About F - 2020

F isn't the name in her passport, but it starts the name her family called her until they thought up a name to put on the birth register.  By then it was a bit late to change what they called her.  4 generations have known her by that name.  The first two have all gone now, but the first of another one is on the way.

F was born in Lumsden, New Zealand, and spent the first part of her life in a place officially known as The Wilderness.  It probably isn't wilderness now, but she hasn't been back there for years.  Since 1994, when she went to UK to study a Master's Degree in Maritime Law, she has only been back to New Zealand for family visits.

One grandmother taught her to knit, the other taught her how to crochet and play cribbage.  Her mother taught her how to sew and 'keep the cake tins full'.  Working alongside her Dad she learned what became her life passion - earth; growing vegetables and fruit, flowers, trees and shrubs, the cycles of seasons and lives, and trying to understand the relationships between things that live together (ecosystems).

In recent years (in UK) she learned to sail, moved to Hampshire, worked in London, rode a big motorbike, lived on a boat, adopted a stray cat (Yes, that's me), got an allotment, wrote blogs about baking and growing vegetables, gave up blogging about cakes and gardens (so many others do it so much better and write about it more interestingly)....."Baking By Tigger's Mum" is still out there in blog-land but she closed the email account attached to it and lost access to the blog.  Silly woman.

F does stuff.  She builds things (not well) out of scrap she has collected (my Condo, houses for stray cats that live under our building, tables for the balcony....).  She grows things; even adopting a piece of unused public land in front of our apartments to satisfy her need to be scrabbling about in dirt.  She makes compost - even with only a balcony to do it on.  She knits and sews, and stashes yarn and fabric for knitting and sewing.  She cooks food, makes jam and marmalade and chutneys for England, and likes having 'dinner parties'.  She goes cycling on her days off, is away for 3-4 hours (usually on Sunday mornings here in Greece).  F is also a bit of an eco-warrior: you know the "reduce waste, buy unpackaged food, use your own bags, sort your recycling, pick up rubbish on the street and the beach, mend your clothes, use up all the scraps, don't drive if you can walk or cycle, and make your life your gym" sort of eco-nut.  She makes crazy patchwork quilts out of the fabric scraps.  Occasionally she carves wooden spoons.

She can' speak Greek.

That's a bit of a handicap.  We've been here 18 months and the best she can do is buy stuff at the laiki, answer questions about where she is from, and exchange the most basic pleasantries.  Other old ladies talk to her and don't seem to mind that she doesn't say much back.

F can't play music either.  Around this apartment are two guitars, 2 ukeleles, a tin whistle, a harmonica, and a push button accordion.  She can't play any of them.  She used to sing in a workplace choir (I know because she used to practise her part at the allotment) but she had to sing the tenor part.  She can't hit many notes much higher than a middle C!

She hasn't got a moustache - but she just made one......because her work place was giving out a prize for the best facial hair cultivated while working at home during the COVID-19 lockdown.  F isn't a feminist warrior, but she recently read a book called "INVISIBLE WOMEN" by Caroline Criado Perez, and kept thumping arm of the chair and reading bits out loud to me.  After that, I guess she thought a beard-growing competition was a bit 'non-inclusive'.