ALT How I Came to Write ‘The Orange’ By Wendy Cope In the early 1980s I was a teacher seconded to County Hall, working on a newspaper published by the Inner London Education Authority. After I left that job I regularly met my ex-colleagues Robert and Dave for lunch, often on the South Bank. On the day of ‘The Orange’, which would have been around 1989, I think we were in the café of the National Film Theatre. I saw the outsize orange and put it on my tray, although I hardly ever eat oranges. The rest of the story is in the poem, which I probably wrote that evening. It is addressed to the man I was in a fairly new relationship with at the time. His name is not mentioned. We lasted about a year. Robert died in 2014. I’m still friends with Dave.