Apples

When I was five I got into trouble. I was an adventurous boy and so
trouble was nothing new, but this was more severe than usual. The thing
was, you see, that I had this great love of fruit - especially apples.
And in 1952 Lincolnshire had a lot of apple trees. A lot of apple
trees. You couldn't move for apple trees it seemed like. About 50\% of
them all belonged to one man, a certain Mr Ron Dewhurst. Mr Dewhurst
was the richest man in the district and he had a thing for apples
too.

It was such a temptation, that was the thing. All those apples just
hanging there. Every day I'd amble past on my way to and from school
and the horizon would be nothing but apples, apples, apples. I was only
5 remember so the horizon wasn't as big as it is now! Every hedge
fronted an apple tree, every lane led to an orchard. And I loved
apples. It got to the stage where I was drooling, literally drooling at
the sight of all those apples. And the smell! That sweet, tangy smell
used to drive me mad. My mother gave me an apple in my lunchpail every
day of course, but by the time I'd reached the orchards in the morning
- the first ones were a good mile from home - it would be long gone. It
was a rare day that the apple wasn't long gone by the time the house
was out of sight, if I'm to be honest. And of course on the way home
from school in the afternoon that apple was as distant a memory as if
it had never existed at all.

All those apples just hanging there. A hungry boy who loved apples,
tortured day after day by the sight of them. Well you can guess what
happened next. I blame it on the fact that I didn't know how much Mr
Dewhurst liked apples too. If I had known I probably would still have
scrumped his fruit - it was just too tempting not to - but I would have
been a bit less blatant about it. I guess that if you're driving along
a country road, peacefully admiring the way the sun brings out the
highlights in your fruit trees, looking forward to a nice apple pie for
tea? I guess if you're doing that and you suddenly see a scruffy little
oik happily sitting on one of your boughs, swinging his legs back and
forward as he eats your fruit, and if the oik is merrily dropping the
cores on the ground beneath in an ever growing pile?. I guess you would
get a little annoyed, wouldn't you? Mr Dewhurst certainly did. He
screeched his old Austin to a stop (why do really rich country folk
always have old cars?) and leapt out into the road as nimbly as I've
ever seen before or since. Starsky and Hutch eat your heart out! He
started running towards me, waving his old walking stick (another
ostentation common to the breed) and yelling wildly at the top of his
voice. Needless to say Iwas off that tree and down the road like a
streak of lightning. I could have beaten Roger Bannister that day. But
another truth of country life is that there's no point running away
when everyone knows exactly who you are and where you live. And even
Roger Bannister wouldn't have beaten that old Austin to my front gate.
I saw it as I turned the corner and I could have died there and then.
But I didn't, luckily, and had the pleasure of arriving to find old
Dewhurst, pork-pie hat in hand, earnestly ratting on me to my mother.
He turned as he heard the squeak of the gate, and the look of pure
venom he shot me still remains in my mind today. I should have
dissolved on the spot. But I didn't. Instead I slumped, red faced and
stomach rolling queasily, down the path to meet my doom. I couldn't sit
down without a cushion for the next week, but it didn't put me off
apples. I still love them to this day.