Diary of a Shopkeeper, 1st September 2024
The old saying has never felt truer than this year: once the shows are past, so is the summer. The air is cool, the wind is snell, and in the morning I come into the Kirkness & Gorie courtyard to find leaves scuttling along the path. They stop when they see me coming. They know it’s too early to give up and fall, but they can’t help themselves. At least there’s just a few of these lemming-leaves so far. Soon there will be dreefs of them against the door every morning.
For us shopkeepers, another unmistakeable sign that summer is over is the thinning out of our tourist customers. There are still a few liners calling but they come a couple a week now rather than a couple a day. There was a slight dropping off in visitors when the Scottish school holidays ended, and there’s always another fall in numbers when the English schools go back, which is this week. Maybe this effect is less pronounced than it used to be: it seems to me fewer families with children come here than a decade ago. Or maybe I just don’t see them, as parents avoid taking their bairns into an off-licence.
Independent travellers, especially older folk, will continue coming at least till the end of September. When I ask folk running hotels or self-caterings, I’m told their bookings are good for a month or more. It’s often said to me that independent folk renting a cottage or a flat for a week must be great for my business, better than liner passengers. Sometimes they do come in and make decent purchases, but just as often they come in on a Friday afternoon.
“What a great shop you have here,” they say. “In fact, what a lot of great shops Kirkwall has. Much better than where we come from.”
“So, how can I help you?” I reply. “Whisky? Cheese? Wine?”
“Sorry, we leave tomorrow.”
“Shame you didn’t find us at the start of the week!”
“Actually, we didn’t know if there’d be any shops in Orkney, so we took all our own food and drink from the supermarket at home.”
Oh well. You can’t win ‘em all.
The busiest liner day of the whole year was yesterday, 31st August. 6,015 cruisers were scheduled to disembark and split their day between bus tours of the major sites and wandering free-range through Kirkwall. It ended up being less busy in the shop than we expected and hoped. Maybe it was the exceptionally fine day – surely the best day of the summer – but the visitors seemed to be basking on the Kirk Green more than browsing our shelves.
Like I said, you can’t win ‘em all.
As it happens, I missed the day anyway, being south for a wonderful wedding celebration near Inverness. It’s a while since we’ve driven through the Highlands, so I’m not sure when 20 mph zones were established in nearly every small town and village. While we drove, they caused no problem at all apart from adding a few seconds onto the time it takes to get to the other side. Later, when we stopped in Beauly for a stretch of the legs and a coffee, the benefits really struck home. It was easier to cross the road safely as we davered about. Cyclists pedalled past calmly. It was quieter and less fumy. Parents with young kids on reins or in pushchairs were slightly less anxious.
And all this for what cost? Signs at the outskirts and painted reminders on the roads. What inconvenience to the motorist? A few seconds. (And to balance that, I reckon it was easier for any car driver trying to park, as the pressure of approaching vehicles was just that wee bit less.) All in all, it seemed like a great scheme with no real downside. Why can’t we have more 20mph Zones here? I’ve often wondered why anyone needs to drive along Broad Street at 30mph, but they can if they want to. And they do.
Another summer season is nearly over. Thank goodness there’s been no accident with a car ploughing into one of those shoals of liner cyclists I – and many others – have worried about in recent years. No oblivious wandering tourist has been knocked over outside our shops (though I’ve seen a few near misses.) But that doesn’t mean we can’t improve road safety for all, whether tourist or local. Twenty’s plenty!
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 5th September 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.