Good thing I carried on chattering!

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I like the traditional bitter orange Seville marmalade, but the oranges are only in season for a short time and last year I missed them and have had to get through the whole year without any of the ‘real thing’. So last week when a friend told me that Seville oranges were in season, I high-tailed it to the supermarket to try and get some before it was too late. I had a quick look at all the oranges on offer but couldn’t see what I was looking for, so I approached a woman doing some stock-taking nearby, and asked whether they had any Seville oranges. She explained that they had various different oranges from different places and that it was always changing, they just took whatever was in season at the time. At that point I could have just thanked her and walked away, disappointed. But instead I blathered on about how gutted I was that I missed them last year and had to endure a marmalade-less year. ‘Oh we have marmalade oranges’ she said, and showed me the bags – labelled ‘Marmalade oranges’ and then in tiny writing underneath ‘traditional bitter oranges from Seville’. Don’t people call them Seville oranges any more? She must have thought I was some sort of orange snob, wanting a specific ‘denominacion de origin’ type of fruit. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2019.