National Apple Day.

 National Apple Day. 

Families will always provide us with the most secure foundation stone when crisis or adversity become the greatest obstacle most of us can ever face. So it was that roughly a month ago, my wonderful family and yours truly gathered together for a day of sharing good times, revelling in the moment and just appreciating the warmth and love that will always be there even when things go awry and not quite the way we thought it would. It was quality time together. It was the greatest feeling of them all. 

Recently, our wonderful son and daughter in law went and my lovely wife went out for the day, precious quality time with the people we've always known and never tire of seeing. We tend take these moments for granted and maybe we become too blase and complacent but the day just unfolded like the unveiling of the most stunning landscape painting. 

Today, Ladies and Gentlemen is a National Apple Day and together as a family we visited a beautiful orchard near Liverpool and just picked loads of apples. It was simple, undemanding day where your precious grandchildren joined grandma and grandpa for a mass collective experience that was just cherishable. So with apple pickers by the ready that resembled those lacrosse handles with small baskets, we all wandered around Mother Nature's most prepossessing trees and scooped up as many apples as we could reach. 

This of course is the autumn harvest festival where the fruits of the forest can be found in abundance. But this was a day for accumulating as many apples as we could pluck from the trees. And, it was fun. Quite definitely. And so it is that the consumption of apples have always been an essential part of our weekly shopping. We go into our local supermarkets and, staring at us quite temptingly, are dozens of apples in varying shades of red, yellow or green with the finest textures, flavours and tastes that many of us have grown accustomed to throughout the years and decades. 

It used to be said that an apple a day would keep the doctor away which, according to medical lore, could be re-assuringly accurate. But then you discover that some apples had a core which could also be eaten. Then there are crisp, pure green apples known as Granny Smith's, an apple of the highest quality but still has a rich piquancy about it that is hard to define. So it is that apples are taken into the dining room bowl and there are the apples accompanied by their faithful companions such as oranges, pears, nectarines, bananas, peaches, strawberries, raspberries and grapes. 

Apple of course was famous for one of the Beatles record labels, a fruit that will always be synonymous with the Fab Four, surely one of the most popular, most adored and idolised boy bands of all time. For years you would like to imagine that both Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Ringo Starr and the late John Lennon and George Harrison would spend hour upon hour warmly cocooned in the Abbey Road recording studios in London's St John's Wood, biting  Galas, Bramley's, Granny Smith's and Cox apples with the healthiest appetite. 

Then John, halfway through Yesterday, Get Back, Hey Jude, Sergeant's Pepper or Paperback Writer, would call out to his enduring friends that at lunchtime, apple pie was on the dessert menu or even apple crumble or, quite possibly, apple strudel. Would they be tempted? But then Paul responded with his favourite which just happened to be apple pie with gallons of custard. Now George was a simple and unpretentious Beatle as were most of the band. He just wanted the simple toffee apple from the local seaside resort. Oh what a taste sensation. Apples have always figured prominently in our diets at some point in our lives and we'll just grab one for a train or bus journey.  

And then there was Isaac Newton, the celebrated mathematician, who, with his theory of relativity, had one of those light bulb moments when the humble apple dropped on his head or maybe that was just an urban myth. Newton may have seen the apple fall but its location is still heavily discussed by today's great academics. We love an apple after a light lunch, an apple of succulent sweetness, juices squirting freely into the middle distance. 

When we were kids there was the Bobbing Apple attraction at our local park fair or summer fete where children are innocently encouraged to dunk their heads into a bowl of water and just eat as many apples as they can. We tend to take apples for granted perhaps because they've always been available at market stalls and then converted into some delectable dessert after tea, dinner or lunch. 

But lest we ever forget the apple goes right back to the beginning of time when men and women had yet to be appear as sentient beings with feelings and personalities. Yes, Adam and Eve were right there at the head of the queue, the first among a worldwide humanity to sample the first apple. You can see it now. There was Adam, quietly going about his daily toils  and duties before Eve came calling and joined by his male friend. So there we were in the Garden of Eden all those millions of years ago and Adam gets peckish and then ravenous. It was the juiciest and most enticing of all fruits. 

Fancying a light snack Adam asks Eve whether she'd like a Golden Delicious and the rest, as they say, is biblical history. Their lives would never be the same afterwards. Today they would be avidly followed by the national newspapers and paparazzi for their considered opinion on that glorious apple. Adam would take that first tentative bite and Eve, curiosity aroused no end, insisted that the apple be shared kindly and generously. And that was the historical turning point. 

Soon we'd be using apples would be used quite frequently used for cooking purposes, enormous globular green fruits which would be excitedly cut up and then allowed to float in a vast pot, boiling away and bubbling quite for what seemed an age Perhaps an hour or later, the aforesaid apples would be ready to be delivered for Sunday lunch dessert. apple compote or apples with currants or blackberries, apples in fruit salads and apples in multitudinous forms.

Over 50 years ago there was a light hearted family quiz show on TV called the Golden Shot. Hosted by the late, effervescent and irrepressible comedian Bob Monkhouse, the idea was that a contestant would be phoned up by Monkhouse at random and then the fun and frivolity would begin. The contestant on the show would be asked what they did for a living and where they lived. There were no requests for their blood group or leg measurements but Monkhouse was a natural joker with always a dry, irreverent sense of humour and nobody seemed to mind. 

So how is the show went. Bob Monkhouse would introduce us to a crossbow and bolt mechanism which nowadays would have been dismissed out of hand is totally un PC and sacrilege. There was no need for violence and savagery on Sunday afternoon TV and this should have been totally forbidden and banned immediately. But we laughed and smiled because a harmless display of archery on London Weekend commercial TV couldn't possibly offend. 

Now this is when things took a thrilling turn for the wonderful. A gentleman, affectionately referred to as Bernie the Bolt would fit an arrow into the crossbow target. On our TVs would suddenly appear a cartoon board on the far side of the studio with, yes, you've guessed it- apples planted at strategic points. Suddenly the contestant would jovially ask Bernie the Bolt to move this lovely looking mechanism. Then right at the end when the contestant felt the time was exactly right to release the bolt. Suddenly a whole fairground of apples would explode where the bolt had impacted.

Today though is National Apple Day then folks. So if you haven't already wolfed down an apple for lunch or just fantasised about apple pie and custard, then now would be as good a time as any to just eat an unassuming apple. But please don't forget to rub the apple on your trousers to give it a silky shine or maybe we should make that doctor's appointment and explain to the good doc that a couple of apples for tea would strengthen our bones and muscles, stiffening our sinews and making as feel just as happy and satisfied as we'd always been.  Oh and don't forget those fruit machines on the one armed bandits in seaside amusement arcades. They were integral part of our childhood and even now as adults. Make that two apple pies, please.