"Deja View"

“Deja View”

Robby was five. Granny Smiths surely aren’t a child’s first choice in an apple. Maybe it was the name; Robby loved his granny, even though she wasn’t called Smith. Robby knew when he swallowed the pip, he panicked. His mother, Moira, comforted the distraught child and told him, “It won't grow into a tree inside you, it’ll pass right through, in day or two.”

She was right, mother’s usually are. The apple seed, who didn’t have a name yet, set off on its journey. Mouth, gullet, stomach, small intestine. Humans, even small ones, are complicated. Then came the large intestine, ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon, see what I mean? Rectum and then ..... anus.

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel”, murmured the pip. Robby and his anal sphincter, by now well house trained, sent the pip, let’s call it Pip, on the next phase of its trip.

The journey through the town’s primitive sewer system was as dark, wet and malodorous as that through young Robby and almost as convoluted, but in due course there was light at the end of the tunnel and Pip popped up in the harbour.

Frank was a seagull. Bird enthusiasts will tell you there are only gulls, ‘seagull’ is a misnomer. Frank was in fact a Herring Gull and very proud of it. I should add that all gulls are called Frank. He was floating in the harbour thinking gull-like thoughts, when his keen left eye spotted Pip bobbing in the water. Gulls will eat pretty much anything, no matter how gucky or how small. Yes, you guessed it, Pip was in the dark again. Another journey in the darkness of Frank’s innards for the already well travelled apple pip.

Our next glimpse of Frank sees him airborne, soaring, as gulls will. He could feel a certain fullness. Too many French fries outside that MacDonald’s! He sought a windshield upon which to make a deposit. Gulls are like that. The feeling of fullness suddenly bordered on desperation and this ruined Frank's aim. Pip barely had time to exclaim “There’s light at the end of the tunnel!” before the white dollop of gull manure burst forth. It went way, way wide of its target. Pip, amid other gull bi-products landed in a much neglected back garden.

Pip did what pips sometimes do. Aided by sun and rain and Frank’s fertilizer it swelled and split and put forth two little green leaves. Days and seasons and years passed. Pip became a sapling and then a healthy young tree. The house was bought and soon Pip stood proud in the centre of a lush lawn. That wonderful year Pip produced its first few apples.

Bobby, son of Robby, who had become Rob, was six and seemed to like Granny Smiths.

Frank’s fate? No idea, but one of his descendants, called Frank of course, kept up the family tradition of soiling windshields until the harbour ferry ran him down, just as his beak closed on an apple pip.