Happy Christmas
Christmas greetings as I get ready to leave for New Zealand where it will be lovely and warm. A huge amount of extra warmth will come from the long, close friendships that we will find and value and renew there (and when I got up this morning and read Larry’s contribution to my Star Apple blog below, I felt I was right back on that snowy morning when we first met years and years ago!).
Also in New Zealand over this Christmas will be Niall de Burca, the storyteller I first met when I was a guest at the Glistening Waters Festival in Masterton some years ago. At that point, he was just about to go back to renew his Irish roots and set up home and work in Ireland. I met him again at the Farmleigh Festival in Dublin this summer and meantime he has become very well known and admired in Ireland. I’m not sure we’ll cross paths in New Zealand this time but it’s nice to know he’ll be there as well.
Closing the circle, I received a lovely message the other day from Jan Maclaren in New Zealand. She wrote because she’s a friend of someone I happened to meet and instantly get on with at a godson’s wedding. ‘Going to New Zealand?’ Charlotte had said. ‘I’ve got a storytelling friend there.’ What Jan didn’t realise when she emailed and told me all about the Glistening Waters Festival that she now helps to organise is that I’d been a guest of the festival, obviously before she got involved. Small world! And storytelling always helps to make it feel warmer and more connected.
And best wishes for 2010! And please post back a message to the blog – it needs you.