Technically I’m not of course but I do like saying the word redolent as it is of climbing fences, taking windfalls illicitly, fearing a shout of “oi!, what do you think you’re doin’”, back over the fence and running full-pelt for our very lives and being chased by a portly perspiring man with a check waistcoat waving his arms in a crazed manner. Then the biting into the even sweeter apple because stolen fruit always tastes sweeter doesn’t it? Then the “ugh!” as one sees half a maggot in the bitten piece.

It never happened, of course. Even if we (me, Paul and Melvin) discovered an orchard which largely didn’t exist, or even a heavily laden tree in a back garden, the fence wasn’t in poor repair, the back gate was locked, and the thought of being caught was a sufficient damper to make us walk away. Good on the Beano or Dandy pages but a far cry from reality.

All of these thoughts were crawling through my mind whilst trying to get the remaining crop of apples from the old tree in the paddock. Not a great crop this year, but there are sufficiently juicy looking ones to at least attempt to get them before they become windfalls. They are about twenty feet up so my apple retrieval tool with its 5’ 4 3/4” handle is a bit puny, so the obvious answer is to lash it to the pruner which is about 12’ long (it is an old wooden one that the previous owners left us – a work of art in itself).

How does one control it as it waves about trying to calm it down so that the bag encompasses the apple then manipulate the long pole at the extremity of one’s reach to induce a sever of the weak link on the stalk when the weight of the contraption is succumbing to gravity?

Managed about a dozen with only one dropped which I’ll have to eat first!