A pink lady

On the 16th May I noticed an oddly good apple from Sainsbury's, a Cox 4105.

Today I notice an irritatingly bad one from the Tesco Express, recently opened just off Horton Lane. An operation which I have been told is a franchise, something which I had not known Tesco's were into. Anyway, they sold us 4 Pink Ladies from New Zealand for the premium price of £2.99 or 75p each. Large shiny looking affairs. Looked very good. But cut them into quarters to core them - don't like risking the elderly gnashers on entire applies these days - to find that the very centre of the apple had gone a rather odd grey brown colour, and they tasted even odder. Rotten maybe, but rotting from the inside out, something which does happen with these artfully stored, out of season apples. Which given that it is presently the spring in New Zealand, these must certainly be.

A 'Pink Lady 4128' with the little sticky label carrying the web address http://www.produceofnewzealand.org/, a site with a head line about 100% pure apples. Wherever do their advertising chaps learn their English from? What does a 97% pure apple look like at home? Does it count if you inject them with 7cc each of 100% inorganic xenon for their better preservation? They also headline a very glossy brochure about apples and colorectal cancer (a matter in which I take a personal interest) which claims that 'phytonutrients in apples inhibited the growth of colon and liver cancer cells in laboratory conditions'. Do they know something that we have missed out on in the home country? Or do the NZ Bayer people talk to the UK ones? See the engaging truck driving across your screen when you visit http://www.bayer.com/.

But I have not learned anything about how they get their 100% pure apples from the tree in NZ to the shop in Horton Lane.