Robin Harford We’ve forgotten how to wait for anything.
Hungry? Order takeaway. Fancy strawberries in December? Pop to Tesco.
Everything’s available, all the time, wrapped in plastic and utterly divorced from season or place.
This isn’t convenience. It’s sensory death.
You’re not tasting food anymore. You’ve lost the ability to notice when something extraordinary is happening right outside your door.
Like what happened to me one year. Walking home at 10:30pm, I stopped dead.
The most exquisite smell hit me. Sweet. Intoxicating. Completely unexpected in the Winter cold.
I walked backwards, sniffing like a bloodhound, trying to find the source.
Japanese mahonia (Mahonia japonica). Those yellow flowers you walk past every day in a city without a second glance.
But at night? Ah well, at night they release a scent so divine I’ve nicknamed them Angels Breath.
My sweetheart and I buried our faces in the flowers (avoiding the holly-like leaves), breathing in lungfuls of pure ecstasy.
I’d walked past these plants hundreds of times and never noticed the smell this way.
Because I was walking past them at the wrong time. During the day, they’re pleasant enough. At night, in Winter, they’re transformative.
That’s what you’re missing when you treat food like it should always be available.
You lose the sharp edge of attention that makes you notice when something becomes extraordinary.
Try this: taste mahonia flowers in Winter. First comes sweet honey nectar, then a delicious lemony tang. Like sherbet, but alive.
The flavour only peaks for a few weeks. Then it’s gone.
Which means you actually have to pay attention.
You have to wait.
You have to become present.
Have you tasted mahonia flowers? What did you notice?
