Apples

- 'Ello, do you want me? Were you wanting some cordial?

I didn't mean Mistress Apple, I meant apples, but she's here now, so let's hope I get through this blog in one piece. Thank you, Mistress Apple, but I still have a bottle of your cordial in a cupboard. The metal one. Yes, the one with a lock. We wouldn't want anyone to steal it, would we?

After the wedding I had a brief stay in London meeting nice people who make books, and now the pieces are in place for the work I have to do this autumn. It is definitely getting quite autumnal now. Leaves are turning, the beech hedge has been trimmed, I treated myself yesterday to a little wander and a bit of blackberry-picking. And our apple tree is being very generous. Within a day or two I need a long session of cutting up apples and putting them in the freezer. The very small ones go to Helen's horse.

- I can tell you my recipe, if you like.

Thank you Apple, but I already know it, and how could I ever forget? But the harvesting of apples just reminded me of a time very long ago when Tony and I were first married.

It took us a while to find a decent place that we could afford, so for three months we rented a pretty squalid little furnished basement flat. After I'd given it a good scrub it looked less like a dungeon, just like something out of Dickens. There was a rickety little cooker that took hours to do anything, in a kitchen the size of a small cupboard. The house would have been grand once, just off Whiteladies Road in Clifton, but now it was divided into as many flats as it could contain. Some of the larger apartments were quite respectable. A more hazardous one belonged to a guy called Larry, who did odds and ends of work on farms. He and his wife had a cat, and about the time we were there Mrs Cat had a family of kittens.

Larry was impressed when I rescued one of the kittens, which had become stuck behind a tea chest. He was even more impressed when I offered a bit of chicken for the cats. My mum always used to cook up the chicken giblets for our cat, so when I cooked a chicken I did the same for Larry's cats. He was so appreciative, you'd think I'd given him an income for life.

It was round about harvest time, and some lovely people from the church where Tony was doing a placement gave us a generous gift of fruit and veg. There were just the two of us, and we only ate together in the evening, so a the fruit and veg took a bit of getting through. We didn't have a freezer. I made a lot of rather strange jam. Then Larry came back from one of his farm days and gave us a bag of apples and a marrow the size of an aeroplane.

Larry, bless him, continued generous. So did the church. It got to the point when I bit my lip and froced a nervous smile whenever I saw Larry coming with a carrier bag and a big smile. I made marrow jam and gave it away to the unwary. I planned the Fifty Things to do with a Marrow cookery book. Anyone who visited us was sent home with apples and vegetables. There is only so much apple pie two people can eat, and in that cooker it took all day to make it.

It reminded me of Miss Read, who wrote some funny and touching books about the life of a country school teacher. The locals gave her produce so generously that sometimes she was forced to bury it secretly in the garden at night. But we didn't have a garden. If we hadn't moved after three months, the marrows would have taken over.