495: I want to talk about bananas

Two bananas, yesterday.

Bananas; love them or hate them, bananas they will remain. How can evolution be true when the banana is so clearly designed to fit in our opposabled-thumbed hands? They even come with their own naturally occurring wrappings, and by slowly turning black they have an outside indication of their internal edibility. OK, that's evolution over and done with; looks like the banana is evidence for an intelligent designer. Only one little problem that designer forgot to perfect. When he/it (not she) was working on the shape, skin, and colouration, he/it forgot to make the inside of the banana taste nice. He/it didn't even grace it with a texture that isn't like a gooey roux of wheat flour and vomit.

For the sake of brevity, and common sense, let's assume the creator of bananas -all bananas, not just some of them- was a man, and let's call that man Bananaman (not that one). Bananaman (not that one) began with a desire to create a healthy and convenient alternative to the sausage roll or Scotch egg; he thought handy, he thought healthy, he thought yummy: he contrived to create the perfect snack fit for the human hand, heart, head and large intestine. He fucked up proper and good. The meat of a banana is a globulous melting filth; a stem of white pus oozing from a phallic yellow spot; a garish gash of ghastly grunge; slightly sweet but with a soggy cold-breakfast cereal texture designed to trigger the gag reflex; a frozen yogurt lolly of puke and alienesque miasma; a hollow fruit of pure unfiltered sadness and unwanted attention; a disagreeable melange of bullying and xenophobia; a distracting subjugation of all that is good and proper; a torturous sentence of a thousand lifetimes; a dirty little secret spread wide for all to see; a snotty nose and a spotty bot; rotten, unwanted, smelly and squidgy.

"You are wrong, they're very yummy."

Once I felt the same about mushrooms. My first job; in a mushroom farm, one well-known in the Lancaster area, and situated close to Galgate village. Mini-bused from Lancaster out to the farm to spend a few evening hours in the dark, legs spread across the aisle, standing between the mushroom beds, climbing high to the third bunk. Picking the mushrooms with the special knife, breathing in the foetid cemetery vapour of the rotting earth. The smell of mushrooms was indelible. Washing would not remove it, for the sinuses were lodged deeply with stinking masses of spores. Years later (when the smell had finally dissipated) I ate soup of the day: mushroom in the university canteen. What can I say; I was depressed, it was a call for help, there were no bananas at hand. Confounding expectations the mushroom soup was delicious, and didn't kill me. I discovered many different kinds of mushrooms in many colours, shapes and sizes. I tried them raw, fried, battered, boiled, poached, scrambled and devilled. I loved them.

So, Bananaman (not that one), I ask you, where are the varieties of banana? Plantains? OK, that's a start. They are nice grilled or fried with a curry. That's it; that's all I know. There must be more? Maybe there isn't. I'm starting to think that perhaps the design argument isn't as good as it might have seemed...