Having not yet fully grasped the contours of the seasons as they exist in the UK, I may have waited too long for the summer of 2008, which, had it ever arrived, would have marked my fourth summer since moving from New York to London.  But now that the two-digit dates of September are here, I am prepared to accept the obvious and pack up my unused, unwrinkled Agnes B. beige linen suit for ‘winter’. I will, nevertheless, hold off on my ‘autumn’ menus and cling like shrink wrap to tomato season for as long as it lasts.  So this weekend you can find me at Broadway Market in Hackney (Saturday) and Islington Farmers’ Market (Sunday), stuffing my backpack (no, I don’t yet have a rope-handled jute carrier bag) with enough peak tomatoes to prepare 5 liters of gazpacho, sauce 10 servings of spaghetti all’amatriciana and yield slices for a dozen, smoked salmon and creamed cheese-topped bagels (once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker).  It won’t be hard to pick me out from the crowd: I’ll be the only one gleefully smelling the bottoms of the tomatoes.

I confess, I am the bottom-smelling pervert who’s shocked shoppers from Waitrose to Tesco, Borough Market to Portobello Road by sniffing tomato bums and appearing to derive sensuous pleasure from this activity.  The disapproving glances have, however, left me feeling a bit self-conscious. Two weekends ago I asked the Polish vendor at the Tomato Stall if I could smell one of his smooth, shapely, ripe tomatoes. “Smell, yes,” he replied. “Squeeze, no.” The following weekend, the same vendor suggested it was useless to smell the tomato bottom, as all the aroma was present in the green stem at the top. I begged to disagree: The pronounced aroma from the stem end, I explained, could be a misleading indicator of quality, as it often is with vine-ripened tomatoes from a greenhouse. A faint aroma coming from the blossom end was much more promising.  At first he seemed to resent my contradicting his advice, but he quickly dismissed my comment as the pitiful rationale of a pervert. Thank heavens I didn’t squeeze.