[BITList] Exploding watermelons put spotlight on Chinese farmingpractices | Environment | The Guardian

[HUGH]

Mike,

Just the thing to liven up any dinner table.  You mention hard peaches - is 
it possible to get any other kind, outside of a tin, nowadays? Ditto for 
plums.  We've had a bowl of plums in the kitchen for over 2 weeks, and they 
have neither rotted nor ripened.  Every so often I try one, and each time 
there is no taste of plum, only a faint acidity, and almost no juice. To get 
some taste from an apple I often resort to chopping the damn thing up in a 
bowl with some sugar and microwaving it for 30 seconds.  M&S had bags of 
navel oranges at £5 for two bags (10 oranges), and the first few were fine 
and juicy.  The last few bags were a lottery - around half the oranges being 
dried up inside.  This morning I tried two oranges from the Coop at 38p 
each.  Very juicy indeed, but the non juice bits had to be spat out, or else 
removed beforehand with a sharp knife.  Don't even mention pears.  Bananas 
are usually fine - my gran always ripened them in a drawer, and that still 
works. We carried bananas once on Chakdara or Chilka - what a drag. We spent 
more time fussing over the temperatures, switching fans on and off, than was 
good for us - the temperature limits were barely +/- one degree F.

Hugh.