The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Oranges from Spain... from Tesco, and Louis MacNeice

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I love clementines at Christmastime. Who remembers two cricket ball lumps at the bottom of their Christmas stocking? One an apple, and one an orange. These were the staples of the stocking, but somehow it would never have been a stocking without them. Perhaps we felt they were some kind of healthy counterweight to the chocolate Santas full of palm oil and emulsifiers and flavourings. At any rate, in the festive season, which so often feels like a barrage of big, fatty, heavy flavours, I always find myself taking great delight in anything that offers me something lighter and fresher and zestier. Nigel Slater’s beetroot, dill and vodka cured salmon with celeriac roulade is wonderful, and looks fantastic when brought to the table, and momentarily transports you to the wilds of Scandinavia (momentarily).

But, for a more everyday lift I keep going back to the fruit bowl for a clementine, the humble clementine. In Tesco with Gus on Friday for the weekly shop, I looked out for their usual Finest clementines which are good value and a league apart from the standard easy peelers on offer. They’re juicier, more flavoursome and, well, more orange coloured inside, which I didn’t realise would make such a  difference to me. So, you can imagine my delight when I saw they were selling 2.3kg crates of these Finest clementines for £4. Is it possible to eat too many oranges? I’ll let you know, but when they’re this tasty and make me feel like I’m maxing out my vitamin C intake, and lifting the mood I’ll keep ploughing on. I may even get round to making this upside down cake again:

Louis MacNeice, in his much quoted poem, 'Snow', writes 'I peel and portion/ a tangerine and spit the pips and feel/ the drunkenness of things being various.' This little moment by MacNeice is supposed to convey the intense sensory experience of what it's like being alive. I love the way he tries to convey the extraordinary out of the ordinary but have at times wondered if he gets a bit carried away here. I mean he is just eating an orange after all. But, maybe it was just a really, really good one. I have been known to sniff pretty much everything before I eat it to get the full experience of it, and I can definitely be found to do this with an clementine, and I do enjoy it, even if I don't quite get drunk on it in the same way as Louis does. However, he was eating a tangerine after all, which do have more seeds than a clementine, and are much bolder and intense in flavour and more used for zesting and marmalades than snacking. And this leaves me wondering: would Louis MacNeice have written 'Snow' if he'd had the much milder, sweeter clementine?

Probably not.

And these are the details (or oranges, rather) upon which great poems are built.