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Ripeness rage

As I sit over my breakfast eating my not perfectly ripe apricot (from M & S), I wonder how we allow ourselves to be seduced by a piece of marketing that we know cannot be true given the nature of the business.

We know that you get perfectly ripe fruit if you are close to source and that the fruit at hand has been handled with care and attention and with regard for the appropriate season. We know that at times you will get a surfeit of the same and will have to think of imaginative ways of coping: bottling, jamming etc. We know that a system that disregards this, and hopes to provide the 'same food' all year round (from different sources) is likely to provide a sameness of failure (that may be redeemed if in your fruit bowl long enough but are as likely to wither as to ripen)!

The difference between an apricot ripened on the tree and its pretend equivalent is especially stark - but the foolishness of my hope keeps trumping my experience!

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