Carina sprouted from an undernourished pot plant in an abandoned allotment on 16th May 1846, and was found wandering from shed to shed talking to discarded potatoes, carrots and the occasional bean she often mistook for a relative. Her penchant for talking and making sense to other vegetables and making up stories about fairy-folk living in and around the babbling brook, brought her to the attention of an elderly publisher living nearby who tended a patch of wild strawberries each summer. Mr. Skirtle found Carina playfully spitting out bits of strawberry and dancing to her own heart beat, singing about sprouts past and present and making up stories about what she thought she saw each night when she went to sleep, but could still see when she woke up in the morning. Mr Skirtle wrote down Carina’s mutterings, published them in a series of books called ‘Whatever’s The Matter With Carina Dunne’ and the rest, we are told with a grimace, is history. Carina is now living somewhere in Dublin, happily married with lively sprouts of her own, and can easily be located by following the smell of burnt dinners, muffled giggles and the distinct smell of oranges – which not even Carina can explain.

Biography by Rob Daniel