A picture from yesterday's DT, showing off a Rumanian girl picking strawberries somewhere in Herefordshire.
Interesting from a horticultural point of view in that the strawberries are being grown on the top of short stout poles under a large plastic tent, rather than outside at ground level, on straw and under nets, as they were in my childhood. The expense of all the poles must be considerable but the gain, I suppose, is ease of picking (a large fraction, I imagine, of the overall cost), freedom from weeds and immunity from ground living pests.
Interesting also that even in this simple illustration of contemporary rural life, the thing has to be posed. No-one would actually pick strawberries with a whacking great basket tucked under one arm in the way shown, but I can see that the pose was necessary from an artistic point of view. I imagine that they actually use some sort of chest high trolley to hold the basket, freeing up both hands and reducing both the amount of movement needed and the amount of girl on view.
A neat illustration, to my mind, of the pervasiveness of the need to pose, to present an image rather than the unvarnished truth, or the unvarnished self. Part, perhaps, of what the author of the Genesis was on about when he made the tree of knowledge the locale of the original sin.
PS: it is odd that I have very fond memories of eating strawberries, more or less off the plant, as a child, but that I do not much care for them now. I dare say strawberries have changed in the interval, but I do not think that that is the whole story.
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