Diary of a Shopkeeper, 27th June

The past week saw the dramatic announcement that everyone who’d been in a pub in the previous ten days had to self-isolate till they’d been tested at the hospital and got a positive result back.  A positive result meaning that they’d been found negative.  Home testing was okay but could only result in a ‘not proven’ verdict, neither innocent nor guilty of carrying the virus.

Of course, guilt and innocence are inappropriate and unhelpful terms when it comes to any illness.  But you’d never guess that from the pronouncements of the Social Media Militia, who immediately started lambasting pub goers, party goers, young folk, old folk and above all tourists.

This despite the fact that, as far as we know, not a single case of Covid in the county has been traced back to a tourist.

Sales of wine to our restaurant and pub customers fell off this week, as was to be expected.  That is surely temporary.  What seems to be permanent is some folks’ ability to manufacture confusion and outrage out of the slightest of raw materials.

They say an oyster makes a pearl out of a grain of sand.  Well, Bruce Brass could make an international incident out of a half-read post on Facebook.

‘I said it from the start,’ he said to me in the shop on Saturday.  ‘There’s only one way to keep us safe, and that’s to ban all tourists from coming here.’

‘That was more or less the way of it for months on end,’ I said.  ‘I have the till slips to prove it.’

‘Ha!’  he looked at me scornfully.  ‘Officially they weren’t allowed in, but everyone kens there were hundreds of them.  I saw it with my own eyes, beuy.’

‘Saw what, Bruce?’

‘Unkan folk driving about – never seen them in my life before, don’t tell me they’re not tourists.’

‘Maybe you just never met them before,’ I said.  ‘Or maybe they were essential workers come up to the hospital or something.’

‘That’s another thing,’ he growled, ‘Do you ken how much the NHS pays agency doctors to…’

‘Good morning shopkeeper!’

For once in my life I was glad to hear the foghorn tones of Mrs Stentorian.

‘Welcome, Henrietta,’ I said. 

Bruce was on a roll: ‘I heard it was a million pounds a week…’

‘We were just talking,’ I said loudly to Mrs Stentorian, ‘About the spike in cases.’

‘Oh!’  She threw back her head in pleasure.  ‘He’s my favourite character.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Bruce, knocked off his stride.

‘Spike, in that marvellous film Notting Hill,’ said Mrs Stentorian.  ‘You know, he’s the comic fellow with the Welsh accent.  I’m surprised Hugh Grant wants to share a flat with him.  To be honest I’m surprised Hugh Grant can understand a word he says.’

‘What bruck are you blethering on about?’ said Bruce.

‘He may not be as gentlemanly as Hugh Grant, shopkeeper, but his funny accent is so charmingly rustic.  Rather like your friend here,’ and she pursed her lips at Bruce.  ‘It sounds delightful, even if I can’t understand a word he’s saying.’

I was getting slightly alarmed at the way the conversation was going.  After all, it’s not good for business if a fight breaks out between a seventy-year-old woman in a tweed twinset and a buldery bald guy in a blue boilersuit.  Before I could think of a way to break it up Bruce squared up to her.

‘That’s because your cognitive universe is shaped by the language of the colonist,’ he snarled.  ‘Away and boil your one-dimensional monoglot head.’

She turned her monoglot head to one side and examined Bruce as if he were an unusually unpleasant moth that had just flown into her walk-in wardrobe.  She sighed.  ‘I do wish I could understand what he’s saying.  Maybe the library should run evening classes in English for Beginners.’

‘No more of that!’ I said loudly, banging my hand on the counter.  ‘What if they were to make an Orkney version of Notting Hill?  They could call it Wideford Hill.  I can see it all: a handsome, wisecracking shopkeeper – let’s say a cheese and wine merchant – looks over the fridge one day to see a beautiful star of the silver screen browsing his shelves…’

‘Lorraine Kelly!’ cried Mrs Stentorian, ‘She’s a great lover of Orkney cheese.’

‘She’s a bonnie lass right enough,’ said Bruce.  ‘Tell you what, if Lorraine was the star, I’d be blide to be Spike.  Can you put in a word for me?’

‘Eh…I’ll do my best,’ I said, ‘But I can’t guarantee anything.’

‘Buck up, shopkeeper,’ said Mrs Stentorian, ‘We all know you’re a writer: you write your little piece of nonsense for The Orcadian every week.  It’s funny, but one or two people have asked if that terribly rude loudmouthed woman is based on me.  I just shake my head.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Bruce, smiling at her.  ‘A couple of folk have asked if the dim-witted but annoyingly articulate xenophobe is based on me.  I just say tell them to stick it where the Flotta flare don’t shine.’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’m glad you like my daft idea, but I was really just trying to get the two of you to calm down…’

‘Don’t worry, shopkeeper.  Your secret is safe with us.  You’ve sold the film rights to Diary of a Shopkeeper for an undisclosed sum…’

‘I heard a million pounds,’ said Bruce.

‘But you’re keeping it quiet till the details have been confirmed.’

‘I can just see it,’ said Bruce.  The climactic scene will be a press conference in the foyer of the cheese factory.  Lorraine Kelly’s about to leave after her celebrity visit, when she spots me in the audience.’

‘I’ll take a question from the gentleman from The Orcadian,’ said Mrs Stentorian in a kind of Glaswegian cum Irish accent.

‘If I were to apologise for my earlier intemperate language,’ said Bruce, sounding more like Russell Grant than Hugh Grant, ‘How long would Ms Kelly consider staying here in Orkney?’

‘Indefinitely,’ said Mrs Stentorian, and fluttered her eyelashes.

And the two of them turned and walked out of the shop, no doubt to live happily ever after.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 30th June. 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.