Ten years

Wow. Ten years. It's been ten whole years since that summer lunchtime when I and the nice local guy who was painting our house (and whose name I can't remember - sorry, mate) left our respective work and stood in the living room watching in appalled horror at the scenes on TV coming out of Christchurch. 6.3, officially an aftershock from the bigger September earthquake, but shallower, and closer, and so destructive, of both lives and buildings. 185 people were killed, and hundreds of thousands of others' lives were changed forever, some by injury, all by shock.

Today, the city is - slowly - reinventing itself, with some parts a triumph, others sneered at as mistakes, plenty more projects still waiting to be finished or even started. There are still expanses of nothing, where once there were lovely heritage buildings, or homes, and that is really sad. But nothing is so sad as dead babies, dead teenagers far from their homes overseas, a dead brother still holding his sister's hand under the rubble, a woman being separated onsite from her pinned-down legs. 

Poor Christchurch. At least, finally, work has begun on restoring the cathedral, symbol and heart of the city - but it will only have the same outward appearance as before. Inside, it will be changed. But, hopefully, stronger.

NZ Roadtrip Christchurch: cracks, cones and cathedral

It's a bit odd, coming to your home town as a tourist. In the case of Christchurch, that's somewhat less the case since the city is superficially so very much changed, post-earthquakes, from the place I grew up in - though still itself, underneath. Well, not literally underneath - that's where all the fault lines and lurking liquefaction lie - but in the parts that weren't so much affected by the shakes. So that's not my side of the city, where I was astonished to see entire suburbs completely gone, just the road network and garden trees remaining: so disorientating that I got lost just blocks from where my former home still (fortunately) stands, apparently unharmed.

The roads are still bumpy, there are still ranks of cones everywhere, and the Cathedral is still its sad self, crumbling, open to the elements and the depredations of pigeons, its future still, after five years, undecided. But. There's a lot that's new too, and exciting, and fun. The clanking old trams are running frequently, their drivers maintaining an impressive level of enthusiasm in their continuous commentaries, the re:START mall of converted container shops is colourful and buzzing (and serving excellent food - pulled pork and beans taco, yum!), and there's lots to do.

The Christchurch Pass ($80) bought us entry to first of all the gondola up the Port Hills, the easy way up to a view (though I watched a man hiking up the Bridle Path with a toddler on his back) over the city to the mountains, and over Lyttelton Harbour. There's a Time Tunnel thing included, which is slightly naff, but ends with a rather touching message about the future from a young girl.

The second element is a punt ride along the Avon through the Botanic Gardens: half an hour of - well, not peace, there were too many people enjoying the river for that - but interest and colour, and fun. Our punter (?) was full of information  - I never knew the the city's weeping willows are all descendants of the tree that grew over Napoleon's grave on St Helena - and skilled at propelling the punt (unlike the *cough* Chinese trio in the canoe ahead of us, doggedly zigzagging from bank to bank). I liked that two ladies sitting on a park bench called out to us, "Are you enjoying our city?"

The third part of the Pass was the tram ride. There is a dining tram for what I imagine would be a pretty bumpy - but very good, I'm told - dinner; but we tried several other places during our stay. Casa Publica in pretty, restored New Regent Street does a fabulous made-at-the-table guacamole; the Friday Food Trucks are less elegant, but the vibe was reminiscent of my youth's Friday nights in the city when the shops were open till 9pm! Best of all was Protocol, at the end of Colombo Street: pulled beef cheek on mash. Delicious.

We were up that end because our Airbnb place was up in Dyer's Pass Road, a grand old dame that the owners had bought as an insurance write-off, and were restoring. They have some way to go, but are full of the determined enthusiasm that kind of defines Christchurch now (if you overlook the worn-down depression that's resulted for many from insurance disputes and painfully slow progress).

But let's not finish on a low note: Christchurch is still a lovely city with much to offer and enjoy - Museum, Botanic Gardens, lively restaurant scene, shops, exciting renovations underway along the river, at the Arts Centre, Town Hall, pop-ups... It's a city just full of splendid sights.

Four years

It's been a hot, dry summer and Thursday morning was another in a long series of blue-sky days. It was the kind of weather that makes water-blasting the house seem like a treat, compared with, for example, mowing the lawns or weeding. So that was how it happened that I was up close with the window frames and noticed that here and there the paintwork is starting to show sun damage. And although I struggle to remember where I've left my phone or what I had for dinner last night, I know exactly how long it is since the painter was here: four years.

Because four years ago today, he and I were standing in my living room at lunchtime, watching in disbelief and horror the pictures coming from Christchurch, my home town. Christchurch, reduced by a 6.3 earthquake at 12.51pm to a cracked and broken disaster zone where 185 people died, instantly or slowly, in nightmarish scenarios that seconds earlier had been boringly mundane: office, shop, bus. Christchurch, the Garden City, more English than England, a place of wide tree-lined avenues and willows dipping into the placid Avon River, stately mock-Gothic public buildings, neat parks and gardens, and an iconic Cathedral smaller than many English parish churches but truly the heart of the city. In just a couple of terrifying minutes, it became - and has remained - unrecognisable, buildings collapsed, towers leaning, roads cracked and manhole covers risen up, stinking grey liquefaction seeping everywhere like ectoplasm, and everybody's lives changed forever.

In the four years since, progress has been made in resurrecting the city, although shamefully slowly. Whole areas, like where I grew up and first went to school, have been abandoned to nature while new suburbs have sprung up on the western, safer side of the city. The CBD, though still characterised by too many bare blocks of dusty gravel, is taking new shape, coming to life, drawing back the people. John Robert Godley's statue has just been put up again in the Square, though it's a bit damaged and faces a cathedral still in ruins with a future under threat. In some areas, you wouldn't know anything had ever happened - except when you speak to the people living there. Even those who escaped major damage to their homes still see their lives as split into Before and After, and that will never change.

The old Christchurch has gone. The new Christchurch will be a different place: newer, flatter, lower, more spacious. Eventually the ruined suburbs will be attractive parkland. The remaining heritage buildings will be stronger and more valued. Will the Cathedral be one of them? I do hope so. Abandoned by the Church, it's up to the people to save it, which is how it should be.

And then there are the 185 lives lost: all ages, all sorts of nationalities, residents and visitors, some suddenly, some agonisingly slowly in unimaginable terror. They will always be remembered, and not only at the memorial that will be built in time for the next anniversary, beside the Avon as it glides slowly to the sea.

Three years on from 6.3

Wow, it's three years today since the earthquake that wrecked Christchurch, when Scott the house-painter put down his brush and came inside to watch the astonishing, incredible, horrifying news on TV with me on a hot, sunny afternoon. The quake killed 185 people, not just Kiwis but visitors and students from the Philippines, Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Israel, Turkey, the USA, Canada and Ireland; the oldest was a woman of 88, the youngest babies of 5 weeks and 8 months. It also wrecked the lives of everyone who lived in the city, some temporarily, most long-term, others forever; and no-one in the country remains untouched. Either they know someone who died or, this being the land of 2 Degrees, someone who knows someone who died. Then there are those of us still mourning the loss of the city we knew and loved; and those whose sense of physical security in this faultline-riddled country is now as fractured as all those heritage buildings.

Canterbury's had more than 12,000 after-shocks, most of them piddling but enough magnitude 4+ to keep nerves frayed. The city is full of empty blocks blowing with dust, the roads are still lumpy and littered with orange cones, whole suburbs are vacant, too many people are still waiting for insurance claims to be settled, and the arguments continue over the fate of Christ Church Cathedral, and where to place the blame for the CTV building's collapse.

But life there continues too, and there is plenty of optimism and enthusiasm for the new Christchurch that is - so slowly - starting to take shape. It will be very different from what was there before, and it will be unashamedly new, but also greener, more spacious, more people-friendly. That's the plan, anyway. Right now it's neither one thing nor the other: impossible when you're there to picture it as it was, hard to imagine how it will be. The connections with the old Christchurch, my home town, are for me now mostly memories with little concrete left to anchor them to (actually, lots and lots of concrete, altogether too dominant). I do so wish the earthquake hadn't happened.

In a week's time, though, the news will be all about Japan and Fukushima, also marking their third anniversary of disaster, on so much greater a scale, and the focus will shift away. Meanwhile, in Christchurch, the weeds will keep growing through the cracked foundations of ordinary people's lives.

Swarms at the Beehive

Ah, people died in China's earthquake today, but they didn't make the TV news: the swarm of quakes in Cook Strait that have rattled Wellington, especially the 6.5 last night, are not unnaturally bigger news here. If we could be sure that would be it, the capital could get on with picking itself up and everyone could just be thankful that no-one was hurt. But seismic activity, it's a mysterious beast, and who knows if there isn't a bigger one about to hit tomorrow, or tonight, or in five minutes' time? Not the seismologists, that's for sure. You do kind of wonder about their usefulness, media-wise.

Christchurch was a shock to everyone, especially the seismologists; but Wellington's like Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and Lisbon, and Santiago: sitting plumb square on a fault line, and it's not a matter of if, it's all about when. Even yesterday's shake, though not that close to the city, was enough to return a section of reclaimed land to the sea, crack buildings and break bits off them, and make roads split, sink and tilt. So everyone's horrified, as well as alarmed, and no-one's going to sleep well in the city tonight.

I was last there in April, just en route to catching the Northern Explorer train back to Auckland, but even that quick visit was fun and I would have liked more time there (and, yes, better weather). Though the last thing I am is political, I really liked the buzz that goes with being the capital, that permeates even the weather forecast in the newspaper. They have other things on their minds right now, though.

2012, wrapped up

The most remarkable thing about this year is that I didn't go to Australia. (I'm still feeling that I've used Oz up - although I'd be happy to be proved wrong. Anyone listening? Kimberley cruise, Kakadu, Maria Island, WA for the wildflower season...?) 

I did pass through, though, a number of times, on my way to more distant destinations; but my first travels this year were domestic, first to old favourite Waiheke Island, just across the harbour but in another zone entirely, ambience-wise. Beautiful, relaxing and laid-back, it never fails to please - even when the weather disappoints.

The weather gave us the runaround for the next trip, too: doing the Crater Lake walk on Ruapehu with the daughters - but after driving down there through thunder, lightning and torrential rain, the day of our ascent to and traverse along that precipitous crater rim was one of glorious sunshine that showed off the turquoise of the lake to great effect, while the cloud that came to swirl around beneath us made us feel like gods, on top of the world in both senses.

My Pavlovian addiction to checking my emails dozens of times a day was reinforced by an invitation popping up there in February to go on a LAN tour of South America. It was a wonderful circuit in a small but jolly group through Santiago to Buenos Aires, to the literally over-the-top spectacle of Iguassu Falls, to Lima where the food was a revelation, and then to Easter Island, which was very special and totally worth foregoing the Travcom/Cathay Pacific Media Awards (in which I was only Runner-Up, so, pft).

In April I began my longest trip yet, flying Etihad to Abu Dhabi, where the Grand Mosque was astonishing, though I could really have done without the sweaty nylon robe I had to wear. Next stop was France, for a glorious, fabulous cruise up the Rhone from Arles to Lyon and finishing at Chalon-sur-Saone. I do so love a river cruise, and Uniworld's River Royale was just perfect, with the best staff ever.


Then it was England for a wedding and old friends, and another cruise that didn't go so well, when I managed to dislocate my shoulder leaping off a boat in the Norfolk Broads. Ouch. But I soldiered on, fortunately joining an Insight coach tour of Eastern Europe for the next 3 weeks where I was very well looked after. It was all about history, war and architecture, subjects which would have bored me rigid in my youth, but which now I find deeply interesting. It helped too that on the way to starting the tour in Budapest, we'd called in at Zagan in Poland to visit the site of Stalag Luft III where my father had been a prisoner, which was a moving experience as well as being fascinating.




Home again after 5 weeks away, I was anchored to the sofa for the next three months, writing, writing, writing with a cat at each side and a dog at my feet. I popped down to Christchurch for a look at my sadly shaken hometown, and was both horrified and inspired by what I saw - the vast empty spaces, blowing with dust, and the cracks in everything; but also the optimistic spirit of the people I met, and their bright plans for the future.

September saw the start of another flurry of travel, beginning with flying with Emirates to Dubai again, where I went up to the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa, and on to Portugal for a scant 5 days mostly in the province of Alentejo where I loved the fortified hilltop villages, the gnarled olive trees, the sheep with bells on and the friendly people; but hated the food-focused itinerary and unprofessional behaviour of one of the small party.




Back home for one night, I was away again next day for a week of glorious relaxation in the Cook Islands, purely a holiday of lying about, sleeping in the sun (not recommended: the sunburn was epic and I still bear the unsightly tan-marks) and doing very little of anything. Stand-out was the day spent cruising on and wallowing in the WMBL (world's most beautiful lagoon) at Aitutaki - just perfect, in every way.

Then, four days later, I was off to North Viet Nam in another group which was lots of fun. We had a brilliant guide, Duke, who took us from Hanoi up into Ha Giang province for a homestay, a day's trekking through the paddy fields and villages, and a long drive into the Dong Van Karst Geopark, which was just brilliant: spectacular peaks, cute kids, colourful villages and a mind-blowing road. The traffic throughout was fascinating - even in Ha Long Bay out on the water amongst those absurdly picturesque islands.



After a fun day out on the train down to Matamata for a look at the obsessive detail of Hobbiton, the year finished back on the sofa with, sadly, just the one cat now at my side. I've had 49 stories accepted for publication, about half of those in the NZ Herald, as well as writing around 30 blog entries for Air France and others for the Yahoo! website. I've been to lunches and dinners and a cooking class, learned how to take the top off a champagne bottle with a sabre, had massages, ridden a camel and a Segway, eaten insects as well as fabulous meals, and been given a huge and beautiful bouquet for my services to Australian tourism, having had over 100 stories published about that immense country. Ironic, or what?

It's been a good year and I've been to some amazing places, met lots of lovely people and written masses of stories (if you're interested in reading some of them, click on the links over there to the right). It's been busy, and tiring sometimes, but I've loved it and am looking forward to more of the, er, different: Alaska, maybe? Africa? Who knows - can't wait to find out. Watch this space!

Non summa sequere

There's more bad news for Christchurch, and what's making it worse is that it's not a random seismic event, it's being caused deliberately by the Government. The Ministry of Education has decided that 13 schools in the city and surrounds are to close, with a further 18 merging. All my old schools are on the list: my primary school, Banks Avenue, where, aged 10, I gave a speech at the opening of our new hall, which now looks rather sad; and Shirley Intermediate, which seemed perfectly functional when I went past it recently; and my secondary school, Avonside Girls' High, which it's planned will be subsumed by ChCh Girls' High. Our brother school, Shirley Boys, will be swallowed up by ChCh Boys. To add insult to injury, both of those schools are arch rivals to ours.

When I was at AGHS last month, the Principal (in the job less than a year before the February earthquake, poor thing) told me that it would be two years before she expected a decision on the stability of the land and the future of the school, so she will be reeling, like everyone else connected with the schools. Which is pretty much everybody in those communities. It's a given that in Wellington, you're asked what you do; in Auckland, where you live; but in Christchurch, the first question people ask you is what school you went to. It's not snobbery: it just establishes where you fit in the city, what community you belong to, what your connections are. It's a shorthand.

Apart from the loss of all those years of tradition and identity for the schools themselves, it seems so unfair to me to snatch away what for many students, their teachers and support staff, and all their families too, is the one of the few stable things left in their lives. To expect them to leave all that's familiar and start again, on top of everything else, is harsh. It's taking the cheap route. It's certainly not aspiring to be the best.

Pourquoi?

Blog statistics are a mysterious beast. Please don't run away, but I can see who's visiting, or rather what city you live in, and have come to recognise my regular lurkers. You're very welcome here! Please keep coming! If you ever feel like de-lurking, don't hold back - I would love to be able to say, "Oh look, [insert name here] has called in", instead of nodding and thinking, "Ah, Mountain View, CA", or "Bonjour, Paris". Don't be shy!

Besides the select few of you who come here directly, many more arrive as the result of a search for what is often something very esoteric and even exotic. This is where you're expecting to read a funny list of wild and crazy search terms, and I wish I'd thought to record the more eyebrow-raising ones, but sorry, I haven't done that (though I will from now on). I do know what the more common ones are though, because Blogger keeps them for me. They're pretty dull and predictable: the Emirates A380 Review is far and away the most-searched and most-read (which teaches me that I should go for the dull titles if I want lots of traffic). Second-most read post, though, is Vive la France, which is curious. The most-common search term is 'French flag' which to me suggests hundreds of schoolchildren with projects on the go, but perhaps not. I imagine they're stealing this image of the flag, which would be sort of annoying, since flags are very capricious things to photograph.

But why so many people typing in 'Vive la France'? I hope it's not because they're wanting a translation, quelle horreur. And why so many in the last couple of days? There's been a sudden spike, people! Fifteen in the last day and a bit alone! What's going on there? What's France up to that's not making it into the news here? Surely the dreadful Alpes murders aren't prompting it? It's very intriguing. Anyway, I hope they're grateful, all 2015* of them, having got here to receive a small dose of New Zealand history and an introduction to Akaroa. Which is doing very well out of the earthquakes, by the way: instead of cruise liners mooring at Lyttelton, which was very shaken, they've been calling into Akaroa for a little taste of France. A quelque chose malheur est bon! And speaking of tastes of France, there's a mille feuilles in the kitchen calling to me, that's going to be almost as good as the one I bought in Tain-l'Hermitage...

* UPDATE: Make that 2107 of them, with 627 'French flag' searches (plus one 'do fish eggs stick on you?')

185 cheers

One day, when Christchurch is rebuilt, there will be a proper memorial for the 185 people who died on 22 February - but in the meantime, there's this. On an empty corner section owned by the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church, artist Pete Majendie has created an installation of 185 white-painted chairs, all different, on an 185 square metre expanse of fine new grass surrounded by scabby patches of liquefaction.

It's not a new idea, to use chairs to commemorate the dead - in Krakow earlier this year I saw another chair memorial in the Jewish Quarter - but it's very effective symbolism and hard to look at without a rush of emotion. Pete was there when I was visiting, and told me that the chairs were freely given by all sorts of people and businesses, and that each one was painted, twice, by hand - "It didn't seem right, to spray them. Hand-painting allowed more time to think."

It was only meant to be there for 2 weeks, but that was 6 months ago, and visitors have filled 7 notebooks with comments in that time, so it's clearly serving a need. One woman, Pete said, spent ages walking around the chairs. I had thought that mourners would find one chair to symbolise the person they lost, but this lady, whose son died, found a whole series, from a baby basket, to a high chair, to a little primary school one, all the way up to an office chair and an armchair like the one he'd sit in at night - his whole life, told in chairs. Sad.

Red and bleak

On Tuesday, 22 February, 2011, the Jubilee Clock stopped at 12.51, the moment when Christchurch history split in two. They'd recently restored the clock and tower, erected for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and the gold is still shiny and the stained glass is pretty with the sun shining through it. It was designed by Benjamin Mountfort, who was behind most of the city's best-loved Gothic Revival buildings, including the Museum, what's now the Arts Centre, and of course the Cathedral. The Museum was earthquake-strengthened a while back and came through the shakes pretty well, but most of his other work now looks very sad.

I did three tours today: the first, on an agreeably comfortable bicycle, was through Hagley Park to Dean's Bush and Mona Vale - such a cushy ride, I'd forgotten how easy it is to cycle around a completely flat city, which is also now so bike-friendly. The Saturday market outside the closed Deans homestead is really good, and more popular with the locals than it's ever been because, I was told, "it's outside". On a lovely sunny morning, it was a perfect re-introduction to the city's loveliest features, which are still there and still beautiful.

Then, on the new Red Bus Red Zone tour, the mood was completely changed by the safety warnings at the start ("You might not survive") and the close-up looks at the shattered centre, after passing through checkpoints manned by soldiers. The CBD is probably less dramatic than in the early days when the streets were still lined with rubble, but even now when most of that's been cleared, it's shocking to see the empty spaces. There are facades propped up with shipping containers with nothing behind, cleared spaces swirling with dust, abandoned buildings with USAR codes spray-painted on the doors reporting when they'd been searched for survivors, and lots of piles of shattered brick and concrete where diggers are busy with scoops.

We weren't able to get out of the bus, but when I came back on my very enjoyable Segway tour, though we couldn't get into the Red Zone, we could go right along the fences outside it and get close to the Cathedral. The tower is nearly all gone now, just a stump left - the cross from the top of the spire is in the Museum, where you can actually touch it, which is kind of odd - and the rose window has disappeared, battered into smithereens in the June 13 quake by the metal supports put there to protect it after February. The Cathedral's future is still in doubt, because the (Canadian) bishop thinks it's too expensive to save and has instead committed $4 million to a temporary cardboard substitute; but there's a strong movement pressing for its restoration. I hope they succeed. It was so sad to see it like this:

instead of like this:

Gone

Five years I spent in this building, being educated, interested, bored, amused, stimulated and stultified, learning so much stuff I still use and possibly even more that I don't (pretty much the whole of maths, PE and art), having fun, passing notes, eating my sandwiches, writing lines, having chalk thrown at me, being told once that I was good at whatever I chose to do (thanks, Miss Cree, and sorry about that dig about maths) and also by my School Cert English teacher that, despite my getting 95% in the national exams, she hoped I didn't think I was some sort of genius (yeah, and thanks for that, Mrs Hardy). Five years in that solid building with the grand staircase and high windows and funny-shaped corner rooms where the wings branched off, allowing Miss Oliver once to fill each of the five corners with a miscreant. And now there's nothing there. Nothing! Just a view across neatly-trimmed grass to the Hall, which you could never have seen from this point while I was at Avonside Girls' High.

I'm back in Christchurch for the weekend, my first visit since the February 22 earthquake last year, and the others that followed it. The last time I was here was a couple of months after the September one in 2010, when everyone thought that they'd dodged a bullet, and the city was shaken and a bit cracked but generally ok. Nobody died. Who knew the big one was still to come?

The city's full of empty spaces that have similar meaning for other people - buildings that were part of their lives and which now are gone, nothing remaining. Tomorrow I'm doing a set of tours for a story, inside the Red Zone that's still fenced off, and around the confusing jumble of closed roads hemmed in with cyclone fencing and orange cones, past stacks of shipping containers holding up tottering walls, piles of rubble with diggers on top, huge cranes swivelling around, some constructing but most of them still demolishing, bit by bit, the personal histories of so many Christchurch people.

Mellow

Perfect, perfect day today: clear, sunny, warm after early freshness, the colours bright and saturated. And on a Sunday, too! It was perhaps especially precious having come straight after what the media are in the habit these days of excitably calling a 'weather bomb', the word 'storm' apparently not dramatic enough any more. It was more of a damp squib (always want to say damp squid) here in Auckland, a bit of wind and rain that blew a bucket across the back lawn - but further south in Taranaki, where I went in November, it really was very violent and ripped the roofs off many houses and punched holes in walls with flying fence posts. Nothing on the scale of the terrifying tornadoes in the US, but bad enough for us, who've had more than enough lately in the way of natural disasters.

Where do I go from here? I could focus on Taranaki, and my Parihaka story, because I was at a meeting a couple of days ago that was addressed by some people from Maori Tourism, that began with an unexpected reference to flatulence and moved smartly on to some fairly abstract concepts and included a lot more te reo than I was expecting or, to be honest, understood (to my shame). Thank goodness I wasn't MCing, the person who was fortunately much more fluent in public-occasion Maori than I could dream of being. The atmosphere was very friendly and down-to-earth, but there were some delicate matters glanced over that it would have been good to be able to talk about properly: like Maori people getting tetchy when offenders are called Maori in news reports, that being a term that they don't really use themselves, identifying much more with their tribes. Fair enough - though 'Caucasian' is just as general, of course.

Or I could branch off from the disasters reference to say how appalled I am that the Bishop of Christchurch has just announced the decision to pull the cathedral down as it's too expensive to try to repair what is now a dangerously unstable building. It's very hard not to come over all xenophobic and say that it's because she's a Canadian, in the job only 3 years, and doesn't understand what the cathedral means to the people of Christchurch and the country as a whole. Doesn't matter if you're Anglican or not, religious or not - that building is the heart and soul, symbol and icon of Christchurch and it has to be saved.

Or I could go with the weather, how lovely it was to be out in the garden unbitten by mozzies, doing some weeding in the hen run, much to the girls' delight (all those worms and other tasty insects revealed), remembering with nostalgia how a blitz like that back at our country cottage in England would have finished with a satisfying bonfire down in the paddock: happy hours of raking and poking, finally and reluctantly going back up to the house, thoroughly kippered. And, as I pulled out armful after armful of the crocosmias that have taken over the hen run, thinking how true it is that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place. Viz: this photo of the gardens at Muckross House in Killarney, Ireland, of crocosmia, in the right place.

12.51

It's been a year. A whole year since I was standing in the middle of the living room, in the middle of the day, hands over my mouth, staring in horrified disbelief at the television. I don't remember how I heard the news - perhaps it was Scott, the house-painter who was listening to his radio as he worked, who told me. Perhaps it was a text or an email. It doesn't matter.

What does matter is that the whole country was doing the same thing as they heard, turning to the radio and television, anxious for every bit of news from Christchurch, painful as the words and images were: our second city, shaken to bits, buildings collapsed, people crushed inside, on a bus, on footpaths, 185 of them dead or dying, others trapped by arms and legs and fingers they were to lose. Everything, as those moments passed, changing forever.

And now it's been a year. The central city's still cordoned off, hundreds of buildings demolished, whole blocks bare and empty, swirling with dust. The eastern suburbs, where I grew up, are wastelands of ruptured streets and broken houses, once-neat gardens and grass verges tall with weeds and brown grass, silent and empty except for some determined souls hanging on grimly through 10,000 aftershocks.

Life is still going on in Canterbury: there's a wonderful spirit of never say die, of new opportunities, of lateral thinking, of community, of a resilience I'd like to think I would show too, but couldn't guarantee. I'm proud of Christchurch people, and today at 12.51pm I'll be standing with them again, remembering what we've all lost.

Busker!

Auckland Anniversary Day today and the harbour was full of 10,000 yachts in and watching the Regatta, while the waterfront was full of people - at the funfair, the seafood festival, the Laneway indie music festival, and the Buskers' Festival, not to mention all the bars and cafes. We were there for the buskers, an annual treat when some of them come up north after attending the World Buskers Festival in Christchurch. It's the 19th year there - 10 days, 55 artists from all over the world - and this year not of course in the usual sites of Cathedral Square, the Arts Centre and various city streets, since they're all in the Red Zone still and fenced off, but in Hagley Park, where it evidently all went well and delivered some much-needed summer cheer to the city.

We were in ChCh for the festival once and it was a blast, especially the part where I ended up on the shoulders of a guy on a unicycle - but it's pretty good here in Auckland too, over the long weekend. Today we saw just three acts. The first was Wally, a non-stop joker (literally) of a tall Australian whose finale is balancing on top of a ladder, after two audience members let go of it. One of them was Max who, deliberately or not - who knows? - had dressed in an eye-catching ensemble of red Cleveland basketball (?) singlet, rather skimpy blue shorts and highly distinctive lime-green shoes. There was no way the performers were going to overlook him, and when we moved on to the next one, another Aussie called Mickey J who danced and mimed much more entertainingly than you might expect from that description (and got a lot of mileage out of Michael J), Max was again selected from the audience for some participation.

He was there in the crowd at our last performance too, but this time - I hope his feelings weren't hurt - he was passed over. The artist was Victor Rubilar, an Argentinian football juggler and holder of not one but four Guinness world records, of which perhaps the most impressive is "the longest distance travelled while balancing a football on the forehead" (278m) - though "the most rolls of a football from temple to temple" (67) for me came a close second in esoteric skills. He was far too Latino to be much bothered with the men in the audience - but, give him his due, he spends hours sunbathing in a bikini top at the beach all for the sake of a 10-second visual joke. Now there's a man dedicated to his craft.

Sigh

The cake is made and decorated, the tree is up and there's a promising swag of pressies underneath it, the epic final assault on the supermarket has been made with success as regards the strawberries (TV news reporting a threatened shortage this year, sparking panic buying in this household at least), the pavlova-making is scheduled, the last-minute asap-deadline of 40 short Australian stories for a website has been met with the promise of a thrillingly generous reward, the weather's come right, delivering sunshine and heat - what could stop this Christmas from being another corker?

More earthquakes in Christchurch, that's what. Four yesterday between 5 and 6 points, shallow and sharp, more liquefaction throughout the eastern suburbs where I used to live, some building collapses, more damage to the already wrecked Cathedral, some minor injuries and, unsurprisingly, heart problems, closed airport, evacuated malls on one of the busiest shopping days of the year - and lots more people deciding that they've had it, they can't take any more. The timing is so cruel, after months of quietness, everyone beginning to hope that it was all over, putting it out of their minds, focusing on Christmas and summer holidays; and now all that's in ruins, shattered like the glass balls on the toppled Christmas trees in homes throughout the city.

It seems very unfair. Yes, other places round the world have suffered much, much worse this year in all sorts of ways, so 185 dead and a bunch of broken buildings is comparatively not much to complain about. But the way it's going in Christchurch is almost like torture: sudden pain, then it's over, but the possibility and fear of more remain, then more pain, then fear, then pain, then fear, then a long respite and the beginning of real hope, then pain again. It's ruinous to the spirit, and especially at a time of year when everyone looks forward to family and fun and being at ease mentally and physically. I do so feel for all those people outside - and inside - their houses right this minute, shovelling stinking silt yet again; and I understand if they feel they can't go on any more.

On the other hand, though, this isn't the Christchurch any more that was so shocked by the first quake in September last year: the city's got systems in place to sort power and water and roads without delay; pretty much everything that can fall down, has fallen down already; the people have water stores, gumboots ready, ornaments Blu-tacked in place. They'll come on through, and they will have a good Christmas. And, afterwards, only some of them will leave.