The first Christchurch earthquake was one year ago today.
I’m reviving my poor long-dead blog with this story, to try and preserve a time and place wiped out forever by the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. Everything here is true (as I saw it); friends will recognise the characters but names have been changed as some people may not want to be part of my reminiscence. Almost every place I mention has since been flattened, closed or damaged so this is not a guide book nor a recommendation.
You may have trouble with my vision of Christchurch as the magic kingdom. You’d be right to suspect that mood enhancers (both prescription and illicit) added lustre, but all our memories are more or less our own creations so it’s still valid, I submit.
Perhaps the best day ever was the first Thursday of August last year, in Christchurch.
At first sight the day wouldn’t seem to have much chance of success. We were two queers on the loose in what’s perhaps New Zealand’s most conservative city. Plus, it was deep winter; I was on day leave from the Spinal Unit with my broken vertebrae newly fused, screwed and encased in a pink collar (picture) that pressed on my raw wound. Worse, my price of freedom was to agree to use a wheelchair all day.
When Richard came to collect me, the nurses had me shaved showered and dressed for a polar expedition. He had planned a day of fun and romance, despite tension between us. Torn between my restlessness and rising panic and Richard’s desperate need to protect me, our relationship wouldn't see out the year.
However, that day Christchurch was ours.
The city was literally glittering. An overnight frost had put glistening white fringes round the river and park. Christchurch modelled itself on an England that maybe never was of tea shops, garden suburbs and niceness. That morning the illusion held firm: Pretty restored Edwardian trams rattled past blocks of Victorian Gothic. Public school boys in their black and white striped blazers or 1950s-style suits hurried to Christ’s College. Handsome puntsmen in straw hats were setting up their punts on the River Avon.
Despite my chair, collar and fragile look (or probably because of it) we were treated like visiting VIPs everywhere: galleries, book shops, design shops, clothes shops… They all showered us with attention.
Many features from my childhood were still there to revisit: tea at Mona Vale, the Museum’s pioneer street with its pretend shops and plaster horse, Ballantyne’s department store, Fazzazz with its shop windows of classic old Ferraris and Bentleys …
The morning rolled on, under a perfect and cloudless blue sky.
Lunch was by turns disastrous, delicious and hilarious. We were lunching with my old school friend Simon at a famous Italian restaurant that wouldn’t survive even the first earthquake, three weeks in the future.
We made a powerful entrance; the centre of way too much attention. For once, the stares weren’t only at me. Simon is over 2 metres tall, a wonder of nature: beautifully proportioned and a natural athlete despite his enormous size. To watch him move is an unearthly experience, and one I never tired of watching. He, completely heterosexual, has always accepted my lusting looks with the same tolerant good grace he displays to everyone.
As both the maître d’ and our waiter gave us The Eye, it was clear we’d get attentive service. As unordered amuse-bouche arrived it was clear we were in for a memorable meal.
We also realised we were trapped in mistaken identity –that Simon was my date and Richard (16 years my senior) some sort of caregiver. He could only sit and seethe as we were lavished with attention and he – who was paying – became invisible. Each fresh treat for us and indignity for Richard added to the humour. An apparently bottomless supply of wines soon overcame my orders not to drink with the result we were soon helpless with laughter and drink.
As the afternoon slipped by, our plans for walks and visits faded away, and with them my last chance to see Christchurch intact.
By three the cold was returning, by five the light was fading and it was time to decant me back into the handicap taxi, to face the nurses at the Spinal Unit and return to the routine of rehab, PE, healthy meals and recovery.
By a malevolent twist of fate that wasn’t my last experience of Christchurch, neck surgery and earthquakes but that’s another story…
