We met face to face, but never eye to eye

[venta]

Some time ago, I reached the age where I realised I didn't know my age. If asked (which, let's face it, doesn't happen all that often) I'm forced to remember what year it is, subtract my birth year, and work out whether I've had a birthday or not recently in order to answer.

It seems such a far cry from the days when anyone was able, and even eager, to give their age; when the half-years and the quarter-years were jealously accrued. Six and three-quarters was babyish, but seven? Seven meant being allowed to walk to Pierremont Road shop by yourself[*].

When I was small, I'd be given my apples cored and cut up, sliced into pieces on a plate. And one day, presumably before I went to school, though I don't know exactly when, I was deemed to have the years, dexterity and teeth necessary to be given my apple whole. To just, like, bite into willy-nilly. I remember distinctly that this was a very grown up thing to do, and quite an achievement.

Accordingly, it's taken me over thirty years to admit that actually, I quite like my apples cored and cut up into pieces. And, if I'm dead honest, and if location, situation and cutlery allow, I would rather have them that way. I've been secretly slicing my apples up for some time. Today I boldly borrowed a knife from a colleague and chopped my lunchtime apple up at my desk. I reckon I'm big enough to eat my food like a baby if I choose.

Apples are much nicer like that, you know :)

[*] Actually, I have absolutely no idea at what age I was allowed to walk to Pierremont Road shop by myself, although I remember it was an exciting milestone. The shop isn't even there any more, bought up by a rival shop-owner and converted to a private house years ago.

Comments

[ceb.livejournal.com]

I am with you in both the apple club and the working age out from first principles club...

[lnr]

Heh, for years and years I was too *lazy* to eat an apple whole, and hence rarely ate them at all. So as an older child I'd only eat apples if someone else had sliced them for me, and even as an adult I'd only bother if I sliced them myself. It's only in the last 3 years I've somehow got the hang of it and now I eat an apple nearly every day, as an actual apple :)

I do still like them sliced too though, it's just my knife at work is rubbish.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

If you were brought up on Fortune apples from the tree in the garden, you'd always cut them up, for fear of maggots...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I was fed apples from the tree in the garden, of unknown antecedents. I don't think they were usually maggoty, though; I think they were more inclined to bruising and grotty-looking bits, which are at least easy to spot. I got my RDA of maggots from the brambles, instead :)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Our garden apples were never that nice - they were cooking apples really and were usually small, hard and sour, in the few years they fruited significantly. The blossom smelled nice in summer, though it hard to compete with the rather more pungent elderflower.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Me too!

[metame.livejournal.com]

My favourite way to eat an apple is with it in one hand and a knife in the other, and to just chop bits off one at a time and eat them - like whittling it down to a core. Particularly good (for some reason) when the apple consumption is being combined with eating some bits of cheese too.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup :)

The problem with that is that it requires two hands and lots of attention (to the apple, knife, thumbs, cheese etc) so less optimal when you're sitting at a desk and pretending to working at the same time.

Also I always seem to end up with a core that looks like a bad early-90s computer simulation of an apple core; too few polygons and unexpected angles. I always get the feeling that there's lots more apple to be had if only I could work out which direction the next cut should be in.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I wish you hadn't said that. Now I'm thinking about convex-apple-cutting algorithms and theorems about edible apple maximization instead of the several things I'm supposed to be doing.

(I tentatively conclude that there's a unique convex hull that minimally encloses any given core, regardless of geometry, but that it is not necessarily reachable in a finite number of cuts.)

[ailbhe]

I have discovered that I love apple-corer-and-slicers. I cut it, nibble the core first to get that out of the way, then eat the slices with gusto and also pleasure. It was such a frivolous piece of kitchen kit that I felt really guilty buying it but I'm delighted now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes! I have contemplated buying one, and concluded (thus far) that its usefulness is outweighed by the amount of drawer-space it takes up. They are great, though.

You can also get equally funky devices for rendering whole fresh pineapples tractable, but I think I'd use one of those even more infrequently :)

(Edited multiple times for (a) saying the exact opposite of what I mean and (b) crimes against apostrophes.)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

For me it was being allowed to go to Marchetti's shop by myself. The one next to the pub, not the one at the end of the Jubilee Terrace, because bad lads liked to hang around on that corner.

(For some reason many small businesses in my village were run by Italians - the chippy was too...)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I think I always ate apples whole but actually only ate about a third before I got bored and/or full. Then I discovered that actually there were other apples than the big red heart shaped ones whose skin tastes like shoes, and stopped getting bored. We had eating apples from the garden but we always made them into pie.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ugh, yes. Shiny red apples are very pretty but invariably horrible. Golden Delicious are also a snare and a delusion, and should be done under the Trades Descriptions Act on two points.

Given that apples is one of the foods that the UK does really, really well I have no idea why these dreadful fruits are foisted on us :(

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I would totally support that claim against Golden Delicious.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Mackintosh Reds? They're an American apple, grown much more for appearance and shelf life than flavour. I always thought they tasted of earwax.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I had a look and it's Red Delicious. Or rather it isn't, it's just called that. It should be Red Shoeleather.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

My favourite at the moment is Pink Lady. They are so juicy they are almost like a solid drink.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I've just never liked apples all that much. Though this may be a lot to do with memories of school packed lunches with Golden (hah!) Delicious (double hah!) substituting for dessert.

I don't remember any of my childhood age milestones. I don't remember a time when I wasn't allowed to, say, vanish off into the fields for half a day at a time, or walk to school (probably about a mile away, and across an A road) by myself. (I do have dim memories of taking a bus at one point, but that didn't seem to last very long. I do remember popping into 'Daniel's shop' for halfpenny sweets on the way home, and the halfpenny was withdrawn from circulation shortly after my 8th birthday). For a while when I was nine my mother would give me money and I'd have lunch alone at the restaurant owned by a friend, just around the corner from school, ordering from the menu and paying like a proper grown-up. At the same age I was expected to pop into the dentist on my way home from school when instructed to do so; and I did.

Oh, no, wait, I do remember that my mother wouldn't go out and leave me alone at home, even for five minutes, until I was seven. How this differed from letting me roam the countryside on my tod I'm not quite sure :)

I am led to believe that that kind of level of independence wasn't the norm even among people of my generation. I don't know why not, really. The twelve year old who can cut their foot with a spade like an idiot is also entirely capable of soaking the cut while they read the instruction leaflet in the first aid kit, then salving and dressing the thing with far more competence and less panic than the responsible parent displays when they find out about it.

To take, y'know, a totally random example :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I am led to believe that that kind of level of independence wasn't the norm even among people of my generation.

By the time I was nine I was cycling right across Cambridge to get to school and I don't remember anyone back then considering it odd.

(These days I've had funny looks for letting Bea walk a quarter of that distance unaccompanied...)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I stand at least somewhat corrected :)

It does always strike me as odd, though, the level of responsibility people expct children to not have these days.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Makes parenting a lot harder.

"Yes, I know none of your friends do this, but I expect you to do it anyway."

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

We never ate apples whole, always cored and sliced. This was not because we had to share or make them go further, or anything like that - we had (in a very small garden, looking at it in retrospect!) four eating apple trees and one enormous cooking apple tree. We took 70-80lb of apples off that tree alone most years. We ate them sliced sometimes because you couldn't be absolutely sure what you might encounter residing within your apple... and sometimes because we were so heartily sick of apples by the end of the fruiting cycle that we would take a few bites out of a whole apple and throw it away, a huge waste that annoyed my mother greatly. Better to share one apple than start two or three and waste half of each.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

With you on apples and, apart from the home tree (not keepers) I get boxes of organic, old varieties (Darcy Spice, Sturmer Pippin, e.g.) sent up from an Essex fruit farm. English and wonderful.
BTW, I got terrible stick from some other parents for allowing you to go, alone and on the train, for your university interview and you were 17!