Australian Prime Minister John Howard pronounces on ABC local radio on the banana shortage: “We will not relax the quaranteen regulations for the importation of bananas…There will be a shortage of bananas. The price of bananas will go up.”
The supermarket chain Woolworths claims that it is attempting to stabilise the banana price – currently about $4 a kilo.
Meanwhile, the only real alternative to the banana – the humble parsnip – costs over $7 a kilo.
At some point somebody will need to move to stabilise the parsnip price too. But as yet our Prime Minister has nothing to say on that subject.
Currently I have only memories of bananas to live on; peeling bananas with a knife at formal dinners (where we wore those stupid gowns) at university. Ditto Apples and pears although I can’t remember if we tried to heap grapes on our forks.
It was Winston Churchill who after World War II deemed every child in Britain should have a banana. Evelyn Waugh – writer of Brideshead Revisited for those jammed in their cookbooks – was cruel and ate all his children’s bananas in front of them.
This experience scarred his son Auberon (who should also be remembered for eating Australia’s native fauna) who never forgot it.
I wonder if John Howard is big enough for a Churchillian banana moment?
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