"Dinnae leave the soap in the basin, lassie, you'll waste it!"
I sing-song an obedient, "Okay, granny!" rescuing the slimy bar of soap from the plastic bowl of creamy water and placing it to one side, on the dry grass.
I reach for the sweet-smelling, sun-bleached, towel and scrub my, still slightly soapy, face pink, using the rough texture to clean the worst of the dark red stains from my damp fingers before running off to join cousins and cousins of cousins out in the field.
Nearly every summer holiday, between the ages of three and fifteen, I would trade ballet classes, Sunday School and life as I knew it, for The Berries.
The Berries was an alternate reality where streetlights, video games and TV were replaced by gas mantles, playing cards and campfires. It was a world away from the life of a wean in Central Fife, who was good at the school and always had her nose in a book. It was a wilder, less predicable place and time, where anything could and, more often than not, did happen.
My mother's family are Scottish Gypsy Travellers - that's an officially recognised ethnic minority now, one to tick on forms and wear proudly as part of your heritage - it always was to us anyway.
There was never a build-up to this alternate universe. One day, after school, we'd all bundle into the backs of cars, pick-ups and the ubiquitous Transit vans, towing a range of trailers. Always trailers, never caravans - caravans were what Scaldies used for holidays - The Berries was NOT a holiday.
"Mind now, you need tae work hard and no shame me. I was always the best picker when I was wee, well, except from your Auntie Betty," my mother reminds me, with an air of dignity and deference to her oldest sister.
"Aye, mammy, I'll pick hard." I reply.
Mum always became 'mammy' at berry time, I didnae want to stand-out like the wee half-breed buck I was. I was used to it, my father's distinctly non-Traveller family were from Belfast where I was a half-breed of a different kind; one who never talked about childish fantasies of becoming a nun and obediently waiting until the National Anthem was finished before turning the TV off at night. Fitting in was a well-practised art; one I took satisfaction in.
The small convoy of motors and wee trailers would head north, in the general direction of Perth, after stopping for a full tank of diesel at a cheaper Fife garage. We'd pull in at a camp, usually a big field owned by the farmer whose berries we'd come to pick - it had to be a big field because there would be hundreds of us pulling in over the next while – and the season would begin.
The ritual of picking berries is a rare privilege that I still miss. Up early, pull on your picking clothes in the fresh morning air, clothes that would become purple from the juices on my hands and in my buckets as the summer progressed. Someone would have made a piece - usually meat paste or cheese on plain bread with a packet of crisps each and a pack of biscuits to split at piece time. My mammy and aunties would bring a flask of tea and the weans would have a big bottle of diluted juice, made with the water we'd fetched from the tap that morning. Some of the best meals I ever ate were eaten from an old margarine tub, sitting on a luggie, at the top of my dreel.
We'd pick all day, mostly in the heat of the sun, with bees humming around us and the scent of chamomile and summertime heavy in the air. I usually had a cousin as a picking partner, we'd pass time singing songs or re-telling stories that we'd overheard the big ones tell the night before.
We'd get distracted and, despite the fact our mothers couldn't see over the top of the dreel either, we'd occasionally hear a soft but ominous, "Get pickin' lassies!" come from nowhere… how did they know? They'd tell us they had eyes in the back of their heads but the wisdom of motherhood tells me it's probably because they’d done the very same thing, a generation ago.
For a small child, night-time on the camp was magical. The expanse and variety of the beautiful Perthshire countryside was our kingdom, we’d have adventures immersed in the sights, smells and other sensations that children access with such ease.
If we could stay up until dark, we’d become privy to all the secrets and scandals of adult life. It’s remarkably easy for a quiet wean to go unnoticed, just out of the light of the campfire. I’d listen to stories told by tired aunties and uncles who were grateful for the warmth of both the fire and the connection with much-missed friends and family, after a hard day’s work. When sleep arrived, it usually happened head-to-toe with a cousin, or younger auntie, in a single bunk, with the sounds of the men, still round the campfire, softly chattering away.
The summer would continue in this endless way, punctuated, on Saturdays, by a trip to ‘The Toon’ for which we’d be scrubbed and dressed in our good clothes. The Toon was Blairgowrie and, boy or girl, we’d be splashing about in the Ericht in our underpants by afternoon, with a promise of chips and ice-cream for supper if we were good.
Somehow, late August would arrive and we’d pack up to make the journey back to Fife. The old empty sock I brought to safely stash my berry money in, would be full to bursting with my earnings, just waiting to be spent on fancy back-to-school stationery that I would proudly use in the static boxes that muffled my voice and the static routines that muffled my freedom. Until next year.