Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I had quite a pleasant surprise the other day. I bought some supermarket oranges that turned out to be quite edible.
Far from my usual experience I must say.
When I was young and full of juice myself, all oranges came from America and were therefore, automatically wonderful.
They were invariably enormous in size and peeled easily and smoothly, revealing a firm pith-free series of segments that came apart without effort or sticky fingers. They could thus be eaten either segment by segment, which was favourite, or half at a time straight from the shell.
Pass on the pips
In either case, sucking out the bountiful sweet juice never involved a pip popping into your mouth and stopping you in mid-suck. While the flesh which followed was a separate yet equal joy to the taste buds.
For these miraculous packets of utter lusciousness were entirely pip less. A fact that alone showed America to be truly as marvellous as those Mickey Rooney/Donald O’Conner films claimed.
And made them fully worthy of their place in the Christmas stocking.
But now … Oh dear!
Taking the pith
Far smaller, a sickly yellow colour in place of the proper deep orange, with a peel that clings on, leaves behind a thick rubbery pith and soaks your hands. They’re a pathetic, rejected by nature version of what once was.
The uneatable pith, laboriously scraped off – as much as it will allow – clings to your finger nail and won’t come free no matter how vigorously you shake your thumb. So you have in the end to repeatedly put the horrid fruit down so you can unclog your nail before carrying on.
And the segments themselves – those pitiful scrawny excuses – juicy enough, it must be admitted, are themselves so tough of skin they cannot be chewed and must either be swallowed whole – at the risk of choking – or be fished out from around your teeth and discarded in turn.
So all you actually end up with, after all that messy labour, is just the juice. And those blooming pips of course.
I don’t know why we’re not allowed decent fruit any more, but I suspect it’s got something to do with the cost/profit ratio for oranges from Nowhereland working out a halfpenny per thousand pounds better than those from the Good Old.
Either that or the French have told the Common Market lot that they’ve got a colony somewhere crammed with reject fruit, and if we don’t all buy it they’ll throw yet another of their sulks.
