Diary of a Shopkeeper, 17th December 2024
Tranøy Fyr and Lofoten islands.
We had our staff Christmas dinner at The Lynnfield last night. It was an enjoyable evening of excellent food and wine, a daft game or two and, most importantly, good company. I’ll remember it for a long time. It set me thinking about other memorable meals. What makes one meal stick in the mind years or even decades after the cutlery was laid down, while thousands of others leave no lasting impression at all?
Growing up in rural Aberdeenshire, going to a café or restaurant was a rare experience. Fish and chips from a newspaper parcel after a trip to the swimming pool was a real treat, but I can’t remember any specific occasion, just a general warm, greasy-fingered glow.
I do remember another meal involving a swimming pool, the beautiful Art Deco Bon Accord Baths in Aberdeen. Why were we swimming in a pool 20 miles from home? I don’t remember, but I do remember going to a small restaurant directly opposite afterwards. I ate pea soup. As we drove home along the jinky roads of Deeside, I threw it all up on the back seat. I don’t know if it was soup sickness, car sickness, or chlorinated water sickness. I do know it was pungent, green sickness.
On reflection, maybe that episode is why my parents didn’t take us out for many meals.
Student years brought new experiences. One landmark was when friends, more sophisticated than me (a low bar, to be honest), suggested we celebrate a birthday in a restaurant called Chinese Home Cooking. I was terrified. I’d heard Chinese food always involved rice. The only rice I’d eaten was rice pudding, and I was appalled at the idea of bits of beef or fish being mixed in with the Ambrosia. And wasn’t it very spicy? (Or was that Indian food, something else I’d never encountered?) I was gripped by the fear of being humiliated by chopsticks, or having to force down some bizarre plateful. But I was also embarrassed to look like a country bumpkin in front of my friends. So I went along with the intention of seeing what Chinese food looked like, and how it was eaten. I didn’t intend to try any myself.
That didn’t last long. In the face of my friends’ mickey-taking, I allowed something called Chicken Cashew Nut, and some rice (dry and aromatic, not creamy and sweet) to be spooned onto my plate. My friends asked for a fork for me. (That’s all you had to do? Ask? What sophistication I was acquiring!) I took a tentative mouthful. Then another, and another. It was unlikely anything I’d ever had before, and completely delicious. It took about three minutes to convert me from complete Chinese-food phobia to lifelong enthusiasm.
Sometimes people ask what the best meal I’ve ever eaten is. I don’t know if it even counts as a meal, more a single dish, but it’s what always pops into my head when asked the question. I was in Hamarøy in northern Norway for a writer’s festival. One day, a minibus carried us to a remote peninsula with a lighthouse at the end. On the horizon, the jagged peaks of the Lofoten Islands. Above, a flawless blue sky. And wafting on the air, the enticing aroma of wood smoke and the sound of sizzling fat.
Over half a dozen smouldering oil-drums, a squad of volunteers were grilling sides of salmon. A few krone bought half a kilo of pink, charred flesh and – the only element of choice – one of four different mayonnaises. The flavours and textures of the food – yielding flakes of fish, crunchy, smoky skin, slippery, lemony mayo – were as clear and vivid as the far northern landscape.
Are meals made memorable by place and people as much as the food itself? I think so. Usually I’m a great fan of convivial eating and drinking and talking. But it’s not the only way to enjoy a meal. One Christmas, when I was 21 and living in an Edinburgh bedsit, I had a piece of work to do on Boxing Day. It was impossible to get home to Aberdeenshire for Christmas Day and back in time for the job. So, with apologies to my family, I stayed put. The students and young workers in the other rooms gradually disappeared to parents or partners.
I woke on Christmas morning to total peace. I was alone. Not having had the foresight, nor the funds, to buy in a festive feast in advance, I crossed the road to a convenience store run by a Muslim family who didn’t mind working on Christmas Day. I looked for something suitable…and found it in the shape of a small glass jar of jellied turkey breast. Back in the flat, I made two pieces of toast and sandwiched the turkey and jelly between them.
Down below the kitchen window, couples were hurrying along with bags of presents and bottles in tissue paper. Kids skipped excitedly in their wake. Cars zoomed off to lunch in the suburbs. I watched them all, munching on my turkey sandwich, savouring every mouthful and every moment.
Whether you spend the day around a crowded table or alone, I wish you a merry Christmas – and happy memories.
Kirkness & Gorie will be closed from 4pm on Tuesday 24th until 10am on Saturday 28th inclusive. Thank you for all your custom in the run up to Christmas. Have a great time!
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 19th December 2024. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.