Happy New Year everyone! We hope that you enjoy a happy, healthy and prosperous 2022. May all your scones be topscones filled with lots of lovely jam and cream! Normally we spend Hogmanay at our local pub but this year, due to COVID restrictions, we decided to give it a miss and just spent it at home.  

So far, the year has been scone free but needless to say we hadn’t reckoned on our correspondents. The last place we expected to hear about a scone, however, was Fredericton, the capital of New Brunswick in Canada.

Heroic adventure

Two of our correspondents got in touch to try and claim the highest scone ever featured on this blog. Wait until Richard Branson hears about this! Will he take up the challenge?  Our correspondents had gone to extraordinary lengths! Refreshing to realise that folk still have that heroic spirit of adventure; 1st to the South Pole; 1st  to climb Everest etc etc. You can probably tell from the title photo, however, that they did not transport a scone to the summit of Everest, a mere 29,000 ft … no, no, no, they had higher aspirations. 40,000 ft to be precise. And even though Everest grows at 1.5 inches a year, that was going to take a long time. They eventually managed to do it albeit  with a little assistance from British Airways.

Unaware

Fredericton used to be called Pointe Ste-Anne until the British drove out the French settlers in 1758 and renamed it after one of King George III’s fifteen children. What are we Brits like? The French were foreigners in Canada after all?? Whatever, we are pretty sure that the 60,000 good people of Fredricton would have had no inkling of the momentous sconological event happening directly overhead. 

By all accounts the scone was rather good but of course our correspondents were not qualified to give any sort of award, It does look a little odd in appearance and it is amazing that Rodda’s Cornish Cream can get to these dizzying heights as well as just about everywhere else on the planet. They thoroughly enjoyed them, however, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it! As for the highest scone award, yes this is indeed it. Our previous high flying scone was a measly 33,000 feet but we cannot remember who reported it. We have introduced a new ‘highest’ category however, so if any of you want to challenge perhaps you should contact Branson, Bezos or Musk.

Travelling in COVID times

Needless to say, our correspondents did not do this specifically to gain the highest scone award, fantastic though it may be. No, they were going to visit family in Conneticut and in these COVID times that is no mean feat. To quote “not difficult taking the tests but filling in the required half baked and inaccurate websites is mind numbing. “Help line” has now become the world’s greatest oxymoron”. They made it, however, so congratulations on that as well as their scone achievement.

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PS:  when we reported from Cafe Circa we said that we would let you know what the book we bought, ‘A Tillyloss Scandal’ was about. The author was none other than J.M. Barrie who created Peter Pan. He was from Kirriemuir which he called Thrums in the many stories he wrote about the town. Most of the dialogue is in the local dialect … so not a particularly easy read! It is set in the early 1800s: “Tillyloss is three broken rows of houses in the east end of Thrums, with gardens between them, nearly every one of which used to contain a pig-sty“.

Attending your own funeral

The main character is one Tammas Haggart. When he discovered that his wife, Christy, pretended to her friends that she was married to another man he was not best pleased that she should think so little of him. He left, not knowing where he would end up. After walking some distance he eventually fell asleep sitting against a tree. He awoke to find that he had been robbed of his hat and his great coat that had been lying beside him. Unbeknown to him the thief fell into a nearby quarry and died with a badly damaged face. The local folk, however, identified him as Tammas simply by the clothes he was wearing. Later when Tammas returned to the town he overheard folk talking of his demise and of the funeral arrangements. Thus, a few days later, from a distance, he was able to observe his own funeral.

Tammas went off and had many adventures as far as Edinburgh and some even say London. Eventually some years later he returned to Thrums and, of course, caused quite a stir. Consternation caused by the fact that not only was he alive but who on earth had they buried? Tammas went home to see Christy but rather than a big welcome he found her sitting quietly by the fire smoking his pipe.

As scandals go?

So now you know. Not perhaps a scandal on the scale we have nowadays with Andrew, Duke of York and Ghislaine Maxwell.  However, it turns out that Prince Andrew is simply maintaining a long standing tradition. In 1809 the then Duke of York was disgraced in similar circumstances. Have no fear, however, we are sure, that Humpty Dumpty’s Duke of York was an honourable exception … phew!