Between the lines 01

On Wednesday, I had too much time on my hands and no battery power left in my brain, so I decided to count how many messages Fruitloop and I had sent each other before the line went dead for the day.

Eighty!

If I can count correctly. Maths wasn’t one of my strengths at school. It might be less, but not much. We had been planning the banner backgrounds in the newly refurbished Brida Town part of the community. I just wanted an example to get rid of the horrible pictures and bury the old image. In the end, I got 25 and a “NO”, we could not colour cluster them. I am sure Fruitloop had better things to do, but no, she was going to push this through.

She’s the expert, listen to her recommendations.
Sigh.
Democracy is not easy.

It’s been a busy week here. I could hear the sound of the builders ripping away the old Brida and installing the new Brida from miles away. And, life goes on while this is all happening. On Tuesday, I spent a good hour giving Nathalie a tour of the building site. She approved.

Monday evening, we could welcome Sarah, our newest member, taking up residence amongst the debris. Fruitloop had warned her, “We’re making a few changes here.” That’s an understatement if ever I heard one. But the removal van managed to navigate its way through everything, and Sarah soon unpacked her things and said hello.

But this is also a new experience for me. Sarah is a community member who is being supported by Fruitloop. This puts me into the rather unusual position of being an ordinary “Brida Citizen” rather than being the “Brida Mayor”. Interesting perspective. Maybe the most curious line in Sarah’s welcome post is how she describes her job: as a project manager, to ensure that the project  “is on the right track with no huge loss.” What a healthy way to look at project budgets. In my rôle as Mayor, I could probably exercise my authority and ask gazillions of questions. As a citizen, I need to exercise patience. Yes, that needs to be learnt.

Speaking of lines, another beautiful line came from Sylvie on Wednesday. “I’m happy to be in this group because sport is important in my life.” She said it to me first, and it came so naturally, and it served as a confirmation that we could be on the right track with our building site. She told me the story of the community hike here in Cleebourg, and I was hacking away at the “Brida Farm’ aka my “potager” (sounds more elegant than vegetable plot), when I heard this “Ah”. There was Sylvie, all geared up for her 10 km hike and 50m detour to say hello. Nice when virtual reality meets reality.

My role as Mayor – let me digress here. Fruitloop gave me a posting plan for our LInkedIn page. We share the posting times, and it consists of who posts when. “Mayor’ posts then and then, “Fruitloop” posts then and then. And then she gave me a rubber stamp to sign off any of her contributions. Very thoughtful, don’t you think?

Anyway, as Mayor, it is important to keep the citizens informed of what is happening in Brida. Out comes a new tool, “The Brida Roundtable”. Because, like all towns, budgets are non-existent, we have to enlist the help of volunteers and my “Chaos Tamer” was soon churning out ideas at the rate of knots. Producing is one thing, deciding what to offer is a totally different ball game. And our population is only about 15% of where it should be. But as in all these things, experience is the best teacher.

But I live for Thursdays. Of the 168 hours every week, there is one which I particularly look forward to. “The Lunch with Janita & Frank” format and Frutiloop had developed a rather special idea. Cléa, who was given the task of choosing the topics for May, took to it like a duck to water and the Random Object got top billing. It is a testament to the participants that they took some care and thought into selecting their objects and talking about them. And it is a special testament to the Brida Community that a highly respected retired Professor of Strategic Management gate crashed our meeting and participated enthusiastically. I don’t know how old Bruce is, but it shows that age is just a number.

The feedback flowed, Nathalie probably gave us the biggest compliment one could ask for. In the WhatsApp she sent me was written one single word which stood out like a beacon above the whole message: “original”.

She saw it.

Thank you.

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