Jura Lives

The Isle of Jura's Oral History Project.
Creating an island archive of living memories and stories. With few people, some visitors, and many deer, it's a way of life that we hope to capture - you will be able to read how the project is going, hear clips from interviews, see documentary materials and join in here. The project is happily funded by grants from Argyll and the Islands LEADER 2007-2013 programme, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Isle of Jura Development Trust. 
Ask me anything
“

”

Talk for the Scottish Council on Archives

I’m getting set to test drive some of our work on an unsuspecting mainland audience this week. Will they be interested in the same things we’re interested in on Jura? Will they get an idea of the place through hearing first-hand clips of its heritage? Will we, compared to other archives in Scotland, have our digital shit together? 

Thursday will tell…. Edinburgh here we come!

BONAFIDE!  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II remembers Jura, played on the beaches with her family and is interested in the oral history project! After stories from the Tarbert Darrochs and Ian MacKinnon about their forebears going aboard Britannia to be presented with wallets, then relaxing with the Royals on the beach at Glenabatrick, I wrote to Buckingham Palace to see if the Queen remembered it too. I put in some handouts about the funders and some photographs that illustrate the project’s themes, and look what was lying on my desk this morning….

BONAFIDE!  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II remembers Jura, played on the beaches with her family and is interested in the oral history project!

After stories from the Tarbert Darrochs and Ian MacKinnon about their forebears going aboard Britannia to be presented with wallets, then relaxing with the Royals on the beach at Glenabatrick, I wrote to Buckingham Palace to see if the Queen remembered it too. I put in some handouts about the funders and some photographs that illustrate the project’s themes, and look what was lying on my desk this morning….

Free Ringtones - for iphone users 

The stags, the fighter jet, and the wee ferry can be found at the link above, for those iPhone owners who are having difficulty downloading the new ringtones from SoundCloud

This is how to do it :

1. Make sure iTunes is closed

2. Click the link to dropbox above

3. Ctrl click to download your *choice* sound!

4. Keep it as a binary file when saving to Desktop / Downloads

5. Drag it into iTunes, where it should appear in your ‘Tones’ folder

6. Let me know how it goes!

Bye for now, Jane

On board in July for A Day in the Life of… series of interviews. 

Renaissance gardening - it’s no picnic…

The project has been lucky enough to spend A day in the life of … Peter, Jura House Garden, this month.He’d recently constructed the prototype of the whisky-barrel-and-fallen-tree sun lounger that you see above.  Other wooden benches of his adorn the garden’s sun traps and ebullient sight lines, though the only time we sat down on one such structure was to have coffee from a flask mid-afternoon while doing a quick recap of the events he had seen in the garden and on the estate over the last 36 years.

The rest of the time we talked while he weeded.  He weeded while he described washing the gravel on the paths, described some of the hybrids he had concocted and their names purple pap, mirjam, described how the wind had stripped off all the long leaves from the eucalyptus above the line of the metre-thick wall.  He barrowed the weeds while he pointed out where the butterflies lay their eggs every year, described the mulching with seaweed and the composting-making, listed the historical artefacts he had found in the soil-pile midden that had been started outside the garden wall in Georgian times.

He cut-back plants while he talked about designing by colour and shape, holding up a flower or a leaf against something he was experimenting with in the nursery, weeded as he described moulding the future by constantly deciding what to pull out and what to leave.

Meanwhile, in the background of the recordings, his son mowed, on foot, a 4 acre field in front of the house, round the tree, up, back, round the tree…  The industry and patience that make natural beauty even better must run in that family.

Voices of the Small Isles’ cafe.

Featuring some of the speakers who came into school to answer the children’s questions about crofting.

The recordings of the full conversations that followed these introductions will be available in the Jura Lives archive next year.  There are some great stories and classic moments from the children and members of the community on the subjects of Childhoods, Croft Homes, the Life of the Land and Crofting Culture on the Isle of Jura.

Thanks to all the marshals and runners of the Jura Fell Race who let me overhear them in action last weekend! Besides their regular duties there were extra heroics this year, due to the tragic accident and the hot weather. The local knowledge, teamwork, respect for the landscape and one another was in evidence all day. It’s great that the marshal’s story will now be part of the oral history archive. The likely lads of checkpoint 1, the busy team at blowy checkpoint 3, the party animals of checkpoint 2 who had already opened the champagne by the time I got there, and the stalwarts of the last checkpoint at the 3 arched bridge, we salute you!

Morning at Ardlussa

I went up the north end early one morning this week, having heard a rumour that there would be a dramatic pipe drop-off into Ardlussa bay for the hydro-electric scheme.  As it happened, welders and tides combined to keep the boat back in Oban, so instead I hung out a bit with the Fletcher family over breakfast.

Scarlett was hopping about using a fork-topped walking stick having a had a piece of glass through her foot on fell-race weekend. Three new silver legged chicks were peeping away from under the incubator in the study and the girls were sent to feed the other chickens and ducks in the orchard. Out there, I was proudly introduced to four older chicks of the gold-legged variety, while Kitty came waddling over carrying a large white duck to show me.  Tabitha was running around looking for feathers and scraps of wool with which to build her own nest, and Molly was scattering the feed under the blossom trees with a flock of hens and 4 barking Cayoga ducks behind her.  

The lady of the house, Claire, was away to water the poly-tunnel strawberries, and came back with a beauty for my second breakfast. 

Andrew was at the kitchen table leafing through an antique hand-drawn calendar with verses for each month about life on the estate written in his grandfather’s handwriting. Scarlett was using it to learn to read.

Off to make the beds for the arriving guests, and Fergie the cat had been releasing some of his prey in the smart half of the house - cries of ’Catch that rabbit!’ rang down the corridor outside the Laird’s bedroom….

Of course, it would be good to capture something about the installation of the hydro scheme up there for the oral history project; but an amazing morning in the everyday life of a busy family caught up in diversifying the estate, how could I do justice to that?

This scythe is as big as a man. It’s stashed in the rafters in Mary’s byre up at Keils.  The byre there is used for storage now; a good shelf has been created on top of the concrete stall dividers with left-over roofing sheets from the new shed.

Next door is the old byre, where the divides between the stalls are propped up flag stones, rather than cast concrete. There is still fragrant straw on the floor in there, and it feels incredibly cosy in spite of there being no windows in, and some peripheral damage to the roof. By the red door are the tarpaulins they used to use to cover the haystacks.

A little remix from an interview Mr Cameron gave to the oral history project on April 24th 2012. It being a glorious day, he was outside making sticks, and the recording also caught people passing by.  

The full track will be accessible in the Jura Lives archive from next November.

More Information