Diary of a Shopkeeper, 5th December

‘I read about you falling off your ladder,’ said Bruce Brass.

‘Thanks for asking,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’m fine, no ill effects.’

‘I didn’t ask,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to say I was right disappointed.’

‘Disappointed? Because I didn’t injure myself?

‘No, cause of all this.’  He waved a dismissive arm at the baubles hanging from the roof and the sparkly lights looping off the Perspex screen above the counter. ‘I can’t believe you put your Yuletide decorations up in November, beuy. You should be ashamed: the old ways are fading fast. When I was a boy we kept to the old Yule. Nothing went up till Magnusmass-e’en on 12th December, and that was just a cow’s skull with candles in the eyeholes. None of your plastic rubbish.’

‘Environmental Health would have something to say if I started hanging cow skulls about the shop,’ I said. ‘Anyway, where would I even get a cow’s skull?’

‘Probably Shearer’s,’ said Bruce, ‘They’ve got everything.’

‘That’s true,’ I said, ‘But it’s irrelevant. I like the old traditions, but skulls are going too far. Are there not any other customs we could revive?’

‘Yule ale,’ he said. ‘A special strong brew for the season.’

‘Ah ha! Step over to our homebrew section,’ I said. ‘Try some beer enhancer for extra body and alcohol.’

‘Nah nah.’ He shook his head. ‘My old father used to put a chicken in the brewing bucket. That fairly got the fermentation going.’

‘A chicken! Alive or dead?’

‘Dead, of course. What do you think we were, savages?’

Bruce’s ginger eyebrows shot upwards, and his beard bristled around the edges of his mask, like a bush exploding in the winds of Storm Arwen. Not for the first time, I wondered how he had the virr to be angry about nearly everything anyone did or said in his vicinity. If they could hook his grumpiness to the national grid, it would be a source of eternal renewable energy.

‘Sorry, Bruce,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to sound critical. I’ve just never heard of that brewing method before.’

‘Never heard of…? You’re seriously telling me you’ve never heard of cock ale?’

I spluttered.

‘You’re not from here,’ he said. ‘I ken Aberdeen isn’t that far away as the foo’s-yer-doo flies, but you don’t understand the real old traditions any more than I understand a word Robbie Shepherd says.’

‘Don’t start on Saint Robbie o Doric,’ I said. ‘That’s fighting talk where I come from.’

‘Where you come from – that’s my point,’ he said. ‘What do you ken about Helya’s Night, or Sow Slaughter Sunday? Do you even put saucers of water out for the standing stones to drink from when they come wandering?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘But there is one Orkney tradition I follow religiously at Christmas.’

‘What’s that? The ba? First footing? Shortbread and ginger wine?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘What it is, I have all the Scotch and Wry programmes on VHS, and every Christmas Day I watch all the Reverend IM Jolly speeches back-to-back.’

He frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with Orkney?’

‘Do you not ken? Before he was a minister, the Reverend Jolly ran a fish shop in Victoria Street.’

That silenced him. I could see his brows beetling as memories, and family trees, and faces of folk he went to school, with birled around in his brain.

‘See when you fell off your ladder?’ he said at last.

‘Aye?’

‘Did you land on your head, by any chance?’

‘Luckily no,’ I said.

‘Ach well…there must be some other reason for you blethering such a load of utter bruck.’

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 8th December. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.