The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

There have been two big developments concerning the nascent Ticklepenny Lock Orchard this week. The first involves trees, business cards and Jane Austen. The second involves cooking apples and the Common Market. Both are equally thrilling and more than worthy of a poorly written entry in the blog.

On Wednesday evening, I took the HS4 across the Wolds from Lincoln to Grimsby and attended a gig on Freeman Street with my dad. While we partied away the hours listening to the popular beat combo Dr Feelgood, my dad let slip that he’d seen some fruit trees that I might be interested in.

The next morning, he told me more whilst we embarked on a wild ride through the mean streets of Louth.

Many years ago, it transpires, a gentleman by the name of Shaun D’Arcy Burt set up a business called Mr D’Arcy’s Heritage Fruit Trees. Surprisingly, given its name, the purpose of this business was to promote, identify and trade heritage fruit trees. Okay, maybe that’s not massively surprising after all. His venture had two main money-making angles. Firstly, the charming and knowledgeable Mr D’Arcy would deliver talks about heritage apples whilst wearing a flouncy white shirt and being dripping wet. Probably. I’ll confess I never attended one of his sessions but I’ve googled Mr D’Arcy and apparently that’s what he looks like.

Secondly, he managed to secure one quarter of an allotment on which to grow a selection of heritage fruit trees. He planted about ten or twelve apple trees, a couple of plums and a single pear.

The foundations of his business empire thusly secured, Mr D’Arcy disappeared off to win the hand in marriage of Elizabeth Bennett and left the grass on his allotment to grow to prehistoric levels, swamping other plants and almost blotting out the Sun. His dereliction of duty eventually resulted in him being blacklisted and his trees were handed over to the other allotment owners. Since then, the yield of Mr D’Arcy’s trees has been shared between the locals. All things considered, it’s a fairly excellent outcome from what could have been an entirely sorry business. Sadly, the labels Mr D’Arcy attached to the trees have all worn off and there’s no way of telling what the various specimens actually are.

I am left with two possible means of identifying them. The first and more glamorous option is to track down Mr D’Arcy himself. He left behind a discarded website and some painfully out of date contact details. The second option, more long term but probably less effort, is simply to collect some fruit and take it along to the East of England Apple Day at Gunby Hall later in the year. I’m a bit of a belt and braces type though, so I’m minded to do both. I will keep you informed.

On to development two. A few weeks ago, when she was still feigning interest in the blog and the weather was so poor she had very little else to occupy her time, my sister discovered an advert for Newark Book Fair. Newark isn’t Lincolnshire, which sucks for them, but the advert indicated that a chap called Roger Merryweather would be giving a talk at the Civil War Centre in Newark on the history of the Bramley Apple. Loath though I am to venture outside the yellowbelly county, I didn’t want to miss the chance to listen to someone that might actually know something about apples so I handed over four squid and booked my ticket. Actually, to be entirely honest, my sister handed over the money as part of my recent birthday present or something. I think she feels sorry for me.

After a lengthy train journey through the various high security checkpoints that guard exit from Lincolnshire, I arrived in Newark. No roads paved with gold. No trees dripping milk and honey. Instead a load of coffee shops and an admittedly impressive museum thing dedicated to the history of the English Civil War.

I smiled unnervingly at the cheerful receptionist types and hurried to the back of the makeshift lecture theatre. Looking around me, I saw about 19 or 20 other people clad in various shades and styles of pastel coloured clothing making polite conversation with each other. I was having none of it. I sat in stony silence pretending to check my text messages until the lecture started.

Roger described the heroic escapades of his Great Grandfather, Henry Merryweather, who was the  first person to recognise the potential of the Bramley and who therefore took it to various shows around the nation, intent on it receiving the acclaim he knew it deserved. The story was entertaining and entirely wonderful and I’m reluctant to describe it in any detail in my own half-arsed prose. Roger spoke for about 45 minutes but has written a book that I’ll attempt to insert a link to somewhere on the blog. Don’t hold your breath. I’m a technological disaster area.

In the 200 years since its accidental inception, the original tree has been knocked over and regrown from its own fallen trunk and has had its existence threatened by neglect, civil war shenanigans and the introduction of Common Market law in 1973 that demanded apples be small (the Bramley isn’t) and regularly shaped (it’s not that either).

The tree itself is now in the care of Nottingham Trent University who have completed a genomical study of it and cloned it for the sake of posterity and pie-making. For an apple tree, it is now impossibly ancient and plagued with Honey Fungus. The outlook is bleak but there are events planned for later in the year that will allow the common man into its presence. I wholeheartedly advise you to accept its invitation.

After the talk, Roger signed my book and offered encouragement in my quest to develop my own orchard. I don’t think we’ll become close friends but at least next time we meet I might have more to say to him than a pathetically stuttered “I like apples too.”

Honestly, you can’t take me anywhere.