It is first light and our snow-bound island is buzzing with activity. Tractors are out blazing the trail through drifts of snow along tracks and side roads. Our one snowplough concentrates on clearing the main routes. 

By 8am landrovers, jeeps, lorries and intrepid cars emerge from homesteads all over the island and head off to pick up friends. Then, all vehicles full to the brim, they converge on the main road and drive in convoy toward the pier. 

For us this is one of the highlights of the Christmas holidays. For today we are on a trip to Kirkwall to see “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. As the film reached Orkney in the latter part of December, this is the first opportunity for many of us to see it.

Most days only a handful of passengers board the ferry. Today there are over 100, including a large proportion of children. The ferry’s small lounge is packed and takes on the atmosphere of a school party. Flasks of coffee, bottles of juice, packs of sandwiches, packets of crisps and biscuits emerge from bags. Children congregate wherever there seems to be some food action, not worried about whose parent is providing it.

The ferry calls in at one other island on our way, then docks at Kirkwall after a two-hour trip. This gives us half an hour to walk through the town centre, popping in and out of shops, and on along the slush-slippery streets to the cinema. This matinee showing has been timed especially to allow us to get home again within the day. 

Once the flurry of finding row numbers, deciding who will sit next to whom and stowing jackets and bags under seats and has subsided, I have a look around. The cinema is at least three-quarters full of folk from our island. It reminds me of the time when the Screen Machine (cinema on a lorry) visited us. 

The film is two and a half hours long and I have four small boys (my three plus one friend) to my right. I envisage several loo trips and quite a lot of endeavouring to keep the younger boys still and quiet. However every time I look along the row I see four entranced faces staring at the screen. Even Fenning, who usually has ants in his pants, confines himself to playing with the tip-up seat once or twice. This is indeed a magic film.

Our collective verdict is a definite thumbs up. Robbie Coltrane  is giant strides ahead as the favourite character. The Great Hall, Diagon Alley and the Quidditch Pitch are the most exciting locations. We agree that watching the film has not destroyed our mental images conjured from reading the books, but has actually rather enhanced them.

After some more shopping we all pile back on to the boat for the journey home. We have really drawn the short straw this time as the route takes us to two other islands before we reach our own. So for nearly three hours we have to survive the traumas of an over-heated, over-full lounge full of over-excited, over-tired children. Pure hell. There’s nothing for it once we reach home but to head straight for the pub to recover over a pint or two and some games of pool.