Diary of a Shopkeeper, 25th December

I’m writing this early on Christmas morning, typing quietly so as not to wake the sleeping household. The Russian novelist Yuri Olesha called his memoir No Day Without a Line. It’s The Orcadian’s print deadline rather than Stakhanovite zeal that drives me to postpone opening presents in favour of a strong coffee and this laptop.

Of course, working on Christmas Day is something that many must do in all kinds of essential services. And in Scotland in particular Christmas was, until fairly recently a much less important celebration than New Year. Bruce Gorie, my immediate predecessor as proprietor of Kirkness & Gorie, made an interesting observation while helping put up the ba batons yesterday. It was only in the late 1970s, he said, that the shop started taking more money at Christmas rather than New Year. Now there’s no contest. Although the days leading up to Hogmanay are relatively busy for us food and drink retailers, the week before Christmas is ten times busier. And it has been hectic this year, for which a heartfelt thanks to all our customers, whether weekly regulars or once-a-year ‘special occasion’ shoppers. My impression from snatched conversations with other shopkeepers is that it has been, after a quiet start to December, a good trading period.

Once again the amazing array of shops in Kirkwall showed that they could provide just about everything for just about everybody. Our vibrant town centre is a rarity these days, and its mixture of retail, hospitality, residential and public spaces is the key to its health. Every pound spent here strengthens the community. And every hour spent here with young family improves its future. Bairns following the Kirkwall BID giant present hunt, or meeting The Grump in his lair, will remember a town centre that’s a fun, entertaining place to be. And – in ways neither we nor they can yet imagine – will help it remain so.

I started this diary by mentioning the Russian novelist, Yuri Olesha. In describing him that way I was perpetuating an error I and many others made for years. Olesha was actually born in Ukraine, in 1899, and grew up in Odesa and Kharkiv. In the early years of the revolution against the Tsarist tyranny he was a supporter of the Bolsheviks, as many young writers were. It was at this time that he published his single brilliant novel, Envy, and the two or three other works on which his reputation stands.

In the Stalin era, his early commitment to the revolution brought him no protection, and like every writer of his generation he lived through years of frustration and fear. At least he escaped the fate of his friend and fellow Odesan story writer, Isaac Babel, who was executed by the secret police in 1940. Olesha published little after his early years. On every side writers who breathed even the slightest criticism of the Soviet regime – or simply veered away from its approved literary styles – were being arrested and murdered. ‘I can’t write any more,’ Olesha said. ‘If I write that the weather was bad, they will tell me that the weather was good for cotton.’ Writing that it was raining too much could result in years in the gulag – or worse.

Looking back over 2022, the horror of what has befallen Odesa, Kharkiv and the rest of Ukraine, is undoubtedly the most important and tragic world event of the year. Yuri Olesha would have been saddened by what his homeland is suffering, though probably not surprised. And he would have kept on writing: no day without a line.

Christmas cake and turkey, flashing lights and tinsel, the ba and the log pull. They may be trivial joys, looked at individually. But they’re the stuff of human life, and taken together nothing could be more important. Like Olesha’s commitment to his writing, they are the best riposte to the stresses and horrors of the world. And we’re right to enjoy and celebrate them while we can.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 28th 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.