TASTE

We are now so used to living and shopping in our super-marketed world where fruit come pre-packaged: selected, washed, graded and nested in plastic or styrofoam boxes, trays and containers that it’s sometimes difficult to remember that that is not how fruit starts out life!

Here, there is in superabundance of fruit - a truck laden with it comes honking into the village once a day - and, frankly, much of it wouldn’t pass muster with the fruit graders at Sainsbury, Tesco, Asda and the rest. No two nectarines are the same size, melons are often scarred and peaches and plums have spots, blemishes and facial flaws that would not even permit them access into the most liberal of open-all-hours corner stores and mini-markets.

But the taste! The fullness of flavour, the so-sweetness and the sheer dribbling-down-the-chin juiciness…

This is how, once upon a time, we all used to eat fruit and, thankfully, it is how they still eat it in those parts of the world where regimentation and uniformity have not been allowed to eclipse all the old-fashioned pleasures…

And long may they do so!