Ally with her dog, Charlie.
Until recently I thought of Christchurch as New Zealand's oatmeal pancake - boring and flat and best avoided unless nothing else was on the menu. I grew up in Christchurch but fled to Wellington (much more along the 'French toast with some sort of exciting berries' line) and only returned about two years ago. I was surprised when the September earthquake hit by how patrotic I felt; how reluctant I was to leave the city.
My Christchurch has always revolved around Cathedral Square - ANZAC services in the Cathedral, work in the Press building and mental street preachers in the Square itself. With the exception of the preachers, who have no doubt merely shifted locations, the February 22 earthquake has neatly excised my most familiar and most cherished bits of Christchurch from the city.
I worked in the Press building for 16 months. I've been elated in its interview rooms, bored in its offices, tearful in its toilets and impressively drunk in its marketing department. On the day the quake hit, horrific as it must have been in town, I wanted to be there with my colleagues and friends.
Now, like many other buildings, the Press is red-stickered - extensive repairs required, demolition possible or likely. Seeing such a huge part of my life condemned like that is heartbreaking, but I'm trying to remember that for every red- and yellow-stickered building there is a row of houses and businesses displaying hopeful, shouty green stickers of 'This One's OK.'
The people are the same at the moment, all suffering different levels of damage; but in the coming months those of us with green stickers will be there to help the less fortunate slowly rebuild - stronger, wiser, sadder than before.
Ally Mullord is a writer and blogger (and sometime band nerd) living in Christchurch. She blogs for New Zealand's TV3 website here and has a hilarious, not-always-safe-for-work personal blog too.
No comments:
Post a Comment