When I go to the Tesco and look at the pears I cannot stop myself from saying aloud to all the fellow-shoppers examining fruit these pears are like bullets. They are all like bullets. Nobody answers me or looks at me. It is as if I am a maniac. The maniacs are Tesco. I have not tasted a pear in decades. The closest I get to the taste of a pear is in a pear chew or a pear drop boiled sweet. Actual pears, like actual apples, all come under the title of generic crispy fruit now. There is also generic softer fruit like plums, peaches, nectarines and apricots, none of which give out distinctive tastes. You are living in George Orwell’s 1984. 1984 is such a long time ago. The power that we once worried about putting into the hands of the state has gone to the huge private corporations and, more worryingly, to the individual. In a generation or two individuals can be invisibly bled of all their reaction, all their rebellion, all their critique. They can even forget what pears once tasted like.

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