There is not much chance of my aimless ramblings on this page ever being confused with anything produced by the squat pen of Seamus Heaney.

However, perhaps occasionally there may be a slight overlap of theme. When I studied the great poet’s Death of a Naturalist collection for my GCSE examination, there were some passages where the message penetrated a skull which was thick and otherwise resistant to my English teacher’s best efforts to educate me.

The poem Blackberry Picking was a good example. The stanzas stirred me briefly from my teenage apathy and stupor because they so familiar. Growing up in rural north Antrim, many hours in late summer days were spent picking blackberries off the briar bushes which sprawled on either side of the narrow country lanes. My brothers and I breathlessly crammed the berries straight into our mouths. Some were sweet, some were not.

Heaney’s descriptions of the ripe blackberry juice being like ‘thickened wine’ and the unripe ones being ‘hard as a knot’ were compelling. Equally familiar was the idea of hands being ‘peppered with thorn pricks’ and the disappointment that the berries which were stored, rather than eaten, did not keep. The discovery of the ‘rat-grey fungus’ on them also representing the loss of childhood innocence.

But perhaps a bit of that innocence never quite goes away. There are certain sights within nature which will always bridge that gap to a distant time. At this moment in summer it is the long drooping heavy leaves of the green nettles and the memory of rubbing cool docken leaves onto bubbled skin to ease the harshness of their sting.

I know that within a few weeks I’ll be looking out again for the signs of the wild blackberries ripening. The small hard green inedible berries will soon mature into fruit heavy with juice that will stain fingers. Happily, there are briar bushes in my back garden, and I will be in a race with the birds to pilfer their goods.

Now, as an adult, I know how to preserve and keep the wild fruit and how best to use it in baking. But that youthful impatience remains an integral part of the ritual and I will continue to eat a fair share of the produce straight from the thorn, just like I did when I was a boy. My wife tells me off for this, insisting the fruit should be washed first. Maybe she is right, but that’s how I’ve always done it, before I ever knew to ask the question whether or not it was good for me.

My son’s ongoing and seemingly immovable objection to eating vegetables means that I try to compensate and improve his diet by stuffing him with as much fruit as he can reasonably digest. Recently he advised that he would be keen to try blackberries. I smiled as I said he wouldn’t have to wait too long until he could pick them himself in the back garden. He seemed less than enthused by this idea and frowned as he asked if I could not just buy them for him from the shop.

I was mildly disturbed and even slightly offended by this suggestion at first. I had never bought blackberries in a shop. More, it seemed decadent and wasteful to pay £2.50 for a small plastic punnet containing fruit which grows abundantly all around me.

However, the more I thought about it, I realised it was difficult to sustain a reasonable and consistent line of argument as to why I should not buy blackberries in the supermarket. I have an apple tree in my front garden, but that does not prevent me buying apples every week. Raspberries, blueberries and strawberries are all purchased regularly without hesitation. I could grow them all if I was so motivated. I am certainly not in any lofty position of authority to advocate getting closer to nature by returning to the habits of foraging in the wild for berries, seeds and nuts.

And where would such a passage of flawed logic take me anyway? Should I also forsake buying meat in favour of rearing fowl, swine and a herd of cows in my back garden? Should I sharpen my knives and brush up on my butchery skills? As my mind wrestled with the impracticalities of an instinctive reluctance to buy what could be otherwise sourced, I was reminded of a quote from Irish writer Brendan Behan: ‘To hell with poverty, we’ll kill a chicken.’

But yet, blackberries remained a product apart within my psyche. My long history with the dark glossy drupelets meant I just could not view them in the same way as all of the other items in my shopping basket. Even as I scanned the barcode on the plastic punnet at the self-service till I found myself mumbling bitterly under my breath ‘Paying good money for blackberries…what is the world coming to?’

Later I presented the fat and sweet berries to my son in a bowl. He quickly devoured them and asked for more. As I opened a second punnet, I found myself pondering how he clearly enjoyed the fruit but seemed utterly uninterested in the process of exploring how the berries were harvested. I decided to try again.

‘Hey buddy, you remember I told you that we have blackberries growing in our back garden on the briars? In a few weeks we can pick our own if you want?’

My son responded with a non-committal shrug and a mumble. It is a gesture I am familiar with, which he displays when I suggest something which is of absolutely no interest to him, but he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. I nodded and smiled, reminding myself yet again that my experiences are not his, that just because I can enthusiastically rattle out 1,000 words on the subject, I should not assume that it will be of interest to him also.

I hoped he’d go blackberry picking with me, knew he would not.