Field Report: The Beauty Contest

Darlings.

I had the most extraordinary dream last night. I blame the Stilton. Pascal LaFontaine always warned me about cheese before bed. 'Reynard,' he would say, 'le fromage after midnight is not a snack, it is a séance.' I should have listened.

Because what followed, mes choux, was a fever dream of such vivid absurdity that I woke up with my brush in a knot.

I was hosting a beauty pageant. For vegetables.

The stage was fluorescent-lit — naturally — like every supermarket aisle in the country. I was at the microphone in a borrowed tuxedo (it pinched terribly around the brush, but one makes sacrifices for art). Before me: a panel of judges in grey suits with clipboards.

'Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the Annual Supermarket Specification Pageant! Tonight — the nation's finest produce competes for the ultimate prize: a place on the shelf.'

First: the apples. A Gala stepped forward — glossy, symmetrical, fifty-three percent red skin. Through. Behind her, a queue of waxed, buffed, identical specimens glided past like debutantes. Then a smaller apple. Lopsided. A fleck on the skin. You could smell the flavour from the wings. She didn't make it to the microphone. 'Cosmetic fail,' said the clipboard. A quarter of the British apple crop, darlings. Rejected every year. For shape.

Next: the potatoes. A knobbly fellow from Suffolk shuffled forward. Beautiful soil still on him. Dense, waxy flesh — the kind that makes a roast dinner weep with gratitude. 'Too irregular,' said the clipboard. 'And what's that mark?' 'That, darling,' I interjected, 'is called earth. It's where he grew.' He was out.

Then the tomatoes. A row of perfectly spherical, perfectly red, perfectly pointless specimens rolled forward — gassed into colour in a warehouse, tasting of absolutely nothing. They sailed through. A heritage tomato — gloriously misshapen, deep crimson, bursting with flavour — was escorted from the building by security. 'Inconsistent pigmentation.' I wept, mes choux. Even in a dream.

The reject bin grew ever fuller. The ugly ones. The knobbly ones. The ones with character and flavour and mud and stories. And the judges crowned the blandest butternut squash I have ever seen 'Supreme Champion of the Shelf.'

Then I woke up.

Except I didn't. Not really. Because this is not a dream, darlings. This is what actually happens. Every day. Supermarkets publish specification sheets — colour charts, diameter ranges, curvature tolerances — and anything outside the lines is rejected. Fifty million tonnes of fruit and vegetables wasted in Europe every year for cosmetic reasons. The winners? Waxed, gassed, uniform, and tasting of almost nothing.

So what does a fox do?

A fox buys the ugly ones. A fox goes to a market, a farm shop, a grower who doesn't own a specification sheet and wouldn't know a curvature tolerance if it bit him on the parsnip. Because flavour, darlings, does not come in uniform sizes.

Toodle pip.

R.

X

PS — I have since sworn off Stilton before bed. Not because of the dreams — they were rather illuminating. But because I ate the entire wedge and now there is none left, which is a far greater tragedy than anything that happened to that butternut squash.