Remember that excellent song from 1969 by Roy Wood & The Move? Well, the following article has nothing whatsoever to do with it!

I’ve always been led to understand that everything in nature had a purpose & a use, & was created to fulfil a specific need. Looking around I perceived that the theory was valid: Cows & sheep were created to keep the grass down; nuts had been created for the squirrels, or was it squirrels were invented to gather in the nuts – no matter, the two are plainly compatible; vultures were created to devour rotting carrion; wasps to devour selected rotting fruit; lemons complemented Dover sole and girls complemented guys - or is it vice-versa?

This theology always satisfied me, as it appeared to accommodate everything & gave it a significant purpose to exist. However, last year I realised this philosophy of life has let me down badly.

The hedgerows were loaded with luscious blackberries, there must have been a ton up our lane at least, when I suddenly perceived that blackberries had no real purpose to be on this planet, or any other for that matter. Birds don’t feed on them – presumably because of the thorns; & even when the fruit falls to the ground, rats & mice don’t touch it. The crop just falls & wastes!

So what conclusion can we come to? Was the philosophy of everything having a purpose a fallacy or is it that the species for which blackberries were originally created are now extinct? Was there long before the evolution of man a creature with leathery feathers & limbs impervious to prickles that feasted rapaciously on blackberries? Perhaps anthropologists have an answer to this ‘missing-link!’

Of course there may well be another explanation. Is it that blackberries were created to bury the mess man would eventually make of this world? It’s an established fact that if we didn’t cut the hedges back each autumn within a few years the brambles’ vigorous growth would reach right across the fields & completely cover like an impenetrable jungle all the unsightly industrial estates that perch on the edge of pretty villages & all those imitation country themed pubs with imitation country cartwheels that sell imitation country ale, call centres too, plus all those out of town temples to Mamon we call shopping precincts - & not forgetting McDonalds! – This, to my mind, is obviously the true purpose for blackberries being on our precious planet – that, and my favourite desert, homemade blackberry & apple crumble, served with real vanilla ice cream of course.