Last night B had to walk me half way home (50 yards, but in my defence, it’s past a graveyard) (A graveyard containing the bones of Macbeth, no less, so you can’t get more unlucky than that, can you…) all because we’d watched a (not particularly scary) drama on the television with lots of murderers. All of a sudden, the population of Murderers resident on or visiting Iona had risen in two hours from none to several hundred, in my head.

Everybody else in the house mercilessly mocked me, counting all the different ways a murderer could strike, and all the different places one could hide, awaiting my walking past, until they realised that I was not leaving their sofa until they let up.

Then B turned the lights off, and I bolted out of the door. Because there were, of course, now murderers in the living room.

Everyone helpfully pointed out that the television programme had clearly stated that all murderers were in Edinburgh. But then we realised that half of those speaking were also from Edinburgh, and, lo and behold, here they were, and if it was the people from Edinburgh doing the murdering, no reason to suspect it might travel with them, as a hobby. I stamped my little foot at this point – yes, literally – and demanded an escort half way home.

I just don’t deal well with scary things. For some reason, books are fine, but present me with images intended to scare and all of a sudden you’ve a big jelly on your hands. Not literally. I’ve never seen a scary movie. Apart from “Carrie”, and I didn’t look up from my book all the way through — not once. Just in case.

I’m not as tuff or together as people think.