Storm in a cream-tea cup

Dear Sir, I am absolutely OUTRAGED... (etc.)

I visited a National Trust cafe just last weekend, at Sizergh.

I had a very nice cappuccino, and watched Nuthatches having a snack on the balustrade outside. I was lucky to get out alive really, considering the terrifying aftermath of a hideous error made by the National Trust in an advert for cream teas.

The Mother’s Day promotion, for Lanhydrock in Cornwall, scandalously showed... I can hardly bring myself to say this... a picture of scones with the jam on top of the cream. I know. I’m sorry I had to mention it and ruin your day, but this is a serious issue.

Apparently, jam on top is a Devon thing. Cornish scone-aficionados were outraged, with 300 complaining about the Facebook post depicting the desecration of a perfectly good tea-accompanying traditional snack. Some even said it “made them feel sick”, but that’s probably all the cream, to be honest.

The Trust were forced to apologise, saying it was a genuine mistake whilst, predictably, Twitter erupted with shocking battles over whether it’s cream underneath, or #JamFirst.

Lanhydrock rushed to reassure that it was merely an image mix-up, and that their catering team “would never make such a heinous mistake”. To the relief of appalled offspring throughout the county, and their mortified mums, their remorseful response concluded with a comforting “Rest assured, your mothers are safe here.”

If you have been affected by this story, and want to find out where you can safely consume a quality scone at a National Trust property, please visit @nt_scones on Twitter.

This post first appeared as the third piece in my column/page in The Mail and the News & Star, on the 16th of March 2018. The title was augmented with "Scones row was..." at the start, and accompanied by pictures of a scone and Sizergh Castle. It was also used as the column teaser on Page 2 of the paper, with a title of "It's all scone wrong for Peter Grenville this week". Nice - two scone/cream-tea puns in one issue.

A delightfully British story this, with many of those involved having their tongues firmly in their cheeks.

(CD A-Z: Suspended, as they're all in a bunch of boxes. More on that next week...)

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