Fruit sours

WHEN I was at school, there was little worse than being a gooseberry.

- Mark Diacono

There to stop anyone feeling embarrassed, you soon became surplus to requirements if things were going swimmingly. The most plausible origin of this peculiar phrase is that it stems from the chaperone using the excuse of picking gooseberries near the potential lovebirds as they walked around the spring garden. This gooseberry scenario I can live with.

My fondness for gooseberries is magnified by their arrival as spring thinks about summer, when few other fruit are in season. To me, the start of gooseberry season encapsulates being in this country at a particular time of year as much as blackberries, wild garlic and strawberries do. I know that, when I’m picking those first sharp fruit, the heady perfume of the elderflower will have just replaced the school-crayon scent of cow parsley in the hedges and field margins, the swifts will be screeching and, in normal years, the first Test matches of the summer will be being played.

As with other sharp fruit, we don’t eat as many gooseberries as once we did. Our gooseberry enthusiasm led to dozens of horticultural shows dedicated to them and, in the mid-1800s, more than 400 cultivars were recorded; now, there is only a handful of shows and varieties available, but, for those who grow and eat them, the enthusiasm remains.