The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

My plan this week was to track down the William Ingall and describe how I moved it to its plush new home along the canal path to Ticklepenny Lock. Unfortunately, events decided not to transpire in accordance with my design. Crawling around my friend Martin’s field and finding the last traces of the Ingall is still very much on the cards but it won’t now be possible for a couple of weeks or at least until he finishes sorting out some windows in the village.

That’s unfortunate for the blog, but does allow me at least to forestall my eventual crushing disappointment. Also, and this is a definite advantage enjoyed by those of us in the extinct fruit and veg game, apples that don’t exist aren’t going anywhere. So, no rush.

Instead of scuffing my knees in Martin’s back garden, I decided to invest an afternoon wandering around Lincoln library. I assumed the Local History section would be a rich treasure trove of information, cryptic clues and ancient pencil drawings describing my fruity nemeses. Lincolnshire, after all, is a farming horticultural type of place and people are bound to have written extensive works of literature describing apples. I can’t be the only waster with time on his hands.

At this point I should reveal that my real job involves a community library so it is not without a simmering sense of jealousy that I entered Central Library with its swanky automatic doors, happy chattering visitors and notable lack of a long dark entrance tunnel. I passed through the fiction and biography sections, looking down on the teeming masses (seven) of library punters who had chosen to invest their Saturday mornings reading adventure stories, and headed directly for the chaotic mass of books, folders, and crumpled pamphlets that made up the Local History (Reference only) section.

These days the library has an extensive and easily navigable online catalogue, but I decided instead to adopt the more traditional method of wandering up and down the shelves hoping that “Lost Orchards of Grimoldby and other Obscure Villages” would jump out at me. My attention was diverted by rows of books about tractors, threshing machines and bombers (which was weird because bombing, along with heavy petting and diving, was banned in my local swimming pool when I was a young ‘un). I found my hands reaching out, hypnotised, towards “In Praise of Bells” and “Bell Tales” but I held my nerve and continued my quest for the Apples section.

There was no such thing. Not a single book. Windmills had their own section. A whole shelf of books sat ignored, despite having titles like “Windmills of England”, “Windmills in England” and “Looking for Windmills (in England).” If I’m being honest I began to wonder whether Windmills might have been an easier subject for my blog than Looking for Pretend Apples. Still, I’m four posts in and it’s way too late to recant.

There was even, and I kid you not, a book entitled “Soils of Lincolnshire.” Soils. Of Lincolnshire.

Of Apples, there was neither sight nor sound. Eventually, I even checked the catalogue. Nothing.

My intention had been to use the fortnight before I head off to Grimoldby and William Ingall to track down one of the Lincoln based apples (the Beauty of Lincoln) but I’m honestly beginning to have a few doubts. It’s all very well my database alleging that it might still exist, but it then gets very shy of offering any other information, like a description, a location or the name of the responsible horticulturist.

I might have to rethink my plans.

Maybe if I concentrate on apples that have some kind of description or at least a bit of a clue, I might have more success. At least in my rookie year. Next year I’ll find the Beauty or die trying.

What I’m also going to do is some website jiggery-pokery that involves uploading the list to this blog. That way, if a reader knows anything, they can check the list for relevant targets.

Who am I kidding? The only person reading this is me.

And I, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, know nothing.