It’s about 7pm on a late summer’s evening. August is on the third lap of its month-long race and September is waiting somewhere up the track for the baton to be handed on.

Which baton? The time baton, Dr Who fans! The year is slipping away like water down a plughole. I’ll turn round and suddenly the Christmas trees will be in the windows and next year’s Easter eggs will be in the shops.

But for now it’s August and it’s time for my evening stroll. My evening stroll with a purpose. Like ambling with style.

I put my walking socks on and then my walking shoes. I find that’s the best order, otherwise the socks get mucky. I download a bit of cool (well, cool for Darfield) jazz to listen to on my headphones to make me think I’m walking in the South Bronx rather than the Dearne Valley.

And then I pick up The Important Item. No, it’s even more important than that: it’s THE IMPORTANT ITEM. The bread bag; the bag that the brown sliced was in.

Yes, I’m off blackberrying up the top road. I leave the house with the bread bag stuffed in my pocket. The jazz is leisurely and urbane. I stroll along and cars whizz by, racing each other way past the speed limit.

A taxi passes, carrying folks to a big night out. A bus passes, doing the same but more slowly. None of them take any notice of me, and why should they: I’m an elderly bloke with a bread bag in his pocket.

I get to the first bush of blackberries at the side of the road just the other side of the garden centre on the way to Ardsley: it’s okay, the blackberries aren’t in a secret location like a rare orchid and there are plenty to go round.

I have to admit that I usually go blackberrying in early September but this year, maybe because of all the rain we’ve had, there seem to be loads of huge blackberries just asking to be picked.

They’re crumbles in waiting or they’re ready and eager to make my porridge taste even better in the morning.

I get the bread bag out of my pocket (‘always carry a bread bag’, my late mother-in-law used to say, and she was right) and I start to pick the beautiful berries and drop them in the waiting bag.

Now the people in the passing cars and taxis and buses have to something to look at and comment on. They can heckle if they like. I don’t mind; I’m picking blackberries and I’m a very happy man.

A spider scuttles away and I take care not to disturb its web. A bird circles overhead, perhaps hoping that I’ll drop a few berries. I carry on picking.

Time moves inexorably on. The evening is turning a little chilly and I really should be setting back home to put the kettle on.

But then comes the moment that all the blackberry pickers reading this column will recognise: the moment we call Just One More.

Once you’re in the grip of Just One More it takes a real effort to tear yourself away from what I’m calling the Treasure Hedge because it’s a hedge full of treasure.

I pick more blackberries and my bread bag is getting fuller. Everyone who’s ever picked blackberries with me is standing behind me, urging me on.

There’s my mother, someone in the Peak District on a Sunday afternoon, filling bread bag after a bread bag from a hedge so packed with blackberries that it almost toppled over.

There’s my mother-in-law in Cleethorpes stretching just that little higher, just that bit further to get the blackberries that are bound to be more tasty because they’re almost out of reach. There’s my old teacher Mr Hinchcliffe telling me that the family that picks blackberries together, and I reckon he’s right.

I’m still listening to the jazz on the headphones and someone is playing a powerful tenor saxophone solo that is so full of emotion it almost breaks my heart. This blackberry picking is all about continuity, linking the little lad I once was with the old man I am now. So I’ll carry on. Just one more. Just one more.

Just one more.