Cherries on a Pale Orange Background
SA/2016
SA/2016
Your tastes change as you get older, so they say.
And, annoyingly - 'cos I hate it when experience lends support to anything that Das Man has to say - I've discovered this summer that I much prefer eating cherries to strawberries.
It's not that I've suddenly been seduced by the somewhat dodgy sexual symbolism of the former, subscribed to by writers including Lawrence (in Sons and Lovers, for example, Paul cruelly pelts poor Miriam with a handful of cherries from atop a very large tree hung thick with scarlet fruit, before then popping her cherry in the pine woods).
Nor is it merely that I find the sleek, cool-fresh cherries more aesthetically pleasing to look at in a bowl.
Rather, I now genuinely like the sophisticated sour sweet taste of them more than the simple sweetness of strawberries which, let's be honest, usually needs to be supplemented with sugar, or enhanced with cream.
So I suppose I should be grateful to Henry VIII who, when not having heads cut off or dissolving monasteries, ordered the introduction of cherries into England at Teynham, in Kent, having tasted them in Flanders.
But the words Thank you, Your Majesty will never pass my lips - not for all the cherries in the world!
It's not that I've suddenly been seduced by the somewhat dodgy sexual symbolism of the former, subscribed to by writers including Lawrence (in Sons and Lovers, for example, Paul cruelly pelts poor Miriam with a handful of cherries from atop a very large tree hung thick with scarlet fruit, before then popping her cherry in the pine woods).
Nor is it merely that I find the sleek, cool-fresh cherries more aesthetically pleasing to look at in a bowl.
Rather, I now genuinely like the sophisticated sour sweet taste of them more than the simple sweetness of strawberries which, let's be honest, usually needs to be supplemented with sugar, or enhanced with cream.
So I suppose I should be grateful to Henry VIII who, when not having heads cut off or dissolving monasteries, ordered the introduction of cherries into England at Teynham, in Kent, having tasted them in Flanders.
But the words Thank you, Your Majesty will never pass my lips - not for all the cherries in the world!
