Possibly you’ve missed this. However, for the last three years or thereabouts, I have been conducting a low-key campaign for the revival of the turnip lantern. And this year, for the first time ever, I am remembering to write about this before Halloween, rather than afterwards, albeit narrowly so.
Fie on this pumpkin nonsense. If you are thirtysomething or older, one surefire way of figuring out whether somebody comes from outside the M25 is to ask them whether they have ever carved a turnip. ‘A what?’ they’ll ask, if they are from the south-east, because they don’t even know what turnips are, because they call them swedes. Which is just one of many ways in which they are wrong.
For them, anyway, the feckless American import that is a pumpkin has been an autumnal fixture. For them, the carving of a lantern has always been an easy, weak-wristed process, with the bulk of the work done for you before you even begin. Never have they hurt themselves doing it. Not unless they’re cack-handed as hell. Never has their honest childhood blood added a purple tinge to the inside of the lid.
You want to know the true metropolitan elite? They’re the people who don’t even realise that, outside London, pumpkins were more or less unheard of until about 1992. Yet now they have come and spread like grey squirrels, usurping that which came before. Where’s Ukip on turnip lanterns, that’s what I want to know. Please, guys. It’s what you’re for.
This is an extract from this week’s issue. Subscribe here
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