BERRY PIERCER

— Here's something interesting. This is a piercing cork for making jam. You know that when you make jam you have to pierce every berry so that the juice comes out, so that the jam is good and tasty. My grandmother loved making jam. At first she used a hairpin to pierce the berries, she had this pin. But a hairpin isn't that sharp and she had to poke each berry several times. The more holes the better. Well, my grandfather found an old champagne cork left over from some party and stuck pins into it. The kind of pins that you use on men's shirts. He put the pins in at an angle and it was very easy to put it on your finger. It was convenient for my granny. But I was very small then, about 5 or 6 years old, so I just held it in my hand and pierced berries with it, and I loved it. My gran used to call me when she was going to make jam (...) She had two tubs (…) I remember making gooseberry jam. We brought a whole bucketful from our dacha and I pierced them all (...) I pierced every gooseberry and then put them in the other tub. I really loved doing it. It was fun. The jam turned out so tasty like that. Well, maybe not only because of that, but maybe it played a part too (...) Then granny lost the cork, and we only found it again years later. It had fallen behind the stove, and we found it when we were moving it. It's true we had to replace a few nails (pins) (...) We replaced the nails and started using it like before. Such an interesting little thing.