I’ve grown to love the cabbage but it wasn’t easy.

The Archaeologist, contrarian that he was, eschewed the traditional vegetables favoured by children in favour of Brussel sprouts which have universally turned small mouths into sealed capsules. Me, I looked on these gangrenous conkers with utter horror.

Cabbage, though, was the worst of a bad bunch. That dark green seaweedle mush that was slapped on my school dinner plate with all the appeal of a dead otter awaiting dissection was awful, the pits but even the crispy home grown version prepared by mum left me ready to gag.

Still we grow up and understand how our lives must change: we turn up at work without being nagged out of bed and with our armpits prepped not to kill; we pick up wet towels,understanding if we don’t we are unlikely to be able to walk with our thighs touching; and we eat greens. These are the very foundations of civilised society, up there with support for human rights and an appreciation of custard creams. I may have been a reluctant convert but I am onside nowadays.

Mind you, I did eschew a cabbage diet recommended to me a while back. Frankly London struggles enough with the quality of its atmosphere without me adding to the problem. 

All of which is a silly, if rather obvious segue to a poem I wrote about Pissaro and his love affair with the ‘umble cabbage

PISSARO FOUND POETRY IN THE CABBAGE

If you listen to the fashionistas of the modern culinary arts,

When they describe perfect roasts or sumptuous lemon tarts,

You’ll hear their words of praise for all those fruits and meat

And how to meld their flavours, comingling savoury with sweet.

And even though they often play an important supporting role,

The humble vegetable is still more courtesan than prole.

The muscular potato or statuesque carrot

Are stables of the table, more often praised than not.

But down amongst the also rans, the forgotten men of food

Whose highest praise is usually ‘Eat up, they’ll do you good’

Besides that distorted vege-beast, the emblem of our drab age

Reviled at school, the pauper’s feast, there rests the simple cabbage.

Let us look beyond this unfairly labelled legume

And restore it to its rightful place where it once more may bloom

Like a cleaned, restored Old Master, a refurbished classic car

As good as oil of castor, the five star brassica. 

Some may moan and cry for help

And groan out loud if offered kelp.

While others quail, and kick and shout

And turn quite pale, at the thought of sprouts.

And then there’s those, who duck and cower

And turn up their nose at the cauliflower.

And this same team will not risk the mockery

Of being seen enjoying broccoli.

But there are men, free men prepared to stand

And defend, till death, these fruits of our land.

Monet, Renoir, the bearded Pissarro

They didn’t paint the pea or the marrow.

No, for them, there was no finer joy

Than to fix, on canvas, the sweet green savoy.