Diary of a Shopkeeper, 5th April

Recent reports of a glut of bananas at a local supermarket stirred my memory, like a stick progging a sleeping bear. I looked back through my shopkeeper’s diary for stories recorded there but never shared in this column. (All the news not fit to print.) And I found the following, from five years ago.

I was filling up the chutney shelves when a familiar figure came buldering through the door. Blue boiler-suit open to the bulging belly, rigger boots, big black beard.  None other than Captain Puggie. I doubt he’s the captain of any vessel bigger than a pint glass, but he spends his life at sea, months at a time, then a few precious weeks back onshore. So, Captain it is. It’s the least I can do. 

‘Ahoy shopkeeper,’ he said.  ‘Have you got any CO2?’

‘Carbon dioxide? Of course.’  I pointed. ‘Over in the home-brew section.’

He shauchled over and rattled amongst the gas canisters.

‘Are you taking up brewing, Captain? I thought you were a navy rum fan?’

He came back to the counter and banged down a box of grey metal cylinders.

‘It’s not for brew,’ he said, ‘It’s for…my yellow friends.’

I laughed. ‘You’ve got me this time. What are you talking about?’

He looked over his shoulder, checking the shop was empty. It was a rainy Tuesday in March, of course it was empty.

‘I have come into possession,’ he said, ‘Of a container load of…’  He held up his right hand, fingers crossed. ‘…a load of bananas. Ask no questions.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ I said. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘Better if you don’t ken,’ he said. ‘I got them from the master of a certain container ship, registered in South Korea, inbound from Colón, Panama. They were headed for Grangemouth, but someone got their paperwork wrong and they had one container too many.  What to do? The ship’s off to Port Klang next, and one thing they don’t need there is more, fingers crossed, bananas.’

‘So they asked you to help out?’

He nodded. ‘Only thing is, they need the empty container back to fill with export-grade teacakes and caramel wafers. So I’ve just three days to get rid of the b…b… them.’

‘I could maybe take a few,’ I said. ‘How many’ve you got?’

‘96,000.’

I laughed. ‘There’s only 10,000 folk in this whole town.  That’s nine and a half bananas each!’

‘It’ll keep them regular,’ he said, ‘But I do have one snag. They’re nowhere near ripe.  They’re green as the north end of a leek heading south.  Hence me needing CO2.’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve lost me Captain. How do those two go thegether?’

He leaned an elbow on the counter, fixed me with his bloodshot blue eyes. ‘Me and our yellow friends have a history,’ he said, ‘Aye, that’s what we call them at sea. Saying the word, fingers crossed, ‘banana’ brings bad luck, so we always have to use that teu name.’

‘I never had you down as a superstitious man, Captain.’

‘Me neither. Until that ill-fated voyage seven years ago, when I saw it with my own eyes.’ He tugged his beard.

‘We were two days out of Wilmington North Carolina,’ he said, ‘when the ventilation system in the cargo hold failed. Carbon dioxide started leaking out, and when we docked and unscrewed the hatches, every single one of our…yellow friends…was black as treacle and nearly as runny.  No modern technology could cope with that! We had to shovel it out by hand – 3,000 tons of the stuff.’

‘Feuch!’ I cried. ‘I’m surprised you can even look at another banana.’

‘I’ll not touch them myself,’ he said, ‘But if I’ve done my calculations right, a dozen of these gas canisters released into a 40-foot container should, after 18 hours, result in 96,000 perfectly ripe…yellow fellows. And a healthy profit for me – and you.’

‘For me? It’s got nothing to do with me!’

‘Aye it does. For when I’ve sold them, I’ll come back and pay you for the gas.  I’ve not got two pennies to rub together right now.  And if I did, they’d probably burst into flames.’

I sighed. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you them on Sale or Return.’

He bosied the canisters. ‘They’re heavy,’ he said, ‘Considering they’re full of nothing but gas.’

‘Some things are amazingly dense,’ I said.

Five years on from the events recounted above, and the Captain is sadly no longer with us. He moved to Wick. And CO2 canisters are no longer available in the shop due to stringent new Carriage of Dangerous Goods regulations. But bananas? We have any amount.

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This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 9th April 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.