Yes, folks, tumshie is the new numpty

Published on 03/11/2004 00:02

WHAT a turnip for the books. No, not the US election but the man from Lamancha, who reminds us of a matter of greater significance.

Forget about these two tumshies, Bush and Kerry. Turn your mind to the Lamancha Turnip Festival on Saturday at Whitmuir Farm (if you want to neep along you’ll find it on the A701 south of Penicuik. Look out for the enormous inflatable turnip).

So, one may ask, why the turnip and why should you turnip? Not only because it is our national tuber but also because Lamancha was one of the first places (if not the first) in Scotland to grow turnips in the open field back in the 18th century. More importantly, the Diary believes it is time to take a stand against globalisation, which has seen Halliburton, or its fruit-and-veg equivalent, flooding our supermarkets with pumpkins, thus supplanting our national tuber, brassica rapa or, as they call it in England - wooo! - the swede.

It has even inspired our poets - Burns addressed lines Tae a Tumshie and MacDiarmid spoke of "makers of noises like turnips".

Indeed, the Diary even prefers the term "tumshie" to "numpty". Henceforth, Holyrood will be known as the Tumshorium.

This is also one of the few matters where we diverge from John Peel. For his Burns Supper on Radio 1 this year, he confessed that with his vegetarian haggis he "might have some tatties, but not neeps. They aren’t a food for a human being". Shame.

Meanwhile, the Lamancha Turnip Festival offers, we are assured, a great afternoon for anyone feeling depressed - if Bush wins - at a tumshie as leader of the free world. There will be music from Beggars Row and a procession of turnip lanterns pied-pipered by the Border blaster, Matt Seattle. No doubt they’ll be singing the auld bothy ballad Neeps Tae Pluck ... etc, etc.

And all for a good cause - to convert the disused school in Lamancha into a community centre.

Nicola wakes up to chains at dawn

ABNORMAL happenings rather than paranormal ones perhaps, as the Streetwork director, Tam Hendry, and his motley crew snuggled down with Miss UK in the haunted Caves under Edinburgh’s auld toun.

Tam Hendry was joined by Radio Forth’s Jill McLaren and Mark Martin in the fundraiser, but the closest they came to a psychic experience was when Jill began communing with the spirit of Maggie from The Broons.

Ghostbusters Mark Turner and David Melrose were convinced that the EMF were picking up a psychic presence, but Tam reckoned it was the signal from somebody’s mobile on the pavement directly overhead on South Bridge.

Unlike their celebrity guests, the Streetwork team are on the streets every night of the year, reaching more than 1,000 young people and 700 older homeless people annually.

Their aim is to raise enough for 300 sleeping bags, pairs of gloves and woolly hats, which will be distributed to rough-sleepers. Contributions can be made through their site or by text, Streetwork to 89303.

At the darkest hour before the dawn, Nicola Jolly was roused by the dragging of chains. It was her wake-up call from Lord Provost Lesley Hinds with a cuppa and a bacon buttie.

Presbyterian Satanists?

THE "devilish" nautical debate in our Letters page, along with our recent John P Mackintosh tale about the "Presbyterian atheist", has prompted an old adage from a Jewish friend. Reassuring us that we were all Jock Tamson’s bairns, he pointed out that Scots were either Presbyterian Protestants, Presbyterian Catholics, Presbyterian Jews or Presbyterian Muslims. In keeping with Executive policy on social inclusion, we’d like to add to the list Presbyterian Satanists.

• ON ANT and Dec’s Saturday Night Giveaway (a light-entertainment television programme, we are reliably informed) there is a phone-in segment where viewers are invited to answer an easy question and win a random prize. Was it purely misfortune or did the Geordie twosome rig it so that caller Mr Tom Barr from Glasgow, who answered his question correctly, won ... a bar of soap? Much mirth from Edinburgh viewers at the jammy dodger.

• WE SEE the Bank of Scotland has given Howard his dancing orders. Could it do the same for the person who dishes out its Keycards? The Diary is still waiting for its one, due for renewal at the end of September. Twice lost in the post, at the third time of asking it has yet to be delivered to the branch for collection.

Saint's day for Clarissa

WHAT do Clarissa Dickson Wright, Lucy Ferry (left) and George Bush have in common? They have God on their side. Dubya has not set up his own church - yet - but Clarissa and Lucy have and today they will be busily hounding St Hubert.

Last Sunday saw the blessing of the dogs by the self-styled Free Church of Country Sports. It was set up for that persecuted minority, those who follow country pursuits, namely hunting.

Their patron saint is Hubert, a passionate hunter who renounced all worldly goods after seeing a vision of a stag with a crucifix between its antlers. He is the patron of mad dogs and hunters and his feast day is today.

The "church" website lists among its members a canon and a viscount, Clarissa (who is number 1,995) and Lucy - the woman who vowed to bring down the government - who is so enthusiastic that she has signed up twice as numbers 4,843 and 4,844.

Drummer Jack takes the biscuit

THE picture in yesterday’s paper of the First Minister with a drumkit prompted the aside as he picked up the sticks by the wrong end: "Drum and drummer." Meanwhile, we always supected the First Minister liked his oats, as was revealed in his electoral "cookie" selection yesterday of oat biscuits, "a firm family favourite". David McLetchie’s selection of flapjacks was an unfortunate Freudian slip. He obviously gets in a flap over Jack, but while he may flap, he never flip-flops.