Can I write a post about ice cream? Well, I can try.

Do you want to read a post about ice cream? That, gentle reader, is entirely up to you. All I would say is that blogs, like ice cream, come in an ever-increasing variety of flavours and, also like ice cream, if you don’t try something new now and then you might be missing out on an experience that bears repeating.

The latest of the WordPress ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ that I’m taking a stab at is today’s offering, which goes like this:

‘32 Flavours: Vanilla, chocolate or something else entirely?’

Vanilla or chocolate? Whoa, what about strawberry for a start? ‘Start’ being the operative word, because the first ice cream I can remember eating was a slice of Neapolitan: a brick of ice cream containing tranches of that Holy Trinity of flavours. This I would have consumed, along with tinned mixed fruit salad, at Sunday teatime. After which we were sent off to bed at what always seemed to me to be an exceptionally early hour. Something to do with getting up for school in the morning, perhaps.

Although I would, eat the whole slice of Neapolitan (of course: what kind of monster do you think I am?), my favourite part was the strawberry and I was least keen on the chocolate bit.

I always thought that was just the way it was. However, now I understand why, because I have just taken the quiz at icecream.com (well of course there’s such a thing) which, after I had answered ten questions of a degree of vacuity and irrelevance that seems to be the norm tor these things, informed me that – and I quote:

“Your flavour match is fruity, you’re sweet as can be. It’s rare to find you without a smile on your face and you’ve been described as ‘sunny’ on more than one occasion. You get the most out of life and you love meeting new people. Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet!”

Eery isn’t it? Me to a ‘T’. Just ask anyone who knows me.

Although the ‘fruity’ bit is fair enough. Then again, I think you’ll find that most ice cream flavours, with the exception of the old stalwarts of chocolate and vanilla, are fruit based, so maybe it’s no more impressive than the charlatan medium who starts his ‘seance’ by placing his fingertips against his temples and saying something along the lines of  “I’m getting an ‘e’. Does somebody have a departed loved one with an ‘e’ in their name?”

And I am discounting any of those bizarre Heston-Blumenthal-on-bad-acid concoctions like Oyster or Bacon and Eggs (oh wait; that one is a Heston Blumenthal. On bad acid.)

But I digress. This may be the rose- (or should that be strawberry?) tinted retrovision of an old git, but it seems to me that the plethora of ice cream flavours now available in your typical supermarket frozen section – and to an even greater extent in any cut-above ice-cream parlour – is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Growing up, all I can remember as being widely available was Neapolitan and its three consttiuent elements.

That doesn’t mean, though, that I’m against innovation in the world of ice cream. Far from it. In fact, I also remember ‘inventing’ one myself, while still a child, by the judicious addition of warm stewed blackcurrants to vanilla ice cream. That (DIY) blackcurrant ripple would still be the one flavour I’d choose to take to the apocryphal desert island.

More recently, I’ve tried lots of different flavours, with varying degrees of relish: Mango…mmmm; Pistachio….yup; Peaches & Cream…sure, why not?; Mint…well, not so much, as it happens.

Anyway, the point is: should you always stick with the basics or should you try something a bit different now and then? Personally, I think that although plain vanilla is better than no ice cream at all, it’s even better to have the choice. Indeed, without the occasional blackcurrant ripple you wouldn’t even appreciate the plain vanilla as much as you should.

Now I leave it to you to decide: was this a blog about ice cream….or ‘something else entirely’?