Nowadays the government and various health professionals relentlessly badger us about getting five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. It did not used to be like that. In fact the quickest way to get a kid to eat fruit was to put it behind a 10’ high wall with a big sign saying ‘Keep Out’ on the gate. If you did that you could guarantee that within an hour of doing so half the neighbourhood kids would have forgotten their ‘Dinosaur chews’, Blackjacks and other treats loaded with enough E numbers to make a Sloth hyperactive and be over the wall and helping themselves to your fruit.
Mrs Carters house was one such example. It had originally been a farm on the outskirts of town but time and progress had resulted in it being just another house in the suburbs where my grandparents lived. To the rear of it was an orchard surrounded by a high wall. The only way of getting to it was through a locked door set in the wall, a door with the dire warning ‘DANGER – KEEP OUT’ written on it in six inch high letters. From the lane that ran alongside it we could see the juicy crop of apples, pears, plums and elderberries that grew behind it. We also knew that Mrs Carter, being about eighty would never pick the fruit and resolved to liberate it for ourselves.
Thus it was that our gang, hyped up on adrenaline and Corona Limeade gathered in the lane that ran alongside the wall all cunningly disguised in the military camouflage outfits that our parents had purchased from the green shield stamps catalogue. That is all apart from Rachel who turned up in jeans and a Bay City Rollers top so we sent her to the corner to keep a look out whilst the rest of us put the master plan we had cooked up over Jaffa Cakes in Stuarts bedroom into action. We would hoist Elizabeth, her being the lightest up onto the wall with a length of rope from granddads shed. She would drop down the other side, tie it to the nearest tree, toss the rope back over the wall and we would use it to shin up to get at the treasures beyond. Dead easy and utterly foolproof.
Now regular readers will know that as soon as the phrase “dead easy and utterly foolproof” is mentioned around here then everything is about to go the same shape as some of the fruit we were trying to ‘liberate’ and this time was no exception. Elizabeth was duly hoisted to the top of the wall and we had no sooner stepped back to check her progress when we heard a most un-nine year old girl like “Oh fuck!” and she vanished from view as the part of the wall she was sitting on crumbled away like the hundred or so year old un-tended wall it was. From beyond we heard the sound of a body and stonework plummeting through undergrowth. As fast as we could, Stuart, Nick and I scrambled up the wall and peered over expecting the worst. Luckily for Elizabeth an Elderberry bush had broken her fall. The bad news was that it was in the middle of a bramble patch.
The dire warning of ‘DANGER – KEEP OUT’ probably referred to the fact that Mrs Carter was obviously a mad scientist in disguise and was experimenting in hideous genetic mutations of the carnivorous kind. The orchard was completely overgrown with the kind of brambles not seen outside of the magic forest in ‘Sleeping Beauty’, the kind that thrived on human blood. We could not see Elizabeth but we could certainly hear her. A nearby bush had apparently developed a bad case of sweariness and from it came a stream of “OW! FUCK! OW! OWW! FUCK! SHIT! OW!”
If the ‘Ringing Singing Tree’ ever developed Tourettes this would be how it sounded and it may have been this that alerted Mrs Carter to our presence as despite her advanced years she was obviously not deaf and suddenly a window that overlooked the orchard opened. In our haste to get to the fruit we had overlooked one tiny little thing, well, small, four-legged thing. Mrs Carters Jack Russell and it came flying out of the window like a furry missile heading for the extremely sweary bush.
It was the thought of being viciously savaged by the dog as well as being torn apart by the brambles o' doom that galvanized Elizabeth into action and suddenly she was free of the brambles and scrambling up the wall. As we dropped down the other side Stuart muttered those famous last words “Phew! Safe!” at the exact moment the dog came hurdling over the wall half way up the lane. How were we to know that there was a pile of rubble at the top end of the orchard that allowed it to reach the top of the wall? What ensued was something out of farce as the neighbourhood was treated to five kids who, with the addition of Rachel looked like refugees from the paramilitary arm of the Bay City Rollers fan club and one of whom looking like they had been dragged through a hedge backwards and indeed had, being chased through the streets by a small but very yappy dog. All that was needed was the music from Benny Hill and the scene would be complete.
We must have run around the area for around half an hour and the terrier only gave up when we finally reached Stuarts garden and began pelting it with dirt from the flowerbeds. By the time we got back to our gang ‘hut’ all thoughts of healthy fruit had vanished from our minds. The only fruit we wanted was the ‘Fruit Salads’ and ‘Rhubarb and Custard’ chews we had bought earlier that day.
Fate though had other ideas. That weekend my grandmother suddenly announced that she had volunteered my services to someone she knew through her women’s guild. The elderly lady had an orchard full of fruit she needed picking but could not do it by her self and she had already had kids trying to steal the fruit so could I round up some of my friends to do the job for her. Perhaps fortunately for us Mrs Carter’s eyesight was not as good as her hearing as she did not recognize us when we were herded round to her house by my grandmother. The dog was a different matter and his growling and barking made the old lady remark “It’s most odd, he’s not usually like that with children!” We did not dare tell her that it probably had not chased most ‘children’ around the streets for best part of half an hour before having those same ‘children’ proceed to hurl large clods of earth at it. Wisely we kept our mouths shut but the presence of the dog certainly made the afternoon of fruit picking that little bit edgier than it should have been.
Mrs Carters house was one such example. It had originally been a farm on the outskirts of town but time and progress had resulted in it being just another house in the suburbs where my grandparents lived. To the rear of it was an orchard surrounded by a high wall. The only way of getting to it was through a locked door set in the wall, a door with the dire warning ‘DANGER – KEEP OUT’ written on it in six inch high letters. From the lane that ran alongside it we could see the juicy crop of apples, pears, plums and elderberries that grew behind it. We also knew that Mrs Carter, being about eighty would never pick the fruit and resolved to liberate it for ourselves.
Thus it was that our gang, hyped up on adrenaline and Corona Limeade gathered in the lane that ran alongside the wall all cunningly disguised in the military camouflage outfits that our parents had purchased from the green shield stamps catalogue. That is all apart from Rachel who turned up in jeans and a Bay City Rollers top so we sent her to the corner to keep a look out whilst the rest of us put the master plan we had cooked up over Jaffa Cakes in Stuarts bedroom into action. We would hoist Elizabeth, her being the lightest up onto the wall with a length of rope from granddads shed. She would drop down the other side, tie it to the nearest tree, toss the rope back over the wall and we would use it to shin up to get at the treasures beyond. Dead easy and utterly foolproof.
Now regular readers will know that as soon as the phrase “dead easy and utterly foolproof” is mentioned around here then everything is about to go the same shape as some of the fruit we were trying to ‘liberate’ and this time was no exception. Elizabeth was duly hoisted to the top of the wall and we had no sooner stepped back to check her progress when we heard a most un-nine year old girl like “Oh fuck!” and she vanished from view as the part of the wall she was sitting on crumbled away like the hundred or so year old un-tended wall it was. From beyond we heard the sound of a body and stonework plummeting through undergrowth. As fast as we could, Stuart, Nick and I scrambled up the wall and peered over expecting the worst. Luckily for Elizabeth an Elderberry bush had broken her fall. The bad news was that it was in the middle of a bramble patch.
The dire warning of ‘DANGER – KEEP OUT’ probably referred to the fact that Mrs Carter was obviously a mad scientist in disguise and was experimenting in hideous genetic mutations of the carnivorous kind. The orchard was completely overgrown with the kind of brambles not seen outside of the magic forest in ‘Sleeping Beauty’, the kind that thrived on human blood. We could not see Elizabeth but we could certainly hear her. A nearby bush had apparently developed a bad case of sweariness and from it came a stream of “OW! FUCK! OW! OWW! FUCK! SHIT! OW!”
If the ‘Ringing Singing Tree’ ever developed Tourettes this would be how it sounded and it may have been this that alerted Mrs Carter to our presence as despite her advanced years she was obviously not deaf and suddenly a window that overlooked the orchard opened. In our haste to get to the fruit we had overlooked one tiny little thing, well, small, four-legged thing. Mrs Carters Jack Russell and it came flying out of the window like a furry missile heading for the extremely sweary bush.
It was the thought of being viciously savaged by the dog as well as being torn apart by the brambles o' doom that galvanized Elizabeth into action and suddenly she was free of the brambles and scrambling up the wall. As we dropped down the other side Stuart muttered those famous last words “Phew! Safe!” at the exact moment the dog came hurdling over the wall half way up the lane. How were we to know that there was a pile of rubble at the top end of the orchard that allowed it to reach the top of the wall? What ensued was something out of farce as the neighbourhood was treated to five kids who, with the addition of Rachel looked like refugees from the paramilitary arm of the Bay City Rollers fan club and one of whom looking like they had been dragged through a hedge backwards and indeed had, being chased through the streets by a small but very yappy dog. All that was needed was the music from Benny Hill and the scene would be complete.
We must have run around the area for around half an hour and the terrier only gave up when we finally reached Stuarts garden and began pelting it with dirt from the flowerbeds. By the time we got back to our gang ‘hut’ all thoughts of healthy fruit had vanished from our minds. The only fruit we wanted was the ‘Fruit Salads’ and ‘Rhubarb and Custard’ chews we had bought earlier that day.
Fate though had other ideas. That weekend my grandmother suddenly announced that she had volunteered my services to someone she knew through her women’s guild. The elderly lady had an orchard full of fruit she needed picking but could not do it by her self and she had already had kids trying to steal the fruit so could I round up some of my friends to do the job for her. Perhaps fortunately for us Mrs Carter’s eyesight was not as good as her hearing as she did not recognize us when we were herded round to her house by my grandmother. The dog was a different matter and his growling and barking made the old lady remark “It’s most odd, he’s not usually like that with children!” We did not dare tell her that it probably had not chased most ‘children’ around the streets for best part of half an hour before having those same ‘children’ proceed to hurl large clods of earth at it. Wisely we kept our mouths shut but the presence of the dog certainly made the afternoon of fruit picking that little bit edgier than it should have been.
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