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Sitting in my apartment in the evening, reading. There's a thumping noise, thump, thump, thump. I go out onto the balcony in the dark, there's nothing and nobody around. A few minutes later thump, thump, THUMP. I open my front door and narrowly avoid getting hit square in the face by something the size of a small cannonball.
'Ah, Jon, there you are', hollers my landlord, Mr B, from his apartment above. He always talks at an impressive volume, as if bellowing into a high wind. I thought he was permanently furious with me at first, but he talks like that to everyone. He has tied a gift pomegranate to a length of rope and is swinging it against my front door, thump, thump, from his window above. I thank him profusely but explain I've never eaten, nor attempted ingress into, a pomegranate before. The English, I say, eat apples and possibly, if feeling particularly racy, a banana.
He explains I have to score the skin, crown to base, in about six places. I then need to cut the top off and pull the thing
apart. I separate the seeds, which you eat, from the bitter white pith, which you don't. And that's how to operate a
pomegranate.
Pomegranates are positively crammed with vitamins C and K, and apparently deliver a healthy proportion of my daily B vitamin and mineral requirements. They have undergone clinical trials for their efficacy in combating a raft of illnesses and disorders, from the common cold and diabetes, to osteoporosis and erectile dysfunction. One trial showed, upon daily consumption of pomegranate juice for two weeks, an increase in testosterone levels of 24%, which frankly I find somewhat alarming. This may go some way to explaining the permanent spring in the step of Mr B, who claims to eat, during the pomegranate season when they do indeed grow on trees, four a day. The French word for pomegranate is grenade, from whence we get the name of the military grenade, on account of their similar shape.
'Ah, Jon, there you are', hollers my landlord, Mr B, from his apartment above. He always talks at an impressive volume, as if bellowing into a high wind. I thought he was permanently furious with me at first, but he talks like that to everyone. He has tied a gift pomegranate to a length of rope and is swinging it against my front door, thump, thump, from his window above. I thank him profusely but explain I've never eaten, nor attempted ingress into, a pomegranate before. The English, I say, eat apples and possibly, if feeling particularly racy, a banana.
He explains I have to score the skin, crown to base, in about six places. I then need to cut the top off and pull the thing
apart. I separate the seeds, which you eat, from the bitter white pith, which you don't. And that's how to operate a
pomegranate.
Pomegranates are positively crammed with vitamins C and K, and apparently deliver a healthy proportion of my daily B vitamin and mineral requirements. They have undergone clinical trials for their efficacy in combating a raft of illnesses and disorders, from the common cold and diabetes, to osteoporosis and erectile dysfunction. One trial showed, upon daily consumption of pomegranate juice for two weeks, an increase in testosterone levels of 24%, which frankly I find somewhat alarming. This may go some way to explaining the permanent spring in the step of Mr B, who claims to eat, during the pomegranate season when they do indeed grow on trees, four a day. The French word for pomegranate is grenade, from whence we get the name of the military grenade, on account of their similar shape.