Fool me once

A fat green blob wearing a three-day growth of stubble, sexy it is not, et the gooseberry adds a welcome sharpness to jellies, jams and a simple fool,

- Tom Parker Bowles

THE gooseberry is not an easy fruit to love. Not only do you have to battle through a perilously thorny bush to reach your bounty, but, once there—hands usually resembling the aftermath of a brawl with a particularly spiteful alley cat—you’re greeted by a fat green blob, wearing what looks like a three-day growth of stubble. Worse still, unless you time your expedition with imma- culate precision, you’ll find a berry so spectacularly sour that it doesn’t just make the tongue pucker, but makes the soul wince, too.

This meant that gooseberry picking, as a child, ranked one step below collecting eggs from the broody, pecky hen. And believe me, that particular clucking chore took the courage of Hercules and the cunning of Moriarty to escape unscathed. Gooseberries, on the other hand, were one of those rare fruits that I simply didn’t trust. Something about those bristles unnerved me. Also, they bit back.