A hand-written lamentation about unripe fruit arrived in the post last week intended for Letters to the Editor.
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The summer's stone fruit was a disgrace, the writer said.
Unripe. Tasteless. Good for nothing but for paving the road. And all her friends in her club agreed.
Here it is in full:
"The repellent unripeness of the 2023 summer stone fruits of all varieties led me to vow never to buy any of it again. Why?
Because none of it is anywhere near ripe. So, it is rock-hard, never develops much taste and even if there is a chance that it'll ripen, it usually goes mouldy first.
Ah, said I. There's rockmelons. But the NOT RIPE obsession got into them too, so that I could only eat the very inner part of the melon.
So that's it for ALL summer fruits of all kinds.
I have an excellent cure for those selling such stuff, although it may take them a while to wake up to it. You keep serving up the rock-hard garbage and I buy none of it. Nothing.
Also, my friends in my club are doing the same. Pave your roads with your prematurely picked rubbish.
Yours, etc."
The small problem was of the writer's identity.
While many would be proud to have their name attached to such a strident censure of the canteloupe, she insisted she not be named for fear of "being confronted by an angry fruit grower".
"So call me ROCK HARD instead," she wrote.
The issue that caused was that our letters editor does not allow people to use pseudonyms instead of their real names.
Nor would they allow for her name to be withheld, reserving that for particular and more serious situations than a rockmelon rant.
So we called our elderly correspondent, verifying not only her identity but confirming her passionate opinions on the summer's stone fruit held as firm as an unripe avocado.
Alas she could not be persuaded to allow her name to be used, fearing her friends would laugh at her when it was published.
So she offered us this final alternative: "Just call me Rock Hard ... or any other bloody name you choose. I don't care".
She left us with a bigger question than that, however.
Is she onto something? Has it been a summer of disgrace from the fruit growers of the nation?
Has the sweet taste of a honeydew been replaced by the bitter tartness of something fit for little more than surfacing a road?
Let us know if you agree with Rock Hard. Hopefully she'll go looking beyond the letters page for an answer.
