Gary Gilmore

Well, I have been absent from the ether for far too long. Much has come to pass since I unloaded my anger on the long suffering Junior. Since then I have visited The Village of the Damned, Christchurch. I have fished with limited success, both fresh and briny. I have ridden my velocipede infrequently. I have had a grown man thrust his testicles in my face. I have had a crowd roar with appreciation as a flaming car jumped me. And I appeared as a page five boy in a national newspaper.

The return to Christchurch was most enjoyable, but the brief visit to some of the damaged areas was, at risk of using a hackneyed phrase, overwhelming. I am still trying to digest what I have seen, the sheer destruction of infrastructure and society is enormous, and I am short of adequate words to convey this.

It's easy to grasp the images of iconic buildings that have been wrecked and rent asunder, but much harder to gain a meaningful impression of the lumpy and beaten roads, the sunken land, the suburbs rendered dirty and deserted. Below is a picture care of Google of Locksley Ave from before the destructive quakes.


View Larger Map

This is what it looked like last Wednesday.

And there are kilometres of deserted and destroyed streets like this.

The jovial parts of my journey involved many things, but foremost was a trip to the busker festival, and the chance opportunity to be publicly shamed as part of a buskers performance. I shall leave the recounting of this until later in the week, as I am still recovering from having a stranger's testicles thrust in my face.