Getting Up Again

Today this arrived in the post. 

I can't quite believe I got to the end of this course and am now entitled to put the letters Dip Edit after my name. A one year course of study dragged out into three, and I am extremely grateful for the patience and understanding of the staff at the New Zealand Institute of Business Studies. I am now a trained proofreader happy to accept work and with the added advantage that, from New Zealand, I can work through the Northern Hemisphere night to have copy ready for your morning. 

Certainly my mail this morning was the silver lining to the earthquake state our country has returned to. While I was planning this post around my new bookshelves I had thought of calling it Earthquake Recovery on account of the time it has taken me to start re-establishing order in my living spaces. That was before the latest earthquakes. Surprisingly none of these books fell and I suffered no breakages. It does seem that the deep piles this house stand on, and the silty clay takes a lot of the shock, though experiencing that midnight quake two nights ago was easily as shocking to me as the Canterbury earthquakes of six years ago. I lay tucked down beside my bed, for between one and a half and two minutes while the house shook violently but evenly, with a noticeable clonking sound. That sound continued after the shaking and I think that it was a combination of the curved roofing iron over the veranda buckling, and the heavy weights inside the sash windows swinging.

Bryony had been to stay over the weekend and got on with sorting and shelving books that had been out of sight and out of mind for far too long.  There's not enough room for them all and I have an embarrassment of riches in the gardening and plant lore department. I have decided that the copper sheathed corner wot-not is to be my sorting shelf for china sales, rather than having them cluttering any available surface.

Once again I am aware of the positive fatalism that I felt after the February 2011 earthquake. Death and destruction hover, and as I lay through the shaking the other night, I was quite prepared for my house to collapse around me. The thought of losing precious 'stuff' including my beautiful home seems quite acceptable now. I know the costs to mental health; I know that I can start a again; I know that I can recover.