Isles shopkeepers retire after 30 years serving the community
by Roderick Thorne
(From The Orcadian dated February 15, 2001)

Jimmy and Marjory Walls, who retired as shopkeepers at Roadside, Lady, Sanday, earlier this month. Thirty years ago they re-established the shop, and have built it up into a thriving business of general merchants, off-licence, and petrol station. (Picture: Roderick Thorne)

"You'll never make a go of it, there are so many shops already . . ."

"It'll maybe last a couple of years, but no more . . ."

Jimmy and Marjory Walls bought Roadside Shop, in Lady, Sanday, on June 13, 1970, though some local comment was not particularly encouraging. More than 30 years later, they retired at the beginning of this month, and the thriving business has changed management; Ian Moore is the new shopkeeper.

Jimmy looked back over his working life recently.

He recalled: "I suppose I started really when I was nine years old at the height of the egg industry in the 1950s. My own father was a blacksmith at Miry Park, and I bought a few hens, and then some more, until the weekly export included three or four boxes of mine, each with 30 dozen eggs. When I had enough money I bought and sold sheep, and eventually a couple of calves. All this while I was still at school."

He left school at 15 and like many islanders took on work wherever he could find it; tangles, mason work, farmwork at harvest time and so on. He was part of the team surfacing the Kettletoft Pier, and he spent a part of one summer dangling in a bosun's chair repainting the famous vertical stripes on Start Point Lighthouse!

In 1963 Jimmy became the van-driver for John and Ruby Sinclair, who ran the Parlgo Stores. At that time there were half a dozen of these mobile shops - but there must have been plenty of custom.

"I would start work at nine o'clock, loading up the van and making sure I had a bit of everything. I'd be away by late morning, and rarely back before 11 at night. Around Christmas time, the Saturday round didn't end until the early hours of Sunday morning. Some nights, the drive home took as long as the journey out, I'd meet so many folk who'd come back from a 'night out' and were looking for a corned beef supper."

Asked whether there were any particularly memorable customers on his round, Jimmy said there was one that would forever remain fresh in his mind.

"Nanny Slater would look after many dogs, her own or strays, and they all tended to behave as badly as the worst one. I carried paraffin oil in a container on the outside of the van, so of course I had to get out to fill up containers. One time, after being bitten several times by a couple of her pack of seven, I warned her that I wouldn't come again unless she had the dogs tied up. When I drove away she bent down to gather stones to throw at me!"

This incident may not have been the main reason, but around this time, along with his wife Marjory, Jimmy decided to start his own shop. William Muir had established a general merchants around the 1860s or 70s, and it flourished and remained in the family for about a century. But it had been dormant for a decade until the Walls family took it over.

"Marjory really was the mainstay of the shop in the early years. I kept my job at Parlgo Stores while she stocked us with footwear, draperies, and some hardware - that's what we sold when we first opened before Christmas."

In 1970 there were ten shops on Sanday. Some were very tiny, operating from one room of a crofthouse; but six were big enough to run their own mobile shop-vans. This kind of competition might have been daunting to some, but clearly Jimmy and Marjory resolved to make a go of things. By the following year, several of the vans had been taken off the road, but Roadside Shop was expanding - groceries became an important addition to the range. Marjory remained at the helm, juggling the busy life of a shopkeeper with caring for her young family - Eric, Eleanor and Pauline.

"In 1974 we were getting much busier and my employers supported my decision to 'go it alone'. When I left Parlgo, they decided not to maintain a mobile shop-van, and I took over most of that delivery round," said Jimmy. "We were surprised and delighted at the support we received from folk all over the island. It was a very busy time in Sanday, especially in the village where council houses were being built, the 'Hydro' - mains electricity - was being installed, and mains water run to the houses. All these extra workers were good customers, and so, too, were the council house tenants."

Twenty-five years ago there were fewer strictures about the sale of local produce.

"We bought and sold local eggs, butter and cheese; there were two bakeries on the island and it was their bread, cakes, bannocks and biscuits that we stocked.

"We became licensed for off-sales in 1976, and not long after that I bought a contract with the Post Office for the rural carriage of goods - this allowed our customers to choose to have home-delivery of groceries for a small weekly charge from the Post Bus.

"Back in the `70s the 'Sanday Parliament' alternated between the Post Office, then under the auspices of John Sinclair, and the benches that we put in front of the shop. These were ten or so of Lady Village's older men, who would gather every Sunday in the summer time. Some arrived by push-bike, some walked, and we knew which place they'd choose - they preferred to be in the lee of the wind. They discussed the politics of the island and the wider world, and reckoned that there'd be fewer problems if things were left to them."

Ten years into their business, Jimmy and Marjory added more room to the back of the shop.

"Now the front part of the shop was given over entirely to groceries, and in the back we kept hardware, fancy goods, toys, wool and so on. And I suppose the other big step we took was the construction of the filling-station. This was undertaken in the mid-90s, and by November 1995 petrol and diesel were on sale."

Parallel to such a hectic working-life, Jimmy has found time for a variety of voluntary works in service to the island community. For a dozen years he's been session clerk; he's served on the school board and the community association, and is now in his second term of office on Sanday's community council.

Sanday folk wish both Jimmy and Marjory a long and happy retirement, and wish every success to Ian Moore, now in his second week as Roadside shopkeeper.