A Passion for Puffins

Libby felt strangely at home here… would she ever return to Iceland, to the puffins – and to Jon?

- Della Galton

Libby stepped out on to the dark Icelandic street and paused to look around her. Despite everything she’d heard from Jon she’d been sceptical, but it was true. The streets were full of children, scurrying about with torches, their breath rising on the chill air, their small faces earnest in the bright streetlights.

“Their parents wake them up just before midnight,” he’d told her on that first evening when they’d met in the bar. “And they go out with their cardboard boxes, searching. It’s fantastic. It’s become a tradition – the very best kind of tradition – because we have something I think you call quality time in England… yes? And also we are giving something back to our beautiful island.”

His eyes had held hers and she’d felt his enthusiasm, his passion. It was something she had come to know and love about these islanders – their understated passion. They didn’t go OTT like the Italians, or brash like the Americans, or intense and serious like the people back home in the UK. Their passion was of the quiet variety.

So tonight, instead of going to bed, she had tugged on her woolly hat, buttoned up her coat, and gone outside to join Puffling Patrol.

Jon and his children Alda and Haddi were waiting for her on the corner of the street where her hotel was – the place they’d agreed to meet.

“Are you ready for our midnight mission?” Alda asked her solemnly.

Her blond hair was pale in the moonlight and her blue eyes were shining with excitement, despite the evident seriousness of the occasion.

Both she and her brother were carrying shoe boxes and they had torches. Clearly they had left nothing to chance.

“You think we will find some pufflings then?” Libby clapped her hands together in the chilly air.