Lee A is with BL's ABU Cresing Timothes. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. It's getting

crispy in Limerick City. I'm going to have to start thinking about gloves soon enough.

I felt the lick of winter on my knuckles. I'm looking forward to winter this year.

Do you know I'm looking forward to Christmas. I think this year's Christmas is going to

feel genuinely normal. The pandemic made the Balax a two Christmas and technically last

Christmas. Even though last Christmas was kind of normal and by normal I mean no active

pandemic restrictions. Like at this point I don't have a pandemic state of mind anymore.

And what I mean there is the way that I had to train my brain completely differently

to adjust to a completely different reality. What I found so upsetting about the pandemic

were things like being literally being aware that another human being is within two meters

of me and for that awareness to be informed by a fear of catching a disease and that

completely rewired my brain that rewired my brain to be anti-social. The pandemic was

anti-social. A disease was being spread through human being socializing. So the restrictions

that were put in place they were anti-social and that was one of the saddest parts of

lockdown and the pandemic for me for my brain to wire itself to be anti-social as a rational

and reasonable response to a threat. And last Christmas I do remember walking into a pub,

walking into a packed pub at Christmas time which is that's a joyful thing to do. That's

a wonderful thing to do. Coming out of the cold, going into a pub, there's a fire

on. The place is packed. You speak to a person and their jacket smells like the cold outside.

There's few things more wonderful than a pub at Christmas time. And last Christmas I

remember walking into a pub and noticing and feeling the humidity of everybody's breath.

And that being a frightening thing because for two years before that had been conditioned

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