Orange wrappers

"In Italy, until a short while ago ... for oranges there was a very thin paper printed with the growers' trademarks, which were always figures of heroes from a long popular dream: lions, tigers, Garibaldi Aida, Othello, the occasional special dragon, gigantic snakes, sometimes even printed in gold."

Reading that in the catalogue to the Francesco Clemente exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1992 got me looking at orange wrappers.


There were lots of orange wrappers around, then. Most came from Spain.
I ate SO many oranges. It was a healthy time.
And people, hearing of my obsession, would look for orange wrappers when they went travelling, and send them to me. I smoothed them out and stored them carefully.
Sometimes I stroked and counted them. 200 ... 300 ... different ones.
I've lost count now. They're languishing in the back of a cupboard.
But now, you hardly ever see them any more.