Quince
They dined on mince and slices of quince which they ate with a runcible spoon.
Then hand in hand on the edge of the sand they danced to the light of the moon
My window's tree is amiable and strange. A quince is halfway to myth. Not of the commonplace of apples and pears, having no home on a fruit farm, it provides for few shopping lists. It dozes behind broken cobwebby plum branches in unvisited orchards but is regal in stories of secret places discovered by children, in fable (The Myth of the Golden Quince), or in company with prehistory's ancestral ferns and mosses.
Its half-hearted attempt at pear shape has shrunk what might have been roundnesses to high cheekbones, flat faces. It cowers in leaves like over-large hands, bigger pathetically on the lower branches, like an ageing woman whose substance has slid down into a broad bottom But go into the garden; touch a fruit; you touch the Edwardian softness of a grandmother's cheek.
* Patrick Coldstream says “Once a journalist, and a promoter of causes, have written a memoir, attended the Poetry School and have eight grandchildren.”
