Diary of a Shopkeeper, 12th December
I had been intending to compile a cheery list of pre-Christmas highlights for this week’s column. You ken the kind of thing: ‘Top Ten Festive Funnies! No 7 will make you bogle like a barman bull!’ But the developments of the last few days have made it hard to maintain such frivolity for even a few hundred words.
On Thursday afternoon I was laughing with colleagues about our forthcoming Christmas night out: menu choices, party games, disintegrating paper hats. Yes, this new Omicron variant seemed to be spreading quickly, but surely we were all safe to go out in mid-December, to celebrate a hard year successfully completed?
Our optimism suffered a blow at five thirty that day, when Public Health Scotland issued a strongly worded statement, urging us all to ‘defer’ our Christmas parties. But still, it wasn’t an outright ban. The Scottish Government was due to issue guidance at lunchtime on Friday. Maybe they would provide a definition of ‘party’ that would allow us to carry on with our relatively well-behaved, double-jabbed, sit-down Christmas do.
Instead, Nicola Sturgeon repeated the recommendation to postpone parties, and also issued barely veiled warnings about severe dangers to public health, and the NHS’s struggle to cope with a surge in cases, and the possibility of more severe restrictions.
It seemed to me that she only held off mandating those restrictions immediately because no financial support had been agreed with the UK government for the economic carnage such a closure would create in the hospitality industry. If the Scottish Government could have launched a new furlough scheme then and there, I think they would have. Rather, we have this strange situation where we’re being advised to avoid parties, but without a clear definition of what kind of social gathering is considered dangerous. Eighteen people in a hotel restaurant? Ten people in a pub? Six people in a house on Christmas Day?
No one in their right mind would wish the Balfour to be overwhelmed by dozens of cases of Covid needing intensive care. Equally, no one would wish for half the businesses in Orkney to be forced to close the week before Christmas because their staff had been pinged following a night out. On the other hand, no one would want the hard-working pubs and restaurants to be emptied of customers at this, their busiest time of year. Especially after a summer where tourist numbers were drastically down on the norm.
And remember, hospitality venues losing out doesn’t just affect their owners and staff. All their suppliers will take a hit too: butchers, fishmongers, wholesalers, wine merchants… Yes, I have a horse in this race. If the Christmas hospitality season collapses, then all this wine we imported for our trade customers will sit around far longer than intended. It will all have to be paid for: that money will be flowing out, but not nearly as much money as expected will be coming in.
It all seems reminiscent of March 2020, when shops like ours were bulging at the seams with new tourist-season stock – and then the tourist season was cancelled. This really is the New Normal, at last. Folk have used that phrase for 18 months, but it’s only now I’m getting a clear picture of what it entails, and it’s this: a painfully slow return towards stability, interrupted by sudden collapses and backwards lurches.
It’s not a pretty picture but it’s beginning to seem more and more realistic. And a staff night out in February is beginning to seem more realistic than one in December.
I hope to return to my cheery festive list next week. Number 7 will make you bogle.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 15th 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.