This summer Jane and I visited Jura, that enigmatic Hebridean island just to the west of  the Mull of Kintyre.   Jura is perhaps best known for  its ‘paps’, three breast shaped mountains that dominate its skyline, and from whose summits you can experience some of the most spectacular views of Scotland’s highlands and islands.

Possibly lesser known is the fact that, in the years after the 2nd World War,  George Orwell found refuge on Jura and it was here that he wrote 1984.   (Orwell changed his original title for the book ‘Last man in Europe’  simply by reversing the last two numbers of the year he finished the book 1948)   I guess its debatable which of Jura’s illustrious visitors, Orwell or St Colomba who passed by on his way from Ireland in 563 or thereabouts, to spread the Christianic message, had the greater impact on modern life.   At school I read 1984 from cover to cover – can’t say the same of the bible.

You could say that both are now outdated.   There are just two churches left on Jura and one of those has been converted to a holiday home, which is where Jane and I stayed while we were there, along with our good friends Alison and Aggie.

As always Joshua was with us.  Here are some words and pictures that reflect our time on Jura.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church
You stand alone
Above the track
Between one house and another.
From across the bay
I can see only mist
Swimming towards the dawn
That will always change with the tide
Of  being.

Jura
You float in the must of strange weeds
Drifting upwards like strings of
Semen
Broken, dispersed and afraid of
Belonging
To the swarm that begins and ends with
Every dying
Breathe

Bell
It must have been an age
Since last you
Spoke to those who cared
To hear the news of distant wars
Perhaps sixty years or more
When Orwell wrote
Nineteen
Eighty four

Ungetatable
He said when he found Barnhill
At the end of the path
Past deserted forests of a thousand
Crucifixes hung with children
Blindfolded and redacted
Forbidden from
Crying out
Pain to pain

Corrievreckan
Baptismal whirlpool
When Colomba came with the child
On the way to Iona
Was it already mute
Never to be mine
Never to be yours
Never really to make it
Through the night

Beinn an Oir
Barren, broken breast
With your crusts of scree
Mecca for many and I
Who would break an ankle
For just one peek
Behind
Your veiled
Horizons

Watch me boy,
Watch me dive below
Dark brown blackish
Waters of Jura’s lochans
Stain glass shards slipping through my fingers
Naked now
Pulling me closer to that
Cloistered void
Called death