There’s no fruit quite as sweet as seasonal strawberries

Strawberries are synonymous with so many of life’s simple pleasures: garden parties, clotted cream, single wickets and mixed doubles. Traditionally, in European art, they symbolise the fleeting nature of enjoyment, a brief, memorable season in the sun.

But in the era of 365-day demand, strawberries have lost their seasonality – and, with it, much of their flavour and fragrance. Most of the year, shoppers rely on imported varieties – crops grown for yield rather than taste, and not always in environmentally friendly conditions.

The toll taken on the Andalusian landscape is particularly marked; precious wetlands drained of moisture as all available water is channelled (legally and illegally) into the fruit known as “red gold”.

Meanwhile, consumers pay the price for fruit harvested early, kept in ultra-cold storage and, most frustrating of all, liable to go off before you’ve even unpacked your bag for life.

So what great news it is that British strawberry growers are enjoying a bumper 2018, thanks to the cold snaps earlier in the year. The flavour is, apparently, top notch and

I for one will be buying by the basket-load. There is joy to be had in eating seasonally, something I learned as a child, when a winter of apples gave way to strawberries, then raspberries followed by gooseberries, plums, damsons and pears, before it was back to apples again.

Every May, we celebrate homegrown asparagus; perhaps it’s time we did the same with strawberries. British growers may want to bring back the “pick-your-own” concept, abandoned by some farmers a decade ago because punters would fill their bellies as well as their punnets.

My advice would be to hand out a free stick of minty chewing gum, to blunt their palates. One of the joys of seasonal strawberries, after all, is the mouth-watering anticipation that comes with delayed gratification.