What a turnip for the books!

IT may be of interest to you to know that the turnip is making a comeback. It's certainly of interest to me. We have an allotment full of them.

The trouble with allotments is that either the crop fails and you have nothing or it succeeds and you are overwhelmed. The phrase "too much of a good thing" was surely born in an allotment.

Thus I have a freezer full of lettuce soup, jars of gooseberry jam and chutney, and rows of pickled beetroot. I am currently experimenting with 101 ways to use a marrow.

But what the hell can you do with 12 stones of turnips? If I had the right connections and if it wasn't for allotment rules forbidding crass commerciality, I could sell them to Tesco, which is reporting a 75 per cent rise in the sale of turnips in the last year alone.

Apparently the supermarket sees it as a sign of the times. The "credit crunch vegetable", as it's been dubbed, is coming back because we're all afraid of poverty and recession. True, you can bulk out stews and soups, and they are a necessity with haggis. Once you've done all that a few times, there's nowhere to go with a turnip.

I have considered grating it, drying it, rolling it and trying to smoke it. Or perhaps finding a recipe for rocket-fuel turnip wine. Moonshine did quite well in the Great Depression, I seem to recall.

But the fact is – and there's no getting away from this – flatulence-inducing turnip isn't on anyone's favourite list of vegetables. Its traditional place in Scottish nostalgia probably owes more to the fact that in the innocent days before the pumpkin took hold, legions of bairns used turnips to make Halloween lanterns.

How we did that without the aid of a pneumatic drill, an electric saw and a flame-thrower I can't quite remember because even peeling a neep is a challenge, let alone hollowing it out and carving eyes and jaggy teeth. But I still remember the unique smell of candle-charred turnip flesh.

Perhaps it does make a fine economic indicator. You can forget your Dow Jones index and your "footsie". Interest rates rise and wane. But you can be sure things must be bad when we are reduced to eating turnip on a regular basis.

Of course the identity and make-up of a turnip is a matter of cross-border controversy. The English eat the little, white bitter ones. The big, sweeter, orange chaps we favour are routinely fed to English sheep and referred to by them as swede. No matter, they are the same family. And if there was such a thing as vegetable society and hierarchy, the broccoli, courgette and asparagus families would be living in the big, regularly weeded, impeccably cared-for, luxurious plots while turnips or swedes would be left to survive by their own devices. In our case they have been remarkably successful, like the poor family in the sink estate that produces 15 kids.

Perhaps that's why Tesco and other supermarkets are talking them up. But despite their confidence, I have grave doubts that the turnip will ever take off and return to its former glory. To do anything remotely palatable with a turnip you have to know how to cook. That means the lost arts of peeling, chopping, mashing and stewing. It's no good throwing it in on high for 30 seconds and waiting for the "ping".

So let's put turnip's new-found popularity to the test. Roll up, roll up for a free neep (you collect). Name and address on a postcard please. No takers? I thought not.

Let's be clear
BEFORE we hear another cheep from the council or congestion experts about Edinburgh pollution, consider this.

Last week Holyrood Park was closed from Holyrood to the Commonwealth Pool, something to do with falling rocks which is, of course, important. But at the same time, Dalkeith Road was closed for half its length and Peffermill Road had roadworks and temporary lights, thus gridlocking the whole area.

Elsewhere the Canongate is to close for a month from today, about 50 parking spaces were blocked off in George Street last week, and – lest we forget – the tram line construction is causing chaos.

Has anyone assessed the levels of congestion when major works are NOT being carried out to find out whether it's the cars which are the problem – or the constant and apparently unplanned roadworks?

Age-old story
SELINA SCOTT is quite right to champion the rights to employment of older, female newsreaders and presenters. But in complaining about the young Isla Traquair pipping her to a Five news job, Selina, at 57, may be forgetting one thing.

She was 30 when she presented News at Ten. Young blood always comes in to replace old. If the Angela Rippons, Joan Bakewells, Anna Fords and Jan Leemings etc hadn't moved on, she wouldn't have had her chances on TV either.