I HAVE always felt quite privileged to be British. Our country has an NHS that values every life – we all count, and compassion and equity is a strong currency.

Asian countries are steeped in family caring culture but I tend to look down my nose at the USA where the big voice is the dollar.

But something has changed here in the UK – and every seriously ill person has a right to feel very bloody angry. We have been vaccinated but huge numbers of us won’t develop antibodies such is the weakness of our immune system.

Yet “Freedom Day” has arrived in England and masks are now optional.

Even new world countries such as New Zealand have demonstrated massive reactions to tiny outbreaks in comparison to ours. It seems life is all of a sudden a fairly cheap commodity for many in the country where I always felt it was paramount.

But all this negativity and anger leaves a bad flavour in my mouth so let’s talk about taste instead. When entering hospital, a fairly routine question asked by the NHS disease bouncer is: “any change in taste?”

It always brings a wry smile from chemo patients who nearly always experience this as a result of treatment – tiredness too and just abut every other Covid symptom.

Many of you are going through treatments that play havoc with your taste buds and many will have tried to explain what things taste like now.

Describing this wholly new texture and flavour sensation can be a real challenge. It could be a task set out in an advanced grade English language interpretation test paper if exams were still permitted.

I love freshly cooked, crispy and salty chips – can’t go wrong with them, right? And yet they are now alien. Camouflaged as chips they are now solidified, warm wallpaper paste tubes surrounded by crunchy dust particle emulsion. Often these delicacies will be served with cardboard deftly disguised as a pork chop or burger to ensure that only the eyeball is left satisfied.

Some foods take on a bitter metallic flavour that lingers long – thus knocking them right off the favourites list. Bananas have slip-slided that way in my house.

A neat trick to get round this bland and alien food experience is to load up strong, fresh citric flavours. I find cereal a real bore but when juicy wee satsumas are chopped into the Cheerios the bowl becomes more “hello” than “goodbye”.

Another trick is to load up with spices but the new chemo regime warns to avoid savoury and spicy foods or risk bowel and mouth ulcer problems – things that wallpaper paste doesn’t cause.

Ally McLaws is a freelance specialist in writing, business marketing and reputation management. See the full range of services and previous columns at www.mclawsconsultancy.com