Picnics

Picnics
Our favourite picnic place was near Bilberry Hall, perhaps a quarter mile further, on a silver-sand twisty path, single file. There were several high earth banks, maybe fifteen feet or so, long and deeply covered with heather and bilberry. Away across the other side of the path were small round hillocks, with a hollow on top, and an opening towards the long mounds. These had been constructed during the Great War, for shooting practice, and there were said to be many little souvenirs to be found on those banks. The only things I found were bilberries and ladybirds. We would settle on the hollow top of one of the round mounds, and each do what we wanted. Give me a little blue sugar bag and I was happy all day, gathering a few ounces of bilberries, breaking off my search briefly for bread and butter and a banana, some milk, and some feather cake – always bananas!

There were definitely different coloured ladybirds then, some were quite pale yellow, some orange, scarlet, and quite a dark red. If there were a lot about, I might gather all I could find, carefully carrying them back to our hilltop hollow, hoping they would settle there long enough for me to go off and find some more, and get a spectacular crowd of different colours.

Very rarely, an aeroplane would slowly chug across the sky, perhaps I saw one or two in the whole year: I associate the sound and sight with the moor picnic afternoons. I used to be tired walking home and was notorious for lagging behind – there always seemed to be large bilberries beside the path when we were supposed to be walking home, and would always end up stopping for something far too amazing to ignore, and then running to catch up with the others.