When I was a child there was no such thing as Baskin Robbins or Ben and Jerry's here in the UK. Ice cream came in six flavours: vanilla (very yellow and not really tasting of anything), strawberry (a strange chemical-tasting fluorescent pink substance), chocolate (beige and sweet), coffee (also beige and sweet), rasberry ripple (vanilla with a scant swirl of red syrup in it) and the oh-so-exotic rum n'raisin (beige with lumps). If you felt really daring you could buy a tub of Neapolitan - one tub divided into sections of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. But that was pretty much it.
When I was seventeen I went on a school trip to Rome. In the Piazza Narvona I purchased a chocolate ice cream: a small tub of a very dark brown substance with a swirl of whipped cream on top. The first mouthful was a revelation: an intense hit of almost bitter chocolate, rich and creamy, a world, no, a universe away from that thing we called chocolate ice cream back home. The taste of sophistication, of being in a foreign land, of the fact that food could be exotic and exciting and adventurous.
The taste of growing up, of expanding horizons, of endless possibilities opening up. I've never forgotten it.
(Brought to you tonight courtesy of a tub of particularly fine chocolate ice cream purchased from our village store. Every bit as good as that ice cream in the Piazza Narvona, which shows how the world has changed, but nowhere near as revelatory!)
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