Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 6 hours ago
I came across this video this morning by chance and haven't shared it with ye before. It's a recording I made on my phone back in August 2020 when I visited Jim Dunne out in Oulart and I'm sure his family and neighbours will like to see it. I just watched it and it's lovely to hear his voice and laugh again.
One of the stories that stuck with me when visiting Jim over the year was how he had peaches growing in one of his polytunnels out the back of his house. That would be nothing unusual nowadays, as you’d just go to a garden centre and buy one, but back in Jim’s day the ordinary man or woman wouldn’t have had them, or a greenhouse or polytunnel like we do now. When I asked him in 2020 if he had ever seen peaches before, he answered, “I never knew what they were.”
Jim went to Canada in the 1950s for work, and like many he had never seen a peach tree in his life. Liking them so much, on his return home in the early 1960s he decided to bring three back in the lining of his coat. Needless to say, he got through Customs, and the trees grew and fruited.
The original trees are now gone, but the peach trees in this tunnel were all propagated from them, and every year they fruit without fail. In fact, they were so plentiful that year in 2020 when I took these photos, the sheer weight of the fruit caused one tree to break.
I remember that day in August, the smell was just amazing as you walked in, and it sparked something in him, he was dying to tell me all about his travels and drinking stories from more than sixty years ago in Canada. I had the three children in the car and couldn't stay long with him. I'm glad we had this chat and it's great to look back at it. Jim was 90 in that clip and he passed away in October last year.
Text: Michael Fortune
I came across this video this morning by chance and haven't shared it with ye before. It's a recording I made on my phone back in August 2020 when I visited Jim Dunne out in Oulart and I'm sure his family and neighbours will like to see it. I just watched it and it's lovely to hear his voice and laugh again.
One of the stories that stuck with me when visiting Jim over the year was how he had peaches growing in one of his polytunnels out the back of his house. That would be nothing unusual nowadays, as you’d just go to a garden centre and buy one, but back in Jim’s day the ordinary man or woman wouldn’t have had them, or a greenhouse or polytunnel like we do now. When I asked him in 2020 if he had ever seen peaches before, he answered, “I never knew what they were.”
Jim went to Canada in the 1950s for work, and like many he had never seen a peach tree in his life. Liking them so much, on his return home in the early 1960s he decided to bring three back in the lining of his coat. Needless to say, he got through Customs, and the trees grew and fruited.
The original trees are now gone, but the peach trees in this tunnel were all propagated from them, and every year they fruit without fail. In fact, they were so plentiful that year in 2020 when I took these photos, the sheer weight of the fruit caused one tree to break.
I remember that day in August, the smell was just amazing as you walked in, and it sparked something in him, he was dying to tell me all about his travels and drinking stories from more than sixty years ago in Canada. I had the three children in the car and couldn't stay long with him. I'm glad we had this chat and it's great to look back at it. Jim was 90 in that clip and he passed away in October last year.
Text: Michael Fortune
