Strawberries and the Performance of Summer
There is a photograph somewhere in my parents' house of me aged about seven, standing in a garden, holding a bowl of strawberries with the expression of someone who has been told to look pleased and has decided to take this instruction very seriously. It is a very British photograph. The sun is doing its best. Someone, just out of frame, has produced a jug of cream. This is, more or less, how strawberries have always worked in Britain. They are not simply a fruit. They are a prop. Strawberries are eaten all over the world and enjoyed everywhere without particular ceremony. In most places, they are pleasant seasonal fruit — sweet, briefly available, nice in a tart or on their own or with a small amount of sugar. In Spain they come with orange juice. In Italy they occasionally come with balsamic vinegar, which sounds wrong and is correct. In Scandinavia they appear at midsummer with a simplicity that suggests the whole business is being handled by sensible adults. In Britain, the...
