Diary of a Shopkeeper, 8th January

We three kings…

When I was a young boy, my best friend’s father was – or seemed to me – an Aberdeenshire Caractacus Potts. Remember Potts? He was the eccentric inventor in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, always coming up with some hare-brained scheme or other. Like a flying car.

Nicholas’s dad was similarly enthusiastic and impulsive, encouraging us youngsters into slightly dubious adventures like going out to shoot crows for dinner or camping in a thunderstorm in the middle of the cow pasture in front of their grand but crumbling house. Well, it seemed grand to me, and it seemed to be crumbling, but these are very long-ago recollections that flicker through my mind like faded home movies. It may be my memory that is crumbling.

One memory that is fixed and vivid remains so, I suspect, because it’s silent and monochrome – unlike everything else that went on in that tumultuous, hilarious house.

As we got off the school bus one day, Nicholas told me that his dad was going to be rich. Even at the age of seven I was slightly sceptical. Only the week before he’d supposedly discovered a secret tunnel with treasure at the end. It turned out to be an overgrown ditch concealing a golf ball he wanted us to crawl in and retrieve. Nonetheless, after a tea of boiled tatties rolled in floury oatmeal, it was with some anticipation that Nicholas and I followed his dad outside and along to an old barn. We didn’t go in the usual way, but round the side and down some steps. Nicholas’s dad was quivering like a whippet with excitement as he unlatched the door and ushered us into a completely dark and rather sharny space.

He shut the door behind us. It was pitch black. ‘Well lads,’ he said, ‘Here it is. The royal road to riches.’

There was the click of a light-switch, and a single dim bulb came on in the middle of the low-ceilinged room. Before us stretched rows of metal trollies, each holding half a dozen long wooden trays. Every tray was full of black earth, or, going by the smell, a mixture of earth and well-rotted manure.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘Mushrooms! I got a bucket of spawn from a friend in Aberdeen. And the growing material, well, it’s lying all around, isn’t it. I just had to persuade the bakers in town to sell me some of their old trays to put it in, and hey presto!’

‘What happens now?’ said Nicholas.

‘We wait,’ said his dad. ‘And soon these trays will be cropping like crazy. We’ll have the mushroom market sewn up from Cairnbulg to Auchentumb. We’ll be rich!’

Nicholas and I crept forwards in the silent mirk, and peered into the nearest rack of trays. After a while, my eyes adjusted to the near darkness. Every few centimetres something white was poking through the dark smelly soil. Something small and domed, glowing against the black earth. They looked like the heads of a hundred tiny ghosts, or the tentacles of some ghastly multi-limbed creature out of Dr Who.

I caught Nicolas’s wide-staring eye, then we ran – up the stairs, and out into the noisy, colourful, chaotic world. We leapt and ran around the yard to throw off the stifling stillness of the mushroom cellar. And we never went back down there. Mushrooms were never ever mentioned again. And the crumbling house continued to crumble happily – no sudden fungal riches befell the family.

What brings back these long-buried memories? Only that the best food I ate over the whole festive season was not turkey, nor clootie dumpling, not even Port and Stilton. It was grilled oyster mushrooms – red, yellow, black, and king – freshly harvested and as firm and flavoursome as fillet steak. All grown in Orkney, at Sunnybrae I believe, and simply one of the most delicious things I’ve tasted in years.

Three cheers for the inventive food producers of Orkney! Just don’t ask me to go down to the cellar.

In case you’re wondering, we don’t sell the mushrooms: I bought them in Shearer’s in Victoria Street. When I was in today there were none on display, but as far as I understand it the mushrooms will become a regular feature there and elsewhere in the future. I look forward to it!

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 11th January 2023. 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.