Just as my browser refreshed to tell me that I had successfully published my post about Full House, my house started shaking. Magnitude 5.2, in Pegasus Bay, just off New Brighton.
I managed to get my chair pushed back and was ready to dive under the desk if things built any more, which is several steps ahead of where I usually manage to be. And checking the GeoNet Rapid site I see that it wasn’t just my jangling nerves, we have had a couple more little wobbles since then. (It was either that, a(nother) kinetic hallucination, or the land under my house had temporarily been replaced by a plate of under-set jelly. Ugh.)
By a weird coincidence, we’ve finally had our claim passed to Fletcher’s, and had the local Fletcher’s Honcho (technical term) and his local Building Company Representative come out to look things over and get the repair process underway. In theory it starts in about eight weeks time, and will take a month to complete. So I’ll be sharing the house with a team of builders through the middle of winter … oh joy. But it will be good to get that done. Fingers crossed there aren’t any more big shakes, or any more damage. (Haven’t been upstairs to check – I find myself strangely reluctant to climb the stairs just at the moment.) (And is anyone else out there worrying that it’s building up to another big one, like in half an hour or so?)
I’ve been good and logged my Felt Report for GeoNet. It’s one of the strange little rituals that people in Canterbury have developed, like the monthly check of the CERA page for the latests addition to the lists of buildings to be demolished. (The guys at Retrace have a lovely way of memorialising some of them – take a look.) I take pride in being the first person in Southbridge to log a report (not this time though – curses!), and there’s a weird sort of comfort in seeing the other reports coming in to the Shaking Map – little coloured circles blooming, saying that you aren’t alone, that other people felt it too. And that some other poor bugger got it worse than you did – this time it looks like Sydenham, Addington, Richmond, Aranui, Bromley and Lyttleton. Hope you guys are ok.
Canterbury, I love you. You know I do. But oh, I really wish this would end. And that we would know it had, rather than this waiting to find out.
A Dark Feathered Art 