Prunophiles, Prunophobes
Sta,—No doubt, as Mr. Penney reminds us, we should all be kind to poor dumb vegetables which cannot answer back, but Janus is entitled to express his opinion (however wrong) about prunes, just as I am entitled to express my opinion (however right) that certain vegetables, such as parsnips and spinach, are enemies of human happiness and scourges of helpless infancy. Then there is the anti-social onion. Without wishing to be in the least dogmatic, I merely suggest that people who poison the neighbourhood with the noxious reek of frying onions ought to be sizzled in their own frying-pans. (More bad manners. Mr. Penney—come on, my neck is stuck right out !) Nevertheless, I think that Janus's unprovoked attack on prunes is ill-natured and will give pain to thousands of prune-chewers through- out the country. It may be true that the. expression "stewed prunes,"
especially when accompanied by that dread culinary term "shape," does not inspire the noblest human, emotions; but Janus evidently knows only the miserable, brownish-black, midget impostor which masquerades as a prune in our Brave New World. Has he never, in better days, encountered the proud, purple-black, fat, wrinkled aristo- crat of the species, benign not only to the palate but to the secret places of the human heart—and elsewhere ? Has he never had a well-cooked devil-on-horseback ? And has he never met this noble fruit at its. finest—the dessert prune out of a squat bottle from Bordeaux ? And would he know how te treat it even if he did meet it ? Let me advise .him—soak it in gin. If he will supply the gin, I will supply the prunes, and I think that after a session together, with adequate opportunities for experiment, I will convince him.
. Finally, I fear that Janus's strictures may give offence in the Royal Air Force, which 1 understand comprises, though perhaps involuntarily, a certain limited number of prunes. Surely this well-meaning, if undistinguished, class of patriotic citizens deserves better than to be
held up to public obloquy ?—Yours faithfully, C. K. ALLEN. Rhodes House, Oxford.
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