Dear Readers, as those of you in the UK will have noticed we are having a bit of a problem getting our usual fruit and veg, and our illustrious Secretary of State for Enviroment, Food and Rural Affairs has suggested that as we can’t lay our hands on tomatoes and cucumber we might like to turn to the humble turnip instead. So, this seems like a good moment to resurrect this piece which I did a few years ago. I still don’t like these knobbly little chunks of nastiness, but maybe you have a turnip recipe to convince me that they have some redeeming features. We might all need to get onboard the root vegetable train very soon. 

So now, let’s shuttle back to 2020…

Dear Readers, when I got these turnips in my vegetable box last week, I admit to being stumped, because of all the roots in the world, this is the one I like least. In Scotland, a ‘neep’ is a completely different animal – in England we’d call it a swede, in the US it’s a rutabaga, and whatever it’s called I’m  rather fond it, especially when mashed and served with ‘stovies’, a delicious mix of leftover meat, potatoes, onions and gravy. In fact, swedes probably merit a blogpost all to themselves, so I shall move on (with regret) for now.

A swede or a neep, depending on where you live (or indeed a rutabaga) (Photo One)

I have a long and unhappy history with turnips, however. Back when I was a young thing and was working in Dundee, I had a blond Adonis of a boyfriend who was very into self-sufficiency. One of the things he grew was turnips, and when they were in season that is basically what we ate. There were turnips and broccoli for lunch (with additional earwigs which we where meant to pick out and put to one side). There was turnip and blackberry jam, following a war-time recipe. There was turnip and blackberry pie with custard made with wholemeal bread flour (don’t ask). There was turnip curry (which at least disguised the taste). Suffice it to say that turnips became my nemesis and I have never willingly or knowingly eaten one since. But here they are, and I am not going to waste the poor darlings.

Anyhow, what is a turnip anyway? Its Latin name is Brassica rapa subspecies rapa, and the wild plant is another of those mustardy cabbage plants with yellow flowers that are so confusing to the amateur botanist.

Wild turnip (Brassica rapa) (Photo Two)

The name ‘turnip’ rather charmingly comes from the word ‘turn’ (as in ‘turn on a lathe/make round) and ‘neep’ from napus, the Latin word for vegetable – so, ’round vegetable’. The poet Sappho apparently called one of her lovers Gongýla, which means ‘turnip’, and I have to admit that when I was arranging the vegetables for the photo they reminded me so much of a pair of breasts that I had to turn one of them at an angle to avoid offending anyone’s modesty. Clearly, this lockdown is affecting my brain.

Turnips actually have a double whammy when it comes to food – the green tops can be eaten as a substitute for spinach or chard, although they have a punchier, more mustardy flavour. In fact, some varieties of turnip are grown solely for their greens, and I’m sure that they’re all the better for it – broccoli rabe, bok choy and Chinese cabbage are all actually turnips. The root is apparently milder when cooked (but still, I would argue, not mild enough), but turnips are also often used as animal feed.  In 1700 Viscount Townsend, a Whig statesman, retired to his country house and became involved in agriculture, no doubt to the delight of the local yeomanry. He did, however,  invent a four-year crop rotation system featuring turnips, barley, wheat and clover, and became an enthusiastic proponent of using turnips as a year-round animal feed. Such was his association with the vegetable that he became know as Charles ‘Turnip’ Townsend.

Charles ‘Turnip’ Townsend (18 April 1674 – 21 June 1738), probably not wearing his gardening clothes (Photo Three)

While turnip greens are high in Vitamins K, A and C. the root is hardly a nutritional powerhouse, containing 14% of an adult’s daily requirement of Vitamin C and rather a lot of water and carbohydrate. Nonetheless, some people have leapt into the fray and tried to make something of it. Its radish-y qualities mean that it is sometimes grated and used in salads. I note that the Good Food recipe site has turnips in marmalade, turnips with duck, crispy salmon with turnip, mandarin and noodle salad and turnip tartiflette . I am going to put my turnips into a red lentil and turnip chilli from one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s books, but as my husband’s stomach can’t tolerate chilli I shall be splashing on the pepper sauce after cooking. If you have any failsafe turnip recipes that don’t taste too much of turnip, do let me know.

Marmalade glazed turnips (Photo Four)

There seems to be something essentially comedic about the poor old turnip. For example, in an attempt to puncture what’s perceived as the po-faced nature of the Turner Prize ( the UK’s chief prize for ‘modern’ art of all kinds), some wag dreamed up the Turnip Prize. The prize is given to exhibits that display a lack of effort, and which are rubbish, though I also detect a very British love of puns. Some of its winners have included a builder’s hard hat with elf’s pointy ears attached (‘Elfin Safety’), a lump of dough with toy children embedded in it (‘Children in Knead’) and a pole painted black (‘Pole Dark’). The prize is, of course, a lump of wood with a turnip nailed to it.

Nonetheless, the turnip has also played a more serious role in history. During the winter of 1916-17, the German populace were close to starvation. The harvest of the potato, a staple food in the country, failed and this, combined with the Allied blockade, the seizure of farm horses for the army, the diversion of nitrogen fertilizers to make explosives and the lack of agricultural manpower as people were drafted into the army made for a perfect storm. The government attempted to substitute turnips, normally used for animal feed, for the lost potatoes, but turnips have a much lower nutritional value, and mortality, particularly among women, increased by 30% in 1917. Furthermore, it’s believed that the malnutrition also had a lasting effect on the immune systems of those who survived, making them more vulnerable to the so-called Spanish flu pandemic which ravaged the world right after the war. The Germans call this period ‘The Turnip Winter’, and a loathing of turnips lingers to this day amongst the older population.

Strangely enough though, just across the border in Austria, the municipality of Keutsch am Zee features a very splendid turnip on its coat of arms, probably a nod to the agriculture which was the chief source of income for the area until tourism came along.

The Coat of Arms of Keutsch am Zee (Photo Five)

And finally, did you ever wonder what people made Halloween lanterns out of before pumpkins arrived from the New World? Well, again it’s our old friend the humble turnip, though I suspect the larger swede is more often involved. Apparently these lanterns are still made out of turnips on the Isle of Man, and in Ireland and Scotland (so do let me know if the pumpkin has made inroads into lantern-making in your neck of the woods – I do suspect that pumpkins are much easier to carve).

A traditional Cornish Jack-O-Lantern carved, as I suspected, from a swede (Photo Six)

And so, a poem. How delighted I was to find that Seamus Heaney had written a poem about a turnip snedder, a machine used to slice up the turnips to make feed for the animals. Here is one from Sentry Hill in County Antrim, from an excellent blog by Anne Hailes – well worth a look.

Wesley Bonar, Museums and Heritage Officer at Sentry Hill with a turnip-snedder (Photo Seven)

Northern Lights above Lendrick Hill in Clackmannanshire, Scotland (Photo by William Starkey, taken in 2016)

Dear Readers, my Mum always wanted to see the Northern Lights. She’d seen a BBC TV programme featuring Joanna Lumley, (and you can watch some of it too here). She never did see it: after their sixtieth wedding anniversary I tried to organise a cruise for them, but Dad wanted somewhere hot and Mum wanted to see the Northern Lights, and so many criteria were designated that it became impossible. Now, I realise that they were both terrified to go so far out of their comfort zones, but they didn’t want to tell me. One of these days, I will find a way to see the Northern Lights myself, and I will see them for Mum and for me.

The Northern Lights (and the Aurora Australis in the south) are the result of particles emitted by the Sun, that are drawn towards the Earth by gravity, but which then bounce off of our atmosphere, releasing energy as light. Normally they just bounce off of the top and bottom of the planet, but when there’s a particularly splendid gust of the ‘solar wind’ we can see them much further south. Incidentally, other planets also have auroras, being subject to the same particle emissions as us – have a look at this photo of the aurora around the poles of Jupiter. Now, that would be something to see.

Jupiter with aurora – photo from Nasa

For now, though, I am keeping my fingers crossed that someone who reads this has actually managed to see the phenomenon from their back garden in the UK – the Northern Lights can often be seen in the Outer Hebrides, or the Shetlands, but it’s much rarer to see them as far south as St Albans (where they appeared on Sunday night), or in Cornwall. You can belong to something called Aurora Watch, which will give you a shout-out if there’s a chance of a sighting (though I didn’t get one, harrumph). The trick seems to be to find the darkest place that you can (something of a trick in North London) and look north. It won’t be as spectacular here as it is in Svalbard, but surely such a rarity is worth a look! You can see some splendid photos of Sunday’s display here.

As with many natural phenomena, the Northern Lights have been seen as harbingers of doom or auspicious signs. If you watch the Joanna Lumley piece, the scientist at the start tells her that it’s very bad luck to whistle at the aurora, in case it notices you and spirits you away. On the other hand, some Native Americans/First Peoples believed that the aurora will carry messages to the dead for you if you whistle to ask them to come closer. And in Japanese culture, it’s believed that a child conceived under the Northern Lights will be both lucky and beautiful. In Iceland, it was believed that the the aurora eased the pain of childbirth, but a pregnant woman shouldn’t look at them because she would give birth to cross-eyed children. So if you do get a glimpse over the next few days, you will have a multitude of ways to behave, some more fun than others.

Let me know your Aurora stories, if you have any! And I will be keeping my eyes peeled, and will let you know how I get on, though I think I will have to go a bit further north than Totteridge to see them.

The Aurora Borealis in St Albans (Photo by Joel Rabinowitz)

Dear UK Readers, just a quick heads up (ahem) that the Aurora Borealis was visible across much of the UK last night (Sunday), as far south as St Albans and Cornwall – this doesn’t happen very often, and it may well be visible again tonight (Monday), so watch the skies, and let me know if you spot (or have spotted) anything…good luck!

Dear Readers, my friend A alerted me to some major roadworks going on in Bedford Road in East Finchley (one of the ‘County’ Roads), and so I toddled down this afternoon to see what was going on. A whole swathe of the pavement is being dug up for what look like cables (though it being Sunday the workmen were on a well-earned day off – they are apparently extremely hard-working and diligent). A grant of £3.4 million has been given to Barnet Council to enable them to roll  out more charging points – at the moment on most streets, there is only one, like the one in the photo above.

The system chosen for this rollout is different to the lamp post charging system – it’s being pioneered by Trojan energy. The charging points appear to be in the equivalent of a manhole cover, and drivers will carry what’s called a ‘Trojan lance’ (no comments about this being an Achilles heel please). The lance fits into the charging point, and then the car is plugged in. I do worry a bit about what happens if some idiot in a heavy goods vehicle mounts the pavement above the charging points, as happened literally five minutes ago while I was writing this piece and noticed a huge delivery van parked diagonally across the entire pavement, but hopefully the manufacturers have thought about this.

The aim is to keep the pavements as clutter-free and accessible to other pavement users as possible, which is laudable considering how difficult it is for anyone in a wheelchair, or with a pram, to negotiate around the various obstacles that currently block the pavement (not including the aforementioned delivery vans). And of course, there are a limited number of lamp posts to plug into, so I see this as a positive step forward, and hope that it’s a success. It’s also very useful in the County Roads because no one here has a front garden large enough to park in – it’s all on street parking, so these charging points will make life easier, and will hopefully encourage more people to switch to electric.

I do see electric cars as a transitional step in the fight against climate change, though, especially in cities. The eventual answer surely has to be safe, clean, accessible and reliable public transport for the majority of journeys – every one getting about in their own car is not a long-term option in terms of resources, whether it’s an electric car or some other kind of individual vehicle. But roll on the electric revolution in the short/medium term, and it’s most pleasing to see some progress being made.

Dear Readers, the magpies have been hanging around quite a lot lately (probably following my bird food preference experiment a few months ago), but today I (belatedly) realised that they appear to be making a nest. They are plucking twigs from the whitebeam, and seem to be weaving them into a rather untidy habitation in the top of the tree. I can’t tell which is the male and which is the female, but one of them spends a lot of time away from the garden gathering twigs, while the other one seems to be trying to tidy it up.

From what I remember, young magpies have to learn how to make a ‘proper’ nest, and it might be several years before they’re successful – these are long-lived birds, and I suspect that what’s happening here is that they are basically ‘playing house’ rather than making a serious breeding attempt. We’ll see over the next few days, but it all looks a bit flimsy and contingent to my eyes. However, I am clearly not a magpie, and in some ways this is an ideal situation, with lots of food available and relative safety, though do note Mr Bear the cat who always takes a lot of interest in whatever is going on.

You can see the comings and goings of the magpies below. The neighbours were less than impressed by the sheer volume of sound that these birds can produce as soon as it gets light, so I suspect I’m going to be very popular over the next few months. Fortunately East Finchley is not the kind of place that is very fond of gathering on someone’s doorstep with pitchforks and lighted torches, but we’ll see as nesting season progresses.

I am actually quite impressed that this pair are finding nesting material for themselves – on several occasions I’ve watched them dismantle the nests of other birds, especially crows and woodpigeons, while the owners of the nests watched helplessly. They really are pirates, and while I have some concerns for any smaller birds who might be thinking of nesting nearby, I also wonder if these magpies will at least keep everybody else off. We’ll have to see. As I’ve said before, when you devise a garden for wildlife, you don’t get to say who can come and who can’t. We could be in for interesting times.

ATP Synthase

Dear Readers, the more that I study Cell Biology for my Open University degree, the more drop-jawed with astonishment I become. At the moment we’re looking at how cells manage the energy requirements of an organism, and an integral part of the process is a ‘molecular machine’ known as ATP synthase. I hope you’ll forgive me geeking out a bit here, because I do love to share a factoid!

As you might remember from your biology lessons, energy is managed by the mitochondria, a kidney-shaped organelle which floats around in the watery interior of the cell. To digress here slightly (and to simplify greatly), it’s believed that mitochondria were once free-living bacteria who, back in the most distant days of the evolution of life, were gobbled up by a larger organism, but which continued to live and eventually became an integral part of all of the more complex organisms (a similar thing happened with chloroplasts in plants).

Anyhow, you might also remember that a substance called Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is one of the ‘currencies’ of energy, which we need to do any kind of ‘work’ in the cell, from digestion to growth. When the bonds in ATP are broken (into Adenosine Diphosphate plus a free phosphate) it releases lots of energy that can be used to power other reactions. The downside is that the cell also has to synthesise ATP, so that it has a store of energy to use. This is where ATP synthase comes in.

Studded into the inner membrane of the mitochondria is an extraordinarily complicated ‘molecular machine’ called ATP synthase. This is a complex of many different proteins which are formed into 15 subunits, but what astonishes me most is its structure. If you look at the illustration below, what it shows is that the protein actually has a rotor which spins as protons enter it from a space between the inner and outer membranes of the mitochondria  (shown in red). This happens because there’s a higher concentration of protons (H+)  on one side of the membrane than the other, so the protons try to equalise themselves. The passage of the protons causes all sorts of changes to the shape of ATP synthase, and generate the energy which allows it to ‘grab’ ADP and a phosphate, and to make ATP.

This might sound like a lot of old chemistry, but when you consider that the human body has literally trillions of mitochondria at any time, and that each mitochondria can have anything from 100 to 5000 ATP synthase molecules working away, it feels (to me at least) completely staggering. And this is only one part of the complexity of the cell. It seems extraordinary to me that all this is going on, for the most part invisibly, in every living thing. It’s miraculous that any of us can ever get up in the morning.

For a rather neat little animation showing the process, click here.

Staphylococcus epidermis – a cause of wrinkles? Photo by CNRI Science Library

Dear Readers, what, you might ask, are these pretty things, that look rather as if they’ve been embroidered onto velvet (and there’s an idea for a novel wall-hanging). Well, it turns out that they’re bacteria known as Staphylococcus epidermis, and that they seem to be associated with a loss of collagen in our skin microbiome. As anyone who’s been watching the TV lately knows, collagen is an ingredient of every other ‘anti-ageing’ cream (the ones that don’t have hyaluronic acid that is), on the dodgy basis that collagen seems to form part of the structure of our skin, and therefore by plastering it on the outside it will do the same thing. Can you tell that I’m a tired old cynic? You wouldn’t be wrong.

However, the question raised by scientist Julie Thornton at the University of Bradford is not a straightforward one. Just because there’s a correlation between collagen loss and the presence of this bacteria (and another one, Cutibacterium acnes (guess what this one is associated with)) doesn’t mean that the bacteria are causing the loss of collagen – it could be that they simply prefer the skin when there’s less collagen in it. A bit ‘chicken and egg’, as Thornton says.

I can see a range of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals companies rubbing their hands together, but Thornton is much more circumspect, suggesting that this should be the starting point for further research into how the skin microbiome influences the production of collagen.

Interestingly, the skin microbiomes of the older volunteers in the study (all aged between 50 and 64) had a higher proportion of antibiotic resistant microbes in their skin samples – whether this is simply because they’ve lived longer, and have therefore had more exposure to antibiotics (especially as they used to be given out like sweeties before we all realised what was happening), or some other factor I don’t know, but I do find it rather worrying. The more we find out about our microbiomes, the more important they become as markers of health and immune response.

Generally, though, I find it interesting that wrinkles are such a cause for concern. I love the fresh, wrinkle-free faces of young women with their glowing complexions, but I’ve also grown rather fond of my face as it’s aged. Its wrinkles show that I’ve lived, and suffered, and survived. They show that I’m resilient, and I love that I have more laughter-lines than frown lines. And honestly, so much of how your skin reacts to ageing is out of your control – it’s your genes, the climate that you grew up in, your exposure to pollution and your life experiences that make the bulk of how your wrinkles will develop. My Mum, who had a much harder life than me, had next to no wrinkles until she was well into her seventies (except for those tell-tale lines beside her mouth that said, as clear as day, that for most of her life she’d been a heavy smoker). And here I am, skin starting to sag, wrinkles around my eyes, and somehow I love my ageing face.   I slap some moisturiser on once a day, but that’s more for comfort than any hope of wrinkle remediation. It somehow feels like there are much more important things to worry about, should I be inclined to worry about something. Embrace your wrinkles with pride, I say. Be a wrinkle warrior.

You can read the full New Scientist article here.

Oh Dear.

Dear Readers, you know that spring has, at least temporarily, sprung when you hear the sound of a frog ‘singing’, only to see that he is involved in a most unseemly wrestling match with two other frogs, all of whom I suspect are males. Dear oh dear. It’s difficult to tell exactly what’s going on, but all of these frogs were about the same size, and the females are usually larger. Maybe they’re just getting into practice for when the females finally arrive. At any rate, it’s always lovely to see them, even though their courtship style is a bit on the rough and ready side. I suppose the breeding season is so short that they have to grab every opportunity. Let’s see how things develop.

This frog had a rather more mannerly approach. I love the way that they hang in the water with just their noses showing, and I always find their ‘hands’ intriguing – so similar to ours, and yet so different! You can tell we were all cut from the same genetic cloth, even though we separated so many millions of years ago.

It was a really beautiful day, with that low winter sun gradually warming up a smidge. I am still very impressed with my one clump of cyclamen.

At the front of the house, the crocuses have really taken off, and there was even a hoverfly and two intrepid honeybees.

And I can hardly wait for the catkins on my Kilmarnock willow to emerge. See how soft and furry they look! No wonder they’re known as pussy willows.

And my little cat (also Willow!) plonked down in a patch of sunlight, and for the first time I noticed that her jet-black fur is gradually going rusty.

Well, I don’t really want to think about it but she, along  with all of us, is gradually getting older. She’s basically extremely healthy, but I notice that she’s slightly more careful when she jumps off the bed, and a little more cautious when she jumps up. After my recent adventures I can’t help thinking that this is only sensible but still, it reminds me that she, and I, aren’t in the first bloom of youth. Still, with age comes the wisdom to think about things before you do them, and that’s no bad thing, for cats or people. And she knows how important it is to find a patch of sun, and to luxuriate in it, something else that I could learn from. Cats are the past masters of seizing the moment. No wonder they were such a favourite with Zen masters.