Cadgers Chance
The story

But when I think about it this is wrong, it didn’t.  I suppose I must go further back to my fascination with the decaying farm orchards of my childhood memories.  These were places of nettles, brambles and wasps with the occasional demented tup.  For the brave or foolhardy, in other words small boys, and the price of a few scratches and stings you could garner a few hands full of delicious tree ripened plums.  Plums that squirted sweet juice when you bit into them, filled the taste of summer and freedom from school.  A little later, if you knew the trees and were willing to climb, some of the best apples evet tasted could be scrumped.  All this fruit had ripened on the tree, it wasn’t picked un ripe and put into cold store in a manner calculated to kill the flavour.  True we had to avoid the fruit that was full of drunk wasps but it was worth it.  These orchards of my memories were neglected and dying in my childhood and now are mostly gone.  Only an ancient pear or two remain mark the grave site of most of the farm orchards of Yorkshire.  The ancient pear trees that i see in my travels are often stood in manicured grass their fruit, nothing more than a yearly inconvenience to the person cutting the grass. “Plant pears for your heirs” has a ring of truth.