Ian McMillan: It’ll be a good year for the apples...

He’d have been even more amused if he’d have seen me stop suddenly by the two apple trees in the bit of waste ground between the garage and the half-demolished pub and alter the lyrics to It’s been a good year for the apples, because, believe you me, it certainly looks like it will be.

These two stunty fruit trees on the waste ground didn’t yield a lot last year. I walked past them every morning, willing them to bear fruit but not many apples blossomed and grew, and even fewer fell to the floor for me to gather. This year’s going to be different, though. The trees are laden with little conker-sized apples that will, by the time the autumn comes and that chap with the wonky tie is still trying to work out where he lives, be as big as tennis balls.

People who know me will know that I’m a fan of the feral apple, the unexpected fruit that’s the result of a core chucked from a passing car or the pip spat from the mouth of a schoolchild as he or she runs for the bus. Each year I search out the free apple, always looking out for new locations and what look like new varieties to pick and stew and make crumbles with.

So now I have to plan how to harvest the, er, harvest. For some reason, even though the feral apple tree usually isn’t on anybody’s land, I always feel guilty when I pick them. I imagine that in a minute somebody, perhaps with a shotgun or a bull mastiff or both, will come round a corner.

I think what I’ll do is the old “I’ve fainted” trick. What you do is this: you approach the apple tree, making sure you’re carrying a bag or you’re wearing a big coat with lots of what we guerrilla apple-pickers call spots of concealment. Everybody else calls them pockets, to be honest. You get as close to the tree as you can as though you’re inspecting a bird’s nest or a rare moth. You suddenly shout, for the benefit of passers-by “By gum, I’m feeling a little bit leet-headed” and you collapse into the tree, making sure the collapse is so spectacular as to dislodge several apples from their branches.

As you spreadeagle yourself in the branches your hands move faster than a jazz pianist’s, grabbing apples and putting them in your bag or spots of concealment. After a couple of minutes you stand away from the tree and say, for the benefit of the aforementioned passers-by, “Eee, I feel a lot better now!” Then you scuttle home and stew them as fast as you can.