From a Distance

We have been having beautiful weather this weekend and I decided that after weeks of having the physio pummel my Achilles tendon I could trust it enough to go for a walk in the hills. Many of the walking tracks are closed because of the dangers of loose rock after the earthquake. So I headed for the Huntsbury Track, the nearest track to me that is open, probably because it goes along the top of a spur so there is not much chance of anything falling on the track (or the unsuspecting walker).

For some reason I've never walked this track before. I was surprised to find how far up the hill the road took me, so I was already half way to the top when I parked the car. That made it quick and easy to reach the top - probably about half an hour though I wasn't timing - and to catch a view of the harbour on the other side.

From up in the hills, the city spread below looked very normal.

Although when I zoomed in, I could see the Science Alive clock tower sheathed in plywood to stop loose bricks falling - and once I figured where to look, the "leaning tower of Christchurch" - the Hotel Grand Chancellor, which has sunk on one side, and will have to be demolished. Easier said than done, it hasn't been quite decided yet how to achieve this without putting the demolition workers at risk, and without damaging surrounding buildings.

But for the most part, I forgot about the city and enjoyed the walk.

And when I reached the bottom again, I spotted this young fellow in a paddock, who was curious enough to wander over to check me out.

Tuesday Poem: Pause by Ursula Bethell

Pause

When I am very earnestly digging
I lift my head sometimes, and look at the mountains,
And muse upon them, muscles relaxing

I think how freely the wild grasses flower there,
How grandly the storm-shaped trees are massed in their gorges,
And the rain-worn rocks strewn in magnificent heaps,

Pioneer plants on those uplands find their own footings
No vigorous growth, there, is an evil weed:
All weathers are salutary.

It is only a little while since this hillside
Lay untrammelled likewise,
Unceasingly swept by transmarine winds.

In a very little while, it may be,
When our impulsive limbs and our superior skulls
Have to the soil restored several ounces of fertiliser,

The Mother of all will take charge again,
And soon wipe away with her elements
Our small fond human enclosures.

************

Ursula Bethell (1874-1945) was born in England, grew up in New Zealand and spent her early adult life in Britain and Europe before returning to New Zealand. She lived in the Cashmere Hills on the south side of Christchurch. Many of her poems refer to gardens and gardening.

The last stanza of this poem was quoted in an article a couple of weeks ago in our local paper, on the Canterbury landscape in literature, as related to the recent earthquakes. It had me seeking out the full poem, which I found in the Oxford Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English.

For more poems, visit the Tuesday Poem hub, where you will find the Tuesday Poets listed in the sidebar.

Getting to Use My Wind-Up torch

This evening just before six we had a large jolting aftershock and all the lights promptly went out. After the two main quakes I felt as if I was on an adrenalin high. This time it was more like "enough, already". I felt - well, tired.

But at least I knew where to find my dynamo powered hand cranked torch, which I had bought after the February 22nd quake, not expecting to ever have to use it.

And we do have a gas stove top, so I was able to continue with cooking dinner. But eating by candlelight really doesn't feel romantic any more.

Eventually the lights came back on, along with computers and everything else. There are reports of more damage such as burst water mains, a building that is now on a lean, and so on. Some cordons that had been removed have been replaced - the road I drove down yesterday is now closed again.

You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone

As buildings are made safe or demolished, more roads are beginning to be opened, which gives me more possible routes to take to work. This morning I took the opportunity to stop and take some photos on the way, because buildings that are still there today (although damaged) may not be there next week.I stopped at Cranmer Square (above) where I was able to find a parking space - not always easy because of safety fencing, road works etc.

The Cranmer Centre on the south side of Cranmer Square was the original Christchurch Girls' High School, and featured in the film Heavenly Creatures with Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey.

It was being inspected...

A detail of the door.

On the north side of Cranmer Square are the Cranmer Courts - a lovely old stone building, once the Christchurch Normal School, later converted to upmarket apartments.

Corner detail of Cranmer Courts.

A Tale of Two Cities

I was at the physiotherapist yesterday and I commented that I was getting exercise by walking back and forth to the Portaloo. She looked at me in some surprise and said "are they still using them" as if she thought everything would be fixed by now.

In fact it's been estimated it will take two years to fully fix the sewerage system. Half of Christchurch is still using Portaloos and chemical toilets, the other half (north and west) really seems to have no idea of how great the damage to the eastern half is.

At our place the choice is :
1. Use the toilet but flush very sparingly - the trucks come round every few days to suck silt out of the sewer pipes, and there are broken sewers leaking into the river.

2. Chemical toilets - one per household, actually quite clean and hygienic but they are a pain to empty. Since there are five to six people in our household, it fills up a lot faster than, say, at my daughter's where there is one.

3. Get some exercise walking to the nearest portable toilet on the street. Also surprisingly clean and hygienic. Not so much fun at night time, or in heavy rain. After the first earthquake the areas with damaged sewers had portable toilets distributed, one to every couple of households. But now we are pretty much using up the available world supply, and there are a couple per street if you are lucky (none on our street, we have to walk about a block).

I mentioned that the boil water notice was lifted the other day. However it is heavily chlorinated to make it safe. I read some advice on how to remove the chlorine taste: boil it!

Mostly an Earthquake Update

I'd been thinking that I needed something to look forward to - something to do other than going to work and doing house and garden chores at the weekend. So last weekend (8-9 days ago) I had a great time at Joanna's poetry editing masterclass, walking in Hagley Park, and then shopping (although the shopping was a bit frustrating).

The trouble with that is that all the things that have to be done don't go away. And many of them take longer because nothing is in its usual place. The result was that I started the week feeling rather overwhelmed. So this weekend just gone, I went back to pottering round doing chores and errands. (Oh, and the NaPoWriMo plan has gone by the board - much as I am missing the fun, the last thing I need right now is an obligation to write a poem a day. They would probably all be really bad earthquake poems, anyway).

On Saturday I thought I was doing quite well. I actually managed to find some flat sheets packaged separately, not in packs with the fitted ones, so my foot will no longer keep poking through the hole in my sheet. I bought a birthday gift for a family member, and in the process of doing those two errands found a couple of shopping centres which actually had some parking available. In fact the South City centre, which was originally inside the cordon, actually had a nearly empty carpark. Probably because you have to figure out which roads you can take to get to it, and because half the shops there are still closed. But it would be a useful place to go if what you want is in one of the shops that are open.

At the second shopping centre, where I found the sheets and the book, I also walked straight past a bakery and let myself be tempted by a very tasty cinnamon loaf. I went to a garden centre and bought cascading pansies for some hanging basket colour over the winter. I plan to collect rain water for the baskets, we have a total ban on garden watering because of many damaged water pipes. And then I stopped beside the road on the way home to dash into a dairy (local convenience store) for cheap milk, and did something I have never done before - I locked the keys in the car with the engine running! My car beeps at me if I open the door with the keys still in the lock. But it turns out, only if you have turned the engine off. My phone call home was followed by a very long wait beside the car for a rescuer to come with a spare key.

However - the good news is that the boil water notice has been lifted. Since we have been using very little hot water though, I thought there might be some contaminated water still in the hot water tank. So I decided on a very long soak in a hot bath which was both relaxing after the car frustration, and served to flush out the tank. I also put a load on warm wash in the washing machine - I have been doing cold water washes and washing in a basin of water for the last month and a half. I also washed my hair - and forgot to put the conditioner in. So now it is sticking out at rather odd angles. I combed a bit of conditioner through this morning and I am avoiding mirrors until it settles down.

Then - I bucketed the water from the bath out to the garden, because I didn't want to let that much water down the fragile waste water system. I was getting a bit tired of carrying it out the front or back door, so I decided to chuck the last lot out the window of the spa. The spa pool is in a conservatory entered from the bathroom, we haven't used it for a few years as it needs repairs that we haven't got round to.

I opened the door - well, I started to open the door, it opened about an inch before it stuck. It wouldn't open any further, and it wouldn't close again either, it appears that opening it released some pressure and allowed the sides of the door frame to move in. It must have warped in the quake. Well, at least we now know to add it to the list of damage for the insurance inspectors when they come.

So, all in all it was a mixed weekend. Much of the rest of which was spent dozing off in various places. I think I have caught up on some much needed sleep, though.

Back to work today, where things are much more normal than our house - only a few small cracks in the wall linings, and actual flushing toilets. There, my boss and I commiserated over the fact that TV 3 has chosen to show really bad movies on Sunday nights instead of our favourite programmes - The Good Wife, for both of us, and House, for me.

And when I got home, while fetching in a load of nice warm fresh laundry from the line, and planting daffodils, I noticed that our roof didn't have a hole in the edge any more. Our emergency repairs - to make the house weathertight - had been started about two to three weeks ago, and seemingly abandoned. Especially when the workmen came back a week or so later and took away the ladder they had left behind. So it's really good to see it done, even though it is just a small item on the list of all the things that need fixing.

And not so earthquake related - the Tuesday Poets have written a collaborative poem to celebrate the first anniversary of Tuesday Poem - check it out.

Tuesday Poem: Fresh Bread

Tuesday Poem is one year young! On the main hub site, there is a collective poem which is being added to all week by the Tuesday Poets. Watch it as it develops.

Here, I am posting one of my early poems as my contribution for the week. We were asked for something celebratory, and this came to mind as both celebratory and youthful. "Fresh Bread" was first published in the Christchurch Press and in the anthology "Big Sky" edited by James Norcliffe and Bernadette Hall.




Fresh Bread

You walked home from the dairy
the loaf still warm
cradled in your arms
You picked at the kissing crust
couldn't resist

That afternoon
you climbed to the top of the tallest pine
rolled down the hillside till you were so dizzy
the hillside rolled down you
made daisy chains a mile long
stayed out till sunset
gulping blue sky

Ate bread still soft
in rough chunks
thick with butter
not like grandma's sandwiches
cut from yesterday's loaf
in careful thin slices.

copyright Catherine Fitchett



The "kissing crust" may not be familiar to all readers. In the days before sliced bread, our bread came as a white loaf of two halves which could easily be pulled apart. The torn surface where the two halves met is what we called the "kissing crust". For some reason, we always competed to see who would be allowed to have it - fresh, soft and spread with thick chunks of butter.

A "dairy" in New Zealand is a convenience store which sells milk, bread and other items.

April is for Poetry

I am still dithering about whether to take part in NaPoWriMo. I am inclined to do so, but I will be starting late and have to play catch up. This weekend, instead of writing, I am participating in Joanna's poetry editing masterclass which was postponed (with a change of venue) from just after the earthquake.

The workshop is in two sessions and the first was excellent - I have never looked at a single poem quite so intensely before as we did today.

Afterwards, I wanted to walk in Hagley Park and the Botanic Gardens, which have been open to the public again for a couple of weeks at least. I wasn't sure about parking though. The usual carpark at the entrance to the gardens is currently closed. It is being used as a vehicle recovery area for vehicles retrieved from behind the cordons. The car parks on the other side of the gardens have big yellow signs up saying "Hospital Parking" as some of the hospital parking is inaccessible due to proximity to unsafe buildings. However I did find a park and walked through to the gardens and out the other side, where I looked at the Arts Centre, which reportedly has $100 million dollars worth of damage and will take four years to fix. Along the street a bit further, a small crowd was watching the demolition of St Elmo Courts through the security fencing.

I walked down a block or two and took more photos of the city through the fencing, then back to the car.

Then I figured since I wasn't too far from the Westfield Mall, I would go to Farmers Department Store and buy some socks and sheets. There is a hole worn in the sheet on my bed, just about where my foot keeps catching it. The mall was busier than Christmas, and I was about to give up and go home when I spotted a park beside the road a couple of blocks away. So I walked back, and was successful in the sock search, but it turned out that only the downstairs was open - which has pretty much nothing but women's fashion, with a small corner each for men and children. Upstairs where all the linen, homewares, furniture etc are found, has been closed since the earthquake. The city, Eastgate and the Palms stores - which are all nearer to me - are closed completely. That leaves two branches fully open, one on the far west and one on the north of the city.

I wasn't about to travel that far, so I gave up. Then I remembered Briscoes, so I checked in there on the way back to the car. They had 40% and 50% off all their sheets, so I walked past shelves and shelves of sheet sets - one fitted sheet, one flat sheet, two pillowcases all packed together - but couldn't find separate sheets except a very few in really horrible colours.

I seem to have been here before. The lack of sheets packaged separately is probably why my sheets are so thin in the first place. The fitted sheets don't actually fit our bed. Besides, I like to wash the bottom sheet and put the top sheet to the bottom, rather than change both at once, especially now when we are trying hard to minimise anything - like laundry - that produces waste water.

Reports are that it will take six months working 20 hours a day to fix our sewage system. Longer if it is a very wet winter.

But hey! I have new blue socks with cows on them. That's got to be worth a smile.

Flap: the Earthquake Fundraiser

This post will stay at the top of the blog for a few weeks. For the latest update, scroll down.

As a fundraiser for the Canterbury Earthquake Appeal we are selling copies of Flap: the Chookbook 2 - a book of poetry from four talented Canterbury poets: Victoria Broome, Catherine Fitchett, Barbara McCartney and Christina Stachurski.

As Paypal can be a little tricky in New Zealand for overseas payments, we decided that the easiest way to work this would be as follows:
1) E-mail us at poetrychooks at gmail dot com to make sure there are enough copies left.
2) On confirmation of your copy, make a donation to the earthquake appeal -
either the New Zealand government appeal
or the New Zealand Red Cross (be sure to select "2011 earthquake appeal"
3) E-mail us your donation receipt and your name and address details, and we will post your copy.

The minimum donation is $NZ20 (about $US15 at current exchange rates) but of course you may donate as much as you wish.

Various Observations

1) Apparently scientific research shows that novelty and challenge are important factors in happiness. On that basis, Christchurch should be a very happy city at the moment. OK, that observation is somewhat tongue in cheek, but I have to admit that I have rather enjoyed the challenge of finding new routes to work. So far, for my twice a week job in which I have to cross town, I haven't once gone the exact same route either to work or coming home. I'm running out of sensible possibilities though - soon I may have to admit that I'm not likely to find a better route than those I've explored already. Though that is always open to change, as new roadworks crop up, or temporary cordons due to demolitions.

2) To the person who put up the home made sign that I pass on my way, offering $40 chimney sweeping: do you really think anyone in Christchurch has a chimney left to sweep? It's time to find a new trade. I believe plumbers and drain layers are in huge demand.

3) Our emergency repairs started, and then stopped again. The roof is more weather tight than it was, but there's still a gap in the eaves. They left their ladder behind, so either they are coming back, or they think it is weather tight enough for now, and just forgot the ladder.

4) At my other job, we listen to easy listening music on the radio. But then there are the ads. I'm getting really tired of listening to ads for roofing companies etc, wanting earthquake repair business. Has anyone actually had their insurance claim settled yet? Most of us are a long way off being in a position to actually choose repair companies.

5) My replacement at my twice a week job started work yesterday. I have a month to train her before I finish up. Two of us working together should make a big impact on the backlog of work. Suddenly the pressure got a whole lot less.

6) NaPoWriMo starts tomorrow. I still haven't quite decided if I feel up to the challenge of writing a poem a day for April. I haven't written anything except blog posts and the occasional e-mail since February 22nd.

The Little Things...

It seems my emotions are easily joggled up or down at the moment. This is probably quite normal given the circumstances. I arrived home from work to find that the chimney had disappeared from our driveway, and progress was being made on fixing the hole in the roof. This is the three day emergency repairs that we were promised, and it has only been nine days since we were promised them. Which I think is actually pretty good given the number of people who are likely to be on the three day emergency repair list. Also, despite being told that the roof wasn't weathertight, I checked inside the roof space on Sunday when it was raining hard, and there didn't seem to be much getting into the roof at all.

So- repairs were happening, the sun was shining and I was feeling very happy. Until I checked my e-mail and found one reporting a Problem which I now have to sort out (administrative stuff for a volunteer job I do) and I became very grumpy again. There are a few other things I have to do for said administrative job, which were decided on two days before the earthquake, and then they didn't happen due to lack of open banks and my being generally distracted. So I have various errands queued up which rely on finding an open bank, which there isn't anywhere near my home at the moment.

Tomorrow on the way to work I have to go to the physio, collect mail from the out of the way Mail Centre, because the post office box is still cordoned off, find any cheques in said mail and bank them, probably in my lunch break. Hoping that the traffic is not too gridlocked as everything takes a little longer these days.

I did manage to get a few things done this evening, in between relieving my stress by playing way too many computer games. In fact I am getting things done, like mending, that have been waiting in the cupboard for several years. I think this is because there are so many broken things around me (china, the roof, the sewage system, the central city....) that I am desperate to fix something.

Most of the time I am very grateful that we are a lot better off than many others in the city. And in Japan. And then every so often the inconvenience of things gets to me.

I only have to hold on for one more month and then I will have a whole free day a week to do errands at my leisure. It was planned before the earthquake, but it couldn't have come at a better time.

To all those people who comment on news websites that we should just get over the earthquake and move on:
How about we move on to your houses, your jobs, your nice undamaged neighbourhoods?

Tuesday Poem: 9 O'Clock Call to Prayer, by Marissa Johnpillai

Nine o'clock call to prayer

The bell of the cathedral rings & I give thanks
for the generations of historical building societies:
the worshippers
of hewn stone & gables;

it rings and I give thanks for mortar grooves,
for the fashion of gargoyle motifs
I look up;
the bell rings;

I give thanks for steeples,
for hotel doors that open automatically,
for balconies on apartments;
it rings & I give thanks

for restaurants
hiding like mice in alleyways,
for second-hand stores,
for souvenirs, for the neon

of English, Japanese & Korean the bell rings;
I give thanks for window displays, for takeaways, for travelling
coffee mugs, for the pep of people in well-pressed suits receding
joyfully into offices; the bell rings.

I must give thanks for the hands
& knees of workers now dead, those who have knelt
to plant brick upon brick, for their dusty dungarees
the bell rings, and God!

I give thanks for the inventor of dungarees,
the makers of dungarees, the fabric millers, metal forgers
turning out buttons & buckles for dungarees, the patient fingers
of all those who have taught children how to do up the clasps.

The bell rings. I give thanks for this tiny piece of world
in which there is the possibility of rolling
from a sidewalk
into a stream.

I loll on a grass verge. The bell rings.
I give thanks for the tolling, for the falling of heavy sound
like a dome over these city blocks, for the hourly exposure
of its sacred acoustics.

******************
Marissa Johnpillai finds herself in Otautahi, turning over thoughts with a garden fork. She has studied and taught at the Christchurch School for Young Writers, and in 2007 received an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington. With the help of a Creative Communities grant through the Christchurch City Council she published a chapbook of poems Hymns for Her in 2009.

Marissa is both a talented poet and an excellent performer of her work. Her reading of the above poem can be found on her website A Problem like Marissa.

It has been on my mind in the past week. I offer it here, with her permission, both as a reminder of what we still have to be thankful for, and in the hopes that the cathedral bells will be heard ringing again before too long.

Links to further Tuesday poems can be found in the sidebar at the main hub site.

Thematic Photographic: March Madness

I took these photos on Norfolk Island, someone there obviously has a sense of humour (even if their spelling seems a little off, in the second sign). They seemed appropriate for Carmi's theme for the week: March Madness. The rules - if it's taken in March, and if it demonstrates madness, silliness or irreverence, it fits. Anything else I posted today would just be a big whine, so something that brings a smile to my face - or yours - is particularly welcome today.

Earth Hour

Three years ago Christchurch was the first city in New Zealand to officially celebrate Earth Hour. A crowd of 2000 gathered in Cathedral Square to watch the lights go out, while around the city , others were taking part in their own homes.

This year there has been very little mention of Earth Hour in our newspapers, although I believe it is being celebrated elsewhere in New Zealand. There are no lights - and no people - in Cathedral Square - Civil Defence personnel and construction workers aside - and there hasn't been for the last month. Many residents went without all power for a period lasting from a couple of days to two weeks or more. In the south and east of the city, we have an electricity grid that is cobbled together from "extension leads" due to the many breaks in underground cables. Rather than turning lights off, we are being asked to conserve power so that the lights can stay on. Not just for an hour, but on an ongoing basis.

The Earth Hour organisers this year are asking people to go "beyond the hour" and make a more permanent commitment. Perhaps conserving power will cause the citizens of Christchurch to change their habits more permanently. More likely, there will be a rebound in electricity usage once the network is restored, as people indulge in pleasures they have gone without in the meantime.

I'm not convinced that in New Zealand, where we have non-polluting hydro-electric power, greenhouse gas emissions are significantly affected if we turn off a light or two. Of course, some of our power stations are coal-fired, so keeping our consumption down is probably a good thing. However a large part of our emissions come from agriculture. Scientific research into improved farming methods is far more likely to help the planet. And on a personal level, reducing our use of motor vehicles seems to me to be far more important.

Aside from forced savings due to earthquake-hit infrastructure, my biggest change this year will be to leave my job on the other side of town - the one I do two days a week at present. I'll be working more days at my other job, and will be endeavouring to walk to work more often. Not, if I am truthful, to help the planet - though that's a beneficial side effect - but because I enjoy the exercise, and because it's healthy. Ultimately, I think people change their habits more easily if there is some personal side benefit. That's the real challenge - to give people motivation to change their habits, other than the feel-good factor of maybe saving the planet, ten years or twenty years or a hundred years in the future.

Postcards from Norfolk Island

And Another Thing...

One month on...

(References to "today" in this post actually refer to "yesterday". It seems I don't have the automatic post scheduling thing quite sussed out yet).

The more I look at our chimney sitting in the driveway, the more amazed and grateful I am at how far it travelled sideways before landing. By my calculations, about eight feet. It's a potent illustration of just how strong the sideways shaking was - apparently off the usual scale, and several times stronger than in the Japanese earthquake. Of course, in Japan they have other problems. If the chimney hadn't travelled so far sideways, it would have come crashing through the roof into our living room, and done far worse damage.

The sign proclaiming Sydenham is open for business has been taken down. I guess it didn't seem appropriate now that Sydenham is - well - closed again.

I went to the physio today. She is back in her usual clinic at a (sort of) local leisure centre, but the gym and pool are not yet open. Maybe next week. On the other hand, she told me that the city's main Olympic pool may not be able to be rebuilt at all on the same land, as the land is too damaged.

The local library on the other hand is open. In fact it is almost the only library in Christchurch that is. (Hurray for well-designed modern buildings). Which means that the car park is full, and all the streets surrounding it are full of parked cars. I'd walk there, except there is the small matter of the Achilles tendon, which is the reason for being at the physio in the first place. It's finally improving, so I may be able to get to the library in a week or two.

I stopped at a dairy on the way home and looked over the rack of magazines. Oprah has a feature on how not to go shopping when stressed. No problem around here. Finding a shop that is open, driving through heavy traffic taking twice as long as normal, and fighting for a space in the car park or indeed on any street within a few blocks of the mall is all far too much effort to go through just for impulse buying. (Thank goodness there is at least a supermarket open not too far from here).

Gerry Brownlee, our Earthquake Recovery Minister, wants to get the message out that Christchurch is open for business. Yeah right. Perhaps he would like to discuss that over a coffee in the City Mall? (Likely to be cordoned off for a few months to come).

My daughter's blog post on how to survive: I particularly liked the last bit.
The first year: You want normality. This may be in short supply. Salvage what you can and adjust to the rest.

Tuesday Poem: Everyone Sang, by Siegfried Sassoon

I was a bit behind the ball this week, and hadn't organised any permissions for Tuesday Poem. I didn't have one of my own in mind either. That ruled out any living poets, any New Zealand poets who had died less than fifty years ago, any from most of the rest of the English-speaking world who died less than fifty years ago, and pretty much all of the non-English speaking world, since I have yet to find a translation that is not copyright (the translators having died less than seventy years ago).

I had in mind to post Siegfried Sassoon's poem Everyone Sang. Sassoon is one of the poets known for his First World War poems, and I assumed at first that he had died in the war, but I was wrong - he died in 1967.

This particular poem seems in some ways the opposite of a war poem. Instead of the horrors of war, it speaks of heightened joy.

Everyone suddenly burst out singing
And I was filled with such delight...

But I wonder if the intense feeling expressed is just the other side of the coin - if the capacity for intense joy and intense horror might go together. In fact the poem itself mentions that horror/drifted away. And a little research suggests that it was written in celebration of the Armistice.

It seems a good time to read a poem that celebrates the end of horror. (Click the link above to read the full poem). It's long been a favourite of mine, even without knowing its history. Here are the last lines of the poem, almost like a prayer:

and the song was wordless;
and the singing will never be done

More Tuesday Poems at the main hub site.

Transitions

I have been digging around in my photo files for photographs of Christchurch buildings. It looks as if many of these will be gone by the time the cordons round the city are removed. Many, of course, are half gone already. Some are considered important enough to save, but it will take large amounts of money and considerable time.

The modern sculpture with the four rotating red sections still stands. It can be seen in this video flyover of Christchurch after the February 22nd earthquake, with buildings in ruins all around it. The large palm tree still stands, too. I photographed the backpackers' hostel behind it about a month after the September 4th quake, which it survived quite well. It too, is now in ruins. The only evidence I have of that is the video I've linked to above. It is a city in transition, although what it is in transition to is yet to be revealed.

For more transition themed photos visit Carmi here

Finding New Ways

As planned I started the day by doing some gardening. The garden has gone rather wild in the last month while I was distracted, but at least it is something I have some control over. By the end of the weekend I hope to have made a significant difference. Then we had a visitor: the EQC rapid assessment inspector. The EQC (government earthquake insurance commission) has learnt from the September quake and they have a much more efficient way of going about things this time. Every house in the Christchurch metropolitan area, as well as some outlying areas, is to be visited over the next two months, starting with the worst affected areas. As it is only a week and a half to two weeks into the process, our area must be quite high on the list.

It is a sort of "triage" - properties are sorted into categories, with a full inspection to be done later. But our visitor seemed to have a very fast and accurate eye for damage - for instance, standing at the door he noticed that our dining room floor was not quite level which we hadn't spotted. He asked if we had a marble, and P found a ball bearing which he placed on the floor, whereupon it rolled quite merrily to the other side of the room. What with the unlevel floor, the fact that we have a door that won't shut and another that won't open (fortunately there are two entrances into that room, especially since it is the toilet!), the chimney that fell down, damaging the eaves, and some widening cracks, he said that he would err on the side of caution and put us into the "severe structural damage" category - a bit higher than I had expected. He did hasten to assure us that the house is quite safe to live in. This should mean a visit for a full assessment within four months, however he then inspected the hole where the chimney fell and pronounced the house not fully weathertight - though temporary repairs had been done on the day - so we have been marked down for emergency repairs with a visit within three days. I assume that will take care of the hole in the roof only, and then we will go back on the four months list.

Later I went for a drive. Before the quake I had signed up for Joanna's poetry editing class. It has been rescheduled and as the original venue is not available, it will be held in a private home. The direct route though, goes right through the red zone. So I thought I would check out some roads while there wasn't pressure on to get there in time. This route skirts the east and north of the red zone. It is mostly OK except for the bridge:

What was normally four lanes - two each way - has become two. It will be fine for access to the weekend workshop, however my idea that it might be a more direct route to work may not be such a good one. I can imagine it getting gridlocked in rush hour (just the same as all the other roads that are still open).

I was very happy to spot this sign on a tree:

I've been to a poetry book launch at the Beat Street Cafe, a lovely friendly little cafe right on the edge of the red zone. It is really good to see things opening again.

Dinner with the family - almost like a normal Saturday night, except that I took my daughter home by car as the buses are unreliable. She says they are OK for coming from her house to ours, as it is at the beginning of the route where they are still running to timetable. Going the other way, she is at the end of the route and it is anybody's guess when the bus will arrive.

The Memorial Service

As I mentioned yesterday, today was a public holiday in Christchurch and a large memorial service was held in Hagley Park. I thought about it, and I didn't go. Suggested transport was bike, walk or bus. My strained Achilles tendon wasn't going to permit either of the first two, and it looked as if the buses would be terribly crowded, as would the event, with insufficient portable toilets for the large crowd. As it turned out, it seems to have been OK. Two of my daughters were there, the other had gone to Wellington for a friend's birthday. Probably because quite a few others stayed away for the same reasons - reports are that there were about 30,000 there or 1 in 10 residents. I did however watch some of the video this evening - the fourteen minute montage of the damage in the city, and a shorter piece showing the clean up afterwards.

There was a reason why the mayor Bob Parker and the TV crews were always shown at the same damaged corner in the September quake. Much of the city wasn't so badly damaged. This time it was different. None of us have been in the central city yet (apart from the rescue crews, the Prime Minister and Prince William), but the video shows street after street with extensive damage. It is rather chilling.

What I did do in the end was go to work. I didn't have to, however the disruption of painters at the office, followed by the quake, followed by two weeks' leave which I had arranged long since meant that I had almost a month's worth of work piled on my desk. I know from experience that this makes me stressed out. And the last thing the city needs at the moment is more stressed people. The sooner I catch up, the sooner I can relax.

Besides, work is about the only thing that it makes sense to do at the moment. In the evenings I find myself feeling a little lost. After cooking and cleaning, that is.

Two whole free days coming up and I have to figure out what to do with it when much of the city is closed. The garden needs a clean-up, and there are other possibilities - I'm thinking of doing a little exploring and trying to find out exactly what is still open - libraries, farmers' markets, and the like. I also need to find more ways to get around the city, as I have some appointments coming up for which the limited routes I have been using won't do.