How Big is Scotland?

Last month, we had a Jigsaw frenzy. We were ploughing through them, in case they went out of fashion. They might become banned on account of their severely addictive characteristics or similar Health and Safety reason.

We completed a fiendish 1,000 piece jigsaw of the U.S., followed by a 500 piece, called the “Corner Shop”, courtesy of Kathy, and then a 1,000 piece map of Great Britain. These were all done on our Grand Piano, a natural place on which to complete a jigsaw. Those of you, who have ever tried this, will realise that.

Back to the jigsaw of Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland, for those of you not sure about the constituent parts of the United Kingdom). We pick up a piece with “Dover” on it. Easy enough. Here’s “Watford”, “Manchester”, so far so good. “Cornwall” O.K. “Blackpool”, Hmmmm. That’s a bit harder. That’s on the left somewhere, in the far North, I think.

Dundee…? Where’s that, precisely? North or South of Aberdeen? Up at the top somewhere….and the Orkneys. Are they further north to the Shetland Islands or south….somewhere near the Isle of Man…approximately. Oh Dear, Hawker – bottom of the class.

You can tell that I am the poor product of a classic English education. I can still decline the Latin verb “amo, amas, amat..etc”, but have no idea whether the Orkneys are north of the Shetlands or south. I know that Henry V won the battle of Agincourt in 1415, (although I am still not sure exactly what he was doing there), but had no idea of the distance between the North and South of mainland Scotland. I gave up geography at the age of 14 (or geography gave up on me). As is evident from this blog entry, this was not my best subject.

Looking at the completed Jigsaw, I noticed that North Yorkshire is only just half way up the whole jigsaw. This results in a huge mental readjustment on my part. I thought that as you drive past Newcastle, the motorway ends, followed by a sheer drop, protected by fire, dragons and Hadrian’s Wall and the ghosts of Roman Soldiers. (I have flown to Edinburgh three times, but I have always thought I was moving into an alternative universe, somewhere near Father Christmas)

And it gets worse…for me, at least. At the very top was a large green part called “The Highlands”. This was a hard section of the jigsaw as many of pieces have no towns or names on them, and they were all coloured green.

A review of the circulation list of my Blog showed that the Scots are under represented. In fact, there is only one, and she would be appalled, but not surprised by my ignorance. There needs to be a positive campaign to have greater diversity on my blog list, and an initiative to educate Grumpy in his own Geography, complete with an action plan and government imposed targets. Is there no limit to the ignorance of the English about the geography of Great Britain?

By the way, Shetlands are north of the Orkneys, Aberdeen is north of Dundee, North to South of mainland Scotland is approximately 350 miles and the real reason that Henry V was at Agincourt was because he wanted to go to Aberdeen, but went to the same school as I did.