Ordinary eating apples I keep in a bowl on the table

The shop bag is already in the kitchen — ordinary eating apples, not for a pie and nothing special. You could tip them into a dark drawer — “they’ll keep”. Then my hand passes them by, and in a week the middle has gone mealy. I fill a low bowl and put it on the table: seen, picked up, finished while they’re still firm.

Ordinary eating apples I keep in a bowl on the table. Not a heap to the ceiling — as many as we’ll eat in a couple of days. Soft or spotted — out at once, not kept “for show”. The market and the smell of September are for another note, and so is a baked apple on a weekday; fruit within reach in general is a wider subject. This one is just about apples in a bowl on the table.

I don’t put a banana beside them if I don’t want everything to go at once. The table isn’t a storeroom: when the bowl empties, I add fresh ones. I don’t hide a “stock” in the dark to be surprised later by soft fruit.

I don’t need a drawer of forgotten apples. I need a bowl nobody walks past. In your house, do everyday apples get eaten from the table — or go soft somewhere in the dark?