Diary of a Shopkeeper, 15th February

We had the honour of being asked to provide refreshments for Jim Wallace’s wake on Tuesday. I didn’t know Lord Wallace well, but he and his family have been customers of Kirkness & Gorie for years, and when I occasionally bumped into him outside the shop he was always ready for a blether. That’s something that us non-politicians value highly in politicians: the willingness to have a genuine conversation, rather than expecting one side (them) to do the talking and the other side (us) to shut up and believe what we’re told.

On the whole we’re pretty cynical about politicians, because we think they’re cynical about us. Most of them get into the business for idealistic motives, but before long they’re saying one thing and doing another. Their idealism turns first to pragmatism and then to cynicism. That’s what it looks like from a voter’s point of view, anyway.

In recent days the news has been full of revelations about the dishonesty and corruption of Peter Mandelson. From the voter’s point of view he looks like cynicism personified. Mandelson had been – I hope I can use the past tense – part of the political landscape since my youth. Every time I saw him I was reminded of Kaa the python in Walt Disney’s Jungle Book cartoon. ‘Trust is me, just in me,’ he sings in a sibilant hiss, while his eyes hypnotise poor Mowgli, and his strangling tail tightens about the child.

I’ve nothing against Labour in particular. One senior politician I met and liked was an important Labour figure. It was the late 1980s and I was touring with a band singing funny political songs about Scotland and Mrs Thatcher. One night we had a gig at a pub in Yoker, one of the many industrial parts of Britain targeted for dismantling by the government of the time. During the show I noticed a gangly, balding man with big specs laughing along, and thought he looked familiar. It was only at the end as we were packing up our gear that he came over to talk to us and I realised it was Donald Dewar, the local MP and Shadow Scottish Secretary at Westminster. I can’t remember if he bought us a drink, or we bought him one, but we had a good blether about Scotland, Mrs Thatcher, and the looming poll tax.

One of my outspoken band mates suggested there should be a giant bonfire of poll tax registration cards in the middle of Princes Street. Donald Dewar laughed and said, ‘I, eh, I would very much like to join you in that, eh, conflagration. But it might be seen as slightly, eh…’

‘Inflammatory?’ I said.

‘Exactly.’

A decade later I was in Austin at the Texas Book Festival, doing readings from a music book I’d recently published. On the Saturday morning of the festival, all the authors taking part were invited to the Governor’s Mansion for a grand breakfast, hosted by the founder of the festival, Laura Bush, a former librarian, and her husband, George W Bush. Bush was ten days into his second term as Texas governor, but already there was talk of him following his father, George HW Bush, and becoming the president. (Less than three years later this would come to pass.)

We munched on beautiful mini tacos and cubes of barbecued beef, looking around the paneled reception rooms with their civil war swords and paintings of the fall of the Alamo. And then – a sudden hush – Laura, George W, and no less that George HW Bush, recently retired President of the USA, were coming down the sweeping staircase towards us. We were corralled into a long queue, and ushered forwards one at a time to shake the hand of one or more Bushes. There was a buzz of excitement and anticipation in the room: even satirists like Kinky Friedman and liberal polemicists like Molly Ivins lined up enthusiastically, their eyes round with the thrill of meeting the once and future presidents.

I shuffled along in the middle of the line. I was feeling sick. Did I really want to shake the hand of the former director of the CIA, of the president who invaded Panama, and launched the Gulf War? I needed to think: I stepped out of the line and skipped backwards a few places. It was a unique opportunity: I’d never get to meet one, and possibly two, Presidents again. Something to tell the grandchildren! But what was the point? What was I going to say to them? What were they going to say to me? I skipped backwards again. I was now at the very end of the queue. Without a conversation, what would meeting the Bushes amount to? A photo op for the official photographer. Taking a few steps sideways, I joined the gaggle of writers who were returning from their close encounter of the Bush kind, pretending I was one them.

I never did shake the hands of the two Presidents, and I’ve never regretted it. But I do regret that I’ll never get to have another blether with Jim Wallace.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 19th February 2026. 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.