It never ceases to surprise people that I can neither smell nor taste garlic. The thing that surprises me is how long it took me to figure it out.

You know when you’ve had some Italian food and the next day someone says “You were eating garlic last night weren’t you? Your breath should be classified as a deadly weapon”. Well a couple of years ago I started eating a particular brand of chicken salad wrap from a reputable supermarket and every day when I’d get home my girlfriend would accuse me of eating garlic and I’d strongly deny it saying she must be imagining it. Well one day she actually had the same thing for lunch as me and declared to my surprise that it contained rather a lot of garlic.

On that day I realised that I truly am a reverse vampire. Rather than making me cower in a corner, garlic has no effect on me at all and goes a long way to explaining why I never eat pasta when I dine out. You see I’m told that one of the main things that makes pasta taste great is the use of garlic. Since I can’t taste it I find most pasta dishes bland and flavourless. You may take for granted its potent taste but I can literally slice up a garlic, eat it, and not be able to tell the difference from eating, say, cardboard.

The worst thing is when I tell people of my affliction the first thing they say… No, the first thing they say is that I must be mistaken. When I persuade them I’m not then they tell me how delicious garlic is and what I’m missing out on. Sadly, nobody’s been able to explain the taste of it to me – flavour like emotions can’t really be described without resorting to other examples of the same thing.

Oh, to taste garlic. I could live 100 years and I never will. A man can dream. A man can dream…