Destination Christchurch

What’s it like, coming out of marking hell? Well, this time I'm actually still sane (thank you Prozac.) It's been a bit like stepping out of a fog. All of a sudden I can hear my thoughts. I notice the mess in the house and the pile of unpaid bills on the table. Oops. I can think straight and acknowledge tomorrow and next week. I can actually think beyond this exam, this report, this frantic and inhumane pressure. It’s like waking up from a coma. I feel human again, and it’s time to enjoy the school holidays.

First thing on the agenda – visit the Christchurch Hineses! Off to Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. Fortunately I made all my travel arrangements a couple of months ago, before the descent into marking hell – sometimes I surprise myself! So this is how it goes: a bus trip to Sydney – I finished two blanket squares for my Tutor Group knitting project (more about that in a separate post), a night at the Ibis Airport hotel, an early morning shuttle-bus to the airport, and I’m up, up and away!

Uneventful flight, but as usual I’m sitting next to a fat person who insists on oozing into the seat I have paid for… but I get to read a library book on my Kobo (more about that in yet another post, too!) and after an uninspiring gluten-free airline meal (fish! Erk!) I touch down in Shakytown at 2-something pm.

Chris and Ingrid collect me from the airport and we head across town to Dad & Diana’s place in the eastern suburbs.

It’s been 6 years and several thousand earthquakes since I was last in Christchurch. The recent biggies – the ones that split Dad’s former house in two and filled it with the silt of liquefaction – may seem like old news to those of us in the rest of the world – but they’re daily conversation and an ongoing fact of life for the people who live here. The roads are bumpy and pot-holed, fences and walls are falling down, and shipping containers have demonstrated their versatility in many ways: as storage places for all your worldly goods, holding up damaged buildings, shoring up crumbling cliffs, becoming coffee-shops and boutiques… being covered in artwork or a knitted container-cosy… 

Shipping container shopping mall - called 'The Restart Mall'

 Cantabrian quirkiness and good humour abound, however, and people have developed their own coping mechanisms. ‘Guess the magnitude of THAT’ is a popular game, as is ‘Guess the epicentre’. ‘What used to be there?’ is another. I liked this sign, in a craft shop window in New Brighton:

 

It’s now Tuesday, and I haven’t felt the earth moving – yet – let’s hope it stays that way. In the meantime, here are some photos taken from the periphery of the Red Zone in the city.  The scale of the destruction is hard to imagine – Christchurch has become a city of car-parks (seriously!) and sprawling vacant blocks. The soundtrack that plays in the background is the unceasing thump-thump of construction work – or rather, deconstruction work. Clearing the rubble is a gargantuan task. 

It was a harrowing ‘tour’ that made me feel a little ghoulish, but even worse than looking at the scenes of dereliction in the war-zone that the inner-city resembles was a visit to Dad’s former home.

It used to be a comfortable home with a lovely view of the river. Now it’s a broken shell awaiting the arrival of the deconstruction men. The hallway is a downhill slope. The bath, if filled, would be nearly empty at one end as it overflowed at the other. Ruined books and records litter the floor and the overgrown ‘garden’. Along the whole street, curtains hang in houses where no one lives any more. The street is deserted, apart from demolition workers and their trucks. The river glides past between the built-up gravel banks that run through this ghost-town.

Stuck in the mud - Dad's record cllection

 

The road to Sumner snakes along the coast, and walls of shipping containers act as barriers against the falling rocks and crumbling cliffs. Broken houses hang precariously from the clifftops.

I can’t imagine the noise of the rocks grinding and rumbling, houses being torn apart , trees falling, or the terror that must’ve gripped people as their world crashed down around them. Just looking at the aftermath, all these months later, was enough for me.

Thelma & Betty and the Perils of Packing

Crikey - it's not that easy! At least our hats are ready to go!


In the meantime.... Thelma is still practising walking in heels, and has just bought a suitcase.

The woman in the shop tried to sell her one big enough for the two of us and our gear to travel in; something you really wouldn't want to be lugging around everywhere, on and off trains etc. These days you can't actually leave your luggage anywhere unattended, or they call in the bomb people. A giant suitcase would be a bit of an albatross.

Betty: It's your turn to mind the suitcase!
Thelma: No, I minded it last time, remember, when you went to the loo, and you were gone for ages!

(This in itself would be a dreadful thing, as women are renowned for going to the loo in pairs. The existence of a giant suitcase would render this time-honoured tradition impossible to uphold.)

So - a sensible suitcase has been bought, in a becoming shade of simply red. Now, what to put in it? The rule of thumb is that if you don't want to be carrying it on and off trains and up and down escalators for a fortnight, leave it behind.

And then there's the carry-on luggage. Being the sophisticated international travellers that we are pretending to be, we don't want to arrive in England looking as if we've been pulled through a hedge backwards - but dear me it's hard to look fabulous after 24 hours in a flying sardine can filled with fake air. Our emergency skin care, toothpaste, deodorant, cosmetics and the biggie - hand sanitiser - have to be squished into tiny tiny bottles (of no greater than 100ml capacity) and sealed in a plastic bag no bigger than 20 x 20cm so that the screeners at the airport can see that we're not trying to bring explosives on board, cunningly concealed in, say, a 125ml bottle of emu oil (my favourite moisturiser).

Lucky me, though - my lovely friend Anna gave me a collection of LAGs*-legal skin care as part of my birthday pressie last week! Here's how it won't look once I've chucked it all into my sealable plastic LAGs* bag:



Today I am shopping for something orange. Not sure what - but my entire travel wardrobe at the moment is black or olive green, and I want something bright!

*LAGs - Liquids, aerosols and gels.

OMG - G garb?

G garb is the brainchild of Tracey Clark (aka Thelma), a biz whiz from the little town of Greta (the G in G garb) in the beautiful Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia. Everybody else in the Hunter Valley seems to do wine, so Tracey decided to do hats. Very logical choice.

She researched the market, wrote the business plan, sourced the hats, designed the logo and funded the setup of the company. Coming from a long career in sales, Tracey knows what’s what, and she’s great fun to boot. With a wicked sense of humour, an adventurous spirit and a steely determination to succeed, Tracey Clark has the qualities that will put G garb on the map.

But who is Tracey Clark? One of five children, she’s now a 46 year-old mother of two grown-up kids. She has three dogs – none of which is hers, is a solid gold dancer extraordinaire, an absolute non master of the violin and piano, and has written more poetry than Keats. She doesn’t like peeling potatoes, and once got lost for several days trying to put on a doona cover, so she doesn’t like them either. Apart from all that, she’s also stylish, effortlessly classy and has impeccable taste. But she’s not much of a traveller.

Tracey doesn’t travel, she moves. The last time was to New York, back in the 90s, and she spent 5 years living and working there before coming home to Oz. The trip to the UK will be her first proper ‘tour’.

That’s where I (Betty) come in. I have been overseas at least 3 times, not even counting the fact that I was born there, and not counting New Zealand either, because that’s almost Australia anyway. I am a whiz at looking lost and asking for directions in two and a bit languages, and I’m the Sensible One.

Tracey/Thelma will try to tell you otherwise, but all you need to do is read some of my other posts to know it’s true. I ride around the countryside and fall off motorbikes in my spare time. And I’m Tracey’s faithful sidekick: the Costello to her Abbott, the klutzy Jerry Lewis to her suave Dean Martin; the Gabrielle to her Xena, and the healer of her broken heart, sitting round the cauldron (a story for another day).



She may call me her ‘business associate’ on the G garb website, but I prefer the term sidekick. My experience of hats is wearing a motorcycle helmet, or a beanie to stop my ears dropping off in winter. Tres chic, ha ha - that's not a G garb hat in the picture above, by the way! Tracey is the hat lady and the expert, and I am her humble apprentice (except I’m older and wiser – the Sensible One, remember?)

We have been invited backstage at the Simply Red concert in Newmarket on 31 July. We have chosen our outfits, although Tracey, an avid wearer of runners, is allegedly hopeless in heels, so she’s been practising in her hallway. I, on the other hand, will stick to sensible shoes.

So – join us for our adventure, yes? It’s going to be a hoot!

A new Adventure – Betty & Thelma Hit the Road

This is a bit exciting. My good mate Thelma and I have teamed up, and we’re about to take England by storm!

In a couple of weeks I’ll be swapping my motorcycle helmet for a sophisticated cool G garb hat and flying away to the UK with Thelma (the Hat Lady of the Valley) for 10 days of Mad Hatterdom.

This has come out of the blue, you say. Well, only sort of. Thelma and I have been friends since our daughters were besties in Primary school. That’s so many years ago now that I’ve lost count. They were the days of swilling gin and tonics and Solid Gold Dancing.

Not much has changed. Thelma & I are older and wiser, and far more fun than we ever were back then. She’s still taller and skinnier than I am, and a far better cook, and I can still drink her under the table.

Thelma also has a great head for business, and for hats. I’m still finding my comfort zone and easing my way into hattiness.

The hats, though, are great – Kevin J. Robinson from Simply Red has been wearing one of Thelma’s hats during the current tour, and looking super stylish.

Watch this space to keep up with our adventure. We leave Oz on July 27 – a mere two weeks away, and EEK! I haven’t started packing!