Diary of a Shopkeeper, 18th December
Delivery for Dunpleepan
To: kirknessandgorie@breckan.scot
From: Henrietta-Stentorian@goodmannerscostnothing.co.uk
Subject: Damsel in distress!!!
Dear Mr Maclean,
I wondered if your emporium still sells cheese and wine? With the cost-of-living crisis, I haven’t been in town as much as I was wont: the price of petrol is simply punishing! So, to economise, I have been ordering my groceries directly from Fortnum & Mason.
Which was all going swimmingly until the dashed postal workers decided to go on strike. (No doubt to give them a few extra days off to do their Christmas shopping!) My seasonal supplies are now stranded in a sorting office somewhere on the south side of Glasgow, of all the godforsaken places.
So much for festive bonhomie! That’s the last time I leave a gift-wrapped mince pie for Postman Pete on his rounds. But his loss is your gain, as I find myself requiring local assistance in putting together a festive hamper of food and wine.
I would appreciate if you could deliver it on Christmas Eve, as close to midnight as possible. If there’s still snow on the ground, please leave marks as if of a reindeer’s hooves. If a thaw makes that impossible, perhaps you could make an arrangement of some half-gnawed carrots, as if You Know Whom had stopped for a snack!!!
Now, as you are aware, I have high standards when it comes to food and drink, or indeed anything I consume. Though now that I write that I wonder, what else does one consume except food and drink? Unless one is a computer printer, in which case ‘consumables’ means tiny plastic cartridges full of the most expensive liquid known to humanity: ink!
Yes, it’s a fact, I read it in the Daily Mail: ink is even more expensive than a bottle of Champagne from your shelves. Despite that, nothing says Christmas more than Champagne, so please include a bottle.
Something else that nothing says Christmas more than – excuse my grammar, I think I may have overdosed on brandy fumes while feeding the cake – is Stilton. So best include a wedge the size of a reasonable wedge. Of course, Stilton and Champagne is a match made in hxxx, whereas Stilton and Port is simply heavenly. So put in a good bottle of Vintage too, 1963 for preference.
Beyond that, I am happy to leave the choice entirely to you. Though if you could email me a list of all your food and cheese options by return, I would be happy to make life easier for you by suggesting some recommendations.
I am willing to spend up to £25 in total. I presume this will justify me getting a gift hamper, suitably wrapped and decorated. The address of the recipient is Mr William Pickle, Dunpleepan, Beyond the North Side, Birsay. Please attach a gift tag with the following message in your best cursive script:
‘Warmest wishes to my favourite Willie, with kind regards, no, with affectionate embraces, no, wait a moment, let me think. To Guilhem le Cornichon, avec des bisous Français…no, that’s rather vulgar!’
Set down this, shopkeeper, this set down:
‘A cold coming we had of it: the Shetland ponies gallus, sorefooted, refractory, lying down in the melting snow. And we, with the voices singing in our ears, saying that this was all folly… And it was: a folie à deux, Monsieur le Cornichon. Affectueusement, Madame de Stentor.’
Oh dear! Do you think that’s too much, shopkeeper? Have I gone over the top? Are the brandy fumes talking?
Please advise!
Henrietta Stentorian, Mrs
. . .
And there her email ended. I didn’t think the message was too much. I thought it was the warmest, most heartfelt thing I’d read all year. Sadly, our gift tags are far too small to fit in all those fine words, so I just wrote: HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
I think Mrs Stentorian must have been reading - or remembering - TS Eliot’s Christmas poem, The Journey of the Magi. It makes sense. She did tell me during a year or two ago that she was brought up in Canterbury by archbishops.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 21st December 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.