People urged to keep a diary during pandemic
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STAFF at the Nucleus archive centre in Wick are encouraging people to keep diaries during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is hoped that the day-to-day experiences of Caithness folk could become valuable historical records in the future.
Callum McCabe, archive assistant at Nucleus, said it is part of a project being run by the Highland Archive Service.
"We are trying to encourage people across the Highlands to keep a diary during this pandemic."
He hopes it will form a record of the event and capture "our regional reaction".
In a post on its Facebook page, Nucleus said: "We can learn from diaries, the weather, the price of food, migration of animals, local events and hundreds of other matters often ignored in the history books.
"Often the most remarkable details will be recorded, regarded as very private writing in the certainty that no-one else will ever read their words.
"As time passes this factor diminishes, no longer being a personal record, it transforms into an important historical record, a testimony of a much wider significance."
It added that keeping a diary is "a great way to clear your head" and record thoughts that will become a part of history.
"Over the coming months we would be love to add your diaries to our collections so they can form part of the Highlands' collective memory."
As way of an example, Nucleus released extracts of diary entries by crofter Hugh Lyall from Brabster.
In a few brief lines he describes farm life in the 1960s in Caithness:
Frid 29th May 1964
Bob finished dressing for the neeps in the morning he rolled it at night we was with Willie Leitch Canisbay in the afternoon cutting peats
James Gunn Mey was with him I was at Canisbay at the Banker lifted £5 home at night
Sat 30th May
The Capital Lime Company was putting on lime at David Shearer Clair Fraser saved the manure for our neeps
Bob was down at Willie Leitch with the neeps
Sower from Davies sowin Willies neeps I was at Davies we was home at night
Sun 31st May
Bob and me was down at Bill Groats a run we called at Clair Fraser on our way home they was a steem engion at Groats
