In the fifties and early sixties mid May was still much too early in England for strawberries. You just didn’t see them on sale yet in any of the green grocers shops.
So each year, when my mothers birthday came around, the burning question for us kids was, would my father succeed this year to bring home The Strawberries! And each year when he came home from work in time for her birthday tea, he’d walk in carrying a small wooden crate full to the brim with big red English strawberries.
How he did it we never knew. It probably wasn’t such a mystery but to us kids and my Mum it was miraculous! Only our Dad knew where to buy strawberries in the middle of May!
Later on strawberries appeared in the green grocers and supermarkets earlier and earlier and then, as now, you could buy them all the year round. But my father always managed to bring home English strawberries for my mother on her birthday.
After my father died, in 1979, my sisters and brother kept up the tradition, so that every year my mother always had English strawberries on her birthday.
If my mother had lived she would have been 87 today, but sadly she died last December and my brother in October.
My sisters and their families in England will be eating English strawberries today in their memory.
We’ll be eating strawberries in memory too.
Ours will be from Holland but will taste just as delicious!
Happy Birthday Mum!