Right, so for those of you who don't know, I started this storytime vlog as a means of keeping communication with my friends in NZ after moving to Ireland. So there were a couple of reasons for moving, push and pull factors. The push factors were a bunch of traumatising deaths and losses - not that I could barely even process them, because my whole world stopped when m'darling Grunger died. The pull factor was my Nana Dodo, who had been diagnosed with a lung condition that google typically gives 3-5yrs to you if you've got. Nana made it 22months from diagnosis and I was privileged to be one of her primary carers for the last 3-4 months.
Usually, if there was a big gap between my storytimes, it was because life had gotten busier here, which tended to mean, I was spending more time with Nana. I don't have words for what it meant to be with her for those days. I was blatantly, deeply damaged when I got back here in February and I can recognise the improvement in me since caring for her, while she cared for me.
Getting all blubby here now, but anyway. Nana recorded The Little Match Girl into a tape recorder in the 70s, and according to her, a neighbour was so impressed with it, that the neighbour and tape both disappeared! I'd hoped to record a storytime with Nana, but just ran out of time in the end.
This is pretty much just a tribute to Nana I've been wanting to do since before she passed on.
Which brings me to Breath.
Oh, Evi, my lil sis. I duno how you do it with your words. But from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for taking the time to express this huge event in our lives with your art. It's a beautiful, heartfelt poem and I'm proud to have been the one to read it (I tried to pass this task on to our brother, but he was having none of it!).
So yep, lil break from regular programming, coming up next is chapter 10 of Headhunters of the Amazon which I recorded approx 6 weeks ago and havent gotten around to uploading yet....