These mis-shaped melons are as healthy as curious carrots, so go and buy wonky fruit and veggies

Does anyone else think it is outrageous that a third of fruit and vegetables from Britain’s farms never reach the supermarket shelves? It’s not because the lorries keep breaking down, but because we, the stupid public, will not buy what is now known as wonky fruit and veg. We blamed the Common Market for setting rules on the shape of a banana, but the very grim truth about all this is that we tend not to buy fruit or vegetables that do not fit in with our idea of what they should look like. We don’t want to eat anything that looks a teeny bit different. And that is just ridiculous.

If you are going to dice and slice the carrots anyway, why would you not buy ones that happen to look like three welded into one? Are they going to look different on the plate? Are they not just going to end up in your belly anyway? Are they going to be bad for your health? Not at all. The really daft thing is that this prissy fussiness is pushing up the price of that fresh produce. How can people complain about the price of fruit and veg when they are too snobbish to buy the not-so-perfect ones? A mis-shapen avocado sells for about a third of the normalshaped ones, and these normal ones would also be cheaper if the farmer could sell the lot.

Personally, I would not mind if my banana was more S-shaped than the usual crescent, if my apple is more like a deflated tennis ball than a sphere or if my spuds have other little baby spuds apparently growing out of them. Is that not a sign of a healthy crop? We must be thick if we turn our nose up at that because, as well as being cheaper for us, less pickiness would help cut waste, reduce the impact of food production on the climate and just generally help the food supply chain. Demand wonky fruit, I say. Cuddle a curious carrot, love a lumpy lemon and always remember to kiss a kinky cucumber. Massage a mis-shaped melon.

The internet is also changing the world, but rural areas such as the islands have had a bit of a wait for decent broadband speed. When BT published a map showing progress in 2015, they had areas shown as Accepting Orders and Coming Soon and Planned Area. The west of Lewis and my home island of Great Bernera was at the very bottom, marked Exploring Solutions. But like Brexit, things have begun to happen. It was announced recently that the latest phase of Digital Scotland’s £146 million superfast broadband rollout will see a few places like Glendale, Torridon, Waternish, and Great Bernera will now get lightning speeds by autumn next year.

I read somewhere that download speeds in those areas will reach more than 200mbps. That’s like, er, whoosh. Films in an instant. Business files could be uploaded and transferred around the globe in minutes, seconds, even milliseconds. Wow. That will be amazeballs, or whatever that X Factor lady who now sells yogurt on TV used to say. Our little island will have better broadband service than the City of London – or even Garrabost, because Point people usually get the lion’s share of everything. No more, you Rudhachs. Eat our superfast dust, losers.

Right, I am calm now. Sorry about my earlier sermon on wonky fruit and veg. I do get carried away sometimes, but it does make me quite angry that there is such little progress with shoppers’ buying habits. To give them their due, some supermarkets have been doing their best to get us buying the wobbly knobbly ones but it is us, the shoppers, who still choose to refuse it. The shops cannot afford to keep doing the right thing if we are ignoring their efforts to help us and the farmers. One piece of good news is that wonky grapes are still used for making wine and that is why we don’t see them in the shops.

Sometimes Mrs X and I like to relax with a wee glass of the vino plonko or two. The other evening, after a long day in which there one or two, er, misunderstandings rather than arguments, she let out a long sigh and said: “See you. I really love you.” Wow, I thought. That’s not like her. Had something happened to make her suddenly become so sweet and romantic? I had to remark: “Thank you. I did not expect that. But is that you or the wine talking?” She replied: “Oh, that was me talking. And I was talking to the wine.”

I would not mind if my banana was more Sshaped than the usual crescent, if my apple is more like a deflated tennis ball than a sphere or if my spuds have other little baby spuds apparently growing out of them. Is that not a sign of a healthy crop?

A big thumbs up from me for wonky fruit