Nuts!

I'm glad it's not an allergy: I have Pine Mouth.
There are two possible culprits: The Sainsbury's pasta salad with pine nuts on Thursday, or a pasta, rocket, mozzarella and pine nut salad from a local coffee shop on Friday. Since I have seen Sainsbury's linked to ocurrences of pine mouth in the UK, I would wager it was that salad, which also had a lot more pine nuts in than the coffee shop one, which tended more towards cherry tomatos and mozzarella (yum).

I first noticed this on Saturday after I came home from my walk. At first I thought it was the aftertaste of the pint of bitter in Sawbridgeworth, or the cold coffee I was drinking at the time, but it persisted: A constant bitter taste on the back of my tongue. My sense of smell is fine, but everything I eat - anything I eat - tastes bitter. Milk. Bread. Ice cream. Fruit. Beef stew. Rice. Even water. In fact, the more I eat or drink, the worse it gets. Imagine putting bitter lemon or tonic water into everything you put into your mouth, and then some. I am not adverse to bitter taste in general (I love grapefruit), but this is like tinnitus of the tongue.

Everything I read on pine mouth says that the symptoms will go away on their own in anything between two days and two weeks, suggesting it's either when the toxin leaves the body or the taste buds regenerate. Until then, I'll grin and bear it. The fact that I can step out of myself (figuratively) and look at the situation from the outside, which is a neat trick, especially if you like writing stories, makes it a little more amusing. But it will be a long time before I eat pine nuts again.