Apples & Pears

An apple to fruit is like water to drinks; reliable, always there. Pick up a good one and that same voice comes back, ‘I seem to have forgotten you. I must eat more apples.’ You stare at it, see the white-faced bite mark and think, ‘wow this is good’. I have no idea how an Indian reflects on an Alfonso mango, but there is something so English in our apple’s juices, so reassuring when felt clenched in the hand and polished like a cricket ball. It is the apple snatched from the branch and scrunched, or brought from the barrow and then tossed in the air to land back in the hand, that puts a spring in my step. Apples remind me of drowsy wasps, packed lunches, the pleasant smell of fermenting sweet rot, brown cores found under the car seat, penknives and cheese and old knotted trees, so easy to climb. So raise your pint of cider to those old orchards that have seen so many changes beneath their branches.