…buy a French pear.

Well, obviously a pear that’s called “comice” or to give it its full name “Doyenné du Comice” is essentially French in nature but in my family you’d rather go pear-less than buy one grown over the channel. The variety was cultivated in France in the mid-1800s but trees were imported into the UK and they've been grown here for many years. You see, my Mum comes from a long line of people associated with the Kentish fruit industry. In fact, one of my Mum’s aunts still lives in a tied cottage on a fruit farm although I’m pretty sure that not much, if any, fruit is grown there any more.

When the common market opened up with Europe, the Kentish fruit industry was one of the industries to suffer and what was once a beautiful land full of orchards and fruit was largely grubbed up because of French fruit imports to the UK. Even though comice pears originate in France, they were grown on the fruit farm where my Aunt worked, along with Cox’s Orange Pippins and each year, we’d visit Auntie Dot and she’d give us a box of fruit for Christmas, a mix of comice pears and Cox’s apples.

Those boxes of fruit hold a special place in my memory, not least because of “the wait”. The wait was the time between getting the comices and them reaching perfect arm-trickling ripeness. The sweet, impossibly juicy flesh with that gorgeous graininess that they have takes forever to come and a moment to be lost to mush so the only thing to do is to gorge on the sweet flesh until you can’t face another one so none go to waste. I mean really, in terms of excess, this has to be of the lowest grossness.

Each Christmas, even though the Kentish boxes of Auntie Dot’s fruit are long gone, I buy British comices and watch their progress each day waiting for the right moment. That short window of perfect opportunity has not yet arrived for these pears. It’s a tradition that has deeply emotional roots and a keen sense of loss.

Oh and while we’re about it NEVER buy a French apple either!