Diary of a Shopkeeper, 31st October
This week’s diary is a story of not much happening. In these pandemic times, nothing happening can threaten to be almost as troublesome as something happening. The weekend promised to be busy. Visitors from south. The first Lynnfield Lux dinners of the season. BID’s Halloween Parade on Saturday. The arrival of four pallets (four tons!) of wine, the start of our pre-Christmas stock-up. And of course keeping customers happy in the shop every day.
All of that was thrown into jeopardy on Wednesday afternoon when my phone beeped a beep I didn’t recognise. That was because it wasn’t a beep, it was a ping.
The NHS Scotland app was pinging me. I had, it said, been in close contact with someone who’d tested positive for Covid-19. I was to self-isolate immediately, and book a PCR test.
I don’t suppose this was too much of a surprise, as there’s a wave of cases here, the biggest since the pandemic began.
If there was any surprise, it was that it’s taken this long to happen. Kirkness & Gorie has been open every day, apart from one week in March 2020, and thousands of people have passed through. It wouldn’t have been remarkable if me or another member of staff had picked up the virus months ago.
The fact that we haven’t is surely testament to the success of masks, screens, and our shop’s hygiene routines.
It was easy to make a booking online for a PCR test, with a slot available on Thursday morning. Meanwhile, a kitchen-table lateral flow came up negative, which was encouraging. However, while there are few instances of positive lateral flows proving wrong, negatives are frequently turned into positives by subsequent PCRs. So self-isolation was the only option.
It was around this point I realised I better let Lauren know I wouldn’t be back in the shop that day. Nor the following day, nor…well, who knows how long I’d be off for.
I also had to tell the Lynnfield that I couldn’t host the Lux dinners, and Laura at BID that she’d be missing a steward for Saturday’s parade.
And then it was back to the laptop. Self-isolation doesn’t mean isolation from spreadsheets, order forms, rotas, and ecommerce strategies. It just means you have to do all that boring stuff by yourself in the kitchen rather than in the good company of your colleagues.
On Thursday morning I drove round the back of the old Balfour, stopping outside a makeshift green tunnel connecting the building to the roadside. A nurse swiftly appeared and equally swiftly swabbed the back of my throat and nostrils. She was gentler on my tonsils than I have been at home, but more searching with the nostril probe. For half an hour afterwards, I had something like an ice-cream headache.
And that was it: all over in just a couple of minutes. I’d get my results by Sunday, she said, possibly Saturday if I was lucky. Everything was being couriered down to Glasgow for processing, and there was such a flood of tests that it was a struggle to keep up.
I returned to the laptop, ready for three days’ more isolation till a negative result came through, or 10 or more if I was positive.
Except, through some combination of luck and NHS efficiency, I got another ping at 5.15pm on Friday afternoon – just 30 hours after the test – saying I was negative.
It was a great relief. It also triggered a great rush, as all weekend appointments were now back on, including hosting the Lux in less than two hours.
And that, dear diary, is the story of a few days that could have been something serious but ended up being nothing at all. For which I am extremely grateful.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 3rd November. 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.