The Island Games are only ten weeks away, and excitement is building in the shop, as it is all across Orkney.

‘The what?’ said Willie Pickle, scratching his big red beard with a packet of spaghetti.

‘The International Island Games,’ I said. ‘Twelve sports, twenty-four islands, two thousand competitors and judges.’

Willie sighed. ‘Sounds like Kirkwall’s going to be busy,’ he said. ‘Can you give me the dates, beuy? I’ll just have to avoid the town entirely. Between games and liners, there’s hardly a decent quiet day all summer.’

‘It really doesn’t get that crowded, Willie,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard the veg aisle of Tesco on a Sunday morning is twice as congested as Broad Street on a liner day.’

‘I carry the timetable for the X1 bus with me at all times, ‘said Willie. ‘So I can avoid coming to town when there’s a bus due in. Far too crowded!’

‘Where were you brought up?’ I said. ‘Sule Skerry? I’ve never heard anyone being so allergic to other folk.’

‘Crackers!’ came a shout from the far end of the shop. Willie looked startled for a moment, but regained his usual bristling equanimity when Mrs Stentorian appeared clutching a pack of thin brown biscuits. ‘You have the new Eviedale crackers,’ she cried. ‘Huzzah! I’ve been looking for them everywhere: Tesco, Lidl, Marks & Sparks, Ocado, Amazon, eBay. As a last resort I came here.’

‘Thank you for shopping local,’ I said.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, smiling graciously. ‘Which is exactly what I’d have said to the Island Games committee if they’d asked me to be one of their Community Champions. But no such invitation has arrived. Of course, with the state of the post these days, it might be coming via Vladivostok…’

Willie scratched his beard angrily. ‘With your history in elite sport, Henrietta, you’d have been an ideal ambassador for the games.’

She gave a courtly wave of her hand. ‘Lorraine Kelly’s national profile is much higher than mine these days,’ she said. ‘But let me tell you, shopkeeper, in my younger days I could have given her – and most of today’s athletes – a run for their money.’

‘Literally!’ said Willie. ‘Tell him about your medals.’

‘The medals flew like confetti at a wedding,’ she said. ‘And like confetti, they’re not really that meaningful: it’s the marriage ceremony itself that’s important. None of us top athletes were really concerned with winning medals. It was all about playing up and playing the game.’

‘What did you compete in?’ I asked.

‘The Island Games are rather well organised and regimented these days,’ she said. ‘But back then there was still a lot of good old British plucky amateurism. I’m not saying that was a better approach, but it was far superior.’

‘So were the sports different in the early days?’ I said.

‘Blindfold archery was one of my youthful specialities,’ she said. ‘I’d hoped to compete in the games of ’82, but after the unfortunate incident with the Mayor of the Isle of Man, it was quietly dropped from the programme.’

‘You ken the three-legged flag of Man?’ said Willie. ‘Turns out one of them isn’t a leg, it’s an arrow. Ouch!’

‘So I moved on to birdminton,’ said Mrs Stentorian. ‘Like badminton, but with a woodcock instead of a shuttlecock. Sadly, that fell fowl of the RSPB.’

‘Fell fowl!’ I laughed, ‘I see what you did there.’

‘It’s health and safety gone mad,’ growled Willie. ‘For birds.’

‘So finally,’ she went on, ‘I settled on my greatest sporting love, one I’ve played since I was a gal at Rodean. The three-legged triathlon.’

‘She was a shoe-in for gold in ‘76,’ said Willie.

‘To be exact I was the left shoe-in,’ she said. ‘The right shoe-in was my partner Minty Cootes. We’d been tethered together for a whole year in preparation, and by the time of the games we were virtually telepathic. If rather badly chafed.’

‘Where were the games held that year?’ I asked. ‘Was it Barbados or somewhere exotic like that?’

‘Nearly as exotic,’ she said. ‘Canvey Island off the coast of Essex. And that location led to our downfall, I’m afraid.’

‘It was tragic loss for the world of sport,’ said Willie, throwing a supportive arm around Mrs Stentorian’s shoulders.

‘Minty was a teenage rebel. She liked nothing more than getting down to some sweaty, gritty pub-rock, mixing the hard-driving beat of rhythm and blues with the snarl of nascent punk. So when we arrived on Canvey Island, she announced for all to hear that she was off to see Canvey Island’s finest, Dr Feelgood.’

‘Great band,’ I exclaimed. ‘Especially the classic early lineup with Wilco Johnson on guitar.’

‘Sadly, her comment was misinterpreted by one of the umpires as expressing a desire to go out and find some illicit performance-enhancing drugs. She was ejected from the games village forthwith. And because we were tied together, I had to leave too.’

She turned away, and I’m sure I saw her wipe a tear from her eye. At this rarified level, sport really is an intensely emotional experience.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 1st May 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.