What can country clothing’s bon vivant offer his community?

Archie Hume of A Hume Country Clothing on how he’s making himself useful to the Kelso community during the COVID-19 crisis

Normally at this time of year, I’d be looking forward to a summer calendar revolving around much anticipated events in the Scottish country diary. Namely, our annual trips to the Scottish Game Fair at Scone and the Border Union Show at Kelso.

Both are a retail and a social highlight, and the effort required to pull them off is energising and exhausting in equal measure. I get a big buzz out of setting up our stand and chatting to everyone who stops by, the craic can be measured by the number of empty bottles of fizz at the end of each day. And, let me tell you…the craic is prolific!

We take a sizeable team with us and each year I feel deeply proud of how the team digs deep and pulls together in the face of problems. Inevitably there are technical glitches, some years we’ve faced epic rain and less than glorious mud, but the team amaze me by staying cheerful and resilient. They’re unfazed by problems and happy to crack on with whatever the day throws at them.

Needless to say, the postponement of the Scottish Game Fair until October and the cancellation of the Border Union Show has left a big hole in my world. I miss my team. I miss my friends and I miss my customers. I even miss my competitors…but most of all I miss the collective endeavour.

With both shops closed and Karen heavily involved with the online business, I found myself largely redundant. It took no more than two days of Joe Wicks, Zoom socials and endless hours examining my newly sown sunflower seeds in the greenhouse for signs of life – I’ve challenged anyone to grow a taller sunflower than me this summer – to realise I needed to make myself useful. I duly offered my services to the Kelso Resilience Group and stood by ready to accept the challenge to become a local hero.

In the time it took for the phone to ring, I watched Contagion a further 3 times and imagined the many ways in which my transferrable skills could contribute to the fight against Coronavirus. These heroic visions were light on detail, though in each I appeared dressed in full PPE, putting my own life in peril to save the lives of the vulnerable. Fanciful, when in reality, having been triaged by the high heidyins at KRG, it would appear that in this time of crisis my skills as the bon vivant of country clothing are best deployed as a drug runner.

Tempting, I know, to imagine this might involve illicit international travel and even greater personal peril. Or at the other end of the scale, high speed, seconds-to-spare deliveries of life-saving drugs to frontline NHS. Instead, it consists of a jaunt around the pharmacies of Kelso, where I sometimes queue to stand the appropriate distance from the counter whilst those with proper skills of actual use at this time, continue working, cheerful, resilient and unfazed by the strange conditions they find themselves working in. Happy to crack on with whatever the day throws at them.

I then deliver my haul like a dutiful drug mule to the elderly and vulnerable of Kelso – all those stuck at home shielding. I make my no-contact delivery then stand back to have a bit of chat – loving every minute.

It would appear to be a perfect skill fit…I get to chat and have the privilege of playing a tiny part in the biggest collective endeavour of our lifetime and they seem very pleased to see me – maybe it’s the loneliness or maybe they just really need those drugs. These days the craic is measured in empty blue & white dispensing bags rather than empty bottles of fizz, but let me tell you, it’s still prolific!