Each Peach, Pear Plum

...I Spy Tom Thumb! I remember this delightful children's book being one of the most popular on the shelf when I was a little girl, at school. I was standing in the queue for the grocery stall in the market, when all of a sudden that rhyme came back to me.

I have been finding it really hard to be restrained at the greengrocers recently, as the soft fruit season is well and truly under way. Standing and waiting, the scent of raspberries pricks at my nose and makes them irresistible to buy. I have memories of being perhaps three or four, and standing by the raspberry cane in my grandad's garden, pushing my fingers through the netting and eating raspberries warm from the sun. The punnets of strawberries look flushed with sweetness, and then there are mounded piles of apricots, cherries, peaches and nectarines. Such bliss!

I find myself asking for a punnet of this, a pound of that...and before I know it, I am well and truly weighed down! I must keep my eye out for gooseberries, as I love those poached with a little elderflower cordial and stirred into plain yoghurt.

It was as I was unpacking my newest treasures from their brown paper bags that I mused upon their names. Apricot, raspberry, peach....all fruits, but colours too. If I was to say that I painted my toes the perfect raspberry pink, you would know just which colour I mean. You can almost taste the colour. If Iwas to say that my new book has a soft apricot dust jacket, you would know the shade I mean.

And yet, these fruits were a multitude of colours. Some of the apricots were that warm cream colour, but several of them had deep sunset blushes upon their cheeks. Upon closer examination, all of the fruit, when examined closely was a multitude of fruity shades and hues.

My favourite breakfast at the moment is a bowl of homemade yoghurt, sharp and tangy, with a pile of soft fruit on top. I have to confess that I have been choosing the fruit for the colour as much as anything, but the flavours have been pretty wonderful even so. Sweet cherries, bleeding pink into the yoghurt, raspberry stains, glimpses of peach fless. A sunrise in a bowl for breakfast, so to speak!