frenchbean

WELCOME BACK TO THE FRENCHBEAN PATCH!

Update January 2012

I am not committing a huge amount of time to hootoo at the moment. Living in a seismically-active area kind of focuses your mind on other things. We've had 9,500 shakes since September 4th 2010, including significant ones over magnitude 6.0 in February (which caused major damage and loss of life), June and December. It is a strange time through which to live, but our new version of what is normal works for me. I am committed to staying put - and will even be looking to buy my first house in 20 years later in 2012.

Who is Frenchbean?

I'm an ex-pat Pom living in Canterbury, New Zealand. I left Britain in 1997 and apart from four years back there to find my feet after my husband died, I lived in various bits of Queensland, Australia until 2008 when I crossed The Ditch and started work at one of the local Councils here. New Zealand was never really on my radar (although I holidayed here in '97). I came here for the job, so it is an incredible surprise to find that the South Island knocks the socks off most places I've lived in the last couple of decades. It's been described as Scotland on steroids. And the rest.

I'm an ecologist and planner by profession and advise the Council on natural heritage issues. I'm not the person who plants the trees or counts the birds (sadly that doesn't pay enough) but I'm the one who makes sure that it can happen: I write the policies and plans and sort out funding. And from time to time those practical people invite me to spend a day with them in the field, which makes the desk job worthwhile. I also use my interpersonal and negotiation skills to build partnerships with community groups and ecologists working with other organisations.

The job pays me enough to seriously plan the dream property: a few acres to grow enough to be as self-sufficient as possible; chooks and ducks; black labradors. I am on the way to having enough money to make it reality. In the meantime I dig up as much of my back yard as my landlord will tolerate and am at my most content growing and tending veg and fruit crops, then concocting preserves and wonderful dishes in the kitchen.

The only drawback to being down here in the South Pacific is that all my immediate family are in Britain. I miss them. Thank goodness for emails and telephones.

Frenchbean's Life Rules:

Make the most of every day and don't die saying What If or If Only

Finally: I keep coming back to this poem; which I first discovered in 1980

Thinks
you think
it can't last
it should be over by midnight
or tomorrow lunchtime at the outside
but it goes on
and nobody stops
to handle the brake
it goes on
and very soon you understand
that
perhaps it will last after all
pretty soon you get to saying to yourself
I must do something
about this
so you settle down with a good book
under the arc lamps of reality
you dissect the words
and keep them in vinegar
you take a little love
and bruise it in your palm
you take a little hope
and boil it in your fear
you laugh a little
cry a little
start to blow your nose
and you think
perhaps a storm would turn off the sun
perhaps we'll all learn to work out the facts
so you put out the flags
as you turn out the lights
and much later
about a lifetime
later
one dark night
in the cold of your bed
you sit up with a start
with a voice in your head
and you say to yourself
I must do something
about this.
Miles Gibson