Typical

It's a beautiful Saturday morning on the islands, prime candidate for a day out and lunch at Julia's cafe..... but we've got packing up to do. It's our last Saturday morning in Orkney, at least for a while.

Island weather is like the little girl with the curl. You know the nursery rhyme.

Today it might be 'very very good' rather than 'horrid'. It just might. It's hard to say. It can start out looking sensational, and only starts to rain once the picnic is packed in the car. But that's Scotland altogether, actually, come to think of it. It's almost a working definition, and sometimes even an endearing one...

We'll squeeze in a last Saturday horse ride - definitely the last, as the horses are going off island to their new livery on Wednesday. But otherwise it's going to be cardboard boxes and paper cuts and dust and the smell of brown tape, and mild childish squabbling about what to take and what not to. "Think about what's essential to your life in the next 5 months" I'll say to them, when they emerge: they're still asleep, or at least hiding under duvets with books, pretending. Breathing long and deep when my ear is pressed to the door.

Seems typical, and that's the word we'll use at breakfast, that it's such a beautiful morning when we can't enjoy it. But how self-absorbed is that, thinking that the weather organises itself just to annoy you?