Swede vs. Turnip

I like to think that I’m the sort of chap who is quite at ease with seeing Gay couples shopping in supermarkets (or anywhere, for that matter.) In fact, to commit a massive generalisation, there is nothing that says ‘Domestic Bliss!’ quite like two men going supermarket shopping together. (Conversely, heterosexual couples always look so damned miserable in supermarkets. Why? I, for one, always seem to have gone supermarket shopping with someone shortly before breaking up with them. Is there a connection? Now there’s an interesting thesis topic.) I realise that this impression is hopelessly superficial, and based on a very small number of cases. But this is all the better for the story.

Yesterday, an apparently blissful Gay couple were at the checkout in front of me. I noticed them immediately, because one of the men resembled Elliot Gould in the Robert Altman classic The Last Goodbye, with a sprinkle of Sir Bob Geldof thrown in. I envied his world-weary, jaded handsomeness, and unsuccessfully tried to find a vein of similar ruggedness in myself, gazing longingly at my reflection in the semi-polished metal strip of the checkout conveyor belt. The other man looked like a young Jean Reno in a trucker cap.

So. Geldof-Gould dropped a mini-tin of Dine Cat Food on the floor. I picked it up for him without even mentioning my view on the stupidity and waste of buying such a small tin of food for a cat, when the cat wouldn’t know anyway, unless you got it accustomed to Dine by weaning it off Snappy Tom, in which case you’ve only got yourself to blame – and you only get one serve per tin, as opposed to at least four from a regular can.1 (Actually, this tin of Dine was so comically small that at first I thought it might be some kind of high-end Paté supplement that people scoop onto the top of the regular blob of Dine, like a garnish for cats! But then I thought: hey, that’s insane. Only Blofeld’s, or Dr. Claw’s, cat are pampered enough to have a garnish, and they’re both fictional.)

I said nothing, in any case – I just handed Bob back his funny little can. He smiled appreciatively. It was a nice moment, and I briefly thought about being less judgemental about people who purchase premium brands of cat food.
Sadly, this synergetic moment was shattered by the sentence below, which was spoken by the checkout guy while holding an unidentified root vegetable aloft:

Excuse me – is this a Swede or a Turnip?

Because neither man was listening, he had to say it again; this time with feeling:

Excuse me, Sir – is this a Swede or a Turnip?

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, is this not an intrinsically funny sentence when one lives in a heavily industrialised country in the 21st century? In fact, I’m willing to bet that the last period of history when this sentence wasn’t funny was during the transition from serfdom to industrialised farming in 18th-Century England – shortly before the Swede/Turnip differentiation permanently lost its pressing relevance to the general populace.2

Oh, sure, there are modern exceptions: the Russians would have had plenty of opportunities to say something like this in earnest during the Soviet Experiment. (Even in pre-Revolution Russia, one of Chekhov’s late short stories was called Is This a Swede or a Turnip, And Even If we Knew, What Would it Matter Anyway?) But nevertheless, both of these foodstuffs are now utterly removed from our everyday eating experience that the distinction is rarely an issue. (Incidentally, the whole thing got me wondering: how can a swede and a turnip cost significantly different amounts? If they’re so similar as to be indistinguishable to a supermarket employee, I bet it would take an identical effort to grow either of them. Surely a resourceful employee would have just scanned a swede as a turnip, or vice versa? Who would know?)

The more I thought about this taxonomic confusion, the funnier it got. I started shaking with silent mirth, causing Jean Reno to glare at me murderously. I realised then that he probably thought that I thought that the sight of two gay men in a supermarket was intrinsically funny, when I actually thought that the sight of two gay men in a supermarket arguing over the provenance of an archaic root vegetable was intrinsically funny! (Actually, the sad irony is that it would have been just as funny if they were a man and a woman: the gay part was a red herring – but Reno the Trucker couldn’t have known that).

The problem was, I couldn’t just blurt out the following explanation:
“Oh no, I don’t have a problem with you two – it’s the turnip, you understand, and how easily it can be confused with other veg – oh, never mind.”
Instead, I had to outstare Reno the Trucker and learn the difference between a turnip and a swede. It was a fun and educational trip.

FOOTNOTES

1 N.B. I don’t actually say this to people in the Supermarket under any circumstances – God forbid! – but I do think about it at length.

2 In this period of history, this exchange would of course have taken a somewhat different form, i.e.:

DISTINGUISHED, YET MOST PROBABLY LECHEROUS, LANDOWNER: ‘Prithee, my faire Wenche, canst thy pray take the Trouble to tellest me whether yon vegetable possesseth most strongly thy features of thy gentle, nurturing, swede, or of thy robust, healthful turnip?’
BUXOM PEASANT GIRL, TILLING FIELD (WITH SLY, KNOWING SMILE): ‘Why, Sire, I know not! The taste of each is much the same to me ‘umble palate, it is though, so God ‘elp me.’