Old man's ambition

Autumn wasn't a bad time really. O.K. the long summer holiday was over but Christmas wasn't too far away and it was still light enough to play out and there were still adventures to be had. On the other side of the main road from our little terrace were the large houses belonging to the colliery officials. The largest of these belonged to Mr Padgett, the colliery manager, who Dad called "Frosty Face because he hardly ever smiled. A six-foot wall, which hid his garden from view, surrounded the house but it did not hide the branches of the fruit trees, which hung tantalisingly near to the wall. From our side of the road we could see apples, pears and plums hanging from those branches. The plums had to be the biggest and juiciest I had ever seen, we had tasted apples and even pears but plums were a delicacy still unknown to me, Bill and Eddie, so we could only imagine the taste but they did look inviting. To safeguard this bounty Mr Padgett had cemented broken bottles onto the top of the walls, which only made the fruit, look more exciting, who would go to such extremes just to stop people climbing up for apples or pears? It had to be for those big purple plums!