Why greengages—and why wasps?
Here’s my first Substack post.
Owned by a small French hotel, known as ‘Les Oeillets,’ the orchard of greengages, surrounded by high walls, led down to a small blue door which opened out onto the bank of the river Marne. Greengages are called ‘Reines Claudes’ in French. I fell under their spell—and then with the story that spills out with them.
Well, the greengage part comes because of a book I read at just the right time in my late teens. I have loved reading ever since I can remember and The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden, first published in 1958, mesmerised me, opening my eyes to adventures that might lie ahead. It’s a story about growing up. The characters have very distinctive personalities and they inhabit an atmospheric landscape which is so vivid I can picture it even now.
When I was sixteen my mother sent me for the summer holidays to a French lycée—first to Paris and, in the years that followed, to Strasbourg and finally to Pau in the Pyrenees. Even so, she herself was not enamoured of ‘things foreign’. I really have to thank Ninette, a French teacher in the town I grew up in, who both instigated these trips and made all the arrangements.
In some ways, these forays on my own into France were a trigger point. This is when I ‘grew up’ and learned to look after myself—and, by no means incidentally, learned to love things French! And speak the language. But that’s another story. It was serendipity that I read The Greengage Summer at the same time.
And then the Wasp …
When I was a small child playing on the beach in a Scottish summer, the picnics set out by my aunts on a tartan rug in the sand were visited by clouds of inquisitive wasps, chasing sweetness. Sometimes there were so many of them that I ran into the sea, up to my neck, to eat my sandwich and drink my Irn-Bru.
The wasps were a nuisance. Today their numbers have plummeted in many parts of the country, like many other insects, all of which are a vital part of our natural ecosystem. This is possibly due to the use of pesticides, the loss of food plants and habitat due to intensive farming development and also climate change. Without them, we would finally plummet too. They can give a painful sting but usually only when attacked. And they make beautiful, fragile looking, surreal, lacey nests as big as a football. I found a deserted one under the eaves of our house.
Last summer, sitting in the garden of The National Trust tea rooms in the shadow of Corfe Castle, in Dorset, we were descended upon by a posse of these black and yellow highwaymen, intent not so much on jewels as on the jammy parts of our ‘cream teas.’ No stings, just sweet treats to be enjoyed on all fronts. It was a joy to see them in such numbers!
Wasps may have bad table manners but they are not all bad. They have their ups and downs, just like ‘life in general’. They also love greengages, just like me!
