The Herbs - Strawberry Picking

The Herbs - Strawberry Picking

"1300. lunch stew and prunes. eat with relish.

1330. eat secret lunch smoked salmon duck green peas strubres and cream."

The above is a snippet of a Headmaster's typical daily 'timtable' from the first nigel molesworth book 'Down With Skool!', one of those books I've read so many times it is now a bit of a shambles.

We sometimes treat ourselves to some strawberries, but in deference to nigel, I often actually write 'strubres' on the shopping list, or I might ask Lisa the leading question "Do you fancy some strubres?" - that is the way we roll, apparently.

We had a couple of strawberries plants at home in the 80s, but they rarely produced anything larger than a medium-sized gobstopper. In the words of Albert Steptoe "One burp and you're empty!".

"Enough is as good as a feast. And too many is worse than none at all!" claims narrator Gordon Rollings in 'Strawberry Picking' when Dill and Sage stuff their faces with a fair proportion of that year's crop from the Herb Garden.

Though frankly, I'm more worried about the long-term damage Bayleaf, Sir Basil and Lady Rosemary are doing to their backs, bending badly when harvesting the strubres.

There's no sign of spooky witch Belladonna, though Bayleaf's mention of The Phantom Strawberry picker does rather come out of left-field, and makes me wonder whether there's a subconscious link with 'The Phantom Raspberry Blower Of Old London Town' by Spike Milligan and a gentleman.

Ultimately, this one is all about the consequences of not throwing away old Christmas boxes, which is about as convoluted an explanation as the dreaded Fast Return Switch in 'The Edge Of Destruction' by David Whitaker and a Food Machine.

Constable Knapweed is on the trail of the missing strawberries, though once he finds the remains, alert viewers will note how the evidence probably won't last long in his custardy (sic). Though he seems to be perfectly happy taking them into sugary and creamery (groan!).

Hmm, perhaps too many bad jokes are indeed worse than none at all, but if you want more thoughts along these lines, our video about 'Strawberry Picking' can be seen here.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)