An Apple Cleft in Two

 In the autumn of my career as teaching head my Year 4 class won an ‘organic’ apple-themed poetry competition. Unsurprisingly, the first prize was a pair of sapling apple trees named ‘Ellison Orange’ and ‘Discovery’ of Worcester Pearmain and Cox’s Orange Pippin parentage.

With expert guidance and a great deal of pride, the children planted their prizes in a carefully selected plot of the recently redesigned school garden. Although we were advised that the trees were of a sturdy variety, we made sure that the saplings were properly supported and carefully nurtured them through each season. No one could contend that they didn’t flourish and thrive in our relatively small arboretum. The results were there for all to see.

The children liked to talk to the trees at break times, and we all liked to think that the trees listened. We made a promise to Mr & Mrs Worcester Pearmain, Mr & Mrs Cox that the fruit of their loins would be suitably stimulated and encouraged to mature in our safe hands, and true to our word, the saplings blossomed in the spring and bore small fruit as early as mid-July.

Not everything in the garden was rosy, however, for early last decade, a particularly harsh winter frost blighted the old school’s new nursery.

The catalyst for this particular scourge had its roots in a 2003 OfStEd report which, amongst other things, had criticised Northumberland County Council for poorly targeted resources, excessive surplus places and an ineffective asset management plan.

The disease quickly took hold and by November 2004 had spread wide across the South East of the county, in the form of a programme developed by the local authority called ‘Putting the Learner First’, a strategic plan for raising achievement and addressing its failings.

‘We’re here for you’, read the authority’s rather feeble and unconvincing assurance to its employees, in the footer of every communication.

Despite all the right noises being made about consultation, opportunities, options and the redrawing of catchment areas, the reality was that each school was left to “fight its own corner within ‘corporate partnership principles’” as one Head put it.

Deeply cynical by nature, I believe that all motives are governed by self-interest and during the long and drawn out consultation period, I saw absolutely nothing to change my mind. Historically, our catchment area appeared to be mostly drawn from the adjacent North Sea; it was a carve-up and my school was being prepared as a lamb to the slaughter.

By December 6th 2004, my school’s 112th birthday, the sentence was writ large upon the wall, of County Hall. I didn’t need to ask for whom the bell tolled. I knew I’d paid the price for five years of adopting OfStEd’s suggestion of a ‘gloves off’ approach to ‘partnership’; I knew I’d paid the price of isolationism and ultimately the price for ‘putting the learner first’ in my own way.

A small part of me died that day - we were interconnected my school and me.

Its doors were closed for good in July 2008 and the building was raised to the ground shortly after; even its cyber memory was shamefully wiped from the Authority’s servers.

Under normal circumstances, when relationships are shattered by bereavement, there are loose ends and usually a gathering of interconnected people, such as you’d find at a funeral or a wake perhaps, can help to re-establish, reaffirm relationships and begin the healing.

But there was no such gathering for my school; only loose ends, bitterness, deep regret and gaping, weeping lesions. Looking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way; I rarely forgive, but I never, forget. I don’t want to forget.

Neither of the young apple trees blossomed in the following springs between 2005 and 2008; but in May 2008, after I’d returned to work after a long illness, I took time out, one morning, to inspect them. The ‘Discovery’ had withered and died, but on closer inspection, the Ellison’s bark, although leafless and, at first blush, lifeless, revealed the tiniest outgrowth near its foot.

The tree, which had been originally introduced into England at the time school was under construction in the early 1890s, was still alive, so before the school could be deconstructed, over a century later, I decided to dig it out and transplant it into the back garden of my home. I thought the symbolism might help.

However, the tree stood dormant for four more years, until mid to late last season, when it unexpectedly burst into full blossom, producing only a single apple; but what a fine specimen it was. The skin’s complexion was strikingly flushed and striped with slight traces of russeting, releasing an intense, complex aroma such as you’d not find on any supermarket shelf, or grocers stall.

I halved the long-awaited, solitary fruit to expose a white star core of sweet aniseed-flavoured flesh and studied the tree’s natural, awe-inspiring accomplishment in my hands.

And then I tossed it to the dogs.

I had been told, years ago, when accepting the prize, that the Ellison was partially self-fertile and its blossom would have good resistance to harsh frosts. And it was true, for this autumn, after an average growth, the tree is fruit-laden, its branches weighed down to the ground.

But I have left the windfalls and the heavy crop to the maggots, the moths and the fruit worms, because sometimes it is better to give your apple away, than to eat it yourself.

I don’t subscribe to my generation’s love of nostalgia. It's a dangerous comparison; a recollection so completely revised and amended, that I don’t think it ever really existed.

Mine is a nostalgic grief and I'm bound to pick at the scab.