‘Pumpkins! I ask you – pumpkins!’
‘Woss wrong with pumpkins? They’re orange. They’re effsfetic ent they?’
‘They’re not traditional though, are they?’
‘Ent they?’
‘Nope. You know the legend doncher?’
‘Er…’
‘The one about Jack.’
‘Jack wot climbed the beanstalk?’
‘Could be… anyway…’
‘Jack wot built the ‘ouse?’
‘Maybe…anyway…’
‘Jack wot went up the ‘ill with Jill and fell down and broke ‘is crown?’
‘ANYWAY….Jack sold his soul, see?’
‘Probably needed to raise the cash to build an ‘ouse. Costs a fortune that does.’
‘Whatever, but the thing is, the thing is then he got scared of the dark.’
‘Probably behind with the ‘leccy bills what will spending all ‘is cash on building an ‘ouse and buying beans and that.’
‘Well anyway, so then he made a lamp out of a turnip.’
‘Why?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well, that can ‘appen when you falls down and breaks your crown. You can go a bit doollally. No amount of vinegar and brown paper’s gonna sort out brain trauma.’
‘Yeah well, anyway, he roams he does, Jack, looking for his lost soul or summat. So other people started to make lamps outta turnips too.’
‘Why’d they do that? Had he started a sort of franchise?’
‘No it was reverse physicilology or summat.’
‘Wossat then?’
‘No look listen, people made lanterns out of turnips and put them outside their houses to scare Jack away.’
‘Why turnips?’
‘Takes a real man to make a lantern out of a turnip. Turnips is hard. All that digging with a teaspoon – only a real man can do that and then when they eats the innards their farts can blow the scales off a lizard.’
‘Spect Jack was used to that what with the beans from the beanstalk an all.’
‘Wot you on about?’
‘Wot YOU on about?’
‘Well the thing is – it was TURNIPS! It was turnips till a few years ago. Then suddenly, it’s pumpkins everywhere and turnips don’t get a look in. And what am I?
‘You’re a turnip.’
‘Dead right. And what are you?’
‘I’m a turnip.’
‘You certainly are. So that’s why I’m mad. Blinking pumpkins. Coming over here, taking our jobs. It’s a liberty that’s what it is. A blinking liberty.’
Words and photograph copyright 2017 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission
hahaha, love it – the picture completes it! 😛
I got some very funny looks in the supermarket putting turnips in with the pumpkins and taking a photograph!
Funnily enough I was talking about that the other day! T didn’t realise people carved neeps. Certainly did here!
Love this. But to be fair, I did carve (or tried to) a turnip when I was part of a medieval reenactment group and it’s nearly impossible to do. Apples were also a choice back when so I carved an apple instead, lol.