When Harold McMillan had to resign due to ill health in 1963 he was controversially succeeded as PM by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Home (pronounced Hume). The 3000 acre Hirsel Estate near Coldstream has been the family home since 1611. It wasn’t very long ago that, in the UK, you weren’t allowed to vote if you didn’t own land … preferable great swathes of it. As an aristocrat Sir Alec spent his life being showered by honours and gifts. His tenure as PM lasted less than a year, though compared to recent incumbents of the post, that’s a long time.

So here we were driving past the wall that surrounds the estate. Pat had noted that there was a tearoom so we thought we should investigate. We went in through a typically large estate gate and then drove for what seemed like miles on a tiny little road with no signs indicating a cafe or anything else for that matter.  Eventually, we had to stop and ask a man with a leaf blower. It seems obvious now but we had come in through the wrong gate … what are we like? Never mind, eventually we made it to the Hirsel Cottage Tearoom.

The tearoom is part a group of buildings that form a kind of arts and crafts centre. There’s a pottery, a glass studio and a nice little museum. When we walked in we got a lovely warm welcome but the first thing we noticed was this.

A bit odd

They had two different kinds … lemon and blueberry and spiced mixed fruit. … ooo! Pat opted for the latter so I went for the other. 

Quite big for our taste but both were very nice. They came nicely presented with butter, cream and jam. Pat’s was beautifully spiced and mine was very moist as you might expect from a lemon and blueberry combo. Slightly odd scones perhaps but we thought they were very worthy of a topweirdscone. Well done the Hirsel Cottage Tearoom.

Ownership?

The Hirsel Estate runs right down to the River Tweed. It made us think that it’s not only scones that can be weird, people are weird as well. They get very upset about land ownership. When we obtain land almost the first thing we do is build walls or borders to keep others out.  Don’t think that there is any other member of the animal kingdom that behaves quite like this. Swallows and Wildebeest just go wherever suits them. It can get ugly, just look at  Ukraine!

We say ‘border, you say ‘boundary’

When you stand on the banks of the Tweed and look across the twenty or so yards of slowly flowing water all you can see is England. At this point the the border runs down the middle of the river … weird. Unionists, of course, like to call it the “boundary”. Calling it a “border” would imply that Scotland might actually be a country in its own right. Gosh, the power of words!

We mention this only because the former Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was wheeled out again this week. This is a sure sign that Westminster feels the Union is in some sort of danger. Last time he appeared was back in 2014 during the Scottish Independence Referendum. All the panicking Unionist parties appointed him as their spokesman with a single remit “save the Union”.

Promises, promises!

Back then they all agreed to “the Vow” which promised that if Scotland wanted to stay in the EU, it had to vote no to independence. It also promised Home Rule … according to Gordon,  the next best thing to independence. That, of course, begged the question “why not just go for the best thing?” In the end it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Will we see submarines patrolling the Tweed?

TD12 4LW       tel: 01890 883645.        Hirsel Cottage FB

///boil,fatter.repayment

ps: We are indebted to our Marco Island correspondents for this photo of Sconehenge. There’s nothing we can say except we thought, for the sake of structural strength, they would have chosen plain scones!