Nettles, wheat and blackberries: Return to red kite country (Part 2)

Our memories are collections of the signals our senses have picked up. Sight, sound, taste and smell can quickly gather information and store it forever. Even after two decades, I’d instantly recognise the levadas of Madeira, the noise of a Fijian seaplane, the taste of that suspect Thai sausage I ate in Bangkok (what was in that thing??), and the smell of Harry’s cherry brandy in the Troodos Mountains.

But touch is different. My memories of sensation are much more vague. I can’t really remember how it felt to sail through the air when I bungee jumped in NZ, or how much contractions actually hurt. I can remember it happening, but my other senses are always there in my memory, helping out. The water sparkled in the sun as you fell, my brain tells me. The other people from the bus were cheering. … There were lights on the Christmas tree. … That damn machine kept beeping, and the sky outside was grey and empty.

It’s hard to remember the way things feel. That’s why, when you pack to go somewhere much colder or hotter than you are right now, it’s hard to imagine needing those clothes. You know your face can get so cold it hurts; you know that you can sweat in bed at midnight without a stitch on - but you just can’t feel it.

But the minute you feel that sensation again, your mind will throw you back to another time.

I remember the sight of the fields of gold - wheat and barley - and the rustling sound their dry stalks make in the breeze. I can conjure up the smell of this country, and the sound of the red kite’s call. But I had forgotten the feel of it. In Greece, in summer, we avoid the undergrowth because of vipers. On tramps through the olive groves, we wear long trousers and carry our 'snake sticks'. But here in England, the overgrown paths are our friends. This is where we will find the untouched blackberry bushes - the juiciest and ripest fruit. As we make our way along barely-visible tracks, elderberry and hawthorn arching above us, my bare legs remember the itchy tickle of the dry summer grass and the scratch of brambles that you know will leave a satisfying red trail on your skin. As I reach, too carelessly, for the biggest fruit, I feel a familiar needle-like sting at my elbow. Ah, nettles, says my brain. That feels like home.

Not that I haven’t nettled myself in Greece. Sure I have. In spring, I collect nettles and make risotto and pesto, and I spend a healthy amount of time hiking up mountains on badly-marked trails. But all my earliest memories of that clever sting - raising white bumps on your skin, wreathed in red, tingling like someone is jabbing you with tiny needles, then fading away only to remind you it was there hours later - all those memories are from this place.