Diary of a Shopkeeper, 7th December

Shetland: unlike in the series of the same name, they didn’t all have Glaswegian accents.

I came into the shop yesterday morning to find an envelope on the doormat. On the front was the single word ‘Shopkeeper’ in beautiful fountain-pen italic. The flap had a green wax seal with the initials HS stamped on it. Henrietta Stentorian? Who else! I’d never received a letter from her before. Or maybe it wasn’t a letter, maybe it was a Christmas cheese and wine order. I set the envelope behind the counter and went on with the cleaning and opening-up routines. A couple of hours later a quiet spell allowed a break for coffee, and I remembered the envelope, carefully slit the wax with a cheese paring knife, and sat down to read.

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Dear friends, family, and selected local tradespeople,

It’s time once again for my annual round robin, updating you on all the significant events of the past year in Quackmyre House in the glorious Western Mainland of Orkney. I know some of you would expect nowadays to receive such a missive by email, but I believe in traditional values, and if pen and paper was good enough for my dear father, it’s assuredly good enough for me.

I’m not quite as scrupulous as he was. I will have a conversation on the telephone, if I must, whereas he would ask his wife (AKA my mother) who was calling, then instruct her to hang up. He would promptly write them a letter asking the caller what they wanted, and so would begin a lengthy exchange of correspondence.

I do regret the loss of such civilised habits, but we must have progress, I suppose.

Progress has been the byword of the year in the Orkneys, which is not something I would say often. But in 2025 it’s been inarguable, thanks to the uproar involved in laying a new superconductor (?) across Mainland, and then the Pentland Firth.

Lorries growl back and forth, diggers drive new roads through fields of bewildered sheep, steel fences protect great piles of pipes, cables, and yet more vehicles. A massive temporary accommodation block has been built on a hill outside Finstown; it’s hoped building warrants will be approved by the council, allowing some workers to move in, before the project is completed in 2029.

My literary friends in the Ladies Who Lit reading group (Hello Allegra! Bonjour Bijou!) say that our local bard, George Mackie Brown, has been proved right yet again. He predicted the chaos progress would bring in his novel Greenvoe, with its sinister Dark Star project. For years people thought he was predicting the effects of uranium mining, then it turned out he was really warning about oil. Now it’s clear that what he’d foreseen was the impact of a high voltage alternating current transmission system, capable of handling no less than 220MW of electricity, powering the future and supporting net zero goals.

Dark Star indeed!

The irony is, the cable won’t be bringing cheaper energy to the Orkneys. It will be shipping it out of here. It seems we have too much energy in the islands, though you wouldn’t know it from many of the locals! (NB If you are a local receiving this round robin you are personally excluded from this gentle ‘dig’ which I say with all possible kindness. Call it tough love.)

Energy was the mood of the summer, first in the tremendous va va voom, as they say in France, surrounding the International Island Games in July. What a joy it was to see so many young people from all over the world marching past our cathedral, chanting and singing. Goodness knows what they were singing about, for many of them refused to use English, but instead sung in what I suppose were their quaint local languages. Our neighbours to the north, the Shetlanders, were particularly incomprehensible!

I’m told the energy of the teams was equally abundant in the actual competitions, but sadly I missed those, due to the recurrence of a sports injury of my own. But this is not the time for self-pity, so I will spare you the details!

But in brief, I will simply say that it all goes back to a particularly vicious intervention from a defender in the Cheltenham Ladies’ College lacrosse team when I was 15, which resulted in my right ear being badly dislocated. As long as I remember to answer the phone with my left ear, all is well. But seeing an anticipated call incoming from a dear friend (it’s all your fault, Mr Pickle!) I excitedly clamped the receiver to my right ear and – well, least said, soonest mended.

(Maybe my father was right after all to avoid telephones!)

Apart from such personal drama, we had the drama of severe weather: heavy snow in January, Storm Amy in October, torrential rain and more wind in November. Who could have seen such things coming? Strange days!

And so we come to the end of another year. They seem to go by faster and faster. ‘Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself,’ as the old proverb has it. (Which reminds me, did you know we had a plague of flies in August? Horrid! Fly spray was selling for £50 a cannister on Have a Merkitplace Orkney.) Yes, 2025 has flown: I must have been enjoying myself, even if I didn’t realise it at the time. Perhaps my resolution for 2026 should be, ‘Think less often of others, and more of your own self-pleasure.’

I commend that thought to you, along with my best wishes for the festive season.

With warmest regards, your friend (or customer, as appropriate), HS.

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This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 11th December 2025. 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.