Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hawthornhalfdayrelay.com. NS
Answer
hawthornhalfdayrelay.com. 3 NS ns-718.awsdns-25.net.
hawthornhalfdayrelay.com. 3 NS ns-2035.awsdns-62.co.uk.
hawthornhalfdayrelay.com. 3 NS ns-1926.awsdns-48.co.uk.
hawthornhalfdayrelay.com. 3 NS ns-1291.awsdns-33.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0