As a child Stephen Fry had a terrible sugar addiction, something he only outgrew as a young adult. I can sympathise, even though my enjoyment of sweet things did not quite reach such a drastic level. Unlike him, I still enjoy sweetness; my tastebuds still rejoice when treated to a good dose of sugar. Mind you, I have very difficult tastebuds. They are extremely demanding and very discerning, something which causes me a regrettable amount of trouble at times.
In my childhood I could (and frequently did) polish off a can of sweetened condensed milk and even today I occasionally succumb and treat myself to a whole can of gooey, sugary ecstasy. Even the lamentable episode when I was seven did not succeed in dampening my enjoyment of of the white stuff. I spent my weekly pocket money on a can of condensed milk and a huge bag of marshmellows, only to discover the sickening truth that condensed milk and marshmellows do not make good stomach buddies! I ended up feeding the the catfish in the irrigation canal running through the small town of Douglas. They obviously were not concerned by the fact that their sudden bounty from above contained a fair amount of stomach acids!
For the rest I indulged in the stock sweet fare of my generation: Wilson's Toffees, Sunrise Toffees, long, flat strips of liquorice, occasionally a Peppermint Crisp or two, Liquorice Allsorts, Sugus chews, fruity bonbons, gobstoppers, what used to be called (in those benighted, non-PC days) niggerballs, Crunchies and Flakes when I had had a windfall, and a whole cornucopia of other sweet delights from the glass jars on the counter of the general dealer's.
But above all we used to feast on fruit. There was never a shortage of apricots, peaches, pears, grapes, figs, oranges, tangerines, loquats, guavas, mangoes, lichis, custard apples, watermelons and cantaloupes and melons, prickly pears, pineapples, gooseberries, mulberries, grenadillas (passion fruit), strawberries and more. And they were always sweet and juicy! No matter whether you bought the peaches from the Indian greengrocer on the corner, from the farm or from the supermarket, they were always just perfect for eating. Nowadays I despair of finding any fruit which had not been over-watered to the point where the sugar content is almost zero, and then had been picked about a week too soon. Fruit which is picked before it has reached that just-right state of ripeness will never taste right. How I miss picking a bunch of grapes from the vine on the pergola and biting into the heady, nectary sun-warmed sweetness! How I yearn for a peach so ripe and sweet, and so juicy that the the sweetness runs down your chin! How I long to stand under a fig tree and eat the summery sweet figs till even my huge appetite is filled! And what fun it was to climb into the huge old apricot or pear trees and feast while balanced astride a branch!
Yes, my tastebuds give me hell, and often, too! But sometimes I think they are even more nostalgic than I am...
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