Every year, as autumn approaches, I find myself thinking about the great Scots humorist Ivor Cutler, with whom I used to go on long rambles around various parks and public gardens back in the 1990s. We made these walks in all seasons, but autumn delighted us most and my fondest memories are of him at Kew Gardens, surrounded by falling leaves, or at RHS Wisley’s apple days, when it sold the flavoursome and sometimes wonderfully irregular apples that supermarkets disdain.
We loved the old varieties that had otherwise fallen by the wayside, as the world moved relentlessly towards a global monoculture – and we’d go a long way to find an Ashmead’s Kernel, or a Beauty of Bath. It’s ten years since Ivor died, but whenever I find a good apple, I think of him.
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