To every thing there is a season. And this is the season of plastic pumpkins, festoons of ghosts and ghouls, and an enormous spider hanging from the roof of Kirkness & Gorie. It’s all completely daft, but – I can’t deny it – great fun.

At the end of a long, busy summer, it’s a relief to get a breathing space for a couple of weeks in mid-October. But what is a shop without customers? Rather dull and not good for the bank balance. Enough of the breathing already! Halloween comes along at just the right time. Instead of tourists the shop is filled with dancing skeletons, spray-can cobwebs, and Kirkwall BID’s Neepie Lantern Hunt. And that brings dozens of bairns, mums, and dads to wander about the shop open mouthed. The kids at the spooky decorations, the parents at the over-stuffed cheese fridge and groaning wine shelves.

That’s not a ghostly sound effect: it’s the result of so many new wines burdening the woodwork. For this is also the season of change in food and drink. Mid-October brings the arrival of Vacherin, for instance, the golden gloopy cheese of the French/Swiss Alps. In the summer months, the kye have been high up in the mountains, producing the copious quantities of milk required for making hard, nutty Comté. But as the weather gets colder, the herds are bought down to lower pastures, yields decrease, and smaller, less dense cheeses are the result: Vacherin.Packed in round boxes of spruce, they can be eaten as they are, or slid into a warm oven for 20 minutes till they’re liquid and bubbling – ideally for spooning over boiled or baked tatties, or onto toasted sourdough.

To every wine there is a season too. A time for white, a time for red, even a time for rosé. Rosé time is gone now – not that there were many sunny summer days this year when it could show its best.

White, too, is most popular in warmer months, and tends to be less in demand over the winter. But there’s always good fish to be eaten and matched with a zingy Sauv Blanc or Grüner Veltliner. And nothing’s better than a fruity Chardonnay with a nice roast chicken. Let’s hope we can all afford to turn on our ovens in coming months: what is life without the occasional roast? I’m with King Henry IV of France, who, in 1598, after years of political tumult and war, decreed that the sign of a prosperous, happy country was that every peasant should have a chicken in the pot every Sunday. (Veggie alternatives are quite acceptable: now that that Prime Minister is gone, it’s permissible for us peasants to eat tofu again.)

But at this season’s turning the minds of most wine lovers turn, like the leaves on Gorie’s oak in our courtyard, to red. Some prefer lighter reds, like Pinot Noir from Burgundy or Central Otago, whose brambly, briary flavours are great with autumnal foods like duck, game, and mushrooms. Others like hearty, spicy reds: good matches for warming stews, and fortification against chilly evenings. Think Shiraz from Barossa Valley, or Reserva Rioja, or Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

We’ve just brought in a pallet of Châteauneuf and other big French reds, direct from the Rhône Valley. Increases in fuel costs and post-Brexit red tape have pushed up prices recently. But these are special occasion wines: best savoured when you want to splash out and that extra pound per bottle is appreciated by all who share it.

For me, Halloween marks the start of a sharing season: a time for convivial get-togethers with friends and neighbours. Get the cheese bubbling, and the corks popping. And someone tell us a nice scary story about ghosties and ghoulies and things that go Trump in the night.

Kirkwall BID’s Halloween parade, led by Kirkwall City Pipe Band, takes place on Saturday 29th. It starts at 2pm at Shearers, Victoria Street. It’s followed by a Halloween Party organised by PEPA - tickets from Grooves. See press and social media for details. All welcome!

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 26th October 2022. 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.

Diary of a Shopkeeper, 23rd October