Tipping Megan

Our book group has now been going eleven years: the next meeting will be our 40th, so we have been regular if infrequent. Five of us came together for the first time in six months on another fine, warm September day.

This afternoon, we did Evesham, having convened in Pershore at noon. After a good look at the Abbey, it was lunchtime: we ate sitting undisturbed in the garden of a riverside pub, well looked after by Megan, a local young lady who will go far. Indeed, she had already been to Florida often, she told us: her Nan was there now, and complaining of the violence. By contrast, Worcestershire seemed peaceful enough, despite the Saturday crowds.

We were gathering to leave the pub, when the conversation turned - as it does - to the afterlife. A bystander joined in. Exchanges flowed. "We really must go," I said.  "You ought to join our book group," chirped in Richard, the response to which made us all laugh: "Do you have a website?"

Damson picking

As an undergraduate in the early 'Sixties, I spent weeks picking damsons for Henry Usborne at Totterdown on the left bank of the Avon just above Evesham. On my first morning up the ladder, someone walked along and addressed the picker in the next tree: he answered, and it was the unmistakeable voice of Richard Grey, but what was he doing in Worcestershire?

One and threepence a basket was the pay rate, hardly sufficient for a minimum wage, but worth it to be part of a youth scene that I sadly lacked at home at Arrow, 45 minutes away by bus. I frequently slept over, and we would sit in the loft listening to Cliff Richard singing Living Doll. One evening Julian drove us in the Land Rover to the Oxford Playhouse to see John Osborne's Epitaph for George Dillon, and another day we bumped along the track from Seven Springs to visit Little Needlehole: he was a friend of Caspar John's family, who rented it.

This afternoon, Caroline and I drove to Duntisbourne Leer for some lower-level damson picking, and we were allowed to give the mulberry tree a gentle shake too.