Who wants to lose?

Port Hills overlooking Lyttelton Harbour

We left Christchurch at the end of last year, over two years after the quakes first started. People still asked us if we left because of the quakes. The answer primarily was no, but there was a "but". We wouldn't have been in the same work situation, if it hadn't been for the quakes. We possibly wouldn't have made the same decision if we hadn't lived through such a perspective changing event. The ongoing fighting, frustrations and consequences of the quakes are tough to live with as a backdrop to your everyday life, if you have the option of leaving most of them behind.

What is to become of Christchurch? - This opinion piece by James Dann in the NZ Herald about the green frame and property prices, certainly received a lot of comments. I read the piece and many of the comments. The more I think about it the more I wonder about winning and losing.

Who decides who wins, or possibly more accurately who doesn't lose, out of the quakes?

The names James Dann mentions, are clearly people who have "won" before (a lot) in the property game of the city. Why did we expect anything different than for them to be the winners again? This is the system we have been running with for quite some time now.

The residential red zone has been frequently talked about as a situation of winners and losers. Yet again  it feels there is anger that the same people who always lose, have lost again. Why are we so surprised? Before the quakes when it wasn't quite so blatant, it rarely got a mention.

Is the anger because now it is out in the open rather than behind closed doors or because for once we all have to face the reality of what our society values and how it actually works?

What surprised me most when last year I had an opportunity to catch a glimpse into the power structures at work in the city, is how we are all so basically the same. We all want to win more than we lose or to not let the bad guys, (whomever they are in our perspective), win. 

As a parent I spend so much time - and it feels most other parents do too - trying to teach kindness, sharing nicely and treating others as you want to be treated. And yet as adults while we dress it up in different words or reasoning we don't do the very things we tell the newbies of our society, the kids, to do.

Some of the things I love about Christchurch's recovery are Gap Filler and Life in Vacant Spaces and their ability to subvert the system. They don't seem to be playing at winning and losing but at fostering community. 

From experience trying to build community is really hard. Christchurch did it brilliantly just after the quakes. I have not heard a single person say that part of the quake experience was a bad thing they wished hadn't happened. As humans we seem to like it more than the winning/losing thing. But Christchurch showed we can only do it en masse for a limited time and when other options are scarce.

We are just rubbish at it, possibly, because constantly we have to fight our urge either to be a winner or to take the winners down, rather than concentrating on building the community up whatever the cost to us. 

One other thing how come a 'win-win' seems something most people like, while the idea - everybody wins - is groan inducing?

If all the inspirational quotes frequently shared on facebook seem to say we can only change ourselves and not others - am even I prepared to not win? 

Let me just think about an answer to that question for a minute.....

Inspirational TEDxEQCHCH

When most of the central city I have grown up in is now empty space, it is easy to spend too many hours depressed, angry and upset. It is even harder when future plans come out and it is difficult to know if they are good or whether money and certain sectors of society are having an undue influence.
I arrived at TEDxEQCHCH, almost two years after the quakes started, weary and wanting inspiration. I went to TEDxEQCHCH last year and came away inspired. There were many exciting plans and ideas, mostly from the overseas speakers. But I did leave with a big question as to what could I do and what influence did a mere resident had?
At the start of this year's TEDx I thought it wasn't going to be as good as last year's. But then the day gained momentum. Ryan Reynold's talk received a standing ovation and it was inspiring. I loved his idea of not worrying about the long term plans but there was opportunity right now to try things in this city. He pulled my fears of the future of this city back to look at the great activities going on now. We didn't have to wait for a good city to be rebuilt, we could be part of making that good city now. He showed, with a positive outlook on regulations, there was a world of opportunity in this city.
Jane Henley's talk was also inspirational about people getting together and collaborating to achieve local projects. It all seemed quite possible to make a difference.
Abbas Nazari received a standing ovation for his moving story of shifting to New Zealand as a refugee. He showed just what faith and hope could achieve.
I was intrigued by Jamie Fitzgerald's talk conclusion. It was different to what he had said earlier. The bit I liked the most was his comment during a difficult trans-Atlantic rowing race their manager said whatever conversations or process they were using to make decisions, it was the right one  and to keep doing it. He also made a good point that the times you move the least can be the most crucial and to not give up. I am a person who always wants to be moving forward achieving something and this was a thought I will store away.
Ernesto Sirolli had no slides and held the audience just with his talk. He showed just how important listening can be. He also pointed out we had given standing ovations to the locals. It was a reassuring thought that we had the good people here.
I purposely spent most of my day with people new to Christchurch since the quakes. It was refreshing to listen to a perspective that was not carrying around the sadness of everything lost or the underlying stress of living through all the aftershocks. They were looking at what is still here and what can be done.
My take home messages from the day were; planning and strategies are over rated, know what you are aiming at and do everything to get there and collaboration and co-operation are the way of the future. It should an interesting future, if we are prepared to get involved or support others doing the fun things.
As a first step we went on Sunday to help artist, Kiel Johnson build his cardboard city.

It was fun despite my limited artistic abilities with cardboard.
Unfortunately the week following TEDxEQCHCH, other consequences of the earthquakes hit us again.
That is Christchurch for you, one day on the up, next day heading back down.
The talks from this year's TEDxEQCHCH should be up here soon. Alexandros Washburn and Ian Taylors are also worth a watch.

20 months later the house is being fixed

Shift in paint on the floor from when the
house was built shows the floor movement
on the other side of the crack

The message on my phone, said call home urgently. I rang Karl and he said he had finally found out at 1pm, the date we needed to be out of house for repairs to start - the movers were to come the next morning at 8am.
To rewind, the date we had initially been told was 2 April so we had packed up most things, (with the help of my fabulous in laws) and had been living for the last two and half weeks trying not to reopen already packed boxes. The standard answer when going to do anything was a frustrating, "it's been packed."
Now it was all on. With the help of Sam we finished packing everything up and surprisingly were ready for the next morning. I went off to work awaiting a text to tell me where to bike home to in the evening.
Yet again wonderful friends came to our aid and looked after the kids so Karl could help the movers. The earthquakes have definitely showed me we can't do this living thing alone, we need each other. Without help from family and friends, we would not have even been ready.
That night we finally settled in a motel for four nights. The kids had gone a bit crazy, with the uncertainty of it all. They went north to Nelson.
The builder began working on the house.
I thought it would be like being on holiday, but it was not. We were trying to live our normal lives and then there was a whole extra level of detail going on regarding our house, finding accommodation and adjusting to living somewhere different.
When EQC came after September and again after February they did all the assessment, we showed them things we knew were caused by the quakes and they found other damage. Then that report went onto Fletchers. Now they had started fixing things, EQC seemed to want to change things or at least seemed to be trying to make us feel guilty for the repairs. Because our slab was cracked right across the width of the house - through the toilet and bathroom, hall and bedroom - it was decided to pull up the carpets to see what was happening. You could see where the floor had moved one way, while the wall had remained. We knew when the carpet was pulled up either it would be good news and there would no more cracks or there might be more, but we were happy it was coming up so that could be checked. Thankfully there were no further cracks but then EQC questioned why it had been done. We were already tired, and trying to get on with work and life, it seemed like another attack from the quakes. My brain felt overloaded with everything
I knew at the end our house would be repaired and lovely. We were taking the opportunity to pay extra to get work done, we had been about to do before the February quake hit.  We had been waiting for EQC to repair the quake damage before we could do what we wanted.

We have now been out for  a week and are currently staying at the neighbour's. Today we organised motel accommodation for when the kids return because it would be too many to stay here. We finally have all the nights we are out of the house accounted for. This was the annoying thing about the dates being moved, we couldn't book accommodation in advance as we had initially planned.
Two years ago if you had asked what I thought about sending my daughter to Nelson during school term time for a week and half, I would have wondered why and how much she would miss her friends, but it was the best thing to do. They have had a chance for a break from the craziness we are living through.
When looking for accommodation, one motel asked us who we were insured with. They smiled and said we would be fine and would be looked after by our insurance company, it would appear others are not being so helpful. The motel guy said the bigger units were in constant use by families moving out for house repairs.
There are so many houses to be repaired and it seems despite agreeing to work EQC are prepared to keep shifting what they believe needs doing. It is hard when you are tired and just wanting to get back into your house. For those further down the track, I am guessing the fighting will have to be more vigorous.
After the house, there is still the driveway, that was looking good to get repaired, right up until the December 23 quakes and then it all went quiet from the insurance company.
It is a long journey for this city.

Christchurch - remember that story?

Earthquakes, aftershocks, quakes, shakes - so many and so many ways they have affected this city.
Recently two visitors from out of town have mentioned the hope they noticed. Before, they say, this city was patching things up, making temporary solutions. Now, it feels big plans are happening, more permanent decisions are being made for a city on the rise again.
I know that hopeful feeling but living here, it alternates with a feeling of utter despair - which only makes me wonder, if I feel that way, how much worse must it be for people in the red zone areas.
There are days when I am just tired of the rubbish traffic, tired of not knowing where shops are now, compared to where they used to be, tired of having to pack up the house, tired of endless headlines of parts of my city beyond repair and being pulled down and tired of not knowing if there is another big shake coming or if December was it.
There are so many contrasts. I work at two places. One that is still in its usual premises, suffered minor damage but it is business as usual - albeit with a more intentional focus because of consequences of the quakes. The other is displaced from the red zone. Desks are tables, plastic bins are filing cabinets and everyone is doing their best to work  in far less than normal conditions. I said to a visitor from out of town, we could meet in the portacom and they thought it a weird thing to say. Portacoms and shipping containers are so normal now, I hadn't even thought about what I had said.
I think I know all the stories of those around me from that fateful February day but then someone tells theirs and I am undone.

Sunday Again

This morning, while standing in church, I was suddenly remembering a year ago.
A year ago on this Sunday it was a sunny day in Nelson.  I am a planner and that week I had packed for Nelson at 3am - pretty useless packing job it was too and we had left Christchurch that morning with no real plans of what would happen after that.
We had gone to church that Sunday at my late Grandparents old church. It turned out quite a few people from my past go there now and it was like being surrounded by family but it was also foreign. They acknowledged what had happened that week in Christchurch and then moved on with their service. It felt so far removed from the turmoil of feelings inside me.
Every time someone had opened the doors at the back, the rattle had reminded me of an aftershock and my heart had leapt. We were in the process of finalising our decision to shut our relatively new retail business so it could become an online only shop for awhile, we had already enrolled Lucy in the local primary school in Nelson and were planning to head back to Christchurch the next day leaving our children behind in the safety of Nelson and their Grandparents, the first time we had left three year old Tristan without us for longer than overnight. At that stage we knew our home still didn't have water or power.
This year it is so different. Tomorrow is also a new beginning as we swap over, Karl taking over the online business to build it up further and caring for the kids during the day and I am off to work. This time we planned the change.
We needed a new change, we've been living a temporary, dealing with things way of life since last year. Putting up with decisions made in haste or changed because of Feb 22. Tomorrow it is our change.
The quake backdrop will still be there though, the first task for Karl is to pack up everything ready for moving out in just over a month to move out so the house can be repaired.

A year on but still in it

A sand sculpture we made on 18 Feb
2011, when we had a different 2011
planned to the one that it became
on Feb 22 2011 at 12:51

It is hard to believe it is twelve months since the fatal quake hit Christchurch. The big quakes of September, June and December were nothing like February.
Its ramifications haven't gone away. We may have got through the first lot of temporary measures but for things like Lucy's school displaced from the city centre, there are the ongoing decisions of what the future might look like. So many times today, I realised things were different whether it was what I do with my day or driving down a road, now changed daily with traffic cones so one way is always two lanes, or driving past buildings that are gone. All of these little things I don't notice anymore but they are all due to February 22 2011.
The weather this afternoon was eerily like last year. When I think of the big September quake, I think of a loud mixture of noise that reminds me of Dr Who's TARDIS on the move. When I think of February I think of incessantly sounding alarms and that night of the silence between aftershocks - no power, no buses and little traffic on the road and the numbness of knowing people were dead.
I am still buoyed by the awesomeness people showed in those early days. The vast majority helped each other, whether we knew each other or not. I will never forget that. It took away my often cynical view of our city - when we needed each other, we really stepped up in a multitude of small ways.
I briefly saw a snippet of one of the memorial services on the television this morning and the sign guy was signing and it made me smile, how he became an instant hit. Flowers in the traffic cones - a little idea that spread city wide - have made me smile all day.
It is hard to know whether good or bad decisions are being made here about demolitions or cordons or city planning but it is a city where we all have to live intentionally. Small businesses have been hit so hard in the last year and without support, could easily disappear. Many other organisations and schools that have suffered are also working hard to keep moving forward. It really is a place that what we individuals choose, does make a difference to what will be here in the future. I think that is why I liked the flowers in the cones, in many small ways, we can decide what the city will look like.

Behaviours picked up from a year of aftershocks

Building being rebuilt in Lyttelton

Almost 12 months since February 22nd, 18 months since Sept 4th and I hate having the kitchen cupboards open, especially the one with all the plates and glasses in. It is a tall cupboard and the one we put strong magnets on, after the June quakes, to help keep it shut. The shelves have never fallen in our cupboards and nothing has broken. But I hate having them open, in case a quake hits. It will seem careless, if we lose stuff now, having gone through this far and lost so few breakable items. Doing the dishes is always a little stressful with them open to put everything away.
The only time stuff fell out of the pantry was when it was open during quite a big aftershock, I think in October or November 2010. If I sit down to dinner and realise the cupboards or pantry are open, I pop up to shut them - because you never know. It seems stupid, paranoid and ridiculous. But it is, I think, about gaining control over the uncontrollable and I don't feel so silly now because I found out other people have their rituals too. Recently someone admitted that every time they empty the kettle, they refill it and boil it. They know it is unnecessary but they like having a kettle full of water.... just in case.
I always have the ipod under the pillow and listen to podcasts to go to sleep. The first night I did that was Feb 22 - when I listened pretty much all night since sleep was hard to come by. Now I feel a bit exposed without it. I need it to go to sleep, it means I am thinking about other things - comedy from the UK or funny life stories from people in the USA.
There was a 4.0 aftershock quake the other night at around 10pm Lucy woke up really crying, not knowing why she was so upset. It took quite awhile to calm her down. I thought we would all be emotionally fine by now. We thought our kids were coping well but I am not sure anymore what is going on in their heads, but we keeping living and laughing.
We were sitting on the couches a few days ago when there was a long rumble.  We've had aftershocks with no shake and I thought it was one of those and then it started to shake. It did scare me because I thought if the rumble was that long what will the shake be like? But then it stopped, after it shook the TV. Lucy said yesterday, "You know those aftershocks that go like this," and made a particular noise to try to describe the shaking - even a six year old is distinguishing differences between them.
Anyway, life for the most part is so normal for us compared to other people living in this same city.

February Again

Yep, that shop looks pretty closed to me.

It is an odd feeling coming to February again. February has been such a loaded word for twelve months.
I thought as 2012 was a new year we could leave quake stuff behind, which I could while on holiday but not once all the normal yearly things kicked in. Lucy is back at school and it is still at its temporary site and while this suits us very well, in the future decisions will need to be made about its permanent site and where that is and what it looks like.
I am going to start working and the jobs I am doing have really come about because of the quakes.
Our house is still to be fixed. I am starting to come to grips with how much everything has really changed in this city.
It is perhaps with a little trepidation that I take part in all the annual beginning of the year things that I did last year. I realise how little of the year we had before it was turned upside down. I remember the things I was thinking at this time last year, that became irrelevant in a few short weeks.
It is in doing these things again, that I see how crazy last year was. The things that just became normal and I didn't question, I am starting to see were not normal before February at all - like helping strangers and accepting help from strangers or showering at other people's houses.
There is so much still to be done in this city and sometimes it feels so much easier just to leave it all behind but I also know the events of the past year are stuck inside me too.
And we still have the CBD red zone cordon with us - see below for city comparisons and we are twelve months on now.

Christchurch's current CBD red zone no go area cordon

Wellington if the cordon was there

Auckland if the cordon was there

Lego man vs the weeble wobble - Christchurch aftershock headlines vs real life

We went away for a week in early January. I was checking the Stuff website most days first thing in the morning, to see if Christchurch was okay. I just wanted to know it was still there.
While we were away there were headlines about Christchurch suffering more shakes. There were about three 4.8s, a couple of 5s, a 5.1 and a 5.5 as well as all the usual littlies that you don't really feel. The 5.5, surely would mean the earthquake art had rearranged itself - we had set it up again after the larger shocks on 23rd December. I wondered what else had fallen over.
We got home and very few things had fallen. Even the little canvas picture that usually falls off in anything over a five was still sitting merrily on its little shelf.
This was the earthquake art.

Before we went on holiday

After all the shakes while we
were away

Yes, that was all, one little lego guy took a tumble across the desk. The weeble wobble was still sitting merrily on its rickety tower.
That is the weird thing with news articles, of course they have to tell the worst but it doesn't really tell you what it is like, which you think it should.
These current aftershocks were now out further east. We were the furtherest we had ever been from all the shaking. So at our place, it would appear things were pretty good. I didn't realise until this whole sequence started back in Sept 2010, how unique is everyone's perspective, even when a natural disaster hits an area. The shakes feel different everywhere. I have heard quite afew people be reassured once they have felt a shake in a new location - it gives a reference point to know how that building behaves. It helps you know how to react.
So the short articles of widely felt aftershocks told me very little about my house and if you ask someone who is there, the reply is standard and it is one, I say all the time too. "It's fine. They are no big deal." But I guess if you are the lego man - it does feel quite a big deal.

A New Year

Like so many in Christchurch my thoughts at this New Year are different from the start of 2011. My friend sums it up so well on her blog here.
Last year we were very glad to see the end of 2010. With its September quake and for us other stresses and strains, we couldn't imagine a tougher year. We were so keen for 2011 to start.
2011 made 2010 seem like the appetiser, (I can only hope that means 2012 is the dessert).
Everyone is at different spots in their quake experience. Some of my friends have moved house and moved on. They have already started new lives, post quakes. The start of our 2012 looks like it is going to be messy with floor coverings all being lifted to check the extent of our damage and moving out a few months later to fix everything once a complete picture of the damage has been worked out.
All this makes me feel a little tired before we have even started.
And the quakes seem to be continuing. I think they are now saying we are having the pleasure of a 1 in 10,000 year event. Lucky us!
But despite that, we went camping after Christmas and it was stunning. We had the area mostly to ourselves. We went to sleep and woke up to bird calls. We spent a morning on a beach with only a seal for company and the odd kayaker and boatie. I felt lucky to live on these shaky islands because regardless of natural disasters, they are hard to beat.
Our malls and our airport may have shut temporarily on the 23 December but it was temporary and it was proactive. The buildings weren't falling down, they were shut for them to be checked carefully by engineers and then reopened if safe. The majority of the houses keep standing through all the thousands of shakes.
There are some things that are harder to control - like the body. I am still reacting to rumbling noises, even if not in Canterbury, before my brain can catch up and tell my body it is okay and there is no need to be on edge. This past year has definitely given me a better understanding of my body and other people.
The story in this radiolab podcast at 9 minutes 20, by Steven Johnson explains why my body reacts as it does to sounds that might be quakes. I understood this podcast because I feel this all the time at the moment.
There was another story in a podcast from the Moth in which Elif Shafak describes the response of her neighbours after they had a big quake in Turkey. I was listening to this and I knew the ending before she gave it. I knew how humans acted after such events.
It may have been a really crappy year but I learnt a lot. I don't know what will happen in 2012 but I think we are ready to roll with whatever is thrown at us and support each other.
It seems strange to have found some sort of inner peace in the most disturbing of years.

Here we go again.... my, my

So two days after I wrote "It does seem the aftershocks have gone away", we have another day of sizable shakes. 

Our only aftershock casualty today - a little crystal tree
fell over and lost all it's crystals. (a different story for those
on the other side of the city)

We'd not long been home from Tristan's preschool break up. I was sitting having a relax on the couch when the rumble and the shaking started. We waited to see what would happen. It kept building in strength and I got up, wondering what the best thing to do was - hold the pantry and cupboards shut or find the kids who were outside, so safe but possibly scared?
I ran down the hall as it was still shaking and finally located Lucy outside. She was really scared. She said she was worried our house would fall on her, like the broken houses on the other side of town. 
The aftershocks kept coming. We had one that even while it was shaking had extra little judders within it. I never knew there could be such a range of aftershocks until the past twelve months.
We filled pots with water just in case we lost it but it kept flowing.
I was supposed to be meeting up with friends for coffee. We didn't know how big the aftershock was but there was very little damage at our house so figured we would go anyway. I had decided to bike, I thought it would make finding a park easier but it turned out parking wasn't the problem. It was the traffic. Everyone was on the roads trying to get home. All the people I biked past were looking at cellphones or talking on them. 
The cafe was open and now mostly empty. We chose a table near the door and that was big enough for us to fit under should another one come. We did this half joking but then the aftershocks kept coming and another big one hit - 6.0. We didn't leave but finished our drinks and our conversation - once we were back sitting on our chairs.
When I got home I found the 6.0 had knocked over my precarious stack of board games in the cupboard, unfortunately I had been stacking all the Christmas presents on top the games too. Now they were all jammed between the wardrobe door and games. I carefully rescued them reattaching the gift cards - hopefully to right gifts.
I was supposed to be going out for tea. I began to wonder if it would still be on, now I knew the malls had shut and there was liquefaction and power issues over the other side of town.
We did go out for dinner but not everyone could come. The people in the damaged suburbs stayed away. On these days it really feels like a city split in half. Some keep suffering and the rest of us are okay.
As I drove home at 9pm - two days out from Christmas - past the mall carpark that was deserted because the mall had shut, past restaurants that should have been full but were shut. Hardly anyone was around. 
I felt so sorry for the business owners. It has been one hard year. But we keep going - some day, one day the shakes must stop. 

Can we go a day without being reminded?

It's nearly Christmas! Tomorrow is the 22nd - ten months on from February 22nd.
If you ask a Christchurch person about aftershocks, we will tell you, we haven't felt any in ages. The point we might not make is that ages is probably different for you, than for us. We had a 5.5 only two months ago, but that is ages for the new Christchurch post Sept 4th 2010. It does seem the aftershocks have gone away. There is the odd teeny one, but they don't count.
The question we've been asking ourselves is can we go a day without being reminded about the quakes?
If it is a work day for Karl, then that is pretty hard because his workplace has still got fenced off areas where buildings are being repaired and some buildings have gone altogether. If it is a school day we can't help but notice that we are driving in the opposite direction to get Lucy to her school, rather than heading into the city.
At home life is normal because we have got used to living with taped up cracks in the floor and then sometimes I remember that we didn't used to live with things like that.
Thankfully our water is finally back to being delicious, Christchurch water so we don't need to use the filter jug anymore to get rid of the chlorine taste. Our tasty tap water has always been one of the things I loved about Christchurch and when it was gone, it was depressing.
A couple of days ago I went to get some things and I thought I knew where the shop was. But, of course, this is post quake Christchurch so when I got there, it wasn't there anymore. Fortunately because I live on the western side, another shop has ended up moving to our side of town and I could get what I was after.
But today we were driving over the other side of town and went passed a house that looked like it had been picked up and dumped off its piles. It still looked like a lovely house but it was on a huge angle. The yard was all overgrown. I couldn't help but think about the people who had lived here before. It looked like it used to be a well kept house. I wondered where they are this Christmas.
There are many things to be thankful for this Christmas but never before has it been the simple things of everyone in the family making it through to the end of the year and still having a house that keeps us warm and dry and has power and tasty water.
The one thing I will miss from 2011 was being helped and helping strangers. It was surprisingly fulfilling for differences to be cast aside, everyone being on the level and us all just being humans helping each other get through.

Red Zone Bus Tour - Beautiful Christchurch

I went on the Red Zone Bus Tour on Sunday. We had an awesome Red Cross lady, Audrey who was funny and made the whole trip very pleasant. I didn't know how I would react. But it turned out different to what I thought. It reminded me of when a German guy was at our place a few months ago and told us how he had been in NZ for some months on a working visa but then had a lot of his personal things stolen from his car and he stopped enjoying NZ, decided perhaps it was time to cut his trip short and go home. He then came to Christchurch and liked it so much he decided to stay and work. We made cynical comments about it not being a city but nice suburbs and he said no. He loved Hagley Park. He saw a busker playing "Amazing Grace" opposite the fenced off Arts Centre and he said it was really beautiful and decided to stay.
That is what I found on the red zone bus tour, the Christchurch I knew so well has gone, never to come back but a new city is here and it has beauty and interesting things of its own, if I care to take it as it is.

You can buy in the soon to be heart of a new city
 - even promises no camping will be required this time!

Nature has a go at its own mosaic on the footpath

The fan was swinging gently in the breeze

Only two panes smashed,
the rest look perfect

Newly exposed wall old wall

The carpark with the bit of wood on it was the carpark
I parked in 2 Tuesday's earlier, right at the front of CTV
to talk to people no longer here

I think this could be quite a popular bit
 in the new city - it looks pretty

Never has this sign been more truly obeyed,
the building in front has been demolished

St John's Latimer Square is gone but a lovely tree is still there

Roses keep flowering merrily

Would these wild flowers been allowed
to flourish pre Feb 22

Carnivores is gone :(

Other than the wonky light pole, this looks lovely,
a view blocked by buildings before

Victoria Square - overgrown but still pretty - lanterns from Feb

Needs a bit of weeding but still looks like a city :)

Looking like a little survivor, this shop is
red stickered but still there so far

If the quake had happened 20 mins later this is
where Tristan & Karl would have been heading up in the car

Red Heart still gently swinging

Backs of buildings - lovely red brick

Palm Tree still looking all good.

Out in the 'burbs

I hang around in the western side of Christchurch. All the things we do are either in the south west or the north west. We have got quite used to life here. The roads in some places are a bit bumpier than previously - it is harder to balance a plate of uncovered biscuits on your knee, over to someone's house. Houses are getting hazard management signs stuck to their fences as repairs get underway. Most of the commercial buildings that fell down have been removed. We are watching new ones go up and refurbishments happen for businesses from the inner city starting up in new premises.
We have also been watching the house down the road get lifted and repiled. It is into its fourth week of repairs but it is now back down on its foundations. It is all very much in recovery, getting on with life and looking to the future.
A few weeks ago for the fireworks we went over to Brighton. I hadn't been near there since February. We parked in a street which was now in the residential red zone. The grass was up to the windows of the houses. There was still dry, fine, liquefacton silt through the long grass on the side of the road. The street was really an unsealed road. We cross the bridge which has holes and broken concrete at each end, where the bridge had rammed into the banks in the shaking. Two plastic pipes snaked their way over the bridge that we climbed over several times in our crossing. Quite a few businesses were still stickered shut.
Last week I had to go up the back of Sumner. Once in Sumner, we drove up a narrow corridor of two storey shipping containers, that protected the road from the cliff and then we had to detour off as the road was closed. We were going up on the hill and we walked the last bit because again there were containers that made it too narrow to drive through. The Evans Pass road over the hill was still shut. A sewer pumping truck was at work down on the flat. It was just a different world. Designer houses were red stickered. Houses we would have lusted after, now we were very glad not to own but we felt so sorry for owners. Houses that were so well kept, now had overgrown grass and loose bits of tape across the driveway and labels of danger, do not enter.
The contrast was staggering. It can even be in one street. I went down Cambridge Terrace - the little piece that I seldom travel between Barbados and Fitzgerald. As I turned behind the Barbados Street cemetery I saw the back wall of the cemetery was lying on the footpath and the grassy bank was just tumbling down on top of it. The road was also bumpy, cracked and sliding towards the river. I had to drive carefully and as I went round the curves of the river, I saw a wooden seat on the river bank now at quite an angle towards the river - no longer a place to sit comfortably and enjoy the view. But at the end of the street, the road was fine, the houses looked perfect and they had a lovely view of the river. It feels a lottery who got badly hit and who got off comparatively lightly.
We've had Fletchers and our contract builder are here assessing the property for repair. Probably in April or March next year but now we have to be assessed by an engineer first to check our floor situation. The long tail of the disaster just keeps on going.
The aftershocks are pretty minor now, though we've had about 3 of around 3.4 in a few days last week (so enough to feel but not enough to really react to). One was in the evening and we could hear it coming, in the morning Lucy said she was lying in bed and heard it coming too and she wasn't sure if it was going to be a big one, so she hid under her duvet. When it arrived it wasn't very big so she didn't bother to come out, she just settled herself back down to go to sleep.

How Christchurch people spend a sunny, Sunday afternoon

This afternoon as a family we did the temporarily opened, public walk from Cashel Mall to Cathedral Square. We queued in an orderly line for two to three minutes and then we were past the official clicking off a counter and standing in Colombo Street looking up at Lucy's old school building on the corner of Cashel Street and Colombo. The walkway was lined with fences and busy with people. The crowd was quite chatty and all sorts of ages were there. Christmas Decorations were hanging from the lamp posts.
We walked past buildings that looked so familiar and then there would be a gap of nothing. As we approached the square, the crowd became quiet, I think we were all unsure how we would react.

We walked between the old familiar buildings of the ANZ and BNZ. Many of the glass verandah panes on the BNZ building were smashed and lying in tiny fragments on the ground. The whole building will be coming down in a few weeks.

Entering Colombo St

BNZ building still to be demolished

Then we were into the Square. The paving stones look so normal and the trees and the seats - exactly as they were the many times I had sat on them. But the Cathedral was so smashed. The old Regent Theatre building was completely gone. In the opposite corner I could see just the old wrought iron entrance way to the Warner's hotel - that was all that remained of it now -  behind the cenotaph. The cenotaph looked totally normal, apart from the unmown grass around it.

It was hard to get my head around what happened here, while I was in the suburbs. Lucy was okay about being back in the Square though she had moments of sadness but I think we all did. I ran my finger down the fence to make it feel real, that we were really here and this was what the Square looked like now.

Once in the Square the crowd was quite talkative and it was nice being back there with so many people. There were a couple of older people in wheelchairs, it was almost like the Square of last year on a Sunday.

During the week I saw a headline that read something like - "Familiar sounds return to the city centre". The cathedral bells jumped into my head but then I knew, it wasn't them, they were not coming back for a long time.

That is the thing-  it is so hard to relate the reality of the new Christchurch, with what is still in my head as Christchurch. It is difficult to believe my city has left me rather than me leaving it behind. 

Entering the Square and the

 familiar old Post Office Building

People in the Square - looks almost normal

A post no longer straight 

A view I have never seen 

before as  Chancery Lane

buildings used to be there

City Founding Father - absent

Cenotaph - looking as it 

always did

A Verandah has fallen to be held up a
light, I wondered how many injuries that
light saved

The city was suffering pre Feb 22
Closing down sale

A Summer Sale almost a year on