Diary of a Shopkeeper, 12th May 2024

Photo credit: AJ ‘Mudlark Lemon’ McClelland

It’s not often that someone takes off their shoes before entering the shop. But the other day Mrs Stentorian did just that. Or, to be exact, she took off a muddy pair of green wellie boots. She padded up the shop towards the counter in thick woolly socks and waterproof breeks. It wasn’t even raining.

Usually I don’t pry, and let the stories come out when they’re ready. But in this case I couldn’t contain myself.  ‘What on earth’s going on, Henrietta?’ I cried.

‘Not on earth, shopkeeper,’ she said, ‘So much as on the shore. Ah the shore! That liminal place where land meets sea, solid earth meets all-powerful water, and man meets his fate. Or woman.’

I looked at the mud and sand that slaistered her clothes. ‘Looks like you’ve found a messy fate,’ I said. ‘Did you fall in?’

‘On the contrary,’ she said. ‘I stepped out boldly of my own volition. And in doing so I rediscovered one of the great joys of my childhood.

‘I remember that,’ I said. ‘My mother used to call it, ‘pleitering in the dubs’, and she wasn’t happy when we trailed it through the kitchen.’

Mrs Stentorian rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not talking about infant misdemeanours,’ she said, ‘But a noble archaeological pursuit. It was Mary Beard who inspired me. I bumped into her at the Ness of Brodgar exhibition at the museum, and spilled her drink. It was a rather violent bump: I was shocked how Orkney Voles managed to die and deposit their bones in such perfect formations.’

‘So what did she say?’

‘She didn’t say anything. Not in words. But her look said, ‘Get out of here and go and do something historical.’ All at once a vivid memory from my childhood possessed me. As you know I grew up in Canterbury, surrounded by bishops. My father’s work would ofttimes necessitate a visit to Lambeth Palace, and he’d take me with. As soon as the noble Archbishop saw me he’d exclaim, ‘In the name of God’s, give me peace!’’

‘A very holy man,’ I said, ‘And a very wise one.’

‘So off I’d toddle to the banks of the Thames, and there I’d stay for hours. Sometimes darkness would have fallen and floodlights illuminated the Mother of All Parliaments before my father came to find me. So I had plenty of time to do – well, you can imagine.’

‘Sitting and crying?’

‘Mudlarking. Quartering the mudflats at low tide, searching for forgotten treasures of civilisations past. Happy days! Between the ages of five and fifteen I can honestly say mud was my best friend.’

‘Did you ever find anything good?’

‘A lot of clay pipes, mostly broken. Broken crockery. Broken bottles.’

I frowned. ‘Anything that wasn’t broken?’ 

‘Shopkeeper, that’s of no relevance to the archaeologically minded. Do you think when Mary Beard was excavating the Ness of Brodgar she’d find an assembly of pot shards and reject them because they were ‘broken’? Did she shout, ‘Throw them on the spoil heap! I’m holding out for a grooved ware pot still in its presentation box!’’

‘I didn’t suppose she did,’ I said.

‘Exactly. And nor did I. Those finds were treasure to me, whether the remains of a Victorian chamber pot or – rather excitingly – Winston Churchill’s false teeth.’

‘What! How did you know they were his?’

‘There was no firm evidence,’ she said with a shrug, ‘But as we historians say, ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ I found them on the mud immediately outside the dining room window of Lambeth Palace, and I’m convinced they’re a relic of that famous day when Britain defeated the Nazis, and Churchill went to celebrate with the Archbishop. It’s said that bottles of Pol Roger Champagne in the double figures were consumed and tossed into the Thames that night. As dawn approached, our great leader decided to make a votive offering as the Romans did at times of military triumph. And he threw his false teeth as far as he could into the roiling waters. Where they remained, embedded in mud, until an eight-year-old girl called Henrietta found them and put them in her pocket.’

‘That’s all very…interesting,’ I said. ‘But it’s a long time ago. Why are you covered in mud today?’

‘Why, I’ve been inspired by Dame Beard. And I’m resolved to introduce mudlarking to Orkney.’

‘Beachcombing, you mean?’

She ignored me. ‘I’ve already found something exciting, on the shore at Cromwell Road. I was hoping for a Civil War musket ball, but instead I found this.’

She pulled a small, cylindrical, mud-encrusted object from her anorak pocket, and handed it to me. With my thumb I carefully scraped some of the grime from around it. Eventually a tiny bottle emerged with a golden liquid inside, and a scrap of paper label still attached. I squinted my eyes.

‘Jings!’ I exclaimed, ‘You really have found treasure. It’s a miniature of Scapa whisky.’

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 16th May 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.