The other day, I wondered what had become of Sir Gareth, an old boyfriend. When I knew him, Sir Gareth was a postgraduate physicist, a member of the Arthurian society, and his sister was married to the local Lib Dem candidate. Some weeks after we started going out my father regaled me with a garbled story about how said candidate had turned up on his doorstep, persuaded him to rejoin the party and mentioned, in passing, that his wife was called Louise and wasn't that a coincidence. Sir Gareth was entirely mortified by the whole thing.
Anyway, Sir Gareth happened to have a very distinctive surname so it was not difficult to translate my idle wondering into substantive action. I thus discovered that his wife (who has given simply loads of interviews that appear all over the Internet and, TBH, I'm not sure why I'm continuing to use a synonym here since they would probably welcome the publicity - the company in question is Honeybuns) started a baking business while studying for a PGCHE and expanded it when they moved to Guildford when Sir Gareth got a programming job there. In 2003 they bought a farm in Dorset, Sir Gareth gave up programming and joined the team and now they run a bakery business in circumstances that sound distinctly River Cottage. They sold gluten-free "mini-bites"* and I thought these, given the back story, would amuse my mother as a birthday present.

This is my Mum, with her gluten-free mini-bites in their refillable tin**.
* In fact my mother, who read all the literature that came with them, has now discovered that all their products are gluten-free and there is a gluten-free cookbook. She is quite excited by this. Given the hundreds of interviews all over the Internet, I'm sort of surprised I missed this fact.
** We were all deeply impressed by the concept of a "refillable" tin. What innovations will people come up with next?
Anyway, Sir Gareth happened to have a very distinctive surname so it was not difficult to translate my idle wondering into substantive action. I thus discovered that his wife (who has given simply loads of interviews that appear all over the Internet and, TBH, I'm not sure why I'm continuing to use a synonym here since they would probably welcome the publicity - the company in question is Honeybuns) started a baking business while studying for a PGCHE and expanded it when they moved to Guildford when Sir Gareth got a programming job there. In 2003 they bought a farm in Dorset, Sir Gareth gave up programming and joined the team and now they run a bakery business in circumstances that sound distinctly River Cottage. They sold gluten-free "mini-bites"* and I thought these, given the back story, would amuse my mother as a birthday present.

This is my Mum, with her gluten-free mini-bites in their refillable tin**.
* In fact my mother, who read all the literature that came with them, has now discovered that all their products are gluten-free and there is a gluten-free cookbook. She is quite excited by this. Given the hundreds of interviews all over the Internet, I'm sort of surprised I missed this fact.
** We were all deeply impressed by the concept of a "refillable" tin. What innovations will people come up with next?