WE like to think that everything we do is well planned and thought out, and being our own masters our lives run to a strict timetable.

Expectant mothers living in the Highlands and Islands are advised to stay on the mainland for a couple of weeks prior to their due date. We were looking forward to a fortnight’s holiday staying with family in Nairn, close to the Highland hospital in Inverness, before our first taste of parenthood.

Our little girl, Maggie, had other ideas, however, and arrived almost a month early.

We are not so isolated here; even in winter the ferry comes four times a week, weather dependent, and all the well-known internet retailers deliver here just like they do to Teesdale. The Co-op in Mallaig is brilliant and will put bags of shopping on the ferry for us, though occasionally something is lost in translation and the expected bay leaves become a bottle of Baileys.

When Laura went into labour on the Friday morning though, with no ferry for 30 hours and a low pressure system expected to cause it to be cancelled, we felt an awful long way from civilisation.

Around noon, with the composed grace with which she approaches all drama, and the contractions ten minutes apart, she relented and I called the midwife. By the time they had helicoptered in a paramedic and an emergency midwife, she was half that, and after a brief inspection it was “go, go, go”.

We were hit by a bitter blow then; there was no way I could go with her. Ordinarily, there’s room for a partner, but with the extra personnel and their emergency labour kit, the helicopter was full.

Watching her being airlifted off the island was uniquely painful.

The only man on the island with a boat which could get me to the mainland was away, but within the hour the Highland network had swung into action and a hill farmer from the neighbouring Knoydart peninsula was on his way over in his fishing launch.

Of all the people who helped us that day, I must mention Iain Wilson of Invergusran Farm, for without him we wouldn’t have been together at that very important moment in our lives.

By the time I got to the mainland and borrowed a car, I was convinced I’d arrive in Inverness too late, but according to Laura the excitement of taking a jet helicopter across some of the most beautiful country in Britain slowed everything right down, and we stepped into the next phase of our lives together, a little shaken but not at all stirred.