Sunday was quiet in the shop. Well, it would be. The athletics were starting at the Picky Centre, football was underway at KGS and various West Mainland pitches, and, for non-sports fans, the sun was blazing down from a cloudless blue sky making the garden or beach irresistible. For any Island Games visitors reading this, don’t believe what anyone tells you: the weather isn’t always like this. It might be for an hour, or an afternoon, but the next day or the next minute it will turn to rain or gales. That’s how we roll at 59°00′N, 3°00′W.

I was just wondering if every single one of my customers was being sensible and making the most of the heatwave while it lasted, when Bruce Brass walked in. Despite the fact it hadn’t rained for a week and the pavements were dry as the Kalahari, he spent a good minute wiping his feet on the doormat.

‘Did you stand in something, Bruce?’ I said.

He stopped wiping. ‘Don’t mock the afflicted,’ he said. ‘It’s a medical condition.’

‘Sorry to hear that, and sorry to be so insensitive. But what is it? Persistent mucky boot syndrome?’

‘Don’t laugh,’ he said. ‘It’s called molysomophobia. The fear of gutter. Or, as the doctor said, a specific phobia characterized by an intense and irrational fear of dirt.’

‘The doctor said that?’

‘Aye. Doctor Google. He’s never wrong and you don’t have to wait a week for an appointment.’

‘Never wrong? Hmm! Did Doctor Google tell you how you caught it?’

He sighed. ‘In my case it’s simple,’ he said. ‘I caught it off my wife.’

‘Off Agnes? She has it too?’

‘Not exactly. But ever since she got that new carpets fitted in the house she’s been on at me non-stop about how I’m a slaistery gushel. It’s like when I was a bairn and my mother said to chow my food thirty times, Now I have to wipe my feet 30 times or there’s hell to pay.’

‘You could just take your boots off before you go in the house,’ I said.

He frowned. ‘I never thought of that.’

‘It might be a miracle cure,’ I said. ‘Google it to find out.’

‘That Dr Google’s right clever,’ he said. ‘Artificial Intelligence, beuy! They should pipe it directly into School Place.’

‘I think that’s called broadband,’ I said.

‘To start with,’ he went on, ‘I thought I might have mysophobia. That’s a fear of dirt and disease too. But to qualify for that, you have to be feart of crowds and crowded places on top of the fear of dirt. Contamination, you see. Well, that’s not me: I’m here, as you can see, in a shop, in town, during Games week. I have no fear!’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘A fear of crowds? I reckon Willie Pickle suffers from that. He was in last Thursday buying great quantities of cheese and oatcakes and beer, and he says to me, ‘That’s it, shopkeeper, I’m fully stocked now. I won’t have to come back to town for the next three weeks.’’

‘Not so good for your takings.’

‘Exactly. ‘What have you got against the town all of a sudden?’ I says to him. ‘It’s not the town,’ he said, ‘The buildings and the roads, I’m fine with them. It’s just the folk. Too many folk freak me out!’

‘You wouldn’t think it at ba time,’ said Bruce, ‘He’s aye in the thick of the scrum for hours on end. Maybe it’s just unkan folk that drive him gyte. And there’s plenty of them about this week.’

‘Damn the bit of it!’ I cried. ‘There’s nothing but other islanders here all week. Whether it’s Bermuda or Saaremaa or Hitra, they’re all islanders like ourselves, the same blessings, the same challenges.’

‘Hitra have the best hats,’ said Bruce, ‘I saw them in the parade yesterday.’

‘That parade,’ I said, ‘Was it not the most amazing sight ever? Thousands of island folk marching together through Kirkwall to the sound of the pipes. Such energy, such youth, such idealism. It brought a tear to my eye! What an inspirational example of like-minded folk working together to achieve something remarkable.’

‘Dead right, beuy!’ said Bruce. ‘I reckon islanders should rule the world.’

‘Or at least themselves,’ I said.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 17th July 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.

Diary of a Shopkeeper, 13th July