Cantaloupe

Today

One of the pleasures of the hot weather is the abundance of fresh fruit. This morning I enjoyed a salad of banana and Cantaloupe melon.

In My Day

On our great hitch-hiking tour of 1969 my friend Angela and I decided to take in a few days at Avignon in France. The weather was glorious and the youth hostel overlooked the Rhone.

We made friends with other hostellers and one day went for a drive into the parched countryside with two French boys.

Late in the afternoon one of them said "I'm thirsty - I need melon!" When we asked where he was going to get it he declared that we had just passed a farm "They will have melons!" he asserted and walked down the track to the farmhouse.

After a little while he staggered back to the car, arms full of Cantaloupe melons. Roaring with laughter he went back to the farm, re-appearing with more - and more.

Apparently the canny farmer didn't do retail, only wholesale, and had insisted that he buy a minimum order of two dozen. We took them back to the hostel where we discovered that they are very nice sliced crossways and filled with red wine.

The following day we were setting off for Italy, so we packed our share of melons into our backpacks, so as not to waste them. After a difficult and long day getting to Grenoble we feasted on more melon, but eventually the smell of over-ripe melon and their weight in the backpacks was too much for us and we ditched the remaining few somewhere by the Autoroute.

I'd forgotten until this morning that they are the kings of melons, in terms of flavour and sweetness.