Hums and bums and raspberries

The children of the neighbour of a friend of a friend wanted to come berry-picking in Arrowtown. I indicated as long as they were not going to annoy me with inherited social conservatism, as kids are prone to do, they could come along. They were 7 and 10.

The 10-year-old was conversationally more interesting than her sister, whose main form of communication was to hum little tunes to herself. Their names had unique spellings which would identify them if I were to record them.

As we walked along a path shimmering with schist dust, the older kid said, "I've never been berry-picking before."

"Have you not?" I said.

"No. And I'm 10 years old now, so that's a long time to wait to go berrying."

Curious insight. "Yes," I said.

Raspberries were in season but already well picked-over in the area nearest the town, behind the grey pipeline. The four adult strategists decided to broaden the scope and target gooseberries, strawberries, and any redcurrants we found as well. We also determined to walk up Bush Creek towards a lesser-known raspberry cache.

The 10-year-old informed me she was born overseas, and had moved home five times in her life.

"Gee. That must have been . . ."

I paused and thought of my imaginary journalism tutor. My imaginary tutor always advises not to ask leading questions if you want valid answers.

"That must have been . . . how," I said. "How has that been?"

"Not good," the kid said. "But we had to move for Mummy's work, so it's all right. We will have to move at least one more time, because we're renting now, so that will be six times in 10 years. That's a lot of times to move."

"It is," I said.

It was a lot of times for the 7-year-old, too.

Oh well. Maybe moving so often had made them venturesome. They were quite happy to come off-piste to reach the best raspberries in the Bush Creek cache.

"Today, being short is your advantage," I said as we tromped through scrub and under low branches.

"Yay, we have an advantage," the younger kid said, in a sing-song way, in the middle of her humming.

The kids had to be taught how to test raspberries for ripeness. You couldn't blame them for thinking the colour is all you look for.

A berry is ripe if, when given a gentle tug, it comes easily away from the stem and it leaves behind its white core. They picked this up quickly, which was pleasing. It made them useful berry-pickers to have along.

Heading back to town, we came across a tree whose fruits were too young, too green to identify. I reckoned they were large cherries. The older kid thought they were plums. I stayed firm on cherries; the fruit had long stems like cherries have.

"But they have bums, see?" the kid said, referring to the seam of the fruit.

"Some cherries have bums, don't they?" I said. But I became uncertain. Maybe only plums have bums.

"When we drive through Cromwell," she said, "We always go, ‘Look, there's the big bum!' when we see that fruit sign."

I glanced down at this frequently relocated kid, and felt glad to be able to assure her some things in life are constant.

"That won't ever change. Even when you are an adult, you will still say, ‘There's the big bum!' when you get to Cromwell."