Pickwick Papers Christmas & LOROS

Only now, after a very difficult and sad month, am I catching up to some of the Richard Armitage things I have been missing. The most touching of this for me has been Richard reading about Christmas from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, in aid of Pancreatic Cancer UK. Pancreatic cancer is of course the terrible illness he lost his mother to (donations can be made to: https://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/donate/, if you are so inclined).

The reading was posted in 4 clips on Twitter (X) on December 11th, 2023 and for a better flow of the reading I decided to stick the 4 clips together in one video, so as better to enjoy it. Here it is (underneath the video on YouTube you can also see links to the original 4 Twitter messages):

What really got to me was the part about loved ones from all over getting together (which is very true in my family as well) and from about 1:50 minutes onwards this part especially hit home:

“Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then have ceased to beat. Many of the looks that shone so brightly then have ceased to glow. The hands we grasped are grown cold. The eyes we sought have hid their lustre in the grave”

The hands we grasped… just like I held my mother’s until she fell asleep… This first Christmas without her is going to be so difficult… Thank you, Richard, for this touching performance.

In other charitable Armitage news, I also see that Sonja has donated the proceeds of this year’s December funRAiser to LOROS and that Richard has even acknowledged it.

I dropped the ball this year on promoting and signal boosting the fundRAising but I am glad I was able to even do a little bit and that the sum is such a beautiful one. Thank you yet again, Sonja, for all you do in this!

Another Armitage birthday

Richard Armitage turned 52 today! I’m just in time to post this on August 22nd. This week I’m attending an international librarian conference in Rotterdam (for you librarians out there, it’s IFLA) so it’s been busy with that and I’m pooped at the end of the day, which means this Armitage birthday almost passed me by. Almost… I’m here now, just in time to celebrate it.

Guylty has transferred the proceeds from the #2023BirthdayFundraiser to LOROS today (we did good: £ 3500,-, is really an excellent end result!)…

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… and Richard has even been so sweet as to acknowledge it.

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Not only is it Richard’s birthday today, he also announced a new book he wrote, which will be available on Audible. That’s certainly worth celebrating as well!

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I had my own little celebration earlier this week, when I finally received my own Pop!Thorin! I always regretted not getting one at the time they came out and by the time I did decide I wanted one, they were all sold out. I’ve been scouring shops for a few years now (no luck) and I’ve only ever seen expensive ones on Ebay (I’m not paying over €100 and sometimes twice that for that little doll). Recently, however, fortune finally smiled on me when I happened upon a very, very affordable one on Ebay, which I of course could not resist.

Pop!Thorin arrived this past weekend, with a few slight scratches as he has fought battles, but still as cute as I knew he would be, just like the man he was modelled after…

… and just in time for a little birthday celebration this evening.

Happy Birthday, Richard Armitage, and may you continue to fulfill your dreams!

Servetus’ annual Armitage birthday event

Check it out here…

The annual Richard Armitage birthday event

Well, there you go…

My Richard Armitage birthday fundRAiser haul arrived in the mail today. I got the three buttons (I used to have a “distRActed” one but have lost it) in the Ebay auction and I figured as there were stickers left in the Etsy fundraiser, that it couldn’t hurt to get some of those too. All for a good cause.

As you can see in the picture, I have immediately put the stickers to use. The John Thornton “Look back at me” sticker has the perfect colouring to suit my e-reader, Harry Kennedy’s “Well there you go” jumper sticker colours very nicely with my laptop and Thorin Oakenshield’s “If this ends in fire we shall all burn together” felt very fitting for the back of my work phone!

Today is also the last day of my summer holiday. Mr E started work again today and I spent the day in bed, reading on my e-reader (that now has a lovely new sticker to adorn it). I have finished my book and have now transferred to the garden. Yes, I probably should have mowed the lawn or trimmed the bushes in our garden but somehow just reading on the last day of my holiday felt like a better thing to do.

Tomorrow I’ll start work with catching up on e-mails and then going in to the office to see what I can do for the big move of one of our libraries at the beginning of next week. We/I prepared all we could before the holiday, so I hope there won’t be much else to do except for posting stickers on the new book shelves to indicate where all the books should go after the move. We’ll see!

I hope the new bookshelves were indeed installed last week and lots of other stuff always seems to come up anyway. The moving dates and all the planning alone have changed something like six times before they became “definitive” in mid July. I’m also nervous for the computers that are supposed to be moved, i.e. the public catalogue search computer and the information desk computer. I was assured that the IT department is aware of the special configuration of those computers but I’ll only be convinced once I actually see it for myself. Also, the alarm detection gates will be installed from Thursday but there were some issues with the wiring and such which should have become resolved in the past weeks but who knows if that will have happened? The “if this ends in fire we will all burn together” feels very relevant for this project.

Anyway, enough about work, back to the Armitage-haul: thanks yet again to Guylty for all the hard work in the fundraiser and for the discreet fangirling items I was able to score! On to the next…

It is done!

Got home from my holiday yesterday early in the evening and late this morning, still in my pj’s, I immediately started the packaging of all the fundRAiser items that I am sending out: 24 Richard Armitage bookmarks and a Richard Armitage travel fund money box…

It took me three hours. Buying postage online and filling out customs forms for each item that is sent outside of the EU (and making sure I address it all correctly!) takes a lot of time and then there is also all the taping that needs to be done to shut the envelopes and stick the labels on. I have trouble keeping everything sorted properly for 25 items, making sure the right person gets the right items and it is all put into the right envelopes. I completely marvel at Guytly being able to do all this for waaay more items than I do!

As it is still my holiday, I refused to do all this sensibly at the table because it would seem too much like work. Did it all from my favourite armchair and boy, does my back feel it! But it is all done now.

Now it’s time for a clean up, a shower, regular outside clothes and a walk to the post office to drop it all off.