This morning the island was covered in fog, not our usual soft hazy mist that does not hide but softens the colour a world in soft focus, but dark forbidding fog. The kind that has the Hamnavoe sounding her horn all the way from Stromness to Scrabster like Peter Brown tapping his way round Kirkwall with his long white cane.

I sat despondently drinking my morning cup of tea gazing out at a view now only in my memory. However as I sipped the warming brew the fog was obviously afraid of its warmth and slipped back to the house across the road. Another sip and it slunk of down the path towards the main road snatching at the bushes trying to hold onto the blades of grass but the bushes quivered their branches shrugging it of. The sharp blades of grass stabbing into it draining it moisture to bedeck themselves in the glittering diamonds of dew.

As the level of my tea sank in the cup the fog slowly retreated from the town the sparrows and starlings laughing at its cowardice from the safety of the fence while the gulls and crows circled daring it to return with loud mocking caws.

May the warmth generated in this thread melt away the fog of ill health returning you to sparkling health.