Bad Apples and Moonlit Apples

I'm 'avin' a bit of a grouch again. Apples. They are unrecognisable these days. Oh, they look alright, polished and unblemished, red, gold, green - labelled with variety an' all that, but they don't taste right. Skins tough as leather, flesh tough or hard as iron, flavour - what flavour?

Does anyone else have the same problem?

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, there was a span when I just about lived on apples. I was trying to lose weight, back in my late 20s, early 30s. I loved the easily identifiable apple differences - in shape, scent, flavour, of at least a dozen different English, and some "foreign" varieties. Most were available only at certain times of the year.

I guess I could be thought of as an "apple fancier" in those days. I'd haunt local greengrocer's shops or the Saturday Market looking for a specific variety. But then came supermarkets and things went rapidly downhill on the apple front. I'd still occasionally find a decent French Golden Delicious. South African Goldens were good too, but I boycotted them for a long time, due to the political situation there. Cox's Orange Pippins, possibly England's most popular apple, were still around, but flavour had gradually deteriorated, when not from local orchards. Macintosh Reds would appear once a year, and I'd buy lots of those - great scent they have, or had.

Since arriving in this fair land I could count on one hand the times I've tasted a decent apple, don't think I'd even use all fingers! The problem could be due to the area in which we live. Maybe good apples are still available elsewhere in the USA, nearer to where they are grown. Those arriving in our supermarket have probably been messed with at seed stage, sprayed within an inch of their lives, stored in cool storage, trundled across thousands of miles, before arriving for inspection of shoppers in south-western Oklahoma.

Sigh.

A poem kept trickling though my head earlier and prompted this post. It's a poem a work friend taught me many years ago. We'd start reciting it any time things (or people) on the job began to get tetchy, for some reason it acted as a release valve; before we reached the end of the first verse we'd be falling about laughing.

The poem was written by British poet John Drinkwater (born 1 June 1882).

Moonlit Apples

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes
A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches,
and then
There is no sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams
Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,
And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
On moon-washed apples of wonder.