With the UK officially the worst country in the world for it’s handling of COVID, here’s a question! What do you do when you can no longer go out on scone adventures? What do you do when sconology grinds to a shuddering halt? And WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN ALL HOPE IS LOST? Okay, that’s three questions but you get the drift and no, the answer is not “phone the Samaritans”. The answer, of course, is to turn to our Bathurst correspondents in New South Wales. Unlike us, they have a government that does have a scoobie and, therefore, are not as restricted. They’ve sent us a wide ranging report covering isoglosses, cricketing legends and telephone boxes … and scones.. It’s modestly entitled Ramblings from Oz. You will see , however, that antipodean COVID life is not entirely straight forward either.

In their own words:

Sconeless in Sofala

Some time ago two friends of ours opened a café called the Painted Horse in Sofala, a quaint old gold mining town about 50 km from our home in Bathurst.

They made scones to die for ! The downside is, I somehow deleted the photo I took on my phone, so there is no proof.  And there is more downside. The café closed down when Covid hit, and has been closed for the past 10 months or so. It has reopened with new owners, but no sign of our friends Nick and Kate.  We called in there a couple of weeks ago but not a scone to be seen, just some tired looking sausage rolls.

Covid 19

We are surviving pretty well Covidwise, just a handful of new cases every day in each state.  As soon as there is a bit of a flare-up in one state or another, the state Premiers start closing borders willy-nilly. We were supposed to meet our son and family at Victor Harbour, south of Adelaide this week, then bang, the NSW/SA border slammed shut and we had to cancel our house booking.  Then two days later the border was reopened.  All is not lost though as we have re-booked for the end of February. Here’s hoping we can get through then.

Isogloss

Not a word I had ever come across.  But your bit about how “scone” is pronounced in Ireland a few blogs ago was intriguing. You may recall that I referred to the town of Scone in one of my poems.  Well, Scone is pronounced to rhyme with “phone”. Here we have to take issue with our correspondents because normal pronunciation for the former home of the Stone of Destiny is actually “skoon”. Such are the  linguistic problems with English

Scones

Today we drove down to a place called Berrara where friends have a holiday house right on the coast.  We are here for a few days, as travel within NSW is not restricted by Covid.  On the way we had morning tea with Julie’s sister and husband who live in a town called Bowral, which incidentally is where Donald Bradman started his cricket career. What did we get for morning tea, you guessed it, scones, of the savory kind, with cheese and fennel.  No faux pas on my part this time, wanting cream and jam, as was the case with the pumpkin scones of yesteryear.

Phone Boxes

And on the way, what should we see, not one, but two red phone boxes, sort of Siamese twins, in a town called Kangaroo Valley. Complete with black box and buttons A and B.  Not sure if they were actually working phones, or just a tourist prop, as Kangaroo Valley is a bit of a tourist trap. Never seen anything like that before. It certainly was not made in Falkirk.

As ever, we are indebted to A&J, our Bathurst correspondents. Your contributions are always extremely welcome. We also envy your ability to leave your house … forgotten what that’s like! It’s ironic  that Trump has gone and we still can’t go out safely!

Remember Gordon Brown, former Labour PM who was wheeled out by the Conservatives to spread gloom and doom during the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum. The Conservatives were too scared to come north of the border. In the style of Trumpery he told lie after lie and promised all would be well if we just stuck by the Union. Well, like the Creature From The Black Lagoon, he has emerged again to tell us that the UK is a failed state. Tell us something we don’t know Gordon. Scotland was telling you that in 2014 and has regretted heeding anything that came out of your mouth ever since.

“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!” Tonight is Burns night which brings about the annual cull of hagisses. It’s the only way to keep the numbers down. We’ve only got a small one and it’s even smaller once the legs are off. Slàinte mhaith, enjoy yours!