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Whortleberries, bilberries or hurtleberries no matter what they call 'em they all be 'urts at Fernhurst, wrote George Larbey in a Sussex dialect. (He was brought up in Fernhurst during the 1940's.)
You know they little black buggers that grows up Blackdown, they stains yer fingers, they stains yer tongue and I dare say they stains yer innards too.
Mum was a practice 'urt picker, she could walk up Blackdown and that t'was no mean feat for a woman with angina, picking 3 or 4 lbs. of 'urts before you had a chance to look round. You ad to pick a lot of they little buggers to make up a lb you know. Mum she'd do it alright, some times us kids would go with 'er; well she'd leave us standing you might say.
I'd soon get bored picking they little perishers, if I didn't get on too well mum 'ud say 'Stick yer tongue out. I thought so, if you put more 'urts in yer jam jar and less in yer mouth you might nearly 'ave as many as I got.'
Funny people, mum's, they seem to 'ave an answer for everything, they bred that way s'pose. They was bred to make jam too I reckon, 'cos she seemed to spend all 'er time making it. There was blackberry, raspberry, plum, and my favourite goosgogs.
Didn't like 'urts much; thinking about it I don't think any of us did, mum liked picking 'em so we 'ad to eat 'em. For some unknown reason, dad working in agriculture, got more tea and sugar than most.
Tea was all right but mum had taught us how to drink tea without sugar. Well not so much taught, the fact is she wouldn't let us 'ave any. Anyway we ate a lot of bread and jam; there didn't seem to be much of a shortage of bread and even when it seemed to become short the baker Morris Mills didn't trouble to take the coupons.
When the jam-jar became empty mum would disappear upstairs and go to a cupboard in 'er bedroom and reappear with a new pot of jam. She would take off the grease-proof paper from the top, held on with an elastic band, which would reveal another smaller circle of grease-proof laying flat on top of the jam. On carefully peeling this off she would always find a layer of thick mould growing on top of the jam.
'I don't know what's the matter with my jam lately,' she would say. 'It never used to do this, it must be this wartime sugar.' It couldn't 'ave been 'er cooking could it? If it was, no one was prepared to tell 'er.
She was a formidable woman, my mum was. Dad knew is place in the house, and that was mainly under mum's thumb. I 'ad known 'im to put 'is foot down, but not often. He knew what side 'is bread was buttered.
Mother also kept the purse strings, she knew 'er money, and there was always money to spare for Christmas, what with the Co-op tontine, the divvy, and I think the working men's' club's slate club, we would do alright.
I think the slate club would pay out a small amount too if the man of the house became sick. Dad was rarely sick, in fact I only remember him being off work once. He 'ad a carbuncle on 'is hip.
Doctor Johnson was called; he was quickly shown to the bedroom, fumbling in his bag we heard him say in a very loud voice, 'It's a carbuncle Larbey.' (He was a doctor and dad was working class, so dad was 'Larbey'.)
'I'm going to lance it,' he said. Dad 'ad other ideas, and we 'erd 'im say in an equally loud voice, 'Oh no you ain't, you bugger off 'ome and come back when you are sober.'
Strangely, Doctor Johnson never returned, and dad's carbuncle cleared up on it's own and dad returned to work.
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