A very brief interlude to say that I have found the name of horror, and it is “dried, sweetened pineapple”.

 

In a somewhat halfhearted attempt to be healthy I decided that, to snack on at work, I would purchase some dried fruit. Dried fruit – is there anything more wholesome and natural? (1). It comes in packets that are almost, but not quite, like sweets, and so there’s a slim possibility that the part of your mind that is used to a diet of solid sugar will be in some way mollified or fooled. Dried blueberries. Dried cherries. Yes.

 

 Dried, sweetened pineapple. No. Heed the warning.

 

 In fact, dried pineapple of any stripe looks like a no-no.  Your standard item, whilst it still tastes very distantly (as

through a glass darkly) of pineapple, looks appalling. Pineapple was not really intended, in any universal scheme of things, to be dried. A dried pineapple ring looks like any of the following, take your pick:

 

a)      some obscure internal organ that’s spent far too long in formaldehyde and then far too long out of it

 

b)      the spiny seedcase of a plant evolved to hook onto wildebeest

 

c)      a roadkill jellyfish

 

 In short, something toroid that’s been wizened and leathered until all that’s left is this peculiar spiky circlet of desiccated matter. When something looks that inedible, and has the general texture of some part of the mummy that the British Museum wouldn’t care to exhibit, the actual residual pineapple taste is insufficient to excite the palate.

 

 But lo, this is not “dried, sweetened”. There are greater horrors yet in store. Foolishly, I thought that dried, sweetened pineapple sounded jolly. I groped the packet – there was a fair amount of give, rather than the brittle, dead-sea-creature feel of the merely dried stuff. Succulent, I thought. That seemed, foolishly, a good sign. The picture on the packet showed jolly little chunks of pineapple. Mouthwatering.

 

 Well then, a few days later, and the seal on the unspeakable container is broken. No actual wailing spirits of the damned were released, although that would have been fitting. Unwarily, I put my hand in to fish a piece out.

Oh Good Lord, is the only response. There are certain sensations that nobody wants anything to do with, and this was one of them. If you can imagine incautiously placing your hand into a bag of dead eels and chopped liver, that would just about cover it. Slimy pineapple, for the lord’s sake. Slimy, sticky, flaccid gobs of yellow. “Dried” it said. There was nothing “dry” about it. It turns out that the phrase “dried sweetened” basically refers to a process similar to that which produces glacé cherries – all very well as singular items on a bakewell, but in their battalions, sickeningly sweet, appallingly textured, whole gelid masses of them, no, no, and no, in that order. A year of therapy would not get the memory of that first shuddering contact from your mind.. HP Lovecraft would have run out of grotesque adjectives for them. They were antediluvian. They were cyclopean. They were ick.

Stick with chocolate, frankly. It may be bad for your body, but it’s better for your sanity.

 

(1) Actual fruit, yes, I know.