It Isn't Over

 

It was time to see Jean, again, to find out if her hip is better, and bring her a little treat.

"Is there anything special you would like from the Yellow Canary?" I had asked. The Yellow Canary is probably the most popular bakery shop along Fore Street, now that The Digey is no longer itself. Just that fact alone (that The Digey is no longer itself) is enough to make a visitor sad, if they had visited St Ives when there was a Digey.

You probably remember it, since the SconeLady has mentioned it a fair time or two - or perhaps two hundred times. My love of it began when I decided to find the BEST SCONE IN CORNWALL 8 years ago. It was a sincere search, which led me little by little, scone by scone, to the one and only, expressly tastiest, crisp on the outside, gentle on the inside, scone of all scones in Cornwall. And I found it.

The Digey had it. Alex and Josh created it (the recipe is secret - except to special people whom they trust). (I'm not mentioning any names), and the people in St Ives, as well as its numerous visitors, loved it. We found it because friend Rosie's Ted asked the gentleman at the Bakeshop on Fore Street which shop he thought might contain the best scone. Ted was quite specific about this scone, that on a scale of 1 to 10, it had to consistently be a 10, and the gentleman at the Bakeshop said, "No doubt about it then, sir. You will find that scone at The Digey." And so we went.

We all had one, and we all voted. It was very definitely a 10. And that was that. No where else did I find anything so good as that Digey scone. Year after year we came back, and year after year Alex and Josh kept making dazzling scones. I even told Rick Steves about it and urged him to go back to St Ives and have one. But then The Digey stopped being itself, and I think Rick missed his chance.

Right before the you-know-what, when travel and everything else in the world was about to shut down, I saw somewhere that The darling Digey had been sold. What did you say?! No more Digey? I can't really say it in strong enough terms the impact that had upon me.

But it was two years before England opened up, and I finally came back to where The Digey had stood for so many years. I stood and just looked at it, bereft. Never was a food room more missed. 

So it was to the Yellow Canary I went, to get a treat for dear Jean. It was raining, but I was covered in a poncho from the Big London Bus Company, and comfortably dry. The walk to Carbis Bay is lovely because it is uphill, and hard, and then you know you get to go back DOWN again. Easy-peasy.

The Digey, 2019

Jean's hip was better, and we had a jolly old chat. Her daughters made cups of tea and served up the treats, and I wondered why, when I was a young person, did I think when people got 'old', (my age, for example) life would be over? It isn't. I know Jean, and IT ISN'T OVER! Life exudes from her 90-year-old self, a life she shares out which makes everyone else around her alive, too. It made me fairly skip down that Carbis Bay hill, just to think of it. 

It's never going to be over, as a matter of fact. Life, the kind Jean exudes, is forever.

See you along the Way!

the SconeLady