Great British Apples

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This short story is brought to you by the author of Maggie's Milkman and Extraordinary Rendition.

Gregor played idly with his handlebar moustache as he looked at the fruit ripening on his trees. Such a bumper crop, juicy, delicious apples, fantastic pears, and wonderful plums, all more than ready to be picked. In years gone by a bumper crop like this would mean pound signs rolling in Gregor’s eyes, a holiday to Florida for the whole family in November would certainly be on the cards once the cider companies and the jam makers had paid their invoices. But not this year, this year was different, this year there would be no foreign holidays, after the harvest there would be barely enough money left to pay the builder’s invoice that had been on his desk for so long. Times were hard, and Gregor would never admit it, but it was all his own fault.

A year ago there would have been no problem, a year ago Gregor’s fields would have been a right little United Nations, there would have been more foreigners than a Premier League football squad and more language spoken than the Tower of Babel.

But Gregor was a proud Brit, his grandfather hadn’t fought in the war so Britain could be invaded peacefully 70 years later. Why should he employ all those Johnny foreigners when he there were hundreds of British people out of work and perfectly capable of picking a few apples? If the government wasn’t going to stop all the foreigners coming over here stealing the jobs from Great British workforce then Gregor would make a stand.

His British only policy applied to all areas of life, he sold his BMW and bought a Jaguar, (what do you mean it’s owned by Indians?) He got British builders in to build the new outhouse, (yes, they cost a lot, but it was worth it, you could trust a British builder, never mind that there was a leak in the roof, it was a great British leak.) And he vowed to only use Brits in his fields. The problem was there were not many Brits around. Well, not ones who would work long days in the hot sun or pouring rain. Not ones that would roll up their sleeves and bend their backs, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week for the minimum wage. The ones he got in the fields whinged their way through the working day; their hands hurt, their backs ached, their kids needed picking up from their grandparents.  While they were whinging the fruit was rotting  Gregor had his Great British Apples rotting in his Great British fields while his Great British workforce were drinking their Great British beer in their Great British pubs so they could come to work tomorrow with their Great British hangovers. To make matters worse Gregor was paying over the Great British Minimum wage for the privilege.

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