The Turnip Treat.

The local dialect word for a turnip where I grew up in one of the UK’s industrial heartlands was ‘chonnock.’ At least I assume that’s how it was spelt. I never saw it written down because you don’t with dialect words, do you? But it looks right.

Anyway, there was a patch of ground behind my primary school where one or more of the teachers grew them and sold them to the kids for a penny each. We all used to buy one, you know, and eat it raw as a snack at break time.

Can you imagine young people these days eating a raw turnip as a snack? We hardly ever had chocolate, of course, or any of the other multitudinous snacking comestibles which are freely available now, so a raw turnip was a rare treat. I expect it still is in places like Bhutan.