This is a bit long and prob self-indulgent post but I went to bed last night reminiscing about the month me and my mates went strawberry picking and keep thinking about it. This is what I remember from the first day.
We were 16 or so, most in the last year at school but I'd been expelled just after Easter, the farm was in a place called Pepper Arden. We'd all had Saturday jobs or paper rounds but this was the first time we were going to work properly and it was going to be an adventure. The foreman, a Scottish bloke with shifty eyes, tattoos and an accent that was difficult to understand said to turn up Monday at 8.00. One of my mates mother said shed take us there but then rang on the Sunday to say that as she had to be at work at 8.00 shed drop us off at the farm at 7.00 so we had to wait outside the farm, which either gave the foreman the impression that we were either very keen or couldn't tell the time. There was quite a lot of people about fourty or so, mixed bunch with bags of food and drink, mainly locals who all knew each other, loads of women including some who had brought their pre teen kids, and to our delight some girls about our age who were quite good looking.
We all marched in to what seemed endless rows of plants with loads of straw in fields and the Scottish bloke took our group aside and showed us how to pick the clipping the stalk near to the flower petal on the top of the strawberries and into punnets with the tip pointing to the top, there were trays containing about eight punnets. You had to pick a fully ripened strawberry. The sun was out, it was a lovely day and we were in some rows next to these girls. So far so good.
It was then that the day got gradually worse. First of all we got told off for chatting too much to these girls and not concentrating on picking strawberries, then chatting to the girls became impossible unless we shouted as they picked very quickly and kept getting further up their row and further away from us. So, in my haste to catch up I picked more quickly but this meant I was often picking unripe ones and kept pulling the flower thing off the end as did some of my mates. So, we then had the indignity at break time, in front of the girls we were trying to impress, of this foreman routing through the boxes of strawberries that we'd picked holding up examples of poor-quality control and saying it wasn't good enough. Part of problem was my nails were short and pinching the stalk was easier if you had longer nails on your thumb and first finger.
At break time we also noticed a group of students, who we hadn't seen when we first arrived as they were camping out on the farm, about two possibly three years older than us who clearly though they were great engaging with these girls that we liked. Anyway we cracked on after the break and started to get a bit more proficient and started to talk to 'our girls again', cementing our initial engagement brought us further confidence and a bit of light headedness which resulted in one of the girls aunts, quite an outspoken and frightening woman herself, shouting across the rows to tell us to mind our language. Enter the Scotsman who loudly requests us to get on with work and to refrain swearing. So, we pressed on in the heat in silence, only to get thirsty in the sun and then kept getting further behind as we kept going to a tap to drink water. (The locals had brought both food and bottles of water and pop and put them near where the strawberries were being stacked) .This of course did not go unnoticed by the eagle eyed Scotsman who now found he had a willing audience of the pickers to engage with his casual observations that we would be owing him money rather than him paying us money at the end of the week.
Having spent most of the last five years at school eating school dinners or and watching Westerns where people gathered round to eat communally it came as a bit of a surprise that lunch wasn't provided. There were no shops nearby but some of the girls let us have some of their sandwiches which allowed us to futher attempt to cement what could be a promising summer of love. We went back to work only to find that the Scotsman had now moved us away from being next to the girls and we were now next to the students. The girls were on the other side of the students which meant we had to catch their eye and talk over the students.
We didn't really know any students apart from some brothers and sisters of girls we knew from the top end of our village who lived in the posh houses so it was a bit hard to engage with them on equal terms. They were all very confident, lots of in jokes we didn't understand, kept saying French phrases that we didn't understand and were all into Pink Floyd and rock and we were into Tamla and Bowie .It was also hard to engage with them as they were engaging with our girls who they found more interesting and our girls were in danger of being seduced by the grass in always greener lure of bohemian lifestyles and French phrases. So the afternoon became less of an attempt to engage with the students but to compete with them over engaging the girls. This war of attrition ebbed and flowed all afternoon. The Scotsman now had two groups to focus on making jokes for the benefit of the other pickers. Unconsciously the focus on engaging with the girls becoming less and less as us and the students competed on exchanging banter with the Scotsman who then told us all to fuck off, shut up and work more quickly.
5.00 we finished and washed our hands. First day of full labour over. We had acquitted ourselves fairly well in the world of work, done a decent day, and were earning money .Despite all odds, despite our lack of knowledge of Pink Floyd and French phrases we had established what was to be a vital foothold, an established if slight lead over the students with the girls. We also had very bad sunburn and at night diarrhea from eating too many strawberries.
