However, after wasting a good couple of hours finding, resizing, and aligning the polar bear, generally gussying things up, trying again to import my old comments and then finally discovering that the people that have them don't support that manouevre technically, damnit - and then swearing and giving up and going with the Blogger comments system (happy, Tim?) - I should probably mention the rather serious earthquake Christchurch experienced some 3 weeks back that may have come to people's attention. Certainly it came to the attention of those in Christchurch at the time. On reflection, I'm pretty sure God / the universe / plate tectonics was merely responding to my complaints of having nothing to blog about. So after all the destruction, it would be remiss of me not to write something.
A lot of people talked to on telly, radio etc. have spoken about how terrified they were during the actual event. I can claim in all honesty I wasn't really scared at all. However, I rush to add that thinking about it afterwards, I have concluded that this wasn't due to any inherent staunchness on my part or anything, but was in fact probably due a complete and utter lack of thought. "Dumbstruck" is a perfectly apt adjective. My brain is probably never working at the best of times when suddenly roused from sleep at 4:30AM anyway, and my reaction to the whole thing as it occurred could be summed up as "Oh, right. So...this is happening, then." Actually, sometimes you can't articulate your thoughts in words properly - but what I can do with complete accuracy though is put the thoughts that ran through my head into punctuation marks. "..." I thought, as Karen ran down the hall to check on Theo, and I... stayed in bed, continuing to do all my thinking exclusively in ellipses. Only when I heard things going crash in the lounge did a new thought enter my head - "!", it went. The sound of items of furniture flying from the positions in the lounge to which I (and indeed they) had become accustomed was what it took to prompt my first conscious consideration of the possibility that this might be quite a significant earthquake. Indeed, that it might in fact be one of those earthquakes large enough to cause things to actually, you know, fall down. However, the thought that it might be one where some of the things that fall down are buildings never really entered my head for the duration (and indeed didn't until much later on in the day, when I finally saw some photos of the numerous buildings that had done just that). The house seemed to be still in one piece, and in no danger of increasing that number. I stayed where I was. I managed to yell out to see if Karen and Theo were all right. Karen yelled that they were. Thus reassured, my brain fell back on "..." again. The shaking eventually stopped, and I found that I had ridden (appropriate terminology for what it felt like, really) the whole thing out without moving out of bed.
So it seems numerous primary school drills certainly failed me there, or more accurately I failed them. The only thing I put between me and potentially fatal descending roof bits was the blankets on the bed, and while I might linguistically fudge it so, I don't think we can really say that this was the "cover" that Mrs Courtenay of Room 6 wanted me to seek in one of these events (it was nice and snuggly, though). Sorry, Mrs Courtenay. If it's any consolation however, I'm pretty confident that I'll still stop, drop, and roll on any future occasion of me catching fire.
Theo, even more nonchalant than I, slept through the whole thing - a cover-seeking fail for him too, I think you'll agree, although I'll grudgingly admit that there are some extenuating circumstances there I suppose, like him not having attended primary school yet. But really, can you be too young to learn emergency drills you'll totally fail to act upon in an emergency? For as the old saying tells us, if you fail to prepare, you'll probably be crushed by falling masonry. Something like that, anyway. So the fact that Theo stayed asleep really meant that we missed a valuable learning opportunity to say "See what Daddy did in this disaster? Don't do that." Lamenting the lost chance to educate, Karen and I groped our way into the lounge (no power for us), leaving the snoozing Theo where he peacefully slumbered.
Some time ago, we were in need of a tall, thin bookcase to A) fit in the tall, narrow space we had available at the time and B) hold books. We acquired one from TradeMe which looked OK, but on receipt turned out to be of the somewhat wobbly variety. As soon as I got it up, I thought: "Man, this thing would so fall over in an earthquake." Ever since we've had it, occasionally I would look at it and think: "Hmmm, I should probably do something about the fact that bookshelf would totally fall over in an earthquake." But c'mon, earthquakes - they don't actually happen.
Stubbing our toes on the 672 entries of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books (The Dragons of Pern, The Dragonettes of Pern, The Dolphins of Pern, The Chartered Tax Accountants of Pern, etc.) now strewn all over the floor, we picked our way over to the kitchen to discover a couple of smashed bowls. The bigger, heavier bookcase (which I had been sensible enough to make secure - well, securesque - against earthquakes) had remained vertical, but the TV had plunged forward off its cabinet. Conveniently it had landed on a combination of the beanbag and Theo's change mat, and super conveniently at a time when Theo's change mat didn't have Theo's head resting on it. Power coming back on later in the day confirmed the TV had come through this little tumble with flying (HD) colours. I found the double doors onto the porch open, and trying to close them, found that I couldn't. In the dark I concluded the door frame must be warped; however in the light of day I discovered the earthquake had rattled the locked doors enough to pop them outwards, and the reason I couldn't close them again was because the locked snib was still out (which I failed to see in the dark). Turning the key clockwise resolved that problem without having to get the EQC involved.
And so really, bar a couple of broken bowls, not much bad seemed to have happened (although we later discovered our hot water cylinder had sprung a slow leak... but only after it had emptied its entire contents over the course of a day into the hot water cupboard). Because work was in town (and something of a mess, if you've seen the photos on Facebook) there then followed what was more or less a week's paid holiday, which I'm almost guilty to say I rather enjoyed, since there were (and are) people about with houses in half and businesses fallen over and dreams crushed and hopes dashed, etc., whereas the largest inconvenience we faced was no hot water for a few days while we waited at first for a plumber, and then - for a couple more days after the plumber had fixed things - an electrician, after I turned the switch back on after the leak was fixed, only for the fuse board to go BANG! and shower me with what was quite an impressive pyrotechnic display of sparks. Said bang may have been the biggest drama of the whole State of Emergency for us. At times during the week sitting quietly at home, playing X Box on one's still functional television or surfing the Internet or playing with Theo, one could easily entirely forget we had just had a major disaster, and at times the only reminder at all that anything extraordinary had happened was having to boil water (which as I have noted elsewhere was an activity that always seemed to come with a vague notion that I should be tearing up towels to make bandages).
There have since followed some aftershocks. Over a thousand in fact, the media tells me. Some of these have been reasonably wobbly, but as one might expect, by now we're getting used to it. After my spectacular failure to observe proper earthquake protocol during the big one, I can only hope that these aftershocks haven't now dulled my reaction to seismic tremors completely, since I don't think any of them have caused me to do anything more than, once or twice, reach out an arm and steady the television. It's important to have priorities.
More disconcerting than the aftershocks for me probably are the holes that have appeared in the fabric of Christchurch. The following conversational snippet has played out between myself and overseas friends many, many times:
OVERSEAS FRIEND: How's Christchurch?
ME: The same.
...but no more, because to a more significant degree than I would have expected in my lifetime really, it's not. A lot of stuff is gone, a lot of stuff will be going, and a lot of new things will presumably pop up in its place. As the weeks roll on, it's apparent that the temporary fencing you see up everywhere preventing passers-by from coming within brickfalldown range of damaged buildings is going to be around for a good long while, and by the time it's gone, it won't be quite the same city as when a lot of people left it. It's going to be interesting to see what emerges on the other side. I say we should build one of the arcologies from SimCity 2000 somewhere (maybe not the evil-looking one on the right), but perhaps that's just me.
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