Let us start at the very beginning with the seed. Seeds are like popcorn and were invented by the same man, Ludwig Von Treeble in Dusseldorf back in 1722. Before then plants had arrived fully formed or were chiselled out of basalt by warlocks. The invention of the seed meant that amateurs could suddenly get involved and so the village fete, and in particular it’s focus, the vegetable growing competition, were born.
At the early ones, such as the 1726 Mindelheim Fete, a form of proto-marrow was grown, though these were often flaccid things that were prone to spontaneous combustion if nudged by an ombudsman.
Diligent work by Dr Emily Tripp and Professor Majorie Comb-Basket led to a more stable marrow – the lovingly named ‘Thripp-Comb-Basket’s Folly’, that could grow firm to just over a foot, and wouldn’t combust, though they would emit a slightly noxious gas when nervous.
Finally, in 1736, working in laboratories in Murmansk, Dr Boris Kuznetsov, fused the TCB’s Folly with a sense of moral indignation and the modern marrow that we know and love was born.
Of course, the marrow’s story from that point has not been a simple one. It was, as every school child knows, responsible for the final extinction of the quagga, was cited as a contributing factor in the second divorce of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and, due to an administrative error, was briefly classed as a weapon of mass destruction in 2007, and consequently banned under the Geneva Convention. This led to a tenfold rise in the arrest of octogenarian war criminals in the Winter of 2007 before the error could be redacted.
Nowadays the marrow is held in high regard – making their way into the world of heraldry, you can now see a marrow rampant upon the crest of many of the nouveau riche. A marrow has also been adopted as part of the official ceremony of the opening of parliament in Bulgaria, replacing the earlier turnip, which had lost a lot of its lustre. The marrow is carried by the traditional ‘debel shpan’ol’ (or ‘fat spaniel’ in English), and thrust thrice betwixt the ‘vrati na parlamenta’ (or ‘doors of parliament’), at which point the ‘sūmnitelen smazchik’ (or ‘questionable greaseman’) will allow egress if proffered ‘dve devstveni kheringa’ (or ‘two virgin herrings’). At that point things often get a little heated, and the ceremonial marrow (or ‘zamestitel na penisa’) often gets badly dented. It is interesting to note that a marrow was recently elected the state governor of Missouri.
And what is the marrow’s future? Well, scientists at NASA believe that the marrow holds the key to a successful colonisation of Mars. Leading space boffins reckon that, apart from the nutritional value and hardiness of the modern marrow, the competitive element of marrow growing, and the fact that it’s sometimes phallic nature can produce levels of whimsy, means that it is ideal from breaking up the monotony of being stuck on a planet that has no discernable atmosphere and is redder than Chairman Mao’s anal sphincter.
In care homes, recent trials have discovered that residents respond well to therapeutic marrows, marrows that are brought into centres for the elderly to pet and fuss over. Studies demonstrated that the therapeutic marrows helped with mental health and general wellbeing, although in a rather unsavoury incident in one home in St. Helens, it did lead to a knife fight between two ninety year old men, when the sight of the giant squash brought back memories of a bitter feud dating from the 1957 West Derby Fete, and the suspicious damaging of ‘Ol’ Betsy’, a marrow that had been odds on favourite to take home the rosette.
During lockdown the New York State Ballet Company produced an all-marrow production of ‘Swan Lake’. It was awful. This has not stopped artistic director, Adrién Le Cochon-Rouge, from using the marrow as a central motif for all the company’s winter 2021 productions, in a move described by Clint Cheesebauer, the lead art critic for the New York Times, as ‘the thoughts of a troubled yet insignificant mind’ who also likened the appointment of Le Cochon-Rouge to the role of artistic director to ‘giving a whelk the nuclear codes’.
The most exciting development in the world of marrows has been led by the Japanese, in their miniaturising of the it. The so-called ‘bonsai-marrows’ have led to an almost messianic fever in the youth of Japan, and many of the ‘kotsuzui no kodomo-tachi’ (‘marrow children’ as they are dubbed) have taken to cosplaying as their ‘bonsai-marrows’ and sitting in vegetable patches for days on end, painted from head to toe in two-tone green stripes. The craze is expected to hit the west by autumn and consumer experts are confidently predicting that the Meranïgurifisu bonsai kotsuzui (or Melanie Griffith bonsai marrow) will be the number one Christmas toy all the way from California to Vladivostok.
Treatises of Gloria 