SWALLOWING SUNSHINE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23221, 19 June 1937, Page 26

SWALLOWING SUNSHINE

CITRUS FRUITS THAT BRING SUMMER TO WINTER Fruiterers’ shop windows glow with yellow these days—lemons, closebuttoned into their sulphur jackets; primrose-pale grapefruit, aloof and rather self-conscious; Tahitian oranges, their sandy coats streaked with the brown of ripeness; and navel oranges as gold as the gorse, and so succulent that even their rinds taste sweet. There they lie. globes of health and colour, in heaped rows behind the glass, shining in the electric light like monstrous jewels, and, through the daytime, be the weather never so grey, catching all the light there is and reflecting it back from their smooth and sunny surfaces. Bananas, which *are also yellow, seem insipid beside them. They are so conscious of their vitality and their lawful place in the scheme of things that no wonder - they are slightly aggressive about it! Two women were looking into a fruiterer's window the other evening. One shivered and turned away from the miniature moons and suns that filled the shelves, saying as she did so: “I hate looking into a fruit shop in the winter time. The thought of touching those cold things makes me freeze.” It was obvious that she was not used to having fruit in the home: that oranges, lemons, and grapefruit were luxuries which were sometimes indulged in in hot weather, but never food to be eaten all the year round, especially in winter. Yet. were she to realise the possibilities of the fruits to which she referred as “ cold ” and form the habit of using them as an important part of her staple diet, she would think no more of handling them than she now thinks of the everyday meat and vegetables which, in their