Apple

An apple is a fruit. It is not a apple. It forces us to consider the rules of articles. I have an apple in my mind as I write. It is the beautiful cherry-red apple that matched the lips of the evil Queen who gave it to Snow White. If I were Snow White I would jump at the chance to take a bite of that crisp and fresh looking, Disney apple. Of course, it is too good to be true. The apple was poisoned, causing Snow White to fall into a death-like coma. But that particular apple is memorable. It is not an apple. It is the apple! Yet there are other apples in this category. For example the cooking apple. My mother used to cook wonderful apple pies with a pastry crust that was mouthwatering. I have never encountered a crust as perfect. The cooking apple was larger than the usual apples we had. Bigger than the brambles for sure. As my mother peeled it, I could already taste the pie in my mouth and the dollops of thick cream.... So there you have the cooking apple. Next in line, is the large dessert apple. I had this in Japan. This is a super-sized apple that is served as a dessert in its own right. My mother-in-law would order these, or someone would bring them back as a souveneir. Imagine that, an apple as a gift. But in Snow White it served the same function. It was also the fruit which children used to present their teachers. If you were fond of someone, they were "the apple of your eye". This large fruit was peeled totally, washed and sliced. You ate the slices with a two pronged dessert fork if I remember correctly. It was special. My feelings and respect for the Japanese culture are linked in part to that apple which was wrapped in a scarf or special packaging. By eating that apple I realised that we can make from ordinary things something transcendental. Another apple I remember is the tomato. Now that is odd isn't it. When I was at art college, I took a course in English literature. One of the set books was Flora Thompson's Larkrise to Candleford, and I believe she said people used to call tomatoes "love apples". It's the red and lushiousness I guess. Also there is the reference to the sinfulness of the apple. When Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge - most accounts have it as an apple. I would have thought a fig which has more of the appearance of genitalia might be more appropriate - at least D.H. Lawrence used it for some very erotic poetry. The apple figures in Greek mythology too, but this time it the golden apple. That brings me through association to the Golden Delicious, a French apple which I love and on another level I vaguely remember the television commercials.

I prefer this apple to those very sharp tasting apples. Which strangely reminds me of... the potato. For me, whenever I taste something that is too sharp and hard - I think of new potatoes. Now, here I remembered that the French call potatoes "pomme de terre", literally apples of the earth. Quite funny. From those apples I bounce to the word pomme or pom. This is the Australian slang term for a British person. According to the OED it is a truncated version of pomegranate (literally means an apple with seeds). Being British, then I am an apple!