I remember the first time I tasted “real” cheese. In our house cheese was a Trump-coloured block that was mainly grated over macaroni to give it some taste. We were poor. I was still at school and one day a friend and I decided to sail to Robben Island in a homemade boat with horrifying consequences, but that is another story. Once on the island beach she said, “Hey, I’ve got something.” It was a tin of Camembert, a tin. The cheese was the colour of pinchbeck and it tasted furtive, as sin or sex might taste.
It was only years later living in London that I would taste it again: Camembert, Brie, a cheese, the name I forget, that was like crunching caterpillars. Yep, I was a cheese eater, I loved its completeness. One slice and a piece of bread and you had a meal.