Diary of a Shopkeeper, 6th August

Nice work if you can get it.

Saturday’s liner was cancelled due to windy weather south, and it was shaping up to be a quiet morning. So I was delighted when the shop door opened shortly after 10, and a rotund figure buldered in.

‘Councillor Swadge,’ I said. ‘Welcome! Haven’t seen you in a long while.’

‘I’ve been away,’ he said, as he peched his way up to the counter. ‘Looking after my business interests in Edinburgh – it’s amazing what you can charge for a couple of Airbandbs during the festival – then a peedie holiday in the south of France. Just the three weeks.’

‘Oh aye, it’s the summer recess for you elected members, isn’t it?’

‘Summer excess, I call it,’ he said.

‘Too much French cheese and wine?’ I said. ‘You could have got that here.’

He shook his head. ‘Too much work,’ he said. ‘Tickets, flights, trains, taxi, hotels, passports, fancy meals, getting up, dressing up, going out, coming back. An excess of activity of every kind.’

‘Sounds exhausting,’ I said.

‘Thank god the new calendar’s starting at School Place,’ he said. ‘A nice schedule, all prepared for us: meeting here, committee there, working group somewhere else – and lots of gaps inbetween to get my breath back.’

‘That’ll be when you do your homework, surely? Every councillor I’ve talked to says there’s a lot of reading of reports and so on.’

‘Nah nah. I’m always telling the young ones in the chamber: that way madness lies. You never get to the end of it, you’ll end up deeskit, and you won’t be giving your constituents what they voted for.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Me, of course,’ he beamed. ‘What the wise folk of Droothydale ward vote for is me. They ken me, they trust me. Who prepares all these stacks of reports and recommendations and rules we’re sent? Some officials they’ve never heard of. So I ignore them and give the people what they want: me, straight talking, no nonsense me. Untainted and uncontaminated by lots of reading.’

He said the last word like he was spitting out a slice of foosty Camembert.

‘What they also want is to see me on the front page of the paper and in Radio Orkney’s Postbag now and then. That way they ken I’m doing my job.’

‘Are you going to reveal what’s really going on with the Chief Executive?’ I said. ‘That’s a big story. It’s bad for HMS Orkney not to have a captain in the wheelhouse.’

A look of horror crossed his face. ‘Holy, no! I ken nothing about that, and I don’t want to. Of all the things I don’t want to know about, that’s the one I want to know about the least.’

‘I’m sure the good folk of Droothydale are wondering what’s going on.’

‘Even if I knew,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t tell them. For legal reasons. Anyway, I have a better idea: one that’ll get me into the paper but not get me into any trouble. That’s why I’m here: I can put a good deal of money your way. If, that is, you can supply me with ten thousand bottles of maple syrup.’

I laughed. ‘Ten thousand? Are you making a million pancakes?’

He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening. Seeing as he was my only customer, he was safe on that score.

‘You ken that President Trump is renaming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

‘My idea is to show solidarity with our Canadian cousins – Hudsons Bay Company, awa tae the nor’wast, blah blah blah. My motion for the next General Meeting of the Council will be to rename the Peedie Sea ‘Peedie Lake Ontario’.’

‘Could be…interesting,’ I said.

‘Wait for the best bit,’ he said. ‘I’m going to propose we drain the water and fill it with maple syrup instead. It’ll boost Canadian exports, support local businesses like you, and cock a snook at Trump. Generally, I like what he does. But when you mess with Canada, you mess with Swadge!’

‘What about the birds that live in it?’ I said. ‘They’re not going to like swimming around in maple syrup.’

‘Ach, they can have a sup of the sweet stuff then fly off somewhere else. Anyway, they don’t vote.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’ve just thought of a problem. The ba.’

His creeshy face went pale. ‘Oh my god. If the ba ends up in the Peedie Lake, it’ll be stuck there for hours. No chance of a smuggle if it’s covered in sticky sweet gunk. Folk would be raging.’

‘They would,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to think of something else. Maybe you’ll have to say something about the Chief Exec after all.’

‘Or maybe we could get the traffic wardens to dress up as Mounties,’ he said.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 10th September 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.