Mandarine - Mandarin, Tangerine

A mandarin, along with any other relation to the common orange, is on the list of foods I truly cannot ever be bothered eating. Actually, I don’t have such a list, but if I could ever be bothered writing one, it’d be on there. They’re a messy fruit. I hate when people eat them on trains and leave their massacred peel strewn across the table, along with the associated juices that so effectively bind to it the magazines and paperbacks of innocent bysitters. Even if you’re a responsible orange-and their diminutive cousins-consumer and you want to clean up your mess, you have to make sure, in advance, you’ve got a bag for the remains. Foods that requires any sort of post-eating planning are just not worth the effort. At least with an apple core, you can carry it around easily enough till a bin is found, or even eat the entire thing if you’re feeling brave. But imagine getting off a train after scooping up a handful of peel, clenching it in your fist while trying not to look like a cocky shit cruising for a fight, or any other fist-heavy activity. Then you’re attempting to open doors by carefully unfurling a finger, only to find your fist immediately starts to excrete a mandarin-skin turd. There’s no way of getting out of that situation without looking like an idiot, a litter bug, or a struggling palsy sufferer. It’s just a nightmare scenario I’d sooner avoid. So what about mandarins in the home? You can be civilised and get a plate or bowl to put your peel in and catch all the drips and squirts, scooping the mess straight into the bin. Well, that still seems like an awful lot of effort just for one of your five-a-day. It’s far easier to buy a multi-pack of orange Kitkats - you can shove five of those in your mouth in the time it takes to peel a single mandarin and you get the same great taste, but chocolaty too! Also, the only rubbish you’ve got is foil and paper, which can easily be screwed up and chucked in the bin or even thrown on the floor if you‘re a scruffy shit, in any case leaving no sticky fingers or juicy mess. Who needs real fruit when you have pre-packaged biscuity-snacks? Nobody. That’s who. Now I’m off to work on that list to see which other irritating foodstuffs can be critiqued to such inept effect.