‘A Delicacy in the Fruit Bowl’

Lychees have always had a slightly special significance for me. I remember the first time I saw their hard, bumpy husk and tender, white flesh with its unique, incredibly delicate taste as a child growing up in Edinburgh in the 1950s.

The only time we ever had them was in January, on my father’s birthday, when my mother would buy some as a special treat for us all.

At that time, the only place you could get fresh lychees, certainly at that time of year, was at what I remember as a rather exclusive grocer - very dark and cavernous and long since gone - at the West End of Princes Street that went by the name of Jamieson’s. 

I can’t imagine what the lychees cost back then, but we savoured each one as a very special treat indeed!