Above all else

I love to read. When I was a kid, my favourite outing would be when my mum would go to Centrepoint, and leave me for an hour or two at the enormous Times Bookshop, with the equally vast MPH just across the same floor.  It wasn't just books. I would read anything that had typeface on it. Random magazines lying around the house, brochures in the mail. I have vivid memories of consistently reading the ingredient list on cereal boxes in the morning while spooning milk into my mouth.  This has ended up with me becoming a great collector of (mostly useless) facts and factoids. Having pointlessly and endlessly scrolled through the "Information" page on Championship Manager, I now know the names of a ridiculous number of English football grounds all the way through to the old Fourth Division.  I can also identify the national flags of most countries, not because of Geography lessons but again because of football matches :D My collection of assorted trivia makes me the internally ...

What is a fruit? In science and botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants. The Cambridge dictionary provides a more layman's definition of a fruit as an edible and usually sweet product of a plant or tress that contains a seed or pit. What then is a seed? The botanical definition of a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo of a new plant and some stored nutrients. The Cambridge dictionary's lay definition is similar - an object produced by a plant and from which, when it is planted, a new plant can grow. But what about seedless fruits? There's a shop near my home which sells these enormous and super delicious watermelons that literally have no seeds in them. I love them! But, you know... no seeds, so... is it even a fruit? Why am I writing about seedless fruits? Well, I heard a really good message on the topic of seedlessness from Bishop Oriel from the Philippines recently, and I have since had the opportunity to properly reflect on it. Is th...