reasons to be grateful: March 2011

There's been so many of you asking how things are, I thought I'd try to capture a little bit of how things are after the earthquake last week. In many optimistic ways nothing has changed, and yet so much is so different.

The girls and I decided to hop down to school to get their gear out of the school in the short window that they were re-opening the buildings. We had to sign in and out (in case we got lost or decided to camp out I'm not sure which.) We were chaperoned through some parts just in case.

Here's the air bridge that Henny was in as the quake started, note the rubber glass surrounds that are almost out, thankfully they remained through the shaking, otherwise the glass would have fell in or out of the bridge.

You can tell the bridge got a fair old move on from the displaced joints above. India was a little less lucky in that she was near her locker, which fell on her and the laptop. The laptop is bung, but India has plenty of energy still (She's training for the Canterbury Premiere netball team currently).

The school has taken a bit of a battering, with the gym being cordoned (no loss according to the girls) and the chapel being demolished today. They've been meeting in a Marquee since September's first quake, whilst they've been planning to rebuild and repair their iconic building. Whilst they all dread chapel, the girls are a bit sad following the demolition just the same.

Whilst our own home is sound, and most of the school is also safe, the surreal element is how close the more extreme elements of the damage can be.

Our own driveway had a wall all along the right, this became a nice bricked path. Now it's cleared up so we can get the cars in and out.

and just past there there's Bernard Cribbins' own hole in the ground.

It's maybe two metres deep, and until yesterday it had a twin in the road, that's been filled in roughly. There was water and sand pouring out of it last Tuesday. That's all been carted away now (some 200,000 tonnes city wide)

The first thing I saw on exiting the house was poor Ngaire who lives next door at the front of the street. This is her house, an aftershock took the chimney down from it's precarious position. She was distraught at the site of the damage to her garden (her pride and joy on a daily basis) and fearful for her neighbour and friend whoc she couldn't contact. Her car was stuck in the garage, I turned off the gass bottles just under the chimney for safety. (well before the chimney fell) Tim was also there, he'd just had another heart attack. Once around the corner there's two churches, both devastated. The tower had been taken off one of them in September and tethered until it could be repaired. I doubt that'll happen any longer. The other stone tower was demolished to make it safe. The bells broken on the pavement outside. Both these buildings were fairly central to the local community. The following shots are of our local shops, some quintesential stores that have been here for so long. They're comically either full of old stock (awesome muffins in the cookery nook as well as rhubarb slices) strewn over the floor or locked away behind glass or suddenly exposed. I don't fancy the smell when they do get into that bakery, but I'm a little surprised that the inside of Quinns Lingerie look so mundane. It's hard to figure really, this is all just around the corner from home. The mess there is workable, but still going to cost a bit to fix. The chimney is now down to the roofline, but the bricks are still fairly loose. I can't take it down anymore really until we can weatherproof the wall that'll get exposed. We just use the front door, rather than walk behind the chimney. Any of you still with teenagers might recognise this mess, but I can confirm that it wasn't that messy when they left on Tuesday. This is the garage, and whilst I managed to rescue the replacement studio monitors I'd lost in the last quake from imminent death in the shake. (I came home from the hills where the quake was centred minutes before it struck, and was sat at my desk trying to make sure my beloved speakers remained on the stands I'd only recently begun using again) Unfortunately my other baby didn't fare so well in the garage. Eliot's motorbike fell onto my road bike, and between all the shards of fibreglass the crank and wheels are munted. Whilst we downplay the quake itself, as the days pass we begin to see more, as well as experience more of just how much this thing has done. Henrietta and I fired up the motorbike (so the jammed traffic wouldn't deter us too much) and visited a colleague just 7kms away. We were both shocked by the damage to the roads. Our suburb had been inundated by the silt (liquefaction), but the ones we drove through had been even worse. Their are metre wide gaps in the roads, foot high drops from one piece of road and the other, and telegraph poles draped with cables in the yards of homes. Poor Sam (friend we were visiting) has no water, power or sewerage and is cheerily trying to keep his two small children occupied while trying to do some PR work for his clients fro a house that wasn't too affected by the shaking, but is within the most affected area of town. Until last April I'd been living just around the corner, so so many of the sites we saw as we bounced around town were very familiar. That is also one of the biggest traumas for me. That so many things I'm familiar with are gone or changed irrepperably. I'm not sure how long it will take to rebuild this wonderful place, and how many of the landmarks will be replaced or repaired. There is a constant air of grief about so many things that are gone now. It is heartening though to think of the way that Coventry was rebuilt and transformed, quite possibly we can make something very beautiful from the ruins. That is certainly my hope. Don't worry about us, we are safe and will continue to be so. All our extended family are in safe homes with all necessities being met and I don't think that'll change much in the meantime. The paradox of normal is clashing with the shear surprise of devastation around every corner, a very surreal existence for us all. -- Adrian -------------------------- vanity: http://adrian.price.net.nz lifestream: http://www.netvibes.com/ninefish background: http://www.ninefish.com/adrian -------------------------- http://five.sentenc.es/ V: 021 2 GET FISH TXT: 021 2 438 347 P O Box 36 244, Christchurch New Zealand, Earth, The universe -43.516495,172.61859 To unsubscribe to these emails, please reply with the words "unsubscribe me you dolt" in the subject line and it will be made thus as quickly as we can, if not sooner than that