How'd you like them apples?

At the moment my head is like a one of those fruit machines you put change into at the arcades, with my eyes being replaced with vertically spinning pictures of fruit.

I'm tracing fruit through the ages...
Eve and the apple.
St Augustine and the pear.
Keats and the nectarine.
T.S. Eliot and the peach.

And now, most prevalently, Jeanette and her oranges, and Rita and her rubyfruit.

'Fruit salad, fruit pie, fruit for fools, fruited punch, Demon fruit, passion fruit, rotten fruit, fruit on Sunday. Oranges are the only fruit.'

Jeanette, I beg to differ. Oranges are plentiful, granted, but they are not the only fruit. Especially in literature. Especially in lesbian literature. And it's turning me into a fruitcake. (Similar to a nutcase, but nuts are not fruit, and therefore not allowed.)

There are also cherries on icecream that are like Greta Garbo kisses. And banana splits, topped with fat cherries bordering on the obscene (that comes crashing down on a misogynist's head). And two raspberries that are ordered alongside a fond female friendship. And Melanies who look like melons. And dried and pickled fruits librerally sprinkled over breakfasts and novels as women age...

And the grapefruit freak. A man who likes strangers to throw grapefruit at his naked body. It has to be a different person every time. He gets off on it (every citrus squelch is described). Fruity.

And of course the famed Rubyfruit. What juicy gossip.

All this fruit has been driving me mad in the attic. Fruit as a feminine and feminist symbol. Gilbert and Gubar would approve.

I think the madness started as soon as I came home, where there are SO MANY grapes on offer. No wonder grapes are associated with ill people. Eating them is like popping pills. Addictive.

People can get lost when diving into fruitbowls, sliding down the spirals of orange peel. Let's hope this fruitcake phase proves fruitful.