Photo Hunt - Fresh

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is Fresh. These are oranges at a local fruit stall. They were actually fresh - photographs can deveive

Are we really that lazy?

This item in today’s Independent perhaps should not have surprised me but it still annoys.

Apparently oranges are declining in popularity in Britain. This is not because we've gone off the taste, but because we find them too difficult to peel. It's pathetic but true. Compared with the easy-peel, lighter-weight satsuma and tangerine, the orange is considered too big, too messy and too inconvenient to denude with your human fingers. A spokesman for Fruitmann, importer and exporter of fruits, explained that consumers just don't feel it's worth the bother taking the skin off an orange

I am in full agreement with the writer of this article when he says “broaching an orange isn't a chore; it is, or should be, a pleasure, because it connects you with the complicated texture of the fruit world, and it repays your assault on its packaging by the freshness of its interior, the astringent fizz of zest, the tart sweetness of its secret, liquid heart.”

The not-wife and myself work full time so we would find it hard to be exponents of slow cooking etc (we don’t want to eat dinner at 1am!) but even we can find time for an orange! Don’t get me wrong. I love the convenience of our modern world – I like being able to use the computer to communicate (a positive blessing for recipients given that my handwriting would shame a four year old!) and so on – but some things are beyond the pale even for us! I wonder how long it will be that we Britons will become so lazy that we will demand core-less apples, clip-on ties and toilets that wipe our arses for us...