*Recipe step 1: take a photo to cheer yourself up in the long asparagus-less months.*

Congratulations to all the newly elected councillors. May all your good intentions and fresh ideas bear fruit over the next five years.

Commiserations to those worthy candidates who failed to win this time. Having watched all the video interviews The Orcadian made before the vote, it seems to me that Orkney has missed out on a few potentially excellent councillors. I wish them and us better luck next time.

And sympathies to two or three well-kent faces who have worked hard in School Place for some years and yet failed to get re-elected. Who knows what prompted their constituents to turn away from them. Who knows what prompts many people to vote the way they do in many elections!

At home we were only visited by one potential councillor, a candidate with a green rosette who was visiting her voters in a very green manner, by push bike. We had an interesting chat for 20 minutes then she pedalled off down the brae. But not all the way to the chamber: she didn’t get in.

In the shop we’re not often canvassed. I remember being visited twice during general elections. Once was by a candidate wearing a blue rosette, who burst through the front door, waved and beamed as he strode across the shop, and went straight through into our wine store. Next thing I saw he was disappearing out the delivery door at the back still waving and beaming. He didn’t get in.

Another time, a candidate wearing a red rosette happened to come in at a quiet spell, and we were able to have a good long chat, setting the town, the country and the world to rights. By the end of it he declared that I should be standing instead of him. Unfortunately, he didn’t know anything about cheese, so a job swap wasn’t possible. He didn’t get in either.

I had a couple of interesting discussions with would-be councillors this time round. They were both full of good ideas and the conviction that they could change things for the better, and I wish them luck with that. I did profoundly disagree with a certain line of argument one of them put to me.

With my Kirkwall BID hat on, I was urging that the council should understand more, and responded better to, the needs of businesses in the town centre. ‘After all,’ I said, ‘We’re all working for the same thing: to serve our community.’

‘The council is,’ he replied, ‘But you private businesses exist to make a profit, that’s all.’

I laughed. ‘That’s a very narrow and inadequate description of what motivates folk,’ I said. ‘If you asked ten independent businesses what drives them, I bet there’d only be one or two who mentioned profit. Most would say things like, because I love to sell the stuff I make; or, to keep the family business going; or, because I like to make my customers happy.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘It’s all about the profit.’

‘Have you ever run a business yourself?’

He shook his head.

The good news is that he got in and is one of our new councillors. So he now has five years to develop a better understanding of the ecosystem that is the Orkney economy, with its big businesses, micro businesses, national chains and – most importantly – its locally-owned and run independents.

What motivates me isn’t profits. It’s moments like the one this week when a customer from the West Mainland, having read about my love of asparagus in last year’s columns, came in with a gift of a bundle of fresh spears grown in her West Mainland garden. It was the best asparagus I’ve ever tasted. And her thoughtfulness and generosity in bringing it in was a moment of pure shopkeeper’s joy.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 11th May 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, 8th May