Kirkwall High Street is aflutter with a single strip of festival bunting as I stroll down to the harbour. I meet Fiona MacInnes, who describes herself as a leading volunteer for the Yes campaign. She is surprised at my sorrow for the prospective split. "Why should you care? It's a Scottish issue. It's not a divorce. I think it will improve the relationship between Scotland and England. It will remove irrational frustration, a kind of impotence, an inability to be responsible." She stresses that the referendum is about independence, not politics, not a vote for Alex Salmond, although it is hard to see how it is for anyone else. I press her on the immigration issue. "That's a political decision that will be taken at an election depending on the party that you vote in," she says. 

It may be that the 16- and 17-year-olds are a significant factor since they will be voting for the first time. I congratulate a sixth-former on her performance at the Maxwell Davies concert and ask how she intends to vote. She says she's "basically No", but increasing numbers of her friends are being persuaded by the Yes picture of the small nation oppressed by its neighbour, prevented from becoming the great power it undoubtedly is. The teachers here will have undue influence. It is clever of the SNP to disguise a vote for themselves as a patriotic cause. The tragedy is that, except in the event of an absolute trouncing of the Yes campaign, Scotland will be changed. For either the No will win narrowly, engendering bitterness and resentment, or the Yes will win and the long and costly process begin of dismantling the institutions, arguing about money, flags, passports and border controls.

The extent of the naivety was summed up by a festival-goer from Edinburgh who told me his heart was in the Yes campaign and he would vote that way "unless it looked as if they were going to get in". Then he'd be worried.