Diary of a Shopkeeper, 11th January

We always shut on Mondays at this time of year, so had planned to reopen on Tuesday 6th after a long New Year break – much needed after the busy Christmas rush. However, it was impossible for anyone to get in on Tuesday, due to the roads being smoored over, so it wasn’t till Wednesday that we opened our doors.

Our first job was to take down the festive decorations. The shop not only looks but sounds different when we do this: footsteps and voices echo strangely, and you realise how much the big paper balls and the garlands of pine and holly have altered the acoustics since mid-November. The other factor is the empty shelves. A deli-owner’s dream is to sell the last panettone, the last jar of cranberry sauce, and the last peedie fruit cake at 4pm on Christmas Eve. When you reopen no one wants to pay full price for those things, and they become dead stock, sold off for a few pennies.

I think we achieved that goal better than we ever have before. That makes our accountant happy, but it does mean that the shop feels even echoier and emptier. Thank goodness for the posties, who delivered our first cheese order of the year on Wednesday afternoon. For a few hours our fridge had looked very sad, but by 4pm it was fully stocked, including with the soft cheeses that had been impossible to find in December. But it wasn’t cheese that the first customer of the new year wanted. An hour after we opened our door, Mrs Stentorian came bustling in.

‘Henrietta!’ I cried. ‘Happy New Year!’

‘I hear you do refills,’ she said, rummaging in her shopping bag and pulling out an empty bottle of Scapa 16-Year-Old

‘We do,’ I said, ‘But sadly not of whisky, only olive oil.’

‘It’s oil I want,’ she said. ‘Quick: it’s an emergency.’

As I turned the tap and watched the grass-green nectar gurgle into the bottle, I said over my shoulder, ‘Did you run out over the holidays? A culinary disaster!’

‘I ran out of ski wax,’ she said. ‘This is the first time in four years I’ve been able to do some cross-country, and would you believe it, there’s nowhere here that sells ski wax. I do sometimes feel I’m living in a third world country.’

‘So our artisan extra-virgin olive oil, hand-picked in the ancient groves of Tuscany…’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m going to grease my skis with it. Chop chop! Look at that crisp white snow and the cloudless sky: it’s a bluebird day!’

I’m not judgemental. If Mrs Stentorian wants to use the oil for her skis, it’s fine by me. As long as she gives the till £7.50 – and she did – she can massage Willie Pickle’s feet with it for all I care. Clearly that was not about to happen, for my next customer, half an hour later, was the man himself.

‘Hello Willie,’ I said. ‘Happy New Year.’

‘Happy for some,’ he said, as he came stumbling towards the counter in a pair of dark glasses. ‘But this weather’s killing me.’

‘It was great for a couple of days,’ I said, ‘but I’m scunnered with it now.’

‘It’s worse that that,’ he said. ‘Look.’

He slowly took his shades off, and opened his eyes wide. They were like two peedie bowls of tomato soup. ‘God’s sake, Willie,’ I exclaimed, ‘That looks bad.’

‘Does it?’ he said. ‘I can’t see.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was so cold,’ he said, ‘that every time I came inside my glasses would steam up. Then when I went outside again they would freeze. Do that two or three times in a row and you’re looking at the world through a sheet of ice. So I decided a quick way to solve the problem would be to spray some anti-freeze on them.’

‘Did it work?’

‘Oh aye! I just wish I’d taken them off first before I sprayed them.’

‘You should be at the doctor’s, not a deli.’

‘Stoop, beuy! All I need is a couple of teabags, and I’ll be fine.’

‘Teabags?’

‘Yaas. Dunked in cold water.’

 We don’t sell teabags, but we have a tub of them by the kettle for break times, so I fished out two and held them under the cold tap, then handed them over, dripping. Willie leaned back his head, placed one gently on each eye, and let out a huge sigh.

‘Relief at last,’ he said, lowering his glasses over the teabags. ‘Now, would you mind convoying me to the door? I can’t see a blessed thing.’

I was starting to wonder if anyone today was actually going to buy food to eat. So when Kiwi Kate appeared and asked for the biggest box of chocolates I had, I couldn’t help but ask whether her intentions were honourable.

‘I hope you’re going to sit down with a cup of coffee and luxuriate in the flavours of rich salted caramel robed in the finest Belgian couverture,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘Afraid not, shopkeeper.’

‘Please tell me you’re not going to rub them on your boots or build a model of the cathedral with them.’

‘Nope. I’m going straight up to School Place to hand them in at reception, for the attention of the famous Kirsty. Where would we’ve been without her and her team keeping us right these past days? We’d have been up to our noses in snow – instead of just up to our necks.’

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 15th January 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.