Several times recently I have been out blackberry picking on the hills around Edinburgh. I’ve gone at different times of day, mostly at weekends.

Each time I’ve met other people picking blackberries too. We’ve swapped ideas about what to do with them. Blackberry crumble, blackberry jam, blackberries combined with apples or plums in various ways. Blackberry syrup, to pour over ice cream.

After a few such occasions it dawned on me that my fellow blackberriers were all of roughly my age. Where were the children? We agreed that we hadn’t seen children picking blackberries this year. Yet we all remember picking blackberries ourselves as kids.

My companion suggested that perhaps blackberry picking was like classical music – ‘something you come to later in life’. After all, picking blackberries requires patience, delicacy and persistence in the face of setbacks.

Blackberry picking as the classical music of the harvest season? Something to ponder.