Here we are again in the season of summer fruit. I tasted the strawberries and they are not worth eating. I tasted the blueberries and they are bland. The melons aren’t bad but they aren’t good either. Nectarines are awful too. So why is fruit so tasteless? Will we blame everything on the drought when fruit hasn’t been good for more than a decade?

In my opinion, too much emphasis is placed on making fruit look attractive and stay fresh longer but its flavour is disappointing. Last winter I finally gave up on buying mandarines because they were bad. We could blame the citrus blight or whatever it was in Queensland but mandarines have been unappetising way before the latest fiasco.

If I were blindfolded I would have to judge that most fruit tastes like cucumber and that’s okay if you want cucumber, but when you want to enjoy a luscious berry, perhaps you should buy the tinned ones from Canada. That country hasn’t yet managed to sacrifice flavour for profit.

Flowers aren’t as fragrant either. From what I have observed at flower markets, the only ones with perfume are the Oriental Lilies. It’s only a matter of time before lilies lose their perfume too. Sadly, it’s all about appearance in the floral world as well nowadays. When I asked the stall owner at the market why this was happening, I was told that deperfumed flowers last longer.

But if that’s the case then why not buy artificial ones? They look good, last a long time and are equally lacking in perfume. In fact, an enterprising businessman could incorporate a continuous spray that could emanate from the artificial flowers and so you would have the best of both worlds. Isn’t it a pity that I should even be suggesting this!