BLUE POOTLE – March 2006

By Aliya Whiteley

On The Turn

Milk is a funny thing to the Blue Pootle. It comes out of cows. Well, it comes out of every female mammal, but I’m really talking about milk I’d care to drink, so that rules out variations such as rhino milk and shrew milk, which sound a bit too gamey and a bit too furry, respectively. Plus hard to get hold of, in both instances. Anyway, getting back to the point, milk is a funny thing for a number of reasons, only one of which is the cow/mammal thing.

What’s really odd about it is that I don’t like it any more.

I used to like it. In my school days (and this is about to give away both my real age and the fact that I’m not actually a creature from another planet, at least, not in any way that isn’t metaphorical) milk was compulsory and I gollumphed it down in huge amounts. I even stole Ginette Frajack’s milk once, and drank that too. And it was warm. Yeah, I loved milk, from the cream on the top to the little white moustache I acquired by the time I reached the bottom. So what changed?

Simple answer: I don’t know. But it didn’t only happen with milk. My taste buds are constantly telling me that some edible substance that once rang my bell in a big way food-wise is now tweaking my yuckometer instead. Or vice versa.

Take olives. I loathed olives, the squishy saltiness with the unwelcome stone in the middle. But now I can’t get enough of the little green fellows, particularly when they’ve been marinated in lemon juice, stuffed with feta, and placed on top of a particularly fine pizza. I love olive-adorned pizza, which is another surprising fact, considering I held the tomato to be a nasty red aberration of the fruit world due to a rotten tomato-throwing incident that occurred in the playground at home-time by one Ginette Frajack after I stole her milk. But no longer. Now I just experience yumminess rather than a scarring flashback.

Weird.

So why does the sense of taste work this way? How come it can change its mind with only a flick of the tongue? Taste is a very unpredictable sense. Let me make my point with a question, in best Jeremy Paxman style:

What’s your favourite food?

Let’s pretend you just said steak. Steak is great, it’s true. If it’s a meal out, and you haven’t eaten all day, and it’s cooked just as you like it and it comes with onion rings and thick cut chips rather than a jacket spud, it’s terrific. But if it’s nine o’clock in the morning, you had a blow-out the night before and your mouth is as crunchy as the kitty litter you just trod in on your way to the kitchen, then a bowl of cornflakes (assuming you don’t have a problem with milk) might be just the ticket. Food is relative, you see. It all depends on what you’re feeling, where you’re sitting, who you’re trying to impress, and how you want to feel at the summation of dessert. It’s impossible to know what you’ll want to eat and when. Supermarket shopping is little more than a lottery.

At least taste is the only sense that is so unpredictable. Imagine if we all had to have twenty pairs of glasses so that we were prepared for whatever mood our eyes were in when we awoke. Or if we had to carry nasal plugs in case our noses decided to take offence to the smell of our work place. Although having to go home because you forgot your nasal plugs might be one of the best ‘chucking a sickie’ excuses I’ve heard.

I wish I could control my taste buds. I miss ice-cold milk and am confused by my desire to consume olives and tomatoes on a daily basis. But hey, I suppose a little unpredictability isn’t the end of the world. As long as I don’t inherit my grandfather’s taste for raw bacon, I’ll cope.

Ummmm… food predilections aren’t genetic, are they?

Word of the Day: Cymbocephalic. Having an abnormally long and narrow skull.

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