Part Two. 4.00pm - midnight or thereabouts:
Walking back to the cottage after completing a bright red premmie baby hat at Clicking Needles, Jeanette invited me in for a cup of tea so we could discuss arrangements for my farewell tea party.
"Or would you like something stronger?" she asked.
I looked at my watch. Four o'clock. Jeanette waved a bottle of Cream of Edradour Whiskey at me.
"Just two wee glasses. We deserve it," she said. I capitulated, just to be polite of course.
We made a list of tea party guests and then began chatting about this and that. Jeanette topped up our glasses. We chatted about this and that a bit more. Jeanette peered at the whiskey bottle.
"It's not worth saving. Let's finish it off."
We chatted a bit more and drained our glasses. Then we heard the front door - Gordon was back from Inverness.
"Halloo!!" he said. "Would you like a drink? I think I'll have a glass of the Edradour to warm me up."
On discovering that the bottle was empty, which he took remarkedly well, he suggested we went to the pub for a drink. By now we were amazed to discover it was 7.15pm and Jeanette still had a chicken to roast for dinner.
"Let's go and have dinner as well!" said Gordon.
As we walked through the main street, Gordon asked if we had brought torches. No, we hadn't. Well he had, but he didn't really want to use it because it didn't have much battery life left. The reason for all this talk about torches soon became clear as we left the well lit village street and headed up the hill in absolute 100% pitch darkness, with no pavements on the roadside.
"Just walk along the white line in the middle of the road," said Gordon, who was obviously saving any battery power for the walk home. Quite what would happen if a car also wanted to share the road with us was not discussed. I supposed we would just dive for the bushes.
Being in the dark reminded Jeanette about an incident earlier in the week. We had gone in separate cars to Pitlochry so she could leave Gordon's car at the station carpark for him to collect when he returned from Glasgow. I waited while she pulled in, parked and put the car keys up the exhaust pipe for him.
Then she realised she had left her phone in his car, and went back to get it, which meant first retrieving the keys from the exhaust pipe.
"Oh no!" she wailed. "I've just pushed the keys further up the pipe."
I gave her a pen to hook them out but she only succeeded in pushing the keys further still up the pipe. She was looking at her filthy black hands in dismay.
"Oh never mind, Gordon will manage to get them out," she said, which was a somewhat cavalier attitude, I thought - especially as poor Gordon would be arriving home after dark.
"Anyway I expect the keys will just get blown out when he starts the car." Starts the car? What with?
Indeed with some difficulty Gordon had eventually managed to pull the keys out of the exhaust with a pen, but it took him some time. He then stopped at the supermarket to pick up a few things on the way home.
As he walked through the door, Jeanette had gasped and burst into giggles. He looked like the chimney sweep! Not only were his hands covered in black oil, but his face was filthy too.
"Goodness knows what they thought of you in the supermarket," she said, somewhat conveniently forgetting that Gordon's plight was in some measure caused by her good self.
After a meal and then an hour or so spent chatting to the locals over a few more drinks, it was time to weave our way back down the hill, again in total darkness so I am not sure why Gordon brought the torch. On the downhill, the white line was not nearly as visible. But perhaps that was the fault of the wine and liqueurs we had just imbibed.
As we came into the village we critiqued the array of Christmas lights wound around various trees and the decorations visible through cottage windows. We admired the two deer, brightly shining on our lawn, grazing in the flowerbed and decided to call them Rudolph and Bambi.
Rather sheepishly, Gordon told us that apparently Ronnie in the end cottage, who is an iron welder, was a bit taken aback when he saw the deer, as he has fashioned a deer which he plans to decorate with lights to put in his garden this Christmas. There will be quite a menagerie running around.
Finally, I collapsed through my front door, which is now adorned with my wreath:
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