George Orwell, poesía completa

VISIT TO BARNHILL ON JURA 2018: 

"THE BIG BROTHER FACTORY"

Team Photo at Barnhill

   The Isle of Jura, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, was the arcane site chosen by George Orwell to spend the finishing four years of his life writing his most celebrated novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Once every two years, during the month of June, The Orwell Society and The Orwell Foundation arrange, under the auspice of Richard Blair (Orwell's son), a visit to the scene where he and his father, now and then accompanied by some relatives, lived from 1945 through 1949. 

    The Isle of Jura is a unique and remote "paradise" island, which in spite of being not far from Glasgow, just 96 km away, it still involves a long trip of at least 4 hours back and forth. The nearest mainland harbour is at Crinan, where you have to take the Ferry which will set you on Jura in about one hour and a half. Once there, the sweet and inebriating smell of cottage whiskey welcomes your senses to a fermented feeling of antiquity. 

   The huge Jura Distillery building, founded in 1810, stands up majestically to let the visitor know that, in spite of the passage of centuries, it is still alive and kicking successfully, outspreading "the spirit of Scotland". This should also be the first building Orwell encountered when he put his foot down on Jura. 

View from Cranaig House Harbour

The nearby Jura Hotel, right opposite the distillery, is still the same cosy cottage, in wonderful conditions, which in Orwell's times lodged the few passers-by who visited the island, most of them wool staplers, farm workers, fishermen and the distillery workers. Orwell was not surely an attraction for the few neighbours on the isle at the times. And he did not intend to stay in Cranaig House, the little town centre, but, instead, he had decided to rent the remote cottage of Barnhill in the northernmost part of the island, about 30 miles from Cranaig. The island itself is about 35 miles long and 5 miles wide. In the times that Orwell lived on the isle, its population was about 2,000 inhabitants, nowadays there are no more than 200 people, most of them young families with children ready to repopulate it and bring it back to term. 

Daybreak from Jura Hotel

The small Waterfront with Jamie Fletcher waiting for us

   After spending two fabulous days (Friday 8 June and Saturday 9 June) at Jura Hotel in Cranaig House and the surrounding area, enjoying several excursions to the paps of Jura, a local term that means "tits", due to the resemblance of these hills, emerging in the plains, with a young girl's boobs, we also visited some local farms, the pub of the hotel with its newly made "spirit of Jura", and debated extensively in the reading room of the hotel on the Orwellian turn of our present times, with a printed edition of 1984, the Facsimile Edition, which would be witnessing our dinner and evening conversations every instant. Undoubtedly, we were a privileged group of 23 people from different countries, the UK, Australia, USA, Germany, and Spain. But by all odds, the cherry on top would be Barnhill, which we would visit on the third day, on June 10 (Sunday). 

View of Barnhill from the Ferry

   The road from Cranaig House to Barnhill is still as it was in Orwell's days, almost impenetrable unless you have a safe and competent four-wheel drive vehicle. Therefore, the best means of transport from the town centre to Barnhill is still by boat or ferry, which will take you there in about one hour. Once there, the visitor reaches the waterfront, that serves as an off-the-cuff harbour, on a bucolic shore, where tens of scattered cows, grazing peacefully by the nearby grove, are the bigger and working population of the area. 

The Greenish Path from the Waterfront to Barnhill

   
Definitely, Orwell had intentionally decided to live too far off the human world. He had replaced humans by cows as neighbours, which brings to mind his satirical fable Animal Farm, published the same year of his arrival to Barnhill. 

   Once we set foot on land, the Fletchers, Jamie Fletcher and his wife Kate, the new landholders of the farmhouse and its 7,000 acres of land, with some friends, were ready to welcome all of us and give a lift, in their all-terrain Subaru, to the few aged members of the literary expedition in need. The farmhouse was still about 2 miles away from the small waterfront.  After a short and pleasurable stroll through a dirt road lined with a dense growth of shrubs and grove we reached the top of the little hill, upon the mountain path, beholding the huge green meadow, sleeping at hour feet, with Barnhill, framed in the centre, facing a breathtaking seascape.

Cows grazing peacefully by the shoreline

The farmhouse was in wonderfully good conditions, in spite of the passage of time. And the formidable facade of the house proved the magnificent condition of the building. 
Orwell had rented the farmhouse on a remote island and in a desolate, though idyllic setting, of the island where he could find peace, inspiration, silence and time to write his greatest masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Strangely enough, many of us agreed about the fact that despite the uninhabited region, nobody feels lonely. Isolation from the world is not the feeling you get in Barnhill, possibly detachment from civilization is the literal 

Facade of Barnhill (June 10, 2018)

impression you feel. The most striking and unforgettable experience would be in the house, in little groups of 10 of us, led by Richard Blair and Kate Fletcher, walking through its rooms, catching and almost detecting the everlasting presence of Orwell in the big kitchen with its huge charcoal stove, proceeding to the different bedrooms, and getting on the second floor, where we would step into Orwell's bedroom and office for his personal and creative writings. The sizeable window at the foot of the bed enjoyed the most thrilling and captivating view of the entire building and, possibly, of the whole region. The window was not a simple constituent of the room, but a window to the entire universe, where we could feel that time had had a stop: past, present and future were in the right and same dimension. 

Therefore, regardless of the rules of the Orwell Society about the strict prohibition on the taking of photographs, Australian Professor Darcy Moore could not resist the terrible temptation to take his camera and start shooting indiscriminately straight to the window and straight through the window under the undisturbed look of Richard Blair, in the middle of his speech on the "history" behind the room and the typewriter. The following member who broke the rule was me, who would have never forgiven myself for not having memorialized such soul-stirring spot and put, next to Orwell's typewriter, my latest publication in his honor.

Richard Blair Reading Session: Orwell's letters from Jura

With Richard Blair in Barnhill (June 2018)

The next step would be in the living room, on the groundfloor, where Richard Blair offered a moving portrait of the times his father and himself would receive some relatives and guests in order to have certain contact with the outside world. After some snacks and teas in and out of the house, we proceeded with the traditional reading of Orwell's letters from Jura by his son, in the garden. 
The way back to Cranaig was longer than expected, maybe our short visit to Barnhill, of just three hours, was calling back for a next visit in two years to apprehend new feelings, thoughts and emotions of an Orwellian past that nowadays is more alive than ever. By the way, George Orwell was born on a day like this, on June 25, 1903. 



Useful References on Jura & Orwell:
The Orwell Society: Jura Days
The Orwell Foundation
Earlier Trips to Jura
Escape to Jura
Isle of Jura

  

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