Stealing Newton's apples

Mary Dunwich writes:

Sunday was a lovely, warm sunny day for a change, so the Dunwich family went out for the afternoon. We walked down to the psychiatric hospital, the Sir Isaac Newton Hospital for Long-Term Inpatients, known to us locals as Sir Isaac's. It is a lovely old place, with large, rambling grounds with a little orchard and some lovely old woods. The public are allowed in the grounds, and it is a favourite spot for dog-walking, blackberry-picking and frisbee practice.

There is a lovely old orchard, now sadly abandoned. I suppose it was once planted for occupational therapy, but it's been long neglected. The only people who pick the apples now are us locals, who turn up with rucksacks and wheelbarrows and shopping trolleys to take their scrumpings home. I know it's stealing, the apples must belong to the hospital trust or whoever manages hospitals for the NHS these days. But I've never seen anyone official looking out there in a stepladder, and we've never been chased off the premises yet.

I made sure the family were all looking respectable before we set off. The Werewolf was wearing his best jeans and a Glastonbury festival t-shirt ("Glastonbury: not just a load of old cow-pats!"). I wore my new LingQ t-shirt ("You don't have to be mad to learn foreign languages but it helps!"). James had even done his flies up. I didn't want us to get mistaken for in-patients trying to escape again.

It was great fun picking all the apples. Legend has it that some of the trees are grafted from old Isaac's own apple tree (the one that invented gravity) but I wouldn't know which. In any case the Werewolf is only interested in picking the cooking apples for making his chutney and pickle. I like the stripey sweet eating apples so I was busy picking those. Minnie ate six apples and then had a sword-fight with James using sticks.

I managed to get James to elaborate on his time-travelling adventures, while he was hanging upside down, half out of one of Sir Isaac's apple trees. It turns out that Jay has been grounded for leaving his mobile phone at Granny's in 1969. Surely this can't be right?

I walked over to the cooking apple trees to ask the Werewolf while he and Minnie were picking the cooking apples. Did he remember his Mum having a mysterious artifact when he was a little boy? He told me Granny Dunwich's story about the alien visitors and the subsequent visit from the Men In Black. This is all really very strange. While I, like all right-minded people, believe my government is capable of all sorts of dreadful things to cover up The Truth, it seems very odd that they should have got news of the alien visit so soon. Who did Granny tell? Or were the Men In Black who came and took the phone away merely a product of Granny's overheated imagination? But if James is right, the phone was left at her house. Either someone took it away or it must have still been there while the Werewolf was growing up. And he doesn't remember it.

I pondered on this all the way home while Minnie threatened to be sick. Did the British Government get hold of a twenty-first century mobile phone in the late sixties, and what did they do with it? Did Granny look at the pictures on it first? I hope there weren't any pictures of her on it. No-one likes to see pictures of themselves from thirty-nine years in the future.