my life

I’m still trying to get over the gravity of that statement. It seems so unreal, even to me now, a week since it all happened. I was sitting in a park today, closing my eyes and thinking about the poor folk who didn’t make it out alive. It seems hard to believe that I was there, in the midst of it, just 1 week ago today.

At 12:44 on February 22 2011 I was sitting in my office in Sumner and tweeted the 3 words “Movement and timing“. I had felt uneasy all day. Sometimes you just feel like something is wrong and you can’t put your finger on it. Was I hungry? Not enough sleep? I just felt uneasy.

At 12:51, just 6 minutes later, an earthquake hit the city of Christchurch, with its epicentre in Lytleton, which lies around 6 kilometres from Sumner.

Simon and I were discussing how to best display Flash within SimpleCMS before the page has fully loaded – you know, a really meaningful conversation about something that really matters – all of a sudden the building started violently shaking. What felt like a split second and at the same time a lifetime, we were both clambering onto and over each other, running out of the door as office furniture came crashing down around us. Running is normally quite an easy thing to do, but if you’ve ever tried to run on a bouncy castle you’ll know how much harder it is when the stuff you’re trying to run on doesn’t want to play along nicely.

We managed to get outside and witness large pieces of metal falling down from the roof above our office – without hesitation (or rational thought) I did the only thing anyone would do in a situation like that: I called my Mum.

There are two reasons why I called my Mum: one being that it’s sort of thing that we all tend to do; the whole ‘chicken soup’ thing. Mum’s are traditionally the person we run to when things go wrong. Mums make things better. The second reason being that I know how much of a worrier my Mum is. “If she’s watching the news“, I think to myself “and she sees that there’s been an earthquake in the place where her son lives, she’s going to be really worried“.

Turns out that she knew nothing about it! Not surprising really, why would she when it had literally happened about 1 minute before I called her? That would be some fast reporting right there. From Christchurch to Hull (sorry, Mum, Beverley!) via the medium of television in around a minute – that’s closer to magick than news reporting.

Anyway, I re-assured her that I was ok and she needn’t worry about me. Which worried her even more than if I hadn’t have bothered calling at all. Looking back, I remember a large piece of roof falling 5 metres away from where I was standing at the time of the call, and being quite close to where there were giant rocks falling down from the cliffs. So to say everything was ok at that moment in time wasn’t really telling the whole truth.

The village Sumner was blanketed in what Simon and I originally assumed was smoke from a fire somewhere. Again, when you actually think about it, no fire could have started that quickly for it to produce that amount of smoke, but our heads weren’t thinking rationally at the time. As we now know, it was actually red dust from a section of cliff face that fell onto the Returned Servicemen Association building (RSA), killing two men.

We ran around the corner to see what was going on – along with us, people were running everywhere looking bemused. I pulled out my phone and shot a short video of the rocks during which time an aftershock hit.

Movement and timing.

Having a 3G connection and being a budding film-maker/geek, I uploaded it to Youtube and tweeted the link to my modest amount of followers (who numbered around 120 if I remember correctly). Somehow it got picked up by the Twitter account @BreakingNews and as a result became one of the most viewed pieces of footage around the world that week.

Shown on the BBC, CNN and Sky News, on TV from Australia to God-knows-where-istan. My out-of-breath, half-generic-northern-half-Hull accent narrated the experience for the rest of the world to see. Simon making a cameo appearance toward the end with a well-timed ‘fuck‘ for all the children watching.

We decided it was time to move; given that the normally distant sea had edged towards us and that a lot of people were tweeting to me about an impending tsunami. We needed to find Amy; Simon’s fiancee, who worked at Redcliffs School as a support teacher.

We managed to bust the door down on the office and grab the car keys off my desk. Simon pointed out that whilst his side of the room looked like a bomb had hit it, with monitors and printers everywhere, my side was just as I had left it – a mess as usual.

My desk arrangment finally looked like Simon’s!

It was an eery drive from Sumner to Redcliffs. One of the most striking things for me was that the iconic and instantly recognisable Shag Rock on the beach into Sumner had almost disappeared. Something that had been a noticeable feature of the area for Millennia had crumbled to nothing. You know it’s bad when even nature looks different, not just the man-made structures of the last century or so.

Even with the lack of traffic, the drive was a slow one; swerving around the many gaping wounds that the earth had recently acquired. A Posthaste van was sitting underneath the cliffs with its windscreen smashed and the offending boulder still sitting there – the unlucky, yet at the same time lucky, driver of the van was standing on the side of the road typing away on his mobile.

We arrived in Redcliffs to find a lot of worried parents picking their children up from the school. We picked our little one up and headed off for higher ground as people kept advising us to do. As it turns out, with the epicentre being in Lytleton, any tsunami that may have hit would have reached us almost instantly – that is of course if it was willing to climb the kilometre high hills to get to us. Being there, right there, at the time, we didn’t know what was going on so we did what we felt was the right thing to do – we headed up the hill.

When we arrived at my house the full extent of the thing hit. Whereas the previous earthquake had knocked our neighbour’s vase over because “these houses are built on solid volcanic rock” as I was often told. This cookie had taken out most of the houses down our street. There were a few bloodied people standing around with young children who seemed blissfully unaware that this was anything more than a new adventure. Amy did a great job of looking after some of the children whose parents were nowhere to be seen and at the same time playing with a worried-looking dog.

I went up the hill to survey the house. I was told by my neighbours that my little Piaggio Apé had been pushed over by the force of the impact so I knew before I saw the place that it wasn’t going to be pretty. That and the fact that the house below us (which had been bought only weeks before) looked like it was about to collapse at any time.

My fears were confirmed. The place I called home was a mess. I’d made an extra effort to tidy the place that morning before heading off to work too – trying to get that welded-on egg off the pan was my biggest waste of time that day.

Because of the non-stop aftershocks which kept coming and coming, I knew for a fact that I wasn’t willing to stay anywhere with anything solid above me; you know, ceilings that sort of thing.

I gabbed a couple of photographs, tents and my wind-up radio that Rachel bought me for my birthday and went back down the driveway to meet Simon and Amy. We drove up to the top of the hill, until we could go no further, and pulled into a place called ‘Gethsemene Gardens‘ – your guess as to what this place is now is as good as our guess was then. Whatever your guess was, I bet you it was wrong. What we found at Gethsemene Gardens was no less than an Ark.

Yep, as if the earth moving beneath us and the talked about impending floods weren’t enough – things just got a lot more biblical.

Now this wasn’t a boat, nor was it simply a building that vaguely looked like an Ark – it was a giant monster of an Ark that very much resembled something Noah would have been proud to have knocked about in. Complete with life-size brass animals, 2 of each kind. The view from the place was spectacular – eerily quite but amazing nonetheless. We could clearly make out the bellowing smoke rising from the centre of Christchurch and although we couldn’t turn on the TV due to the electricity being off, we knew that this was a big event. And we were part of it.

Bev and Ken were the proud owners of the Ark and the beautiful gardens adjacent to it, built by hand by her brother John over a number of years, this was a place where this old Christian couple hosted weddings. Inside was a chapel and even a bar. If we were lucky to escape the full wrath of the earthquake, we were even luckier to find an Noah’s Ark, at the top of a hill… with a bar.

The lovely couple offered us their caravan to stay in for the night and we gladly accepted their kind offer. It was raining by now and starting to get dark. We were all very tired so to have somewhere to stay that was solid enough to keep us warm but was not made of bricks was just what we needed.

As if they had earthquakes every day, Bev and Ken were prepared with candles and a toasty log fire and with my wind-up radio it all made for a real wartime experience.

She popped open a bottle of red wine and we all felt so safe in their living room which was essentially a large wooden shed with colourful sheets draped across the ceiling to keep the heat inside. She cooked us a meal of potatoes and cream with sweetcorn and beef. It all had to be eaten now that the fridge was without electricity. Every time an aftershock hit, depending on its force, we would either glance over, smile nervously and say something like “Did you feel that?” or if it was less of a rumbling build-up and more of a whack, we would all let out a collective “Woooooooaaahh” accompanied by some serious chair-clinging.

Listening to the radio brought home the severity of the event. People had died this time and we felt lucky to be where we were. That night the three of us, Simon, Amy and myself went to our little caravan and tried to get some rest. Turned out that I found this easier than the pair of them did. From my perspective, I was alive, I was safe and I had checked there was nothing above me that could be shaken enough to fall on me whilst sleeping. That and the day’s experience was enough to get me to sleep and snoring enough to ensure that Simon and Amy couldn’t. Sorry guys!

The aftershocks continued all night apparently. I say ‘apparently‘ because I only found this out when I was told about them in the morning. Whilst I had only woken momentarily to a large shudder, only to fall back asleep again, it turned out that Simon and Amy had enjoyed no more than an hour’s sleep.

The next day was spent helping to clean up in the Ark. In the dark. The Ark in the dark. Hulking giant brass camels around for the old couple was the least we could do for them. The pews were everywhere too and there was a good amount of glass around so we stuck on some gloves and got to work.

We ended up staying at the Ark with Bev and Ken for 4 nights in total, until we heard that the bridge which connected the village of Sumner to Christchurch city was open again. Simon and Amy wanted to find the quickest way to England and I didn’t blame them.

We drove across the city which resembled a war zone. Liquefaction distorting and warping my beautiful newly adopted city.

The army were out in force, patrolling the city and enforcing a curfew on its residents. Around 4 hours later, we made it to the other side – it was literally a tale of two cities, the West side having seemingly suffered no damage at all. A complete contrast to the September 2010 earthquake which really hammered this area.

We stayed the night with friends of mine, Mike and Susan, whom I had met through my Mum – he had lectured on Social Care in Hull a few months before and after Mum had told him that I was also living in Christchurch we made contact. They were both very warm and welcoming and after surviving on over-filled kettle water and melted ice for the past 5 days, having clean running water was something I will never take for granted again.

It was shower time and I was dirty!

But they had more than just compassion and running water; they had electricity and internet! “Internet, my old friend, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

Watching the television for the first time was shocking. The true devastation of the city centre was heartbreaking. What was undoubtedly the finest city in New Zealand had become rubble and the landmarks which defined it and its heritage were devastated.

Simon and Amy left on a flight for London just 3 days ago and already I’m missing them. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m going to stay, but I don’t know where. Life moves on and I’m lucky to be alive. God bless all those who are not as lucky as we are.

Today I went fishing and found out today that I am not a natural born killer. I’ve always justified my meat eating habits by kidding myself that anything I was eating I could have killed myself. That beef steak from some cow killing; easy. The lamb chop, all chopped up; simple.

I came to be fishing as I’m actually in paradise at the moment. I’ll write more about it later, but paradise lets you get into a little row boat with a rod or two and head off into the middle of a lake.

At first, this fishing malarky was amazing. The view, the serenity, the book I’m reading. It was at least 2 hours of lazing, and a couple of false alarms before I realised I had a bite! This fish, who was just trying to have his lunch, was going to end up as mine.

Remembering what my friend Wayne had told me about how to land a fish was proving difficult as the moment struck. The fish came out of the water, wriggling and having trouble breathing, with a hook (that I had put there) right through its eye. God, I felt awful.

Should I let it go back in the water where it obviously felt more at home? Not with a hook in its eye; it had to die. And I had to be the one to kill it. I’ve never knowingly killed anything other than flies and wasps in the past and the reality of what I had to do kicked in.

Now, If you’re a seasoned fisherman or a hunter you must be thinking I am a bit of a pansy right now; you’d be right. I dragged it into the boat, picked up the knife and stuck it into its head, thinking that I would surely kill it instantly. It continued to wriggle about so I stuck the knife through it’s head again. Still moving. I tried to cut its head off but the knife wasn’t sharp enough so it ended up just pushing down on its neck until its eyes popped out.

It was at this point I will never forget the look on its face, as if to say “Why are you doing this to me?” – I kept saying sorry, sorry, sorry as I stabbed it repeatedly in the head, trying desperately to put it out of its misery. I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing, this was proving to be a traumatic experience.

After about 10 minutes (could have been longer, could have been shorter, I don’t know) it was fully dead. Not moving at all. What a relief. I spent the next 15 minutes or so just staring into the distance, contemplating what I had just done to another creature; a creature who had done nothing to harm me at all. It was quite a humbling experience, and until now I never knew that I was such a wuss.

I rowed back, and the nice lady who owned paradise filleted my friend. She then rolled him in flour and black pepper. Fried him, squeezed some lemon on him and I ate him. He tasted nice!

I’ve been here for 5 days now and thought it was about time I posted something on this here interweb.

The first thing I noticed about New Zealand is that people just seem to have more time for you; they’re not rushing around wanting to be somewhere else all the time. So far, they seem a lot more chilled out than back home.

Still being a bit jet-lagged I’ve been having some pretty erratic sleeping patterns, but the other morning I decided it was about time I got into the swing of things a bit and woke up at 6.30 am, ready for what would be the most productive day since I have been here.

I had a web meeting with Simon regarding Simple CMS at 7am so I went to the coffee shop around the corner and logged on for that – an hour later we were done and I had to get ready for a job interview I had arranged for 12 noon.

It’s not that I want a job working for anyone else, as I don’t think I’m able to anymore, it’s been too long; it’s just that if I want to stay here for any length of time I have to get sponsored by an employer. My interview was at the other side of town and after enquiring as to how much a taxi would be (and being told about $50-$60 one way!) I decided it was probably a good idea to get a car. I went on to Trade Me (the Kiwi equivalent of Ebay) and found a big one with four wheels and gave the bloke a call. In broken English he said that the car was still available and I said I’d be around within the hour.

One $50 taxi ride later (it was further away than I had thought) and I was at the guy’s house. Turns out he was Philippino and had lived here for 30 years, but still spoke with a very strong accent. He told me it was his birthday and invited me around for dinner with him and his wife on the evening; I accepted his kind invitation. More about that later.

He didn’t seem to know much about the car as he was selling it for his son who had disappeared to Australia and he didn’t know when he’d be coming back so had decided to sell his car. Fair deal. All he kept saying was “New tyres, look! New tyres!”. Judging by the size of these tyres, they must have cost a bob or two so I could see why he kept banging on about them.

Anyway, I had a quick look under the bonnet, making those noises as if I knew what I was looking for… I did that thing that my Dad does to make the engine rev without getting inside (it’s a little silver thing you pull on) and put my ear to the engine. He must have thought that I had a clue! I took a ride around the block, offered him $3,100 ( that’s about £1,200 – he had it for sale for $3,500 ). He took the cash and the car was mine.

Now I’m no mechanic but I’ve had my fair share of shit cars and I have a good feeling about what not to buy. It wasn’t ticking and banging so I think it’ll be okay. It also had 6 months’ more WOF (their version of MOT) and 6 months’ REGO (road tax equivalent) so I’ve got at least until October before I start having to worry about any official stuff. We Brits can drive for up to a year on our UK licenses, and New Zealand law doesn’t require you to have car insurance… yes you did read that right, New Zealand law does not require you to have any car insurance… so all I had to do was drive away. Bonza!

( Being the assiduous chap I am, I chose to take out some insurance, just in case I bump a Ferrari or the likes. Annual cover cost me £63… yep, for the whole year! I’ve got this awful feeling that someone is going to wake me up at any minute, and I’ll be back in the UK )

If you haven’t already guessed, my new car is the one in the pictures – do you like it? I know, I know, I bet it’s a right gas guzzler but seeing as a litre of petrol is 61p and diesel is only 37p I don’t mind too much. I always switch the taps off when I brush my teeth now, so I feel this keeps my carbon footprint in a nice balance.

So now I had my car but I was lost; I went and bought a Tom Tom and found my way back to the hotel. Had a shower, ironed my best shirt and I was ready for off… and still only 11:00am. I arrived at Green Bay at 11:45. Seeing as I had time to spare before I had to meet the dude, I had lunch of Sushi and made my meeting at 12. Phew… all before I had even got up the day before.

He offered me a job as a consultant designer, which means I can concentrate on setting up the business here, whilst still getting sponsored. So all in all, a very productive half day!

The afternoon was spent recovering from my massive amount of productivity by driving my new car over to the beach and taking the photos of the car you see on the right. There was a man fishing in a little boat so I watched him for a while, and took some photos of the City from the North Shore.

On the way back I bought my new friend, Junn, a book for his birthday and drove back to his house. When I got there the place was full of Philippino folk of all ages. They all greeted me enthusiastically and led me through to the kitchen where there was so much food on the table.

Ruby, Junn’s wife, sat me down and piled my plate high with different things I’d never seen the likes of before – and sausages. It felt a bit weird being there as I’d only met them that day when buying the car, and didn’t know anyone there. I couldn’t exactly blend in to the background either as I sort of stuck out like a sore thumb – I think it was the pink shirt.

They all made me feel very welcome though and when the food was over, the karaoke machine came out. Junn started singing and when he was finished hinted that I should go next. That was my cue to leave… but not before I did a little rendition of La Bamba by Los Lobos! Oh yeh!