Diary of a Shopkeeper, 2nd February

If one customer requests something we don’t have, I make a mental note. If a second customer asks for the same thing, I jot it down in the back of my diary. If a third person asks, I spring into action. So it was that, last October, just ten years after first being asked about a subscription wine box service, we launched the Orkney Wine Club. Now Willie Pickle was staring suspiciously at the poster on the front of the cheese fridge.

“What’s all this about a Wine Club?” he said. “And how come I’m not a member?”

“You’ve never joined,” I said.

“You never asked me to join.”

“I’m pretty sure I mentioned it to you when we launched,” I said. “And I pointed out the poster, and gave you a flier with all the details.”

“I ignore advertising,” said Willie. “If someone has to persuade me to buy something that’s a good sign I don’t need it in the first place.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But that does pretty much explain why you don’t know about it.”

“Is it a club like the Orkney Club, where you can go and have a quiet drink in peace?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not a physical place at all.”

So it’s not like the Masonic Club, where you can go and…well, I couldn’t say.”

“No, it is neither a secret society nor a society with secrets. It’s just a way to introduce folk to new wine.”

“So it’s not like the Golf Club?”

“No.”

“Or the Sailing Club?”

“No, Willie! Nor is it like the Rotary Club, Rapture Nightclub, or the Field Club. It’s not even like the ‘If You Like a Lot of Chocolate on your Biscuit Join our Club’ Club. Because those biscuits can no longer be called chocolate, believe it or not, since they reduced the chocolate content so much. Now the slogan is, ‘If You Like a Lot of Chocolate-Flavoured-Coating on your Biscuit Join our Club.’”

“Calm down, shopkeeper,” said Willie. “I was only asking.”

I took a deep breath. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I’d thought I made it very simple so there could be no confusion. The Orkney Wine Club: it’s in Orkney, it supplies wine, and you have to join the club to get the wine. It does what it says on the tin.”

“Or on the bottle,” said Willie.

“Exactly. Every month members get four interesting bottles of wine, and a wee booklet with descriptions, food matching suggestions, and stories about the wineries.”

“I hope it’s not like that bruck you write in the paper ever week,” he said. “I reckon you just make up half of that. The problem is I don’t know which half.”

I went over to the windowsill where I had a few spare Wine Club booklets. “Take one of these,” I said. “Have a read and see if it’s of interest. This was the last one, all about Australia. Look, there’s some photos of my wine buying trip there a few years ago.”

“And a recipe for mince and tatties!” His jaw dropped in astonishment. “Who needs a recipe for mince and tatties?”

I laughed. “Well, probably nobody. But I put it in just to give folk something interesting and a bit different. It’s actually from a novel by James Kelman. He won the Booker Prize, you know.”

“From a novel? So not only do you make stuff up, but now we’re getting made up recipes too! Unless this Kelman fellow won the World Mince and Tatties Prize I’m not interested.”

“There is a World Mince and Tatties Championship, actually,” I said. “They hold it in the Mishnish Hotel every year.”

“Mishnish? Mishnish! You’re doing my head in shopkeeper – with a tattie masher. You don’t expect me to believe there’s a place called Mishnish?”

I laughed again. “It’s true! It’s in Tobermory.”

“Argh… What’s the story Tobermory? You really are talking a lot of baloney-mory.”

“The point is,” I said, “Take the book, read the recipes, see if you like the look of the wine. If you do, come back and join.”

“I don’t think so, shopkeeper,” he snorted. “To quote Karl Marx, ‘I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.’”

“Actually, I think it was Groucho,” I said.

“The Groucho Club?” said Willie. “Aye, I’ve heard of that. Now, if there was a Grouchy Club I might just sign up.”

“I’ll take a note,” I said, reaching for my diary.

Willie Pickle, and everyone else, can read more about the Orkney Wine Club here. You can even sign up with just a few clicks…

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 26th 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.