Diary of a Shopkeeper, 10th January
After the welcome break of the Christmas and New Year holidays, your friendly local shopkeeper has to work hard to get some momentum going. Normally we never stop, so seven or eight days off in a single fortnight can leave brain and body like a car with a flat battery: in need of a kick-start.
Luckily, we have our lovely customers to get us going.
The phone rang. It was Bruce Brass. ‘Are you still doing deliveries?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We delivered to you yesterday, remember?’
‘I just thought I’d check if anything had changed.’
‘Lots of things have changed. Everything is changing all the time these days. But our delivery schedule hasn’t changed. Not since yesterday.’
As soon as the sentence was out of my mouth, I regretted using the word schedule. I quickly started speaking again in case he hadn’t noticed: ‘We’re always delighted to deliver to you, Bruce, we…’
‘Schedule?’ he roared down the line. ‘Are you telling me you have a schedule now? Last I heard it was just a free for all: order and we’ll deliver when we feel like it.’
‘Ooh, that’s a bit harsh, Bruce. You ordered at two yesterday and we delivered at three.’
‘Admittedly, that was fairly quick. But it’s hardly a schedule, is it?’
I took a deep breath. ‘In some ways you could say it’s better than a schedule. If our regular delivery day to Birsay had been Friday, you wouldn’t have got it yesterday, you’d have got it the morn’s morn.’
‘The morn’s what? Don’t give me that Aberdonian gobbledegook.’
‘Tomorrow, Bruce, you would have got it tomorrow. But instead you got it yesterday. Which has to be better, doesn’t it?’
Down the line I could hear him huffing and puffing. ‘Are you saying yesterday is better than tomorrow, shopkeeper? That’s not a very positive attitude for a man in your position. You should look to the future now. It’s only just begun.’
I waited to see if he would follow up with any more Slade lyrics, but all I heard was heavy breathing.
‘The rules are changing so often,’ I said, ‘It’s hard to get any new routines established, especially after the Christmas rush. But we will in a week or two. I wrote about all this in my column in the paper last week, actually.’
‘Your column? Don’t mention that bruck! You’ve blotted your copybook there, beuy.’
‘What?’
‘I used to think you were giving it to us straight in those columns, but now I’m not so sure. I think there might be a few tall tales involved.’
‘Well, some are serious and some are…’
‘That Christmas one about ghosts and selkies up the Deilquoy Road. So far so good. But I was talking to Willie Pickle the other day, and he said it was a load of nonsense about your van going in the ditch.’
‘I did go off the road.’
‘But were you in the ditch?’
‘Well, I was tipped over a fair bit.’
‘Ditch or no ditch?’
‘To be honest it was so dark, I’m not completely sure. I thought I was in the ditch, but…’
‘You thought? Not good enough, shopkeeper. We’re meant to be able to rely on you. It’s the paper of record, beuy, the first draft of history. Thinking isn’t acceptable: we want facts! Otherwise we’ll end up with a bunch of hooligans storming School Place like they did over in America, all because you fed them a pack of lies like that Trump fellow.’
I gazed over at the whisky shelves for a moment, wondering whether it was too early to have a dram to calm my nerves. I checked the clock: half past ten in the morning, so yes, definitely too early. Plus I had to pick up some cheese from Hatston later.
‘Anyhow Bruce,’ I said. It’s always good to have a blether. But what was it you were actually phoning about?’
‘When I ordered my lager kit yesterday, I forgot to ask for brewing sugar. Any chance you could drop me off a bag?’
Instantly I started doing the mental maths: how much profit was in a £3 bag of sugar versus how much the diesel to drive to Birsay would cost.
But even as my brain was doing the sums, my lips were saying, ‘No problem, Bruce. I’ll see you about three.’
Like I said, it sometimes takes a customer to get me going. And Bruce Brass was getting me going to Birsay.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 10th January. Other diaries continue to appear weekly. I am posting them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions. See the Home Deliveries page of this website for details of what and when we are currently delivering - much more accurate than Bruce’s rant!