Sometimes doing what you don't want to do turns out good.

It has been a rough few days. The weather has been driving wind and rain and I wasn't feeling so good. Doreen sent a text reminding me that tonight was craft club and asking if I was going.

All day I hummed and hawed trying to find excuses not to go. Eventually as the day was lengthening I decided that if I were going I would have to go into Kirkwall to collect some money and get enough petrol to last me for a while.

5% Celsius as I stepped out the door and although the wind had dropped it was just strong enough to give the chill a bite. The sun had graced us today and was sinking in its low winter orbit as I drove. Thankfully it was at my back casting its long shadows over the land. Light in Orkney at this time of year has a brittle crispness bringing things into sharp focus.

One of the fence posts ahead of me had a brown lump on it and suspecting what it might be I checked the road then slowed as I got near it. Sure enough sitting atop the post was a Catty Face. (The local name for the short-eared owl) It made no attempt to move just swivelling its cute face with perpetually startled looking eyes to watch as I slowly passed.

A mile or so farther on I saw a flash of colour ahead and since the road was still quiet I once again slowed. A grin twitched across my face as I watched the cock pheasant daintily strutting along the top of the dry stane dyke for all the world like a miniature Beau Brummel that impressive London dandy.

I did my chores and returned home settling in the warmth and resenting the thought of having to go out again but I had promised so I gathered a few bits and headed of. What an amazing night it turned out to be an older lady who I have only nodded to in the past came in late and sat beside me. She looked at the dishmop, wooden spoon, duster, washcloth and j-cloth I was working on and exclaimed, "you are making a sally kitchen maid"

I showed her the one I had made for my mum one Christmas almost 20 years ago now at a time when David was unemployed and we couldn't afford to buy presents. I had added a halo made from a gold coloured pot scrubber and a tiny hand written book of readings and hymns for Christmas as though it was a choirboy.

Our conversation wandered from Carols from Kings a family Christmas tradition that mum and I would stop whatever we were doing and listen to it when we had radio and watch when we eventually got television. I am not quite sure how we reached there but I listened fascinated as she told be about being evacuated from London during 1939 and returning in 1941 begging their parents not to send them away again even through the blitz. What an interesting and fascinating day it has turned out to be just because I made myself do what I did not want to do.