Phoebe Weller of Valhalla’s Goat in Glasgow knows exactly who to call when the shop’s hardware starts to malfunction or the till mice decide to misbehave
Roddy really is the hero of the piece.
Roddy, bottle-bottom specced Roddy who invented our till system – which is, if you’re wondering, a troupe of highly-trained mice sitting in boxes which look like processing units. Some were in the Disney classic Cinderella (1950). Roddy moved into EPOS systems from the Ghostbusters (1984)-suited squad who bravely millennium-proofed our fridges and hoovers so they didn’t run amok with Millennium Noncompliance (1999), back in the days when anyone could make a buck from fear, not just friends of the Tories.
Out they went, these enterprising souls, Sonic Screwdriver (1968) in one hand and stethoscope in the other, breathing heavy sighs and beating stickers with Aztec-themed Bugs to hoovers and fridges and toilet doors and staircases. The Williams Fridge had one, before it started leaking white blood and humming about “the good of the corporation”.
We send WhatsApp messages to each other, me and Roddy. Mostly the message “till isn’t opening please make it open” or “blue screen of death is this it??” – basically when one of the mice rebels and starts crying white blood and murmuring about European Working Rights violations and drinking the sample bottles of port in the cellar.
He logs in and tasers the mice from afar, usually, or tells us to stand on Kelvinbridge with a scanner and a bottle of pet nat under a full moon repeating “Treguna Mekoides Tracorum Satis Dee” (1971). When that doesn’t work he says we’ve Been Meddling, for example adding new products to the system or exchanging goods for cash, and he’ll come by when he can.
And what a hero he is when he comes in! And what a hero of the piece he is! Arriving with his piece wrapped in tinfoil and then Greaseproof Paper (do you need Greaseproof Paper? Check out www.greaseproofpackaging.co.uk and help fund my January holiday to the Caribbean!), or Greaseproof Paper and then tinfoil depending on which way round your time is going or which end of the activity you are engaged in.
The contents of the Amazing Piece remains a mystery because Roddy is very private and doesn’t like people watching him eat, which is cool, and cool too because Mysteries are cool! On the advice of another merchant at a Wine Merchant round table we have recently instituted a Mystery Barrel on the shop floor. Upon it we brown-bag up ANY OLD SHIT and label with a Nice Price and a Catchy Name, on regulation VG Post-its. My personal favourite Catchy Name was FRUITY FRUITY TOOTY KAPOOTY HONEY £30, which included two fruit beers, two CBD cans of something and a dusty craft mead.
The mystery wine has been less of a success. Maybe one of the rebellious till mice has told the customers that they’re all that Vibrating Sherry/not Sherry bought pre-pandemic in a moment of arrogant retail whimsy.
“The barcode machine’s fucked,” Roddy says, balling up his finished Amazing Mystery Piece wrappings and striding out of the shop with it under his arm, briefly examining the wares on the Mystery Barrel, lingering at the WHAT’S HOP AND WHAT’S NOT £32 bag but deciding against it.
He’ll be in touch.
