Diary of a Shopkeeper, 1st January 2023
George Formby in the Boots carpark, 1942
One of my best Christmas presents was a second-hand book. It’s a slim volume with tattered covers, and must be very rare, as I’ve never seen it before or even heard it mentioned. The title is, Smuggle! The Secret History of the Kirkwall Ba. The author is given as U.P. Downie, though that looks like a pseudonym. There’s no date of publication, but the most recent events narrated date to the mid-1960s, so I’m guessing it came out shortly after that.
Specifically, the last event is Pelé’s appearance in the Christmas Day Ba of 1966. Since his recent death, the Brazilian superstar has been widely acclaimed as the greatest ever footballer. He hasn’t gone down in history as the greatest ba player, in fact many don’t know of his participation at all. According to Downie, it was after the short-lived Brazilian World Cup campaign in England, when Pelé was hacked and battered by Bulgarian and Portuguese defenders, that he decided he needed toughening up. The book quotes him as saying, ‘Football has stopped being an art, stopped drawing the crowds by its skills, instead it’s become an actual war. To win I must study the art of war, and where better than in front of your Merkit Cross?’
Pelé’s remarkable aerial skills came into play at the throw-up, as his distinctive yellow shirt rose above the pack, and he connected with the ba in a perfect header, sending it flying as far as the head of Albert Street. Whether that was a crucial factor I don’t know but it did end up a Doonie ba. Pelé may not have won the ba, but he returned reinvigorated to international football after his Orkney visit, and went on to captain Brazil to World Cup victory in 1970, which is nearly as good.
Another piece of ‘secret history’ revealed in the book is the story of the wartime bas. Officially, no games took place between Christmas 1939 and New Year 1945. According to Downie, bas were indeed played, but their existence was hushed up for fear of giving succour to the enemy. ‘Imagine the propaganda,’ he writes, ‘If Goebbels could have shown newsreel of hundreds of Orcadians knocking seven bells out of one another – especially as many of them would have been in uniform.’
Who won those hushed-up bas is not recorded, unfortunately, but there is an account of a celebrity attendee in 1942. George Formby had been entertaining the troops in Hoy, and was in town to watch the Christmas Day ba. He was so impressed that he composed a song about it in his typical cheeky-chappie style, ‘Ba-Bottom George,’ which he premiered at his next ENSA show, in The Cromarty Hall:
I can guess that some of you are wondering at my wet behind
and how I got so soggy on my…no never-mind.
You may think that I'm too daft to know what’s up and what is down
but when I've sung my song you’ll see I really know this town.
With my uke in my hand I took my eye off the ball
When the pack knocked me flat that wasn’t funny at all
I went flying upside down off the Boots carpark wall
now my name’s Ba-Bottom George.
When the song was issued a year later on a Regal Zonophone 78 (serial number MR-3720), its title was changed to ‘Bell-Bottom George’ and had a naval theme. If it wasn’t for Smuggle! we might not know of its original form at all.
U.P. Downie recounts many more fascinating and – to me at least – unknown stories about the ba. I wish I could pass on more detail, but there’s just not space, and I can only mention a few highlights:
·The year the Doonies won with the aid of a trained cormorant.
The year the ba went Up – all the way up to the top of the cathedral spire, and got speared on the weather vane.
The year my illustrious predecessor in this shop, James Kirkness, smuggled the ba inside a barrel of gin, which had itself been smuggled from Holland – a double smuggle!
My allotted space is full. What’s more, it’s 5am on January 1st, and those Hogmanay drams may be affecting my ability to write, and to remember crucial details - or anything at all. Like where I left the blessed book: I can’t find it anywhere. Happy New Year!
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 4th 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.