Some Memories From My Life In Bananas

Contrary to popular belief, the bananas do not ripen whilst being transported from their source country and turn from green to yellow (except for the  occasional "ship ripes").  They are taken to Ripening Centres and placed in large chambers where the temperature and atmospheric conditions are controlled and monitored in order to ripen the fruit over a period of days.  A major component of this process is the addition of ethylene gas.  As bananas usually arrive once a week, it was the ripener's skill and expertise that allowed this fruit to be ripened over a period of a week or so to ensure that a steady flow of fruit was available for further processing and sale.  There is various debate about the impact of having to use short ripening cycles in order to be able to meet the customer demands and also slowing down to make the fruit last longer.  The officianado's and experts will have varying opinions as to the impact on the quality and taste of the bananas resulting from the various ripening cysles.

I was working up North putting in our first touch screen pack house and warehouse systems when I was approached by one of the managers who asked if we could get a larger screen.  In those days, touchscreens were not cheap and were 14" in size.  I explained that it could be done but asked why it was necessary, given the potential extra expense.  The manager then told me that one of the supervisors, who spent most of the time moving pallets of stock around the facility, was a bit short sighted and, when she needed to use the screen to record stock movements, would need the screen to be much larger to be able to see what was being displayed.  I then asked the obvious question - if the person was so short sighted, why were they allowed to drive a fork truck.  

The most frequently asked questions by visitors to our sites was - how often do you get spiders and insects in the bananas?  I have to say in my experience, they were few and far between but we did get all sorts of large and unusual insects hitching a ride with the fruit.  Most of the time, due to the low transit temperatures they were pretty docile.  You usually knew when one had made a appearance by the screams coming from the pack house and a rush of staff away from the area.  The more experienced supervisors then grabbed a plastic box and donned gloves to round up the specimen for the assembled staff to ogle at, before making a call to the environmental body for identification and collection.  The remainder of the fruit was usually quarantined and then more closely inspected (by volunteers) to see if any more were hiding in amongst the fruit.  

There were instances of stowaways in the back of trucks or in the holds of the vessels arriving from overseas.  The former usually resulted in a the stowaways making a run for it when the rear doors of the lorry were opened.  Invariably, this was in the site yard and, as the driver opened the doors and folded them back before reversing onto the loading dock, the stow ways would jump down and leg it.  We did phone the local authorities but would could they do, by the time they arrived they were long gone.  The knock on effect was that the entire lorry load of fruit had to be dumped as there was no way of telling what had happened to it.  It was clear in some instances that human waste was evident.  The stowaways in vessel holds presented a bigger problem.  More often than not, relatively large "holes" had been left in the pallets creating enough space for several people to live during the voyage.  All sorts of objects and human waste were left behind inevitably resulting in the large scale dumping of fruit.

Importing from South American countries like Colombia does not come without its hazards.  An infrequent event was the removal of a container from an arriving vessel by Customs officials to be inspected.  More often than not they found something and it would appear that whatever intelligence was being collected at source was bearing dividends.  All we knew was that all the fruit that we needed for ripening and processing was being held and we risked being short of supply to our supermarket lords and masters.  I do recall drugs being found at our depots but on only 1 or 2 occasions during my 20 years.

I once went to a comedy show where one of the performers was a certain Andy Parsons (Of Mock the Week fame) - he started off my asking the audience who had travelled the furthest to see him.  Most of the attendees were local but I had driven a long way to get to the venue so I piped up that I had driven 60 miles to make the event.  Having established that I was the winner of that little quiz, he then asked me what I did to which I responded "you don't want to know" - after more good humoured abuse from Andy, I finally revealed that I was in "bananas" - henceforth I was known as "Banana Boy" and was relentlessly hounded and heckled by all subsequent performers - all it good spirit and I was profusely thanked at the end for participating.