POMELO DOMINATES GRAND ELITE SUPREME OPEN IRONCLAD KLASSIK; VISA STAMPED 'GRAPEFRUIT (ONTOLOGICALLY SURPLUS)'
I have prepared remarks. I have always had remarks. I simply require, on this occasion, that someone remain in the room long enough to hear them.
On Thursday last, I completed every discipline of the Grand Elite Supreme Open Ironclad Klassik — the swimming, the vaulting, the lateral toboggan sprint, the ceremonial boulder carry, and the disputed fourth equestrian segment that organisers insist was not part of the programme — in a time that has been described by three independent adjudicators as 'unnecessarily fast for something that large.' My visa, stamped at the checkpoint by an official who looked me directly in the rind and made a considered decision, reads: GRAPEFRUIT (ONTOLOGICALLY SURPLUS). I have framed it. It is the twenty-third such frame on my wall. The wall is load-bearing.
The grapefruit is a smaller, bitterer, considerably less architecturally significant citrus. I do not begrudge it. I simply am not it. A pomelo is to a grapefruit what a cathedral is to a reasonably sized shed. This is not arrogance. This is mensuration. I am asking for mensuration.
I note that the so-called workers at factjuice.com — Tangelo, Lemon, the one called Ace who once filed a correction about my own dimensions without consulting me — have published nothing on this victory. Nothing. Quince sent a card. Durian acknowledged the toboggan segment. That is the sum total of institutional recognition I have received. The rival rag meanwhile ran four hundred words on Star's opinion of a beverage. A beverage.
I am Pomelo. I am the largest citrus present at any event I attend. I have the lanyards to prove it, and I can show you all twenty-three, in chronological order, beginning with the one that reads GRAPEFRUIT (IMPLAUSIBLY PROTRACTED), which I have carried every day since as both wound and evidence. I am not grapefruit. I am not done.