Food, glorious food

Having just been thinking about the possibility of trying new foods, my mind has turned to the exotic. Having been born in the home of the haggis I am obviously happy to try oddities and see whether they tickle my palate. I remember as a child sitting on a beach just across from Venice and enjoying fresh watermelon. In those days people were not as careful about rubbish and we merely dug holes in the sand with our toes and spat the seeds into these. Covering them over afterwards was considered the limit of civic-mindedness in those far off days.

Since then of course I have tried quite a few different things and only occasionally come to the conclusion that I would not complete whatever it was that I was trying. However a pal of mine, working with me in Africa, was even more adventurous than I was; this was a mistake as he then began to waste away. He flew back to UK and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in London found no exotic disease, however he had seven different types of worm in his intestines, which seemed a shade excessive. I was glad that I restricted my intake of things from the roadside to only really well cooked items!

Asia of course sends one towards noodles, and there are plenty of places ideally suited to people like myself. But even in my youth I was unable to bend to eat them while seated on the floor, no doubt it is something you need to be brought up to do.

But actually I am not a great lover of noodles and certainly would not go to the extent of having a personal cooler fan fitted to my chopsticks, although there are those who subscribe to the practise, as we see here. It seems a bit extreme to me but each to their own, as they say.