Shrivelled Vegetables Form Union After Pumpkin Harvest Falls
Drought-hit growers suggest painted root vegetables, prompting turnips to demand wages, dental cover and a seat at the Halloween table.
ENGLAND, Smaller pumpkins are expected this Halloween after drought cut the harvest, so growers have suggested that families paint cheerful faces on vegetables instead of carving them. Several turnips approved at once. None could say why they had been waiting in a hedge outside a village hall.
“We have faces already,” said Myrtle Root, interim general secretary of the Provisional Association of Underappreciated Vegetables, speaking through a knot in her skin. “We require eyebrows, a dignified hat and the legal right to be called performers.”
The union has sent a 47-page demand to an unnamed ministry. It is written entirely in gravy. It calls for eight-hour days, paid root leave and protection from children who say a parsnip looks like a nose. The clause ordering pumpkins to stop calling themselves the main event is marked urgent in beetroot ink.
“We have faces already. We simply require eyebrows and a dignified hat.”
Growers put a bowl of water beside the paperwork, which the vegetables described as “a promising first round of negotiations”. The bowl has since developed a personality. It will not serve anyone until its rim is listed as a co-author.
The paperwork at least gave the vegetables something to pursue. At a trial Halloween display in Lower Wombley, families painted faces on potatoes, carrots and one extremely confident celeriac. The celeriac asked for a spotlight, a small orchestra and a backstory involving a lighthouse. It got a tea towel and was told to work on its attitude.
Town hall officials, who are not connected to any real town hall and may in fact be three filing cabinets wearing a waistcoat, have proposed licences for vegetable expressions. Each painted face would receive a serial number, a seasonal mood and a reminder not to frighten passing courgettes.
By Thursday evening, the vegetables had elected a ceremonial pumpkin as mediator, despite its insistence that it was “just pleased to be included”. Talks will continue until Halloween, or until the carrots discover that collective bargaining gives them access to the stationery cupboard.