How not to be a thief

Two lads were sort-of playing football. In a lazy, sporadic, hot-afternoon kind of way. They were on the village sports field, which is concrete but flat as a billiard table, smartly painted dark green and with white and yellow lines in all the right places.

One of the two players remained sitting on the ground with his back to a wall while the other stood a couple of metres away, kicking the ball gently towards his friend who then threw it back to him. The more energetic of the two was the lad sitting down, who would sometimes throw a bouncer, making the ball leap into the air just in front of his opponent’s foot.

The most interesting aspect of this uninspiring performance was that the ball they were using was a baby aguacate, an avocado.

Did you know that immature, freshly fallen avocados will bounce? I didn’t. It’s not something you’d want to test in normal circumstances. They do though, they bounce very well, almost as well as those brightly coloured little bouncy balls dispensed by machines in bars and cafes.

The avocado footballers were attending, like us, a village fiesta in honour of one of our saints (there are two). The religious celebration had taken place on the previous evening - a short mass in the chapel followed by a procession around the village - so today’s event was pure pleasure, with music from two of the island’s many traditional folk groups supported by a kiosk selling beer, wine and soft drinks and the prospect of a communal paella later in the afternoon.

However, this was the month of July and the sun was strong. The town council had provided a marquee with folding chairs for those who wished to listen to the music, but it was amplified as always to jumbo-jet volume so many of us simply cowered around the periphery in whatever shade we could find. Our two footballers continued playing but taking things nice and slowly.

Watching them, it occurred to me (not for the first time, not for the first time at all) how extraordinarily unbalanced is this world we live in. I’d recently read that New Zealanders had developed a huge appetite for avocados which local farmers were scarcely able to satisfy, leading to the entirely new crime of avocado theft. Organised gangs were creeping among the avocado trees at night to denude them of their fruit. Farmers faced seasonal ruin.

Here in La Gomera avocados grow so prolifically, on trees that grow so tall and broad, that the fruits can quite literally fall on your head. Many get squashed by passing vehicles.

So too do the oranges and the mangos in their seasons. But please be aware, reader, that a fallen fruit still belongs to somebody, no matter what the law may say about it. I know of a foreigner, a permanent resident on the island, who took to picking up fallen avocados and carrying them home in a plastic bag. He was seen the first time he did this, of course - there is always someone who will see anything you do - and he was at once labelled as a thief. In a society where honesty and trust are taken for granted and very rarely abused, such a label is with you for life. Anything you do thereafter, no matter how innocent, will be viewed with suspicion - what’s he up to?

You can pick up a fallen avocado if invited by the owner, naturally. And if you meet a neighbour walking back from their farm with a bucketful of avocados, oranges or mangos, you will be given an armful of them with no option for refusal.

You could also, I guess, play football with a fallen avocado without penalty, because football is second only to religion as a respected activity. Be careful, however, not to do what young Rubén did at our fiesta. When the two footballers lost control of their baby avocado, Rubén intercepted it, attempted a nifty return but trod on it instead. He walked away looking a bit crestfallen and trying to shake guacamole from his foot.

Notes for the serious student
Know your avocados! They are on sale all year round in the local shops and markets, but several varieties grow on the island itself and they appear at different times. First up are the ubiquitous pear-shaped kind with a slightly rough green skin, the sort you expect to get in your avocado-with-prawns starter anywhere in England.

They’re fine, but better still are the rounder kind that ripen later, with knobbly skin ranging in colour from dark green to black. The skin is tough and thick but the flesh is full of flavour. They’re my favourites.

Finally come the smooth-skinned variety, much like an overgrown pear in shape and colouring, and they can be huge. They’re perfectly edible but bland and watery.

Mangos too come in various guises. The first to ripen, typically around June or July, are the size of a plum, yellow in colour and with a darkish yellow flesh. They are delicious but extremely fibrous and will have you picking your teeth for hours. I suspect these are the closest to the wild fruit.

The later ones are called mangas rather than mangos in the Canary Islands, but they’re just various cultivars of mango. Ranging in size from hen’s egg to ostrich’s and in colour from green to red or purple, they are milder in flavour than the fibrous mangos but equally delicious if you catch them at the right moment.

A practical tip for dealing with mangos: to get at the flesh, take a sharp knife and slice the mango on either side of its flattish central stone, which you can find by looking for a slight hump in the roundness of the fruit. Then scoop the flesh from your slices with a teaspoon. You’ll get covered in mango whatever you do, but this is the least messy method.