SNZ - Editor's Ramblings

How SoaringNZ gets made

2012-04-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

Editorial Issue 27

SoaringNZ is now well into our fifth year and I think we’ve got quite good at the process of making it. I’ve had some comments recently that made me realise that our readers have no idea how that happens. People are surprised to realise that I do not sit in an office in town bossing around my staff as they answer phones, while I source and write stories. In fact I sit at a desk in the back bedroom of our rental house in Halswell in between working nursing shifts at a resthome down the road.

SoaringNZ has one employee – the much appreciated proof reader Melanie Henrikson (who is also a nurse in ‘real life’). It became obvious after the first issue that a proof reader was essential. It is embarrassing to admit, but even after taking English to seventh form level at school, I still only have a rudimentary grasp of grammar and in some cases spelling. I blame the schooling system, which has only gone downhill from there. That is a rant for another day.

The magazine’s parent company McCaw Media also has a new employee. Paula Ruddick will be tackling our accounts from this issue on. See more about this and the changes it will make to your club’s payments in the Log Book section. I am multitalented but running a business and dealing with money are a set of talents I haven’t mastered.

So how does your magazine get made?

It couldn’t happen without the internet. This would have been a completely different job even twenty years ago. Everything happens via email. Articles and photos all arrive this way. Occasionally I receive photos via other methods and will scan old pictures, sometimes I receive discs of photos in the mail, but just about everything is email.

I have a large white board for planning the current mag (and another one for future planning). On receipt of an article, I make a tick in the column next to the article’s name. I give it a read through and can spend quite a bit of time making sure that it actually says what the author thinks they wrote. Some correspondents have an even worse grasp on English than I do and some do not have English as their first language. Never let that worry you. We (Melanie and I) will always make your words read well. There can be quite a bit of work making long pieces fit into the word limit for the pages available, while keeping the important parts and feel of the story. As a rule of thumb, we use 500 words per page with pictures and illustrations. The number and quality of the photos sent with a story are as important as word count in determining how many pages I will use for a story. The look of the magazine is very important and I don’t want pages of tight text with nothing much to break them up.

Once I’ve done my work on a story it gets another tick, then it is emailed to Melanie. She reads through it and catches many things, often minor, but all improving the ‘readability’ and accuracy of the piece. She sends the corrected version back. That’s another tick on the board.

Once all the material for the issue has those three ticks, it’s ready for the next stage. I work out (roughly) how many pages per article and which are the most important. All the edited version of words, the photos, illustrations and notes are put onto a stick drive and taken to Rosalie Brown and Lee-Ann Collins at RGB Design. These ladies work the magic that makes the magazine look so good. People erroneously think I do this. I don’t. These girls are amazing. They are not employees, but I pay them to do it and it is money well spent.

Once the girls have made a good start, there is a proof for me to go through. At this stage, I’m checking that the important parts of each story are emphasised, the pictures fit with the text, I put captions on the photos and check for any obvious mistakes and muck ups. My changes are made and I get another draft. This is pretty close to the final version.

This draft is sent out to a set of proof readers with impeccable credentials. These people are volunteers and include Max Stevens, executive officer of GNZ and ex Deputy Director of CAA, and John Goddard, ex Air Accident Inspector. There are also a couple of other people and all of them are fonts of gliding knowledge. We all sit down and pore through the draft, checking every word, finding the last mistakes, and there always are some, no matter how carefully the text has been checked before. Interestingly, we often find different mistakes from each other. Accuracy and legality are the main focus of this proof read.

We don’t print anything that may be detrimental to gliding in general or any individual pilot in particular.

There is one last chance to catch mistakes and make any changes (at a cost) when the printer sends their proofs. We check the colour and the final look of the thing. It will take about a week for printing and posting and be in your mail box a few days later.

Roughly two weeks after that, I start making the next one.

Fly safely

Jill McCaw

A special flight with my son

2012-02-28T01:42:00.002-08:00

This is my editorial from Issue 26, Feb/March 2012, of SoaringNZ.

A Special Flight with my Son.

Mt Aspiring from the air is the most awesome piece of rugged countryside I have ever seen. There is an astonishing ice plateau, a huge stretch of white snow, the scale of which is nearly impossible to comprehend, until you see the tiny shadow of your glider against it as you fly only a few hundred feet above it. Suddenly, the sheer size of everything jumps into focus. Massive waterfalls tumble hundreds of metres into a hidden valley which moments before you’d dismissed as a bit of a gully. The terminal wall of the ice isn’t mere metres high; it’s at least a hundred. And the small cloud you can see curling down off the edge… when you cross that ridge you are going to plummet.

Thankfully I wasn’t flying this adventure on my own.

I’m not quite sure what I’d done to deserve it but out of the blue one morning at Omarama, my son Alex announced that since no-one else was flying the Janus, he’d like to take me on a cross country. For all that we’ve spent a lot of time together at gliding sites since he’s learnt to fly, we haven’t flown together much. I did have the honour of being his first passenger (very pleasing) but most of the time we’ve been too busy doing our own thing to even think of flying together. With a fantastic weather forecast, a glider to ourselves and the whole sky to play in, we decided on the ’south a bit,’ type task setting of a certain record setting friend of ours. Very soon after getting airborne, this gelled into a Mt Aspiring - return.

The day was spectacular. It was December 23^rd, a day John Robinson, in his story about flying from Alexandra thinks was the best gliding day in years. Cloud bases were well above 10,000 feet, possibly about 14,000. We had no oxygen gear, not expecting to need it and reluctantly left good climbs well before they topped out.

We headed off across the Ahuriri and the Dingle to Lake Hawea and from there it was unfamiliar territory for me. Alex is training to get his instructor’s rating and from what I can tell from flying with him, he’s going to be very good. He would be explaining where he was aiming for and why and all of a sudden break off and say, “You can tell me to shut up if you want to Mum.” Why would I want to do that? I was flying with one of the top cross country pilots in New Zealand. The insights were fascinating. And this was my son.

I was basking in that most extraordinary feeling of happiness that parents get when they see their kids achieving something wonderful. I love that my boys have taken to gliding and love it as much as John and I ever did. Having been brought up on airfields, there was always the chance that they’d hate it and want nothing to do with it. The fact that Alex has made gliding his sport and is proving to be so good at it is just a wonderful bonus. Yes, I should have been on top of the world.

Sadly I was also suffering that peculiar sensation of joy and distress that I suspect can only be felt by glider pilots. In spite of loving the flight, the scenery, the company, the whole everything, I was starting to feel really ill.

It was hot, it was a thermal flight and because it hadn’t seem to matter at the time we were getting ready, I wasn’t sitting on any cushions and could barely see out of the back of the Janus. This all added to my discomfort. I had flown a little in the beginning of the flight, but once we were over the tiger country of the McKerrows, getting high and staying there was crucial, so I was happy to let Alex take over. Which all meant that by the time we were actually approaching Aspiring itself, ready for that one time only skim across the plateau, all I was really concentrating on was making sure I had my plastic bag at the ready.

That plummeting bit off the edge of the plateau turned out to be the trigger. The steep climb back in our last marked thermal to get us back onto the tops was… unpleasant. But… bag carefully dispatched through the window, by the time we were heading home I was fine.

And I wouldn’t have missed this flight for the world. I was flying in some of the country’s most spectacular scenery with one of our top young pilots. All glider flights can be joyful and fun but this one was especially so, because the pilot in command was my son. I’m sorry Alex if I’ve embarrassed you by printing this. Please don’t let it stop you taking me for a flight like that again, because I can honestly say that this flight was one of those special times that I will remember for ever.

Happy flying everyone.

Stay Safe.

Jill McCaw

For information on Gliding and a glimpse into the pages of SoaringNZ then go to the GNZ website.
To subscribe to the magazine then please email me at soaringnz@mccawmedia.co.nz

Emily, Harry and Jack and an Earthquake - Jack's story.

2011-05-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

This is Jack's story, of what happened in town. If you've enjoyed this story please let me know. If you didn't like it, I'd like to know that too. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

cheers
Jill.

Jack’s Earthquake story.

It took Harry some time to calm things down and peel the kids off Jack. When he did manage it he wrapped him in a huge hug of his own, the relief of the safe arrival of the baby and Jack’s return overwhelming. They clung to each other. Jack was filthy, reeking of something nasty Harry couldn’t define but he was alive and here, home safe.

The police officer shepherded the children out of the room then came back, standing over them, awkward and uncomfortable. ‘Do I need to get him to hospital?’ he asked someone. Harry wasn’t sure if it was him or the midwife.

Jack was a mess. Harry had no idea if Jack ought to be in hospital. As he wrapped him in his arms Jack gave a choked sob and started to cry. His body was shaking like he had a fever. ‘Hey?’ Harry stroked his face, trying to work out what was wrong with him. His skin was gritty and dry. ‘Are you okay?’ Jack didn’t speak, just curled tighter into his arms.

A hand touched Harry’s shoulder as the midwife Marnie crouched beside them and held out a bottle. ‘Jack love, do you need water?’ Jack reached for it gratefully, sucking hard. He coughed and spit out mud. ‘Easy,’ Marnie soothed. ‘Are you hurt Jack? Let me check you out?’

Jack sat up straighter in Harry’s arms, making a visible effort to control himself. He shook his head but his breathing stayed ragged. ‘I’m okay.’ It took him two goes to get his mouth around the words, ‘Bruises, that’s all.’ Marnie ignored him, running her hands through his hair, feeling his cheek bones and moving down his neck. Jack winced as she got to his shoulders. ‘It’s just bruises.’ His grip on Harry tightened; the shudders back. ‘I’m okay.’ He buried his face in Harry’s neck, his voice a breathy whisper that Harry hardly heard. ‘I’m alive.’

The weather was grey and nearly drizzly but Jack didn’t mind. Life was good and he was happy. He tucked the large canvas prints carefully into the boot of the car and checked his phone. The baby could come any time and he needed to be ready. He patted the canvases, so pleased with how they’d turned out. They were gorgeous and were going to look great in the foyer of the new place. He decided he’d head around there now. He laughed out loud with delight. He was sort of in love with the place. It was like the previous two gyms had taught him, taught them, him and Harry and Kev and the team, what they really wanted from the business and this one would have it all – studio with a sprung floor, state of the art sound systems, full time, professional trainers and something really new for them, a café in the foyer.

Coffee. That was a thought. Maybe Harry could come over to the new gym later and they could, he laughed again, christen the place maybe. Grinning he pulled out his phone as he drove out of the car park behind the camera shop. It was illegal to text and drive, but he wasn’t on the road yet. Coffee. He’d invite Harry for coffee, then if the workers had gone…. The guys doing the floor were supposed to be finished by this afternoon. “Cof” was as far as he’d got before he arrived at the street. He wasn’t as fast at texting as the kids. He hung onto the phone as he swung out onto the road behind what looked like a brand new four wheel drive. That would be great for heading up the ski fields in winter. Jack would kill for a truck like that. Maybe if the new gym started doing well it would be time to take some money out and reward themselves; stop funnelling money back into the business all the time.

Pulling up behind the vehicle at the lights he continued struggling to find the letters for his message. Coffee later, come to new gym, was what he was intending to send. “Coffee L8”... He looked up and saw the lights change, eased forward, glanced back at the phone for the next letter. Bang. The car jolted. He fumbled and dropped the phone.

‘Crap.’

The four wheel drive had barely moved before stopping again and Jack had just driven into the back of it. And… ‘Oh crap.’ The driver’s door opened and a guy in a suit got out. A big guy. ‘Fnck.’ Pulse rate increasing Jack got out to meet him. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could look after himself if things went bad, but he just didn’t want to get into something in the middle of the street for heaven’s sake. And honestly - over reaction. He’d barely touched the other car and if anyone had come off badly it was probably his tinny front bumper. Other traffic tooted but he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t go anywhere or get off the road with the other guy in front of him. Someone edged around them, hand heavy on the horn, other hand gesticulating rudely. The advancing driver was about his age and in spite of the suit and tie he looked fit. And really pissed off. Oh great.

‘Hey,’ Jack held up his hands. ‘I’m really sorry.’

Then suddenly the whole world went weird.

Jack’s memories of the earthquake were incredibly confused. He remembered seeing the ground rolling, great waves coming across the park and along the street, but he was also sure he was knocked off his feet in the first instant. He spent the entire time flat on his belly trying to crawl under the car as bricks and shrapnel crashed down on him. He was sure he was going to die. The noise was incredible, an overwhelming cacophony of sound abruptly ending in a moment of eerie silence as the ground went still. The silence lasted one, two heart beats and then suddenly the air was filled with the sound of alarms as security systems in buildings and cars went off. The noise was shrill and insistent and over it rode the sound of screams.

Dust was thick in the air as Jack tried to move. He was held down, weighted by rubble, bricks and concrete and he fought, panicked to get to his knees. He hurt. He as coughing, choking in the dust then he felt hands on him and suddenly he was free, yanked painfully out from under a mantel of bricks. ‘Christ man,’ said a male voice and through gritty eyes Jack recognised the Suit Man. At least he no longer seemed to want to beat Jack to a pulp.

With the other man’s help Jack staggered to his feet blinking in shock and disbelief. His car was covered, absolutely covered in bricks and concrete. So was the footpath and half of the road. With a sense of complete unreality he realised the whole front of the building nearest to him, all three floors of it had come away and cascaded outwards. If he’d been in the car he’d have been lucky to survive. If he’d been on the other side of the car he wouldn’t have survived. He could see into rooms as if they were film sets, someone’s flat on the upper floor, kitchen table and chairs, a potted plant in the corner. The rooms below obviously storage for the shops below them. A tangle of fallen shop mannequins made him giggle hysterically. It looked like a frozen orgy.

The city he’d been in, only minutes before was gone, replaced by a cloud of dust, the set of a disaster movie. It wasn’t even a good disaster movie he thought, slightly unhinged. If Hollywood had done this they’d never have piled all those bricks so haphazardly, they wouldn’t have put the mannequins like that. The dust would be more artistic. People were looming out of that dust, like zombies, panicking and crying, and Oh My God, it suddenly hit him as he turned to look back up the street, there’d been another earthquake, a big one, and this time the city hadn’t got away with it.

‘I think the truck’s got some real dents now.’

Jack blinked in surprised. He’d forgotten about running into the four wheel drive. It hardly mattered now. The four wheel drive wasn’t completely destroyed like his car, it had been further out into the intersection, away from the falling building façade, but it had certainly taken some hits. Jack started to make some comment, when his eyes swept on past. Dust was starting to settle and it looked like… oh God. Of course there had been people in those cars. ‘Come on,’ he grabbed for the guy’s arm. ‘We have to get them out.’

The two of them worked down the row of cars that had just started turning with the lights. Many people had already gotten themselves out. They managed to wrench open doors and in one case smash through a windscreen to rescue several others including a teenage girl, bleeding copiously from wounds to her face. Suit Guy had run back to his vehicle and found a towel to wrap her head in. She was barely coherent but she refused to sit down and wait for help. She was terrified. Jack didn’t blame her. After shocks rumbled through and more bricks fell as the ground heaved. Everyone was frightened. The girl pressed the towel to her cheeks and started walking. She disappeared into the dust and the crowd. Some people were still running past; others were stumbling, shell shocked. Many people walked with purpose, getting out of the city, out of the devastation.

‘Shit,’ Suit Guy said. ‘We should have gone with her. Made sure she got to the hospital.’

‘I know.’ In mutual agreement they both stopped a minute, leaning on a ruined car. Other people were trying to climb into a collapsed shop. There was a lot of shouting. Office workers joined construction workers, students, tourists and the occasional police officer frantically trying to save people trapped in the rubble. ‘Do you think we should get out?’

‘Might still be people in those cars.’

‘Yeah.’

Some of the cars had managed to drive away. It was funny, but after Suit Guy pulled the bricks off him Jack had never considered leaving. Suit Guy’s car was in the clear, he could have easily left and yet he remained at Jack’s side, the two of them checking cars and pulling people out. There was quite a crowd now, slowly making their way down the centre of the street, leaving town. There was also quite a group, climbing into damaged shops, pulling rubble aside, helping people. It still felt like a bad disaster movie set, but now they’d seen real blood it was all much more real.

They’d cleared the line of traffic that had been stopped at the lights. Someone was shouting at them, waving them over to a shop front. With a start Jack realised it was the photographer’s building he’d been in only minutes earlier. It was completely shattered, the verandah fallen down, the ceiling collapsed and a chain gang working, passing out rubble, obviously working to free someone who was trapped. Jack recognised the huge photo mural from the back wall, mostly obscured now by concrete beams. He and Suit Guy turned in that direction when Jack heard it. Suit Guy heard it too because Jack saw his eyebrows go up. ‘Shit,’ he whispered as Suit Guy held up his hand, urging him to be quiet.

Over the sound of sirens they both heard the sound of a baby crying. Jack turned his head, trying to localise the sound in the chaos. ‘This way.’ It took them a moment or two and when they found where the sound was coming from they stopped in total disbelief. It was another car. This one had been parked by the footpath. It was buried and hidden under concrete and bricks, nearly completely crushed. It was only half as high as a car ought to be. They scrabbled their way through the mess, clearing a space; just enough to see into the car and then Jack wished they really hadn’t. There had been a woman in the car, probably in the passenger seat. She didn’t much resemble a woman any more. Long dark hair and a sparkly hair clip suggested she’d been quite young.

Jack recoiled backwards and Suit Guy caught him. Then Suit Guy saw what Jack had seen and they both swore and gasped. Neither of them threw up, but it was a close thing. Blood caked dark hair was going to feature in Jack’s nightmares for the rest of his life.

The baby was still crying.

Steeling himself, Jack climbed back into the space and peered around the body into what small space was left in the vehicle. Strapped into the back seat was a sturdy plastic baby car seat. The child was obscured by the car seat but he could see small hands waving furiously as the occupant protested at being frightened and alone. ‘I’m coming,’ Jack managed to call out. ‘Hang on baby. I’m coming.’

It could be Sarah in the back seat. ‘Oh God.’ For the first time since the quake Jack actually thought of his own family. ‘Please God.’ He spoke out loud. ‘Please let them be all right.’ If something had happened to any of them… Don’t let any of them be broken. The kids would be at school. School buildings should be safe. Emily and Sarah though, they’d be at home. If it was this bad here, what had happened there? And how would Emily cope, if she had to get out of the house? Jack really couldn’t afford to give in to his fear, not if he was going to help this baby, the one right here. ‘Be all right,’ he whispered. ‘You have to be all right.’

‘Is the baby all right?’ the other man asked.

Jack started climbing back out. ‘I think so. We can’t get to it this way.’ He felt in his pockets. Harry would be at the gym. That was an old building, an old movie theatre. It could be in as bad a state as any of the buildings he could see here. ‘I’ve lost my phone,’ he told Suit Guy, panicked. Harry could be buried under a ton of bricks. Emily and Sarah could be in the ruins of their house. Who knows what was happening with the other kids. ‘I need to ring my family. I need to check they’re all right.’

‘Phones aren’t working,’ Suit Guy grunted, shifting broken concrete off the back of the car. ‘I’ve been trying. Nothing happening.’

‘My wife’s due to have a baby.’ Jack got his arms around the other end of a beam and together they managed to shift it a few inches. ‘She’s at home with our one year old.’

‘Shit man, you should go home.’ Suit Guy had raced back to his car and come back with a tyre iron. The baby was crying. It could have been Sarah… Jack couldn’t go home, not yet.

It took forever to clear enough space to actually get close enough to break into the car.

Jack managed to get his own car boot open and get his tool kit and tyre iron out too. Two people were carried out of the photographer’s on make shift stretchers before they managed to get in through the back driver’s side window. ‘If Mum was in the passenger seat, where do you think Dad is?’ Suit Guy asked.

Jack looked at one of the broken bodies being carried out of the building and shrugged.

Suit Guy managed to get his upper body through the broken side window. ‘I can’t undo the straps,’ he called desperately. ‘I’m going to have to try and slide the baby out of it. Easy little fella.’

‘No. Don’t do that. What if it’s hurt?’

‘It’s moving a lot.’ And screaming. Suit Guy didn’t need to say that.

‘Hang on.’ Jack looked up at the crowd of people still walking past. ‘Has anyone got a pocket knife?’

A young Asian guy came over. ‘Don’t look in the car,’ Jack warned, just too late. The kid fumbled and handed over a knife before staggering back into the crowd.

With a knife to cut the seatbelt it only took a minute until Suit Guy was pulling the solid moulded baby capsule out of the car. A small angry person blinked at them and waved his fists in fury. Jack and Suit Guy smiled so hard it hurt. ‘There, there,’ Suit Guy said inanely jiggling the car seat up and down.

The baby was younger than Sarah, probably a bit under a year old and Jack was pretty sure it was a boy. He was nearly too big for the capsule type car seat he was in but that car seat had undoubtedly saved his life. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him.’ Jack had had plenty of experience and was pretty sure he could tell a baby that was okay and one that wasn’t. He cut the straps holding the little boy in and carefully picked him up. The baby stopped shrieking and cooed. ‘There. See.’

Suddenly the Asian kid was back. He had a bottle of water and held it out tentatively. Jack could have kissed him. Together they managed to tease some into the baby’s mouth before Jack took a drink himself. The water was so good as it cut through the bile and dust in his mouth. He took a careful mouthful, swilled and spat before taking another and swallowing. He passed the bottle across to his partner. Suit Guy too took a grateful swallow.

The child was more settled now and Suit Guy took him, holding him close against his chest. His big hand completely enveloped the little head. ‘He needs to get checked out.’ He looked up at Jack. ‘I need to make sure that this one gets to the hospital.’ Then in what was just one more bit of weirdness in a weird day he turned and walked away. Jack and the Asian kid stood there and Suit Guy, holding the baby joined the crowd of people trudging off down the street.

‘We should have got some ID,’ Jack said. He was sitting on the sofa shovelling beans on toast into his mouth from a plate on his lap. He was dressed now and hadn’t stopped talking since he’d started in the shower. Some of what he was saying wasn’t really appropriate for his audience to Harry’s mind, but the kids weren’t leaving and Jack couldn’t be deflected. The words just tumbled out.

‘I didn’t think until he’d gone. I could have grabbed the mother’s bag; there would have been something to say who they were. They’ll have got to the hospital and no one will know who the baby is.’ He looked up, ran his gaze around the room, looking at everyone in turn as if checking once again, that they were all there, that they were all safe. Kathleen and Jenny were sitting on either side of him and he took a moment to stop eating and give them a hug. ‘I came back later,’ he said. Emily and Harry were on the other sofa with the new baby and Sarah who was burrowing between them, completely out of sorts. Jack’s eyes rested a moment, warm and soft on the baby in Harry’s arms. Harry looked down at her and swallowed. A rush of warmth and love caught his breath. He kissed her soft cheek.

‘Da,’ Sarah said crossly.

Harry grinned and Emily pulled Sarah back onto her lap.

‘I put a note on the window to say the baby was okay and he’d been taken to hospital.’ Jack seemed on the verge of crying again but controlled himself. Wilson who was sitting on the floor at his feet gave his leg a pat. ‘I just thought. What about the Dad? What if he managed to come back to the car and found… found… She was dead. And the baby was just gone.’ He pushed the plate away and Kathleen saved it from hitting the floor. Jayden took it from her and carried it away. ‘So I left a note.’

Jack sighed and shut his eyes for a minute. ‘I never even learnt his name.’

‘The baby?’ Emily asked.

‘Him too,’ Jack smiled sadly. ‘No. Suit Guy.’

Harry was aware of Marnie watching them all carefully. The television was still playing the terrible images of destruction and despair in the city. Jack seemed to have stopped shaking, but he couldn’t stop talking.

‘I was going to come home then, just join the crowd and start walking.’ His eyes were bright with tears. ‘I was so scared of what might be happening at home.’

Heading for home might have been his intention, yet somehow Jack had ended up helping to free a woman trapped in the wreckage of the photography shop.

‘Hey mate.’ Jack couldn’t actually see who was shouting at him from inside the dark building. ‘We need some help in here.’ The world had been turned upside down and Jack could help so he went in.

In amongst broken glass shelving, thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment and huge printing machines a woman lay pinned by beams that had crashed through the ceiling. Her upper body had been protected by a desk. Her legs and hips were buried in the rubble. ‘Her name was Hazel,’ Jack told the family.

There were already three people working to free her when Jack arrived with his tyre iron. The Asian kid brought two car jacks and they started a delicate operation, lifting and bracing the beams. They worked excruciatingly slowly as the woman screamed in pain every time they moved anything. Jack held her hand for a while until his physical strength was of more use propping the beams with sturdier pieces of rubble so the jacks could be moved and the beams shifted just a little more.

‘Stop.’ There was a man in overalls leading the rescue. An aftershock had them all cowering, arms over their heads. Their braced beams rattled ominously. ‘We have to get her out now.’ Dust was thrown back up into the air and something crashed heavily to the ground behind them in the gloom.

Coughing Jack looked around at the other dusty, teary faces, all of them eyes wide in the dim light. Everyone was nodding. ‘Just do it,’ Hazel said quietly. They barely heard her. ‘I don’t want to die in here.’

‘Last attempt,’ the leader said. ‘Get those car jacks under here. Crank em up as high as they’ll go.’

Jack and another man linked their arms under the Hazel’s back and through her arms. He could feel her tense as she braced herself. Two men worked each jack, one holding it steady, the other cranking. ‘Go,’ people were shouting. ‘Pump it. Go. Come on. Go.’

The beams protested, things moved, all the way back into the corner. Hazel screamed. Jack and his partner took a grip and when the guy in overalls nodded they pulled.

Hazel popped out surprisingly easily and the two men nearly lost their balance. They collected themselves, standing and lifting and rushing her out of the store. As they left someone shouted, the rescuers leapt back and one of the jacks overbalanced sending the whole heavy concrete beam crashing back to the floor.

Outside someone had prepared a door and they lay their burden gently on to the makeshift stretcher, deliberately not looking at the bloody twisted mess of her legs. Jack had a brainwave. ‘Wait here a minute,’ he shouted to the others and raced back out into the middle of the intersection to Suit Guy’s SUV. Suit Guy had walked off with the baby but he hadn’t needed to, he could have driven. His vehicle was battered but still perfectly drivable. And, thank God, Jack breathed, he’d left his keys in the ignition. It started first time.

‘Ambulance,’ Jack announced, flinging open the back door. They very carefully loaded the door and its precious cargo into the car. It wasn’t big enough to fit all the way in, but it as long as Jack drove carefully she shouldn’t fall out either. Jack grabbed a towel from his gym bag and they used that to cover Hazel’s legs. First aid didn’t come into it, they didn’t even try. She needed the hospital and she needed it now.

Someone climbed in the back with Hazel and the Asian kid stationed himself beside the driver’s door, walking beside the vehicle, spotting holes, cracks and obstructions to the road. Jack was grateful. It was only five blocks to the hospital but it was the longest drive of his life. The bridges over the river were impassable to cars and hundreds of others were trying to find a way across, trying to get out of the city.

Jack gave a howl of frustration as the third bridge they’d tried had the roadway buckled and broken, the approach torn away. People were walking across. He stopped the car. ‘We’ll carry her. The hospital is just over there.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The guy who’d been in the back with her climbed down stiffly. His voice choked. ‘She’s gone. Not long after we loaded her in the car. I wasn’t sure. I kept thinking, she’s just unconscious. She’ll be all right. But she’s not.’ He looked pale and shell shocked. ‘I kept hoping.’ He raised a shoulder, tried for a nonchalant shrug that he didn’t pull off. ‘At least we tried. Right?’

‘Right,’ the kid agreed. He looked absolutely gutted. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yeah. I’m sure.’

The three men stood, lost and unsure. Jack wanted to hug, wasn’t sure if it was right, but then the kid gave a sob and he wasn’t sure who started it, but they were all, three strangers huddled together, holding each other, grieving for the brave lady that none of them knew.

‘We carried her the last few hundred metres to the hospital door.’ Jack had sounded surprisingly matter of fact as he told his tale but was starting to lose it now. His voice was thicker, and he rubbed at his eyes. ‘We left her to be properly pronounced dead on arrival.’

Carrying the baby Harry shooed Kathleen off the sofa and settled beside Jack. ‘And we could tell them who she was,’ Jack told Harry, leaning in against him. ‘And then I started walking home.’

Kathleen took the baby as Harry pulled Jack into his arms.

END

Emily, Harry and Jack and an Earthquake. part 5

2011-05-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

This is the end of the first section.

Harry sent Kathleen off to (carefully) rummage through the store cupboard in the garage and find a tarpaulin. ‘Have you heard from Jack?’ Emily asked as soon as they were alone. They walked slowly up the passageway to the bedroom.

‘I got a text, but it doesn’t make sense.’ Harry showed her.

‘Looks like he fumbled the buttons. You know he always does that. The keys are too small for his fingers. He probably pushed send before he’d finished the message.’

‘But “coffee”? In the middle of this? And why’d he send the same thing again?’

Another contraction started and Emily turned in towards him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he had to brace himself as she writhed, crying and shouting in his ear. Her body felt so hot and damp and foreign. ‘God,’ she growled as it eased. ‘I should be in hospital. Having drugs.’ She sagged and he took her weight. ‘Arrrghh.’ She panted some more. ‘What are we going to do? I’m going to have this baby soon.’

Harry had already figured that one out. ‘It will be fine,’ he soothed. ‘Like Marnie said. You’re fit and healthy and you’ve never had any problems before.’ He really really hoped that was the case. He shuffled them into the bedroom.

He and Kathleen stripped the bed then made it up with the tarp over the mattress, a pile of towels, a sheet and more towels. It crackled a bit but it shouldn’t be too uncomfortable. The trouble was, Emily was exhausted but she didn’t want to lie down. She leaned on her elbows on the top of the dresser and insisted on having the TV on, even though Harry wanted to keep her calm. ‘How can I be fucking calm when Jack’s out there,’ she hissed at him. ‘Leave it on. I have to see.’

Harry looked up alarmed, to see Kathleen’s shocked gaze. Damn. It was barely a year since the girls’ mother had died. He couldn’t bear the thought that they might lose their father too. None of them could contemplate that thought.

‘He’ll be helping people,’ Kathleen said, gesturing at the screen. ‘That’s what he does.’ The TV was showing a group of people, some of them in dirty ruined business suits, still wearing their ties, lifting someone on a blanket into the back of a four wheel drive. ‘He’ll help people then he’ll come home when he can.’

Harry and Emily exchanged glances. ‘Of course he will,’ Harry tried to say brightly.

‘Just if he doesn’t hurry up,’ Emily said in a strangled voice as she doubled over again, ‘he’s going to miss this baby. Oh fucking hell it hurts.’ She screamed.

Harry raced over to support her. Jenny was standing in the doorway, baby Sarah on her hip looking at Emily aghast. Harry pressed his hand into the small of her back, the only thing he could do that eased her pain, even slightly. Kathleen went to her sister and hugged her. The disaster on the TV continued.

It took a bit of coaxing but eventually they managed to get Emily on to the bed and settled her on a pile of pillows, lying partially on her side. She dozed between contractions. Harry lay on the bed beside her pressing into her tailbone. Emily’s phone had been bleeping and she’d had the same message from her friend Chantelle three times. Harry had had the enigmatic coffee message from Jack once more too. The phone system was not working properly. The reports of the destruction on the TV were starting to repeat themselves. There didn’t seem to be any new news although there was speculation of a huge death toll.

Kathleen had fetched the bottle of water that Harry had had rolling around on the floor of his car for weeks. It was the only drinking water they had as they had to treat the tap water as contaminated. He offered it to Emily who drank half of it in one go. He wished he’d thought of it earlier. The kids shared the bottle of fizzy that was in the fridge. Harry directed the girls to use a clean pot and ladle water out of the toilet cistern. He figured that would be fine to use to wipe Emily’s face and cool her down. There had been no word from the midwife for some time.

The boys appeared through the door from the patio. They were covered in mud. ‘The tap outside my bedroom’s come off,’ Wilson announced. They’d followed the sound of rushing water they could hear when they were in Wilson’s bedroom and realised that the tap on the outside wall had come apart. He was brandishing a hammer.

‘The place was flooding so we’ve turned the water off at the main,’ Jayden explained waving a large wrench. Harry was impressed. ‘Now we’re going to go and fix it.’

‘What?’ Harry sat up. ‘How?’

‘Well we probably can’t actually fix it,’ Wilson told him, ‘but it’s not like we need the outside tap right now so if we bend the pipe up and stop it running then we can turn the water back on.’

‘Can’t make things any worse,’ Emily murmured beside him.

‘Okay then,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘Don’t wreck the place.’

Five minutes later, when Emily was in the middle of another wrenching contraction there was a huge after shock. The house thrashed like it was in labour, things crashed and broke and Harry hung on to Emily and tried not to scream. Dear god, the kids were under the house. How could he have let them do that? What sort of moron was he? The whole building could collapse on them. As soon as he could stand he raced for the man hole. Jenny and Sarah were screaming. As he got there Wilson shot out of the hole. He was pale, his eyes huge with fright. He threw himself at Harry. ‘Jayden?’ Harry yelled.

‘I’m here. I’m coming.’ The other boy climbed up out of the hole, shaking and white.

Harry pulled him into his arms, hugging the filthy pair. ‘Don’t you do that again. That was a really stupid idea. I’m such an idiot.’ He realised he himself was shaking. ‘Just stay safe okay. Stay safe.’

Jayden gave a funny grin. ‘We fixed it though.’

Back in the bedroom he found Emily on her knees on the bed, her eyes wild. ‘They’re all right,’ he told her hurriedly. ‘The boys are fine.’

‘The baby’s coming,’ Emily gasped. ‘I think I want to push.’

‘Oh shit.’ He hurried to hold her as she tried to pant through the contraction. He was absolutely terrified. ‘Don’t push. Not yet.’

‘Not going to be able to hold off for too long,’ she grit out. She let out a string of swear words and Harry could feel her whole body involved in the effort of giving birth. ‘Goddamn bloody Jack,’ she cursed as the contraction finally eased. They were much stronger and longer than they had been.

‘Is this his baby?’ Harry could have bitten his tongue as soon as he said it.

‘You know I don’t know,’ Emily growled at him. ‘Could be either of you. Not going to happen a bloody gain.’ She snorted through her nose and reared up, grabbing for the head board and slumping back onto her knees, legs wide apart. ‘Oh god.’ She leaned her head on the wall, taking a moment’s rest. ‘I need to know. You’ll have to look. Am I dilated enough? Is it safe to push?’

‘What? How would I know?’

‘Have a bloody look.’

Unwillingly Harry lifted her nightgown and peered at her nether regions. ‘It doesn’t look normal,’ his voice squeaked.

‘Of course not,’ but her voice tapered off into a grunt as the next wave took her and Harry watched helplessly as things bulged where they shouldn’t. Jesus, he was a gay man. He shouldn’t be looking at women’s twats at anytime and certainly not like this.

‘Oh gross,’ said a voice. Harry dropped the edge of the nightie and looked up to see Jayden staring at them appalled. Brilliant. Then his eye caught a glimpse of a familiar looking uniform and his heart thunked. ‘Someone’s here,’ Jayden announced and a police officer walked into the room. The young man was very deliberately not looking at Emily on the bed. Harry felt all the breath leave his body. ‘Jack?’

‘Pardon?’ said the officer.

A moment later a small middle aged red haired woman swept into the room. ‘Now what have we here?’ the midwife said cheerfully. She handed Jayden the towel she’d been drying her hands on and beamed around the room. For all the cheerful smiles her gaze was assessing. ‘Emily love, you’ve created a lot of fuss. Looks like I got here just in time.’

She nodded at the police officer. ‘I flagged down young Benjamin here and his four wheel drive. He’s been a real trooper. I’d never have made it otherwise.’ She pulled a large green wrapped bundle out of her bag and proceeded to quickly and efficiently set up equipment on the top of the dresser. ‘It is absolute carnage out there on the roads. You’ve got no idea, there are pot holes the size of trucks and,’ her eyes spotted the TV and went wide. The cop was riveted by the images too. Harry realised that if they’d been on the road they probably had no idea of what was happening in the city centre. Well they’d probably heard on the police radio but to see it... Marnie’s eyes narrowed at Harry and he shook his head. No, he wasn’t turning it off. Her prattle continued, ‘You’re so lucky you stayed put. If you’d tried to get to the hospital you’d probably be giving birth in the car. I know you read about that in the papers all the time, but believe me you don’t really want to try it. Awfully messy. Really hard to get the stains out of the upholstery.’

She hitched up the night dress and ran her hands over Emily’s belly, feeling the baby, assessing the situation. ‘Oh not long now, doing well.’ She pulled out some sort of instrument. ‘Let’s just listen to baby’s heart beat shall we,’ and a swisha swisha swisha sound filled the room. Harry had never felt so relieved in all his life.

‘I want drugs,’ Emily moaned.

‘Too late for that.’

Emily gave a strangled cry. ‘Can I push?’

‘Go for your life.’ Marnie motioned to Harry. ‘Hey Dad. Up on the bed. Whatever she needs,’ she whispered as he clambered up. The cop’s eyes were wide and Harry realised that all the kids were hanging in the doorway too. It didn’t matter at all.

Things happened very quickly after that. Emily hung onto the headboard and bore down with everything she had. Harry pressed on her back. Emily screamed. The world outside was full of chaos and death but in here, on the bed where the baby was created, Emily was giving birth.

‘There’s the head,’ Marnie said with satisfaction. ‘Just easy now. Let baby come. Good girl.’ And with a final agonised cry from Emily the baby arrived.

Emily collapsed into Harry’s arms as Marnie wrapped the baby in a soft white towel. ‘It’s a lovely girl,’ the midwife said happily.

‘Oh.’ Emily sighed against Harry’s neck.

Something wasn’t right. ‘She didn’t cry,’ Harry said panicked. He looked down at the little bundle. A bemused blue eye blinked at him from a scrunched up face.

Marnie grinned. ‘They don’t all. She doesn’t need to. She’s fine. She’s just lovely.’ She wrapped an arm around Emily and kissed her. ‘You did real good.’ She passed the towel wrapped baby up into Emily’s eager arms. ‘Turn around real careful. We haven’t cut the cord yet.’

‘So everything’s all right?’ Jayden asked anxiously, edging into the room.

‘Everything’s just fine,’ Marnie told him. She smiled at the kids. ‘You’ve got a new sister and she’s perfect.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said a gruff and unexpected voice by the patio door.

Harry jerked his gaze away from Emily. ‘Jack?’ He didn’t look real, didn’t look like Jack. He was chalk white, eyes huge and dark in his face, lips pale. Harry’s first startled thought was that this was Jack’s ghost. Then the figure gave a choked sob and slid down the wall to sit on the floor and Harry realised that this was Jack all right. He was battered and broken and he was covered in dust. There was blood too.

Jenny screamed and everyone surged forward.

‘Thank God,’ Harry said with utmost sincerity. His eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh thank you God.’

Emily, Harry and Jack and an Earthquake. part 4

2011-05-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

Part 4

Harry didn’t know what he was going to come home to. It had taken him an agonising ninety minutes to get from the gym, collect kids from two schools and get home, covering an overall distance of roughly fifteen kilometres. Emily had been right though. The schools had stood up quite well. Freaking out teachers trying to do the right thing had held him up. Jayden and Wilson were corralled in the middle of the playing field with the rest of their classmates. A teacher was stationed at a desk and anyone leaving was supposed to sign out at the desk with the parent/guardian collecting them. All well and good. The problem was that Kathleen should have been there too and she wasn’t.

Once that was sorted it had taken him and the boys nearly half an hour to get to the primary school along with every other panicked parent in the suburb. With flooding, liquefaction and torn tarmac there was barely one lane passable on the main road the school was on. He let Wilson out of the car and sent him running ahead, hoping that he’d be able to collect the girls and come back. That hadn’t worked of course. Jenny’s school had an even more stringent sign out system than the high school. Harry ended up driving into someone’s front yard and running down to the school himself.

It seemed to take forever before he had them all and could head home. Jenny was pale and freaked out by the quake. Her school had already had quite a bit of damage from the first one and her teacher had gone into a screaming panic when it struck. The three older kids however were quite excited by all the drama. They had their phones, thumbs texting frantically and seemed to know more about the destruction of the city centre than he did. He didn’t tell them that Jack had gone to town.

He’d given his phone to Jayden who’d done a mass text of all their gym staff and friends in the city simply asking “Ok?” His phone was now continuously bleeping. Jayden checked the messages and passed them on.

Finally coming up their long drive he was relieved to see the house still standing and looking perfectly normal. Emily had said the kitchen wasn’t safe. He really hadn’t known if the house would be standing or not. They’d passed other houses that weren’t. Harry hit the automatic garage door opener as the phone beeped again. ‘Jack,’ Jayden shouted as he looked at the phone. So maybe Jayden had picked up on Harry’s concern. He felt overwhelming relief, a great weight lifting off his chest. Then he had to hit the brakes when he realised the door had only risen a few centimetres and then stuck. ‘What’s he say?’

Jayden sounded confused. ‘Coffee? What?’

‘Give it here?’ Harry grabbed for the phone as everyone clambered out of the car. The message didn’t make sense. “Coffee L8”. ‘What’s he on about?’

The boys had grabbed the garage door and were trying to push it up but it wasn’t going. Kathleen grabbed Harry’s keys from the ignition and tried the front door. She shoved it hard. ‘It’s stuck.’ They all streamed around to the back.

The back yard was a surprise. Liquefaction had come up through the patio and in several places across the lawn leaving grey greasy mounds. It had flowed right into the dining room through the open sliding doors but at least they could get in.

‘Emily.’ The kitchen was trashed but the house seemed sound.

‘Mum.’ Everyone was shouting.

Harry’s phone bleeped again. Message from Jack. He fumbled to open the message only to stare at it in confusion. The message was the same as before. “Coffee L8”. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ The feeling of dread settled back in his chest. Jack wasn’t sending nonsense, not at a time like this. He stopped long enough to text back, “whr r u ru ok”. Doing that meant that by the time he got to Sarah’s room, following the sound effects, he found Emily and all the children balled up in a semi hysterical huddle. They were all of them on their knees on the floor. He pulled the baby out of the crowd and passed her to Kathleen before fighting his own way in and taking Emily in his arms. She groaned as he grabbed her, arching back and crying out. Her protruding belly pressed against him and he started in surprise as he felt it go rock hard against him. The kids backed away nonplussed as she screamed.

The spasm seemed to last forever as he held her and tried to think of what to do. It was obvious that the pain was beyond what she could breathe through. Her attempt at panting sounded more like a gas burner as she forced air through her nose and teeth. He was inordinately pleased that he’d seen her in labour with Sarah because otherwise he would have been terrified. He was still pretty scared but at least he knew this was normal. Then he felt her belly soften and she collapsed against him puffed and limp.

‘Hey,’ he said gently, placing a kiss on her forehead. ‘How you doing? How far apart?’

Emily nuzzled against him tiredly. ‘Getting closer. Haven’t timed them recently.’ She looked up and grinned at the appalled circle of teenagers. ‘It’s okay guys. I’m having the baby and it hurts. But it’s okay.’ Harry couldn’t believe her instinct to care for everyone else, even in the middle of all of this. ‘Having babies hurts.’ He hugged her tight and buried his face in her tangled hair.

‘What do we need to do Mum?’ Jayden’s voice cracked.

‘Yeah, you know,’ Wilson piped up, ‘aren’t we supposed to boil water or something?’

Harry tried to pull himself together. He’d just spotted the TV over Emily’s shoulder and the sight of the destruction was distracting. God Jack could be in the middle of that. ‘Ah. Boiling water. Actually that’s a good idea. Get out the big pots and boil water. We’ll need it for drinking. The tap water won’t be safe.’

‘Just like last time,’ Jayden agreed.

‘Yes, three minutes, just like last time. And while you’re at it, can you two have a go at getting the kitchen cleared up. Bring the rubbish bin in and just chuck anything that’s wrecked. See if you can shovel out the sand too.’ That should keep them occupied for several hours and save them from seeing Emily in pain. They didn’t need to see that.

He turned back to his wife. ‘Have you got hold of Marnie?’

‘She’s trying to come. The bridges are out so she’s having to come around the long way. She should be here soon.’

Harry thought about how long it had taken him to travel a much shorter distance but kept his concerns to himself. ‘Have you spoken to her?’

Emily shook her head. ‘Text. Landlines work but you can’t call to cell phones. Texts work sometimes. She says I’m a healthy woman who’s already had two normal deliveries so she doesn’t expect any problems and not to worry.’ She passed over her phone and Harry scrolled through the messages from the midwife. Every message said “Don’t Panic” in it somewhere. He was resisting the urge to panic and collapse completely so he didn’t find Marnie’s advice particularly helpful. Emily gasped and tightened her grip on his arm as the next contraction arrived. They really weren’t very far apart. Panic seemed like a bloody good idea right now because it looked like he and the kids were going to be delivering this baby.

‘Oh god.’ Emily was crying. ‘It hurts.’

He kissed her. ‘I know baby.’ He held her through the contraction then stood up carefully when it ended. ‘Come on. Let’s go do this on our bed. You’ll be more comfortable. Kathleen, give us a hand.’ They helped Emily to her feet.

He tried to think of what else needed to be done. ‘Jenny, you’re in charge of Sarah okay. Keep her out of the kitchen until the guys have made it safe. Get her something to eat at her tea time. Can you do that?’

Jenny clutched her little sister, her eyes round and scared. ‘I can do that,’ she whispered.

Weakly Emily smiled at her. ‘It’s all right sweetheart. Really. I’ll be okay.’

‘Where’s Daddy?’ the little girl asked quietly.

Emily, Harry and Jack and an Earthquake. part 3

2011-05-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

Part 3

Emily peeled the mud soaked nappy off Sarah and dropped it on the floor with a plop. She could hear the breathless voice of the TV announcer and it took her a moment to work out what was wrong with that. The radio had been on and now it wasn’t. The radio itself was still in its cabinet in the lounge and the lights were still going. She looked at the footage on the TV of the devastation in the city centre and realised that the building housing the radio station was in the city, it may well be one of those destroyed. Shivering with horror at the thought that the voice she was listening to, only minutes ago could be silenced, could be dead, she collected Sarah in her arms. The little girl automatically wrapped her legs around her and Emily was glad of her warm solid weight. ‘You’re getting to be such a big girl,’ she crooned, enjoying the normality of cuddling her daughter. Her back didn’t feel up to it but she wasn’t letting the baby go. ‘Come on. Let’s go to your room and find another nappy.’ They needed to be somewhere where Sarah would be safe, even if Emily herself was incapacitated.

They’d just made the hallway when she felt the pain starting and had to put Sarah down. ‘Go on love,’ she gasped. ‘Race you to your bedroom.’

Sarah looked up anxiously as Emily doubled up, leaning against the wall. She made shooing notions with her hands, biting back the urge to cry out. Sarah was scared enough already. Sarah plopped onto her bottom and didn’t move. Emily panted as the contraction turned her abdomen rock solid. The pain started to ease and as she straightened up she felt a sudden rush of fluid down her legs. ‘Oh great.’ Her nostrils twitched at the warm fecund smell. ‘Well at least we’re not too worried about ruining the carpet right now.’ Her waters breaking meant she really was in established labour though. ‘Brilliant timing.’ She hitched back the sob that nearly broke from her. She couldn’t give in to it now.

When she collected herself she realised there was a crack in the wall. It ran all the way up the wall and across the ceiling. They’d had virtually no damage in the September quake. Now it seemed this one had broken the house. It wasn’t falling down though thank goodness.

Sarah’s room seemed completely unscathed. Thankfully Emily left her on the floor and raced back to the lounge for the phone and as an afterthought, her handbag with her mobile and her list of phone numbers. She was moving really awkwardly now and it wasn’t just because her legs were wet and sticky. She could feel the baby’s head, hard and solid in her pelvis, forcing her bones apart. The next contraction really hurt. Alone she let herself scream.

Hurrying as best she could she stripped off her wet things and after a moment’s thought pulled off her top as well and replaced it with a nightie. She’d have loved a shower but this really wasn’t the right time for that even if the water still worked. She couldn’t afford the time to find out. She grabbed a towel and wiped her lower half down and then grabbed another pile of towels from the cupboard and went back to Sarah’s room.

Sarah was battering against the door trying to get out and protesting extremely vocally about being locked in.

After waiting out another contraction Emily finally tried to phone the midwife. A call to her mobile didn’t connect. In desperation she fumbled through her handbag to find the card the woman had given her on her first visit. It had her home number. Hardly daring to hope she dialled the number. It was answered by a man. The man was her son. His Mum had been coming home from a call. He didn’t know where exactly that she was but she had texted to say she was okay. Emily felt an overwhelming relief. That meant that she would be okay.

Texting. Emily hadn’t thought of that.

It took her ages to compose the text. She seemed to be lacking the ability to co ordinate her brain and her fingers. “In labour, pls come. Emily Jones.” Her body’s whole focus wanted to be on giving birth, but she couldn’t stop and do that. Not quite yet. She remembered this from her other labours, the way her whole being became totally focused on giving birth. It was quite zen like, quite amazing and looking back, she’d actually enjoyed that part of it, before things had become too intense. Now though, she still had things to do.

After the text to the midwife she sent one to Jack, “Ok??” She managed to hold Sarah down enough to get another nappy on her. Sarah’s room had been the spare room and office up until only a couple of months ago. There was still a cheap old television on the floor of the wardrobe. She managed to drag it out but decided against lifting it up on to any of the dressers. It was safer on the floor. She had to shift furniture to lead the power cord to the plug and attach the aerial cord and by the time she’d finished she was wondering if it was worth the trouble. It was the thought that she might see Jack on the television footage that helped her do it. She had to know he was alright.

The phone beeped.

Emily flung herself across to where she’d left it on the bed. Marnie. The midwife. ‘Thank god.’ She fumbled to open the message. “Don’t Panic,” she read. Emily burst out laughing. “Stay put,” were the next words. “Pls confirm. Are you at home? Are you alone? How long in labour? Time between contractions? I will come to you.” Emily’s amusement stayed with her. That was the most succinct Marnie had ever been. She tended to rattle on and on and on and it drove her nuts to be around her longer than the 15 to 20 minutes that their appointments usually took. But she also made Emily feel safe and cared for. Other than her eyebrows rising to her hairline when she realised that Emily had two male partners and that either could be the father, she had passed no negative judgements on their domestic arrangements. For that alone Emily would have hired her. The midwife she’d had for Sarah’s birth had not been nearly so easy to get along with.

She didn’t want to lie down but she did need to rest. After a moment’s thought she piled the pillows up on the bed and leaned across it, on her feet but her upper body supported. It eased her aching back. ‘Hurry up and come home Harry.’ She tapped out her reply to Marnie as the horrific images on the TV continued. She couldn’t look away. A dishevelled lady reporter was trying to explain that the phones weren’t working and hundreds, herself included didn’t know if their families, their children were all right. Someone else asked people nationwide to use phones only in emergency situations to reduce the overloading. There were pictures of bloodied people being helped from ruined buildings. People in business clothes, dirty and bloody themselves assisting others, doing first aid. She had to keep watching in case one of them was Jack.

On the floor Sarah scolded her new baby dolly and spread books and toys around the room in a temper. She latched onto Emily’s leg and yanked, telling her off for not picking her up. Emily’s contractions were about three to four minutes apart.

The phone beeped. Marnie again. “Bridge out. Still coming. Don’t panic.”

The horrifyingly familiar sound of a train approaching morphed into a wild jolting shake knocking Emily face first into the pillows as her feet slipped. She struggled to breathe as another contraction wrapped her in its grip. ‘No,’ she yelled. ‘Ow, damn. No.’ The whole house rattled and shook. Terrified the roof was going to fall she slid to the floor, head against the bed, pulling Sarah in too, even as the pain of the contraction paralysed her. Sarah was shrieking in terror. ‘Oh god,’ Emily moaned into her hair. ‘Oh god, I can’t do this.’

Emily, Harry and Jack and an Earthquake. part 2

2011-05-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

The story continues.

Part 2

Harry’s was pretty sure he was in shock. The baby was coming and Emily said the city was destroyed. The gym was in chaos, the building itself broken and its contents tossed together in a jumble. He had been helping people injured by flying weights, machines and broken glass when Emily rang. People were cut and bruised but there was only one serious injury, Steven, the instructor on duty in the main gym who had been knocked out and whose leg now bent the wrong way.

It felt like a betrayal to leave him even though there was nothing he could do for him. Clients in the gym had included a doctor and an off duty paramedic who had instantly come to the boy’s aid. The side door of the building was the only way out, the front door blocked with rubble, the back apparently jammed closed. Aisha, the young instructor who’d been taking a class when the quake struck was trying to keep people calm and usher them out. She seemed perfectly unflappable and Harry was thankful for it. ‘I have to go,’ he told her. ‘The baby’s coming.’ She looked like she’d been about to argue but changed her mind.

Out in the staff car park at the back Harry could barely believe what he was seeing. Three cars parked behind the bakery were flattened, completely covered in bricks and rubble. Heart in his mouth he raced across, trying to peer through the grimy windows, hoping desperately that there had been no one inside. Something moved in the second car and his heart leapt into his mouth but it was a dog, a small fluffy white thing bouncing up and barking furiously at him even though the car it was protecting was now just scrap metal. Harry had no idea how they’d get the creature out.

He huffed in a relieved breath. He could see right into the kitchen of the bakery, everything looked perfectly normal, if you ignored the fact that there was no exterior wall. Thank god, there didn’t seem to be any injuries there.

His hands were shaking as he tried to get his key in the car door. Sarah had managed to chew up the remote door opener mechanism just yesterday. Jayden was trying to fix it. In the meantime he was back to the old fashioned key in the lock and he could barely manage.

Sitting in the car he took a moment to try phoning Jack. That didn’t work. Then he tried the kids’ mobiles; they all had them. No mobile phones seemed to be working. In desperation he sent Jack a text. “Ok?” Then he sent a bulk text to Kathleen, Jayden, Wilson and Jenny. “Cmng 2 gt u.B rdy”, and wondered inanely if they’d understand his version of text speak. Then he wondered if they’d even get the text in the first place. He threw his phone on the passenger seat.

Roads which an hour ago had been ordinary suburban streets were now four wheel drive territory. Harry’s car was just an ordinary sedan. He was negotiating a flooded street with unexpected sink holes and small hillocks when his phone chirped to say he had a text. He grabbed for it as he kept driving, trying to see who it was from. Kathleen. He stabbed at the buttons. “Wth Jny” she said.

So texts worked.

And Kathleen must have left high school and walked or possibly run three kilometres to get to her sister’s primary school. Another chirrup. Jack? No, Jayden. “U hv 2 sin us out”. Really? No one had signed Kathleen out.

Harry kept waiting for another text. It didn’t come.

tbc

Emily, Harry and Jack and an Earthquake.

2011-05-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

On February 22 of this year people who live in Christchurch had their lives turned upside down. The rest of the country had a lot of preconceived notions fairly shaken up too. We had all become terribly complacent about earthquakes. We had had a big on in September and survived. In February people died. The shock, grief and heartache for the people of Christchurch was just off the scale compared to what had happened in September.

I had thought I would write a blog post about it as I had after September. I found myself however doing something different. I wrote fiction. I was not personally involved in any horrific happenings on February 22^nd but those happenings affected me deeply. I wanted to write about those people and what happened that day and the only way I felt I could do it justice was to write fiction.

I have used the characters from the novel I’m writing. They’re contemporary characters living in a fictitious version of a New Zealand city. In my mind it’s always been Christchurch. These are real people in my head. It made sense that the earthquake happened to them too. In writing these characters living through the February earthquake I can pay tribute to the many ordinary people who became heroes that day.

This feels like a very brave move to me. I have never before put my fiction out in public, well not under my own name anyway. I am very proud of how this work has come out and hope that people will enjoy the story. I have essentially been writing fan fiction for my own characters and I must admit it has been fun to extrapolate where they are beyond the events at the end of the novel. If you like it I hope you’ll let me know.

As background you need to know very little. Harry, Jack and Emily live a in a ménage relationship sharing a home, families, and each other. There are three people in their bed. Other than that they lead a normal suburban life with a large blended family. How they came to be in this stable and happy situation (and they are very happy) is a whole novel and you’re just going to have to wait until I’ve finished writing it to read all about it. The children mentioned are: Kathleen (15) and Jenny (12) – they’re Jack’s daughters, Jayden (14) – Emily’s son, Wilson (14) – Emily’s foster son and Sarah (14 months) – Emily and Harry’s (and Jack’s by love and proximity) daughter. Due to all the hurt and comfort type loving at the end of the novel Emily became pregnant again. On February 22 she is ready to pop.

I will post this in the instalments I originally used when I posted on the Compuserve Writer’s Forum to preserve the original cliff hangers. The entire story is around 12,100 words. This first section about Harry and Emily is 7500, the rest is Jack’s story of the day which can be read as a separate piece and will be posted (blogpost willing) in one section.

Read on (and comment).
To read the whole story obviously you need to move UP through the more recent posts.

Cheers

Jill

Emily, Harry, Jack and an Earthquake.

Short story (12,100 wds)

Not for publication elsewhere without permission

Christchurch New Zealand. February 22 2011

Emily found there was a small smile on her lips as she felt the tightening around her abdomen. The baby was coming, but didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Emily had had a show this morning, discovering bloody mucous when she’d wiped herself. She hadn’t said anything, everyone was so busy, the kids with school starting, the men with all the effort in getting the third gym up and running. She’d let them have as much of an ordinary day as she could.

It was lunch time and she’d managed to swallow half a sandwich. She knew she needed fuel for what was coming but wasn’t really interested in food. A cup of tea would be good though. And she needed to think about what to get out for tea because someone else could well be doing the cooking. A crash from the other side of the dining table pulled her out of her introspection. She looked up to see Sarah grinning at her, happy to have gotten her attention. The toddler was in her high chair, and obviously bored with mashing sausage into the tray had launched her plate at the floor.

‘What was I thinking,’ Emily muttered to herself patting her belly and glaring at her 14 month old. ‘Oh that’s right. You weren’t thinking. None of us were thinking. Unplanned.’ She raised her voice. ‘Sarah. No!’ And then under her breath, ‘Not unwanted though.’ She felt the rumble of an aftershock and as usual ignored it. Since the big quake in September they had tapered off. They didn’t happen very often these days but they weren’t unusual either. She started around the kitchen divider heading for Sarah as the shock got stronger. And then suddenly the whole world heaved and the rumble became a roar. She screamed as cupboards and drawers behind her suddenly shot open, the floor dropped away and she fell. On the other side of the table the high chair bounced and toppled over and she could hear Sarah’s shrieks over the crashing and thunder of the earth tearing itself apart.

Emily tried to get to her baby but couldn’t move with the violent shaking. Crockery and all the contents of the kitchen cupboards threw themselves into the air and shattered on the floor. Water suddenly erupted out of the patio, a great grey torrent pushing up nearly a metre into the air before spreading out across the garden and in through the open sliding door. With a feeling of disbelief she watched the clock crash off the wall and the framed pictures leave the walls. One crashed down where Sarah must be.

Then quite suddenly it was over. Fighting panic Emily managed to get to her knees and scuttled through the stinking slush to get to her baby. It was only the briefest of moments before she saw her, but in that time she was convinced she was dead.

She wasn’t. Stunned momentarily into silence Sarah took one look at her mother and began to scream. For the first time in her life Emily was pleased to hear her daughter’s fire engine shrieks. She struggled to undo the belts holding her into the fallen high chair, thanking her lucky stars that the back of the sturdy home built chair had protected her from the heavy picture frame that had fallen across her. She crushed the child to her chest and rained teary kisses into her hair.

Shakily Emily managed to get them both over into the lounge where other than the contents of the bookshelves being on the floor there was little damage. ‘Oh my god.’ Emily was trying not to cry. That had been absolutely terrifying. She clutched the baby. ‘That was a big one wasn’t it?’ Sarah squirmed in her arms and reluctantly she let her go. ‘I think that was bigger than the first one.’

Sarah sat on her plump little bottom and stared back at the kitchen, her eyes round with shock. ‘Owie,’ Sarah said.

‘Owie,’ Emily agreed with a giggle before a sharp pain in her abdomen doubled her over. ‘Ow. Ow. Shit.’ She clutched at her belly as an unmistakable vice like feeling tightened around her belly. ‘Oh no,’ she moaned, ‘Not now.’

As the contraction eased and she caught her breath she scrabbled for the phone. For the life of her she couldn’t remember which of the three gyms they now owned the guys would be at so she tried their cell phones. She tried Harry as the one least likely to panic, only to get a burp, burp noise of a phone that wouldn’t connect. Swearing she tried Jack’s number with the same result. ‘Oh god, what do I do now?’

Sarah had crawled over to the TV which perhaps because it was on a stand on wheels was still standing, although it had moved across the floor. Sarah stabbed at the on button and surprisingly it came on. She patted the screen in excitement when she saw “Dora the Explorer”, her fright forgotten.

‘Sorry Bubble,’ Emily used the remote to change to a local channel just as another contraction grabbed her. She doubled over trying not to swear and to remember how to pant through the pain. An aftershock rattled and shook the house and Sarah screamed again.

‘Fuck.’ Emily levered herself onto the sofa as Sarah flung herself back into her arms. Glancing up at the TV she couldn’t believe her eyes. The TV was beaming live coverage, obviously broken into schedule programme and what it showed was just simply not possible. The city was recognisably Christchurch but it was a Christchurch that looked like it was in a third world country full of hundreds of battered, dirty, shell shocked people, fallen rubble and dust. ‘Oh fuck.’ She grabbed for the phone and tried again. Now when the guy’s phones wouldn’t connect she felt a frisson of fear.

It was reflex that caused her to dial the land line of the gym, the first one, the one that was just up the road. And it rang and someone answered. ‘Hello?’ queried a female voice she didn’t recognise. The woman, presumably the current receptionist sounded rattled.

‘Is Jack there?’ she asked with no preamble, ‘Harry?’ Her eyes were still on the TV. Dear god. The Cathedral had fallen down. This couldn’t be real. ‘Hello,’ Harry’s voice said and she nearly cried.

‘Harry?’

‘Oh god Em, it’s dreadful.’ He sounded near to tears. ‘The place is wrecked. It’s all gone. It’s ruined.’

‘What?’ she said stupidly, trying to settle Sarah more comfortably next to her rather than on top of her. ‘It’s okay sweetheart. Don’t sit on Mummy. Come on, get off.’

‘The building’s fallen apart,’ Harry said and she could hear the fright in his voice. ‘The whole brick façade over the doors, it’s fallen down. Christ we were lucky no one was killed. And the back wall of the bakery next door, it’s just blown out and fallen through our windows. If the lunch time crowd had still been here…’

‘Oh god,’ Emily moaned. She never considered anything like this might have happened to them.

‘The weights machines,’ Harry continued, ‘the weights machines moved. You know how heavy they are. We’ve got people hurt. Some guys had stuff fall on them. I can’t believe it. I have to go.’

‘Harry.’ She had to get his attention. ‘You have to come home.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Harry.’

He picked up on her voice. ‘Oh god. What? Why? Are you all right? Sarah? The baby? Is it Sarah?’

‘Jesus.’ They both swore as an aftershock rumbled the buildings they were in. ‘I’m in labour,’ Emily gasped.

‘What?’

‘The baby. It’s coming.’

‘Shit.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m coming home now,’ Harry said.

‘Get Jack,’ Emily told him.

‘Jack’s in town.’

‘No.’ She felt faint. ‘He can’t be.’ Emily looked at the TV. ‘Noooo. Please.’

‘What?’

‘Town’s gone. Town’s destroyed.’

‘Huh?’

‘Aren’t you watching a TV?’

‘We’ve got no power. What do you mean?’ Her own terror was mirrored in Harry’s voice.

‘Town’s just fallen down. The Cathedral’s collapsed. They’re showing pictures of all these people… running… There are buildings totally collapsed.’

‘No,’ he breathed.

She tried to get her wits about her. ‘Where was he going? Why was Jack going to town?’ Her voice sounded shrill in her ears. Sarah wiggled off the couch.

‘The photos,’ Harry was panting, ‘the big prints for the foyer in the new gym. The camera shop rang and said they were ready. Jack went to pick them up.’

‘Shit.’ The camera shop was right in the middle of the city centre.

‘I’ll ring him,’ Harry said.

‘I tried. Cell phones don’t seem to be working.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah.’ Emily could feel a contraction building. ‘Harry you need to come home.’ She gasped as the pain increased. ‘Ow. Get the kids. Ah. Hang on.’ She knew she made some inarticulate noises but god it hurt. She’d forgotten how much it hurt.

‘Em.’ Harry was shouting.

‘It’s okay. I’m okay.’ She caught her breath. ‘The baby’s coming, that’s all.’

‘That’s all?’ he said in disbelief.

‘Go get the kids,’ she said as calmly as she could.

‘The kids. Oh God Em. What if something’s happened to the schools?’

Emily’s heart panged at the thought but she pushed it down. ‘They’ll be all right.’ They had to be. ‘The schools are built to all sorts of safety codes.’ She had to believe that. ‘Harry keep calm. Go by the schools and pick everyone up. I want everyone home safe. Jack will be coming home.’

‘Okay.’ He paused but didn’t say anything about Jack. ‘Have you rung the midwife?’

Emily could have kicked herself. It had never occurred to her. ‘I’ll do that right now,’ she told him.

‘How far apart are your contractions?’

‘I haven’t timed them. I don’t know.’

‘Okay. We’ve probably got time. I’ll get the kids and come home and take you to the hospital and Jack will be home by then. If things get bad before I get there then ring an ambulance. Okay?’

‘They won’t come.’ Her mouth was dry. ‘They’re going to be so busy. There won’t be any ambulances.’ She glanced up as she heard Sarah suddenly cry. ‘God.’ She heaved herself off the couch and followed the noise. Sarah was sitting in the kitchen, surrounded by broken glass and mud. ‘Sarah.’ The baby didn’t seem to be bleeding. ‘Sarah, don’t move. I’m coming.’ She was bare foot but she had to get to her child.

‘What?’ Harry yelled from the phone.

‘There’s glass everywhere,’ Emily told him. ‘I have to go.’

‘Wait.’ Harry shouted. ‘Is the house safe?’

‘The kitchen isn’t. Sarah don’t move.’

Dropping the phone she held out her hand, motioning for the little girl to stay put. Cautiously she slid her feet through the sludge, barking her toes on unseen obstacles as she rounded the end of the divider bench. She got close enough to reach down and lift the child, her back screaming with the effort and plonked her on the bench top. There was a tiny cut on her little palm. Emily’s heart was racing. She slid the child, on her squelchy bottom back along the bench as Sarah wrapped her arms around her neck, her own feet sliding cautiously back through the muck. She had to stop and wait out another contraction, holding desperately onto the bench top with Sarah clinging to her before she was able to get them both safely back out of the mess.

The phone was still at the end of the bench. Harry was no longer on the other end of it. With her heart in her mouth she tried Jack’s cell phone again. There was nothing. ‘Oh god please Jack. Please come home.’

The Joy of Soaring

2010-12-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

This post was originally written and published in Kiwi Flyer magazine Dec 2010. I felt it deserved a wider audience, particularly among my non-gliding/flying followers. I've mentioned the joy I get from flying gliders briefly on a post at the Writer's Forum. This goes into it a little more.

I promise to write something about Alex and his 1000km flight very soon.

During the recent South Island contest at Omarama I was preparing for my daily role of time keeper when I was kidnapped off the grid by Terry Delore. Terry wanted company for: “A brief half hour flight ... have you back before the launch.” Yeah. Right.

Terry Delore is a legend in soaring circles around the world. He was adventurer Steve Fossett’s pilot (Fossett was relegated to a co-pilot role) for all of the duo’s world record flights and also holds several world records in his own right. Terry doesn’t “do” competitions anymore, preferring instead to share his knowledge with others in the gliding fraternity by taking them for rides and giving hands on examples of how he does what he does.

Following Steve Fossett’s death in an air accident two years ago Terry bought the glider the two had used for their flights. Named ‘Athena’ the ASH 25 Mi is a super ship for long distance flying. She is self launching with a Wankel engine with retractable prop. She has an enormous 25.6 m wingspan and looking out along the wing it seems to go on forever. The little Grob Single Astir that I usually fly has a wing span of 15m. You could nearly park it under Athena’s wing.

Terry Delore loves gliding. He doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. He has flown further than any other person but one in the whole world. He soars for the sheer joy of it and on Friday 19 November he took me along for a ride. Terry doesn’t do short flights.

We took off under our own noisy steam and climbed to around 2000’ AGL before shutting down the engine. Then started one of the best flights of my life. We climbed into wave and headed south. A week earlier Terry had taken my husband John on a similar expedition, they had ended up turning north again over Patterson Inlet on Stewart Island, a turn point exactly 300km from their take off point at Omarama. They were prepared for a long wave flight. I wasn’t. I was wearing shorts and tee shirt, short socks and trainers. I did have a hat and I was sun-screened. I had none of my usual gliding paraphernalia, not even a drink bottle or a muslei bar. Didn’t matter.

Fortunately it was a warm day and for most of the trip we had a clear sky. On oxygen we flew alongside lenticular clouds marking the wave at around 12,000 feet. We kept the airspeed to around 100 kts and at one stage the computer was showing a ground speed of 216 kph. With the sun out it wasn’t cold. Terry is a fantastic teacher, explaining tactics and intricacies of wave flying as well as letting me fly the aircraft. The long wingspan makes her very heavy on controls and she needs a lot more rudder than I am used to. She’s heavy on rudder too needing all my strength to “boot her in”. Terry ribbed me on the “windscreen wiper” effect the yaw string made across the canopy.

We travelled south down a wave system formed by the Dunstan Mountains and crossed the Nevis valley through gaps in the cloud. Overhead Kingston at the south of Lake Wakatipu we could see that a front was moving up the country, the winds were changing direction and we wouldn’t be able to travel too much further south. I was fine with that, among other things I didn’t have was my usual equipment to deal with in flight “relief”. I was fine, but I didn’t want to be up there all day. Terry was sharing his water and some huckery muslei bars and lollies he found in the side pocket. We did manage to sneak down across the Mavora lakes and tip toed out across Southland in an area of zero sink as far as Mossburn. The south coast and Lake Te Anau were in sight and we’d gone far enough. High overcast was starting to cut off the sun and we turned north to run for home.

When you put Athena’s nose down she just goes. The ASH 25 might be old technology, they have been around since the mid ‘90s but there is still not much that beats them. With a lift/drag (L/D) ratio of 57 at 51 kts it goes for miles without losing any noticeable height. We ran at what Terry reckons is best L/D of 120 kts for distance covering and were back over the Clyde Dam in no time at all. By then the high overcast had shut the sky down and the front was chasing us. Individual clouds were still marking the Dunstan Wave but it was nothing like the long smooth lenticulars we’d come down on. At around 10,000 feet we needed it to get us home.

It was not a problem (few things with Terry ever are). Terry showed me how to point the aircraft at a cloud and pull up and away as we came into the lift, gaining a thousand feet in height as we did so. It was glorious fun. The whole trip was glorious fun and the lines from John Gillespie Magee’s poem High Flight were running through my mind.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew –
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

We were back on the ground at Omarama ahead of the front after three and a half hours of wonderful flying. I was cold and desperate for a bathroom visit and wonderfully happy. I couldn’t stop smiling. This flight reminded me of something I often forget in the seriousness of editing SoaringNZ. Gliding is fun. Gliding is like nothing else I know for making me feel happy and joyous and that is why I do it. This flight with a good mate who just happens to be the world’s best soaring pilot was one of the most fun things I’ve done in ages. If you’d like to give the fun sport of gliding a try, look up your local club on the Gliding New Zealand website www.gliding.co.nz

I’d like to thank Terry for taking me for a “short flight.” One day I’d love to go with him on a long one.

For subscriptions to SoaringNZ email soaringnz@mccawmedia.co.nz

Have a wonderful flying summer. Happy Christmas.

Jill McCaw

The after Aftermath of Earthquakes

2010-09-24T04:17:00.000-07:00

Nearly three weeks after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that destroyed parts of our city and disrupted life on a huge basis, things have settled down. The state of emergency has been lifted, for many people life is business as usual. In our house things go on as they always have, even though we are living in a house that will probably be condemned as costing more to repair than it is worth.

Huge areas of the city are fine. The areas that aren’t though, really aren’t. Houses are unliveable, the sewers and water pipes are all destroyed. Many streets have rows of portaloos lined up on the footpath. Just up the road from us the road has been torn up and water and other utilities repaired and the whole lot replaced. All the houses from three past us to the corner, about 6 houses, have been “red carded”. That means that not only are they unliveable but they are so unsafe the owners aren’t allowed back inside to collect their stuff. They have lost it ALL. Thank goodness that is not us.

I have a friend who is a builder. It was he that I called on to check out that our house was safe to be in a couple of days after the quake. He’s signed up for one “tour” with the Earthquake Commission as an assessor and will probably sign on for one more. A “tour” is three weeks, working 10 days straight, one day off and back for another 10 days. Apparently there are 100 assessment teams on the ground. Each team averages 3 houses a day, and there are 68,000 damage claims to be assessed. Take a moment to work out the maths.

The assessors too can’t do this for ever; most have their own businesses that they’ve put aside to do this work. You can see why I don’t expect our place to be seen any time soon. Then when we do, finding builders to do any work for us is obviously going to take time too. If anyone has kids wondering what to do with their lives, taking on a building apprenticeship right now seems like a good idea. That and plumbing.

The aftershocks have decreased markedly. There are hardly any and they are generally small. For quite a while there would be a really strong one around 11pm, just when everyone was nodding off to sleep (well most people anyway). It left people very shaken and uneasy and scared to sleep. A lot of people were taking time away somewhere else in the country or even over the Tasman, just to be able to sleep easily for a couple of nights.

As for what is happening around the city, I thought I’d share the earthquake related news from yesterday’s (23 Sept 2010) Christchurch Press newspaper with you. We start with the headline Despairing plea for help. Christchurch people still without showers and toilets in the earthquake-damaged homes have made an emotional plea for more help. About 100 Avonside residents gathered on the silt-covered road and cracked footpaths of Ackland Ave yesterday, upset at the lack of communication from local government. People were unhappy that no one could give them any idea of how long it would take to get any basic amenities running again. There are emergency grants for people unable to live in their homes, but these people can live in theirs, they just have no amenity services. There was also anger that rent still has to be paid, that appears to be at the landlord’s discretion. There were no real answers given in this piece besides the council saying they would urgently bring in more portaloos.

The other two stories on the front page had nothing to do with the earthquake.

Page 3. Building repairs too dear, say owners. Two Christchurch heritage buildings badly damaged in the earthquake will be too expensive to save, the owners say. Over the next 10 days, city councillors will decide if three damaged heritage buildings need to be demolished. The fate of heritage buildings and the rebuild of the central city is shaping up into an interesting debate. Many people are for knock them down, rebuild and get on with things quickly. Others are calling for a more reasoned decision arguing that even if it takes longer, surely it is worth taking the time to see if these building really need to go, if facades at least can’t be saved? The whole look of the city will change if we are not very careful. Personally I love the way Christchurch has a mix of old and new buildings, a feeling of history, I don’t want to see it gone.

The next earthquake related news isn’t until page 7. That in itself says a lot about Christchurch’s recovery. This one about something that seems a little forgotten by the city, the surrounding farm land that has taken a pounding, Environment Canterbury rates likely to rise to restore farmland. Landowners who want to continue farming the flooded paddocks surrounding Halswell and Tai Tapu are being warned a rates rise will be needed to pay for major earthquake remedial work. That seems a bit rough when city rates haven’t been cited to rise in spite of the huge amount of repair of infrastructure that is going to have to occur.

Sadly on page 9 we get Theatre survives earthquake, but not hoons. The heritage building the Theatre Royal is one of those “classic” theatre buildings with the plaster work ceilings and stalls, circle and gods seating, a beautiful building and a lovely place to go see a live show. Anyway, due to renovation work that’s not long been finished it survived just fine, but then some idiots drove a car through the antique street doors! Yep, life is back to normal. The idiots are back on the streets. The paper is now covering the court news again too. The courts are back in session.

The business section predicts that the Economy might boom like Napier. Napier is a NZ city that was levelled in a quake back in 1931. Canterbury gross domestic product is likely to plummet 2.1 percent in the September quarter, because of the 7.1 earthquake, an economist says, but the rebuild could lead to a boom. The 1931 Napier earthquake provides some historical context to a recovery from the Sept 4 quake. Economists have worked with Treasury’s estimate of the cost of the disruptive earthquake being $4 billion, or 2.1 percent of gross domestic product. Figures like this are interesting. There are starting to be lots of figures floating around. 80,000 claims expected to be filed with the EQC and insurance companies. $4 million worth of food destroyed in warehouses. I can tell you that it means diddly squat from where I sit.

The opinions columns and letters pages are still full of quake stuff, but the letters show an interesting trend. The local body elections are getting some play again and people are doing their best to remind people of the (in their opinion) poor record of our current mayor for most of his term. No one had anything bad to say about him during the emergency, they’re all very careful to point that out, but please, they are saying, remember the controversies of his time in office. People are also frustrated with what they see as the “wrong” people placed in the committee in charge of rebuilding the central city and deciding the fate of heritage buildings. Yet if we’d chosen these people by a public vote the council would have been beaten up for taking too long when urgent action was needed. In other words the public bashing machine has reawakened. It really is business as usual.

This is a snapshot of my world, right now. We personally feel unsettled but realise we can do nothing but sit and wait. My brain is turning back on and I’m functioning again. The next issue of SoaringNZ is nearly ready for the design team of Rosalie and Le-Ann. Both of their houses survived. The printing company had to outsource work while their printers were off line; they had moved off their concrete foundations. They couldn’t reset them until the worst of the aftershocks had finished. By the time we got to print in 2 weeks they expect to be back to normal.

We have been very fortunate that the ghastly weather that seems to have afflicted the rest of the country, unseasonal spring snow storms in Southland and flooding in the North Island have missed Canterbury. Because of the topography of the Southern Alps, while the rest of the country has been suffering we’ve been experiencing warm lovely spring weather. The flowering cherry tree outside my bedroom is just gorgeous. I took the dog out to the botanic gardens on Wednesday to romp through the daffodil lawn. He wasn’t impressed (because he had to stay on his lead) but I was.

I’ve started looking at house plans and realised I don’t want a different house. I want this one back, but maybe I can tweak the plan a little to get the bathroom in the right place. It may actually be fun to do this. Thank goodness for full insurance. If I’ve learnt anything out of this it is the value of being fully insured. That’s my lesson for today. Stay insured, and as I’ve mentioned before, put bottles of water in your freezer.

Random Musings on the Aftermath of Earthquakes

2010-09-11T01:35:00.000-07:00

Random Musings on the Aftermath of Earthquakes

In fiction after the earthquake the heroes stop and catch their breath before racing off to save/warn the city/people downstream of the impending collapse of the water reservoir/damn/nuclear power station. Or maybe they are out of there and chasing the baddy (who possibly caused the quake) across the county/state/world before he can do it again. Either that or they congratulate themselves on their survival and start shagging like bunnies.

In real life it is nothing like that. Life becomes surreally normal. I sit here in my house that will probably be condemned, finally catching up on my email backlog, preparing the next issue of SoaringNZ and listening to the rugby on the TV in the room behind me. The power is on, the water and sewer work, the heat pump is keeping us warm. In other words it is a normal Friday night for the McCaw household except that there may or may not be an aftershock.

For many other Christchurch families life is not normal, not at all. People are still in shelters or bunking in with relatives. Many as well as losing their homes have lost their jobs as well. It will be a long time before things are normal for everyone. It is a quiet and non dramatic form of un normality now, not the sort people write books about.

The following are a few thoughts I’ve had over the past week regarding earthquakes and their aftermaths.

A lucky Earthquake
It seems inconceivable that a major city can survive a major earthquake with no loss of life!

Timing of course was everything. The quake struck at 4.35 am Saturday morning. The majority of people were home in their beds. People who had been out and about Friday night clubbing had mainly gone home. The streets that all the masonry cascaded onto in the city centre were mainly empty. No one was in the businesses and shops in the old buildings in the city centre that collapsed. No one was on the roads that opened up into enormous holes.

People were injured by falling chimney bricks coming through ceilings and onto beds. However there had been a short jolt just before the big one and that had woken most people and sent them for cover, or at least out of bed to see what was happening before the big one. There are many stories of beds covered in masonry that people had vacated moments earlier.

All buildings in NZ built in the last 20 years (don’t quote me on that timing) have to meet stringent earthquake standards. Most of them did. Older buildings have been strengthened to meet earthquake codes over a similar time period. Christchurch was shaken, most of it didn’t collapse.

No Loss of Life! Just incredible!

Mayoralty
It seems to me that if you are a mayor facing a dubious prospect of re-election, but you can keep your head and say what the people need to hear you say during a crisis, you can probably be assured of getting back in. Bob Parker was the perfect Mayor-under-pressure. He didn’t put a foot wrong. I’m predicting a landslide victory.

Sand/Liquifaction
One thing I don’t think anybody anticipated with earthquakes was sand. I had learnt back when I was doing earth sciences at Uni, that in a Christchurch earthquake liquification could be a problem. I thought that meant that the ground would become soft and buildings would become unstable because of that. Yes, that is exactly what happened, but these “sand volcanoes” were never mentioned. Everywhere around the city, some places worse than others, thousands of litres of water and sand were forced from under the ground. The ground compressed, water can’t be compressed, something had to give and it all shot up, with force and often through concrete floors.

The world in the aftermath has become a world of sand. HUGE amounts of sand. The gardens, roads, and street side gutters are full of it. As it dries it turns to dust. My fishpond is full of it. The drive way and lawn are covered in it. I can’t keep it out of my house. University students are out all around the city shovelling it up. People are frantically trying to get it out of the gutters before it rains again and causes flooding. Where are they going to put all that sand? Where are they going to put all the rubbish, full stop?

As an aside, we are lucky on so many levels that the predicted back weather for Sunday never came to much.

The Water table
The water table seems to have risen. Our creek bed at the back of the house is a least 30cm (1foot) higher than it was (full of sand) and the water is right up to the top of the banks. During the quake itself the water level came all the way up to the dog kennel way up the lawn. There are many puddles and wet spots around the local farm land from recent rain, but it’s been dry for over a week, they should have gone away by now. John reckons the local river is flowing backwards in places. I don’t see how it could be because there’d be a lake forming somewhere and there isn’t.

Epicentre
The epicentre is actually a line about 30km long. It is not a single spot on the ground. All along that line the ground has offset, sometimes by as much as 8m. See the photo John took of Telegraph Road. The centre line of the road lines up with the outside line further down. That is a huge earth movement. Apparently no one had any idea there was a fault line there. This was not the alpine fault quake we’ve been expecting, this was something completely unforeseen.

Holes in roads
Holes and humps in the roads are probably, beside the sand, the one real visual thing that shows something happened here. I’m not talking about in the central city, I haven’t been there yet and I’m picking that it will feel pretty horrific when I do, but out here in the suburbs where superficially at least, everything looks normal the sand is a giveaway. Even unstable houses don’t look wrong until you are close enough to see the cracks. But driving down a road and hitting a completely unexpected mound gives you a jolt. That wasn’t there last week. You can see the cracks, they’re quite obvious, but the mounds that have risen up out of nowhere aren’t nearly so easy to see. On the plus side, we’ve completely eliminated the problems the city has been having with boy racers and their souped up cars. Those things won’t be able to get out of the driveways at the moment; they’re all super low slung! There’s a silver lining no one predicted.

Boiling water and disaster preparedness
Boiling drinking water gets really tiresome really quickly. It takes a long time for a large pot full of boiled water to cool enough to drink. Ordinary modern kettles that switch off once the water has reached the boil do not boil water long enough to make it safe.

Something I had done, about the only real disaster preparedness I had done, was to put bottles of water in the freezer. I had heard about this on the radio only a few months ago. You fill any empty freezer space you have with plastic bottles of drinking water. It serves several purposes. It makes your freezer more efficient to run if it is full. If you do lose power it will help keep the perishable contents cold for longer. It provides cold water for packing picnics etc AND you have a supply of fresh water for emergencies. I don’t slavishly follow all advice notices. I do not have a disaster kit, but I did have water in the freezer, candles in the cupboard and enough canned food to last a few days. Torches were a bit lacking. Fortunately we never lost power.

Groceries
Even if the supermarkets manage to open weird things happen with food supplies. To start with truck loads of stuff came off the shelves and got ruined, not just in the supermarket but in the food distribution centres that own the places. Truck loads, tons and tons and mountains of ruined food. Breweries lose stock and the ability to make more. The flour mills that supply the bakeries are all damaged, long before the bread doesn’t get to the empty shelves.

The earthquake happened in the early hours of Saturday. I didn’t attempt to go shopping until Wednesday. The first thing I noticed when I got there was the silt in the carpark, the second, the photos on the windows showing what the place had looked like in the aftermath. You can imagine. Rivers of red wine, glass, a pile of all the nuts and things out of the bulk bins, broken stuff everywhere.

Inside, the fruit and vege section looked like it always did. I guess that stuff is supplied locally and had been restocked. No cereals left on the shelf, no canned baked beans or spaghetti, dry pasta, noodles, flour, sugar, plenty of eggs – again local produce. Hardly any bottle of drink, juices, fizzy drink (except for bins of coke), no bottled water left, strangely no kitty litter (can’t work that one out). No commercial bread although their own bakery was doing sterling work producing various loaves themselves. No muslei bars, plenty of wine (restocked from where?) and only beer in bulk cartons of 2 dozen cans.

So can you see what you need to be stocked up on to survive for a few days after a disaster? Strangely chocolate biscuits were on sale. Chocolate bar supplies looked to be very low too. Comfort food obviously.

To make matters worse the main road and main trunk railway line about 150 km north of town have been completely wiped out in a landslide this morning (a week after the quake) and supplies coming into town are having to be trucked around the slip by a rather torturous route.

Recovery
We are not a third world country. The earthquake earlier in the year in Haiti was of a similar magnitude to this. Nothing else about the situation is anything similar. The night following the quake there was no one who didn’t have somewhere to sleep with a roof over their head. No one has gone hungry. Some homes are still without sewage and running water but it is very few. Portaloos have been placed on the worst affected streets. Trucks are bringing in water to people who need it.

People will be facing financial hardship if damaged homes were not insured, some have lost their jobs as businesses have been forced to close, but no one will starve. No one will remain homeless. Some of the resettlement etc will not be to everyone’s liking and people will moan, but everyone will receive the basics (and more than the basics compared to Haitian standards) that they need to survive.

Community Spirit
Amazing. Just amazing. People have pulled together in the most wonderful way. Students have created armies out their clearing the streets. People are providing food, places to stay, whatever people need, someone is doing it. So many of the emergency staff have been dealing with their own trauma and they’re still out there helping, fixing, doing.

I feel like the whole country would come and help with whatever we asked. There is nothing to do at our house right now, we just have to sit and wait, but I know if I asked, someone would come.

It is exhausting, all of this, but knowing all of the good will makes such a difference. I was quite impressed seeing how tired the Prime Minister and the Civil Defence Ministers looked on TV the other morning, like they too had been up all night doing the best they could do. And the Civil Defence guy looked even more exhausted the next day. That probably meant more than best wishes from the Queen.

Aftershocks.
We’re over them. Truly. It feels like you keep biting on something unexpectedly hard so that your teeth are continuously jarred. Then you forget what it’s like, until the next one.

I've been thinking about Death.

2010-08-11T05:25:00.000-07:00

I decided not to blog until I had something to say. That seemed to freeze my brain completely. Today though I learnt that the search is over and Steve Morrissey's body has been found in the bush near where he went missing in Hong Kong. That in turn got be thinking about death and I wrote this:

I have been thinking about death. Life comes with death- always - we just tend to forget about it most of the time unless it is actually touching us. Real life and real death vary from what we see on the murder stories on television. They vary from each other too. Most people die quietly, easily, comfortably. They are missed and mourned by family and friends. There is grief and loss and in time their loved ones move on. While still missing the person who died they can feel blessed for having known them and take comfort in knowing that the person died with dignity. Some people hold on to life, fight for it as they battle illness or injuries. We use language that suggests the person is at war. Some people temporarily beat off death and gain precious extra days, weeks or even years. We cheer and celebrate these remissions.

Some deaths are high profile. There are several deaths that are “newsworthy” today in New Zealand and I knew two of the men. Sir Ron Trotter, the great businessman who according to Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly, “played a pivotal part in the modernisation of New Zealand's economic direction during the 1980s and after,” died today. He died of cancer aged 82.

Ron Trotter was a cousin of sorts of my husband. I’d met him at family weddings and even danced with him. He was perfectly pleasant and good company but I didn’t know him well. His death doesn’t affect me personally other to note that with his passing the last of his generation of the family is gone. I don’t care about the events and work he did that earned him a knighthood. No doubt though there will be extensive eulogies in the newspapers tomorrow.

Sir Ron died at about the expected time in his life span. Steve (Chook) Morrissey didn’t. Chook is the Air New Zealand pilot who was missing on the Wilson Trail in Hong Kong’s New Territories. It has just come through on the internet, that his body has been found. Apparently finding him any sooner wouldn’t have made any difference to the situation. Chook’s death is well before his allotted time, he was fifty one. No doubt the news services will be explaining the circumstances as they become known, but it appears that dehydrated, he and his walking buddy separated, Steve for some reason left the trail, fell and didn’t get up again.

I didn’t know Chook well either but I knew him better than I knew Sir Ron. Chookie was a member of the Wigram Aviation Sports Club, an Airforce base gliding club. I’m a member of the Canterbury gliding club which also used to fly out of Wigram Airforce base. I’ve known him as one of those many people who are just around, part of the community involved in our sport. He was someone who was there at Christmas camp and social events. He was such a nice decent guy. He had a great laugh. At the beginning of this, when we first heard he was missing I could imagine him, with his droll manner saying after he was found, ‘Oh come on. Did you really think I’d do something that stupid?’ I wonder how long I’ll be able to remember what his voice sounded like.

Many friends of mine did know him very well. The gliding community has been on tenterhooks and so anxious, so worried about him. To get this outcome, it’s so hard, even for those like our family who didn’t know him well. I suppose at least that it’s good that there is an outcome. Now he can be brought home, people can mourn. I am so sorry for his family who have lost him like this and whose grief is so much greater than mine.

There is another death that is making a lot of news at the moment in New Zealand. In fact it has dominated the news over the last week. Today was the funeral with full military honours for Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell, 28, the first person in the New Zealand military to die in combat since July 2000. Lieutenant O’Donnell was on patrol as part of our Peace Keeping troops in Bamiyan, Afghanistan when he was killed and two other soldiers injured. This has been big news here – huge! I’m very conflicted about this death. Yes it is tragic, of course it is; his family and friends must be going through hell. I know our troops are only involved in Peace Keeping and not actual combat, but hello, have you noticed what part of the world they’re in? They are soldiers. I would have thought that the potential for violent death was actually in the back of their minds when they joined up even if it isn’t actually written in the job description. My son is contemplating a career in the airforce. The thought of premature death due to the job has crossed his mind, we’ve talked about it. I told him I trust the airforce to keep its people as safe as possible but I was aware the potential was there. I also told him I trusted him not to make the mistake that killed an Airforce helicopter pilot and two of his crew on Anzac day when they flew into a hill in bad weather on their way to a commemorative fly past. Being in the military carries risk but good sense and training generally keeps people safe.

I hope it doesn’t detract from the week’s tragedies to say this but fictional death has been on my mind this week too. I read fiction, lots of it. I write fiction too. Death is a huge plot point in fiction. You can’t have a murder mystery without a death after all. My story is a murder mystery. Meredith Pleiades was drowned in her bath. He ex husband Jack had visited her the night she died. He had motive, Meredith wanted to contest custody arrangements of their children, and he had opportunity. Jack’s gay partner Harry would do anything for Jack, so too would Emily, Harry and Jack’s other partner. Could they be killers? Yes Jack lives in an interesting family and the love story between the threesome, Harry, Emily and Jack was initially the whole focus of my story. The story had no tension though. It was an unconventional love story but it had no bite. Add a death however, now it’s a story.

I belong to the compuserve Writer’s Forum. We have a thread running in the Writer’s Exercise section called the Toolbox. The tool we are playing with this month is Death and Life and the strong emotions that surround them. There has been some fantastic snips in the thread. Claire is writing up a storm with her story of warring Australian brothers during WWI. The women they both loved has died in child birth, the child, whom they are now attempting to rear is the only thing they have in common. The brothers fought in the war, they were surrounded by death. Claire writes of their experiences heartbreakingly well.

Tara is writing of Kasia, a Russian/American girl tracking down her missing parents. She is great peril at the hands of the Russian mafia when one of the baddies tells her that they have killed her boyfriend. Even knowing as I do that this is not really the case, my heart nearly stopped with horror. It is powerful stuff. There are other writers posting equally harrowing and some really heart warming things too. Writing is a solitary activity, having somewhere to share the craft and the excitement of writing something good is wonderful.

In fiction we need death. In real life – well we can’t escape it. I just hope for me and for those I love that it comes at the end of a long and satisfying life. My thoughts and love are with those touched by death right now.

Gliding Safety Issue for SoaringNZ

2010-05-25T04:52:00.000-07:00

Most of the material for the next SoaringNZ goes to the designers tomorrow to be laid out and made to look pretty. It will be a challenging job this time as we are doing a safety issue and essentially all our feature articles come without pretty pictures and diagrams. We’re talking safety issues, not the latest pretty toy or the most scenic spot for a competition. However I know that Rosalie Brown and her sidekick Lee-Ann will do a fantastic job at making this issue look as good as all the others. Rosalie can be found at RGB Design. RGB Design make SoaringNZ look good. They will take these somewhat dry articles and make them look good enough that you will be bothered to read them. Reading these articles may save your life.

I say it in my introduction to the safety articles in the magazine and I will say it here, most of us involved in gliding in New Zealand have lost gliding friends to a fatal accident in the last two years. We also know personally at least one person who has been involved in a non fatal accident that could have had more serious consequences. New Zealand’s safety record recently is appalling. The trouble is no one knows why. Why too are dreadful accidents happening to experienced pilots?
I am not going to speculate on any of this. I don’t have the knowledge or skill set to do so. I just know I don’t want to hear of anyone else I know dying. Don’t do it people. Be safe.

In this post I’m going to put up some links to classic safety articles. I have put how to find these into words in the magazine, but really it is much easier to click on a link on line.

We are publishing the following article in the magazine, “Complacency, What me worry?” by Martin Hellman but other overseas pilots who don’t receive the mag (why not? Email me now!) may wish to see it. This article is excellent.

Bruno Gatenbrink’s talk on Safety is here. It includes the following which should give you an idea of what it is all about. That sentence, "The most dangerous part of gliding is the trip to the glider field" is the dumbest, most ignorant saying that has found a home in our sport. He then goes on to say, and I can’t fault him with this: Actually the opposite is true. It is more dangerous than anything else that I do or know about in my life. Why don't I quit? A good question. One reason I don't quit is because it affords me more fun and pure joy than anything else I could imagine.

Combs’ classic article "That Beautiful Mountain and her Sinister Trap" was first published in Soaring (the American version) in 1984. I am sure it has been printed in the Gliding Kiwi in the past too and probably in all the world’s major soaring magazines. Its illustrations are very familiar. Its words haven’t grown old.

JJ Sinclair wrote a piece in his local club newsletter in the States which has also gone on to be a bit of a classic and a slightly updated version of the one above. “Don’t Smack the Mountain 101”. You need to scroll down to page 9 to find it. Another newsletter story well worth reading is Kempton Izuno’s “Into the Bowels of Darkness” where he tells of getting sucked into cloud and how he managed to come out again in one piece, albeit flying backwards! It is on page 12.

Have you had enough yet? The DG website contains a series of other safety articles. Check out Safety Tips and Training, and Safe Winch launching. Here is a link to the SoaringSafety website’s list of all safety related articles in Soaring (USA). There is enough reading there to keep you going for years. Check out the other links on the side of the page.

Don’t just read about it people. Think about it. This bad stuff could happen to you. Bad stuff does happen to good people. In gliding terms think of that E on the end of the check list, eventualities, and in the best motto any group has ever come up with Be Prepared.

And that famous quote that really shows my age: "Let's be careful out there."

Happiness is in the Small Things.

2010-05-10T01:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and I had a nice day. I’d worked a night shift Saturday night, arriving home around 8am. A quick shower and I was off to bed. This put a kink in the traditional Mother’s Day breakfast in bed, but that’s fine. I’ve never been very keen on breakfast in bed anyway.
Lots of little things made me happy today.
It was a glorious sunny autumn day and I was awake by midday. Getting up and enjoying the sunshine was a good idea. I had a leisurely breakfast on the deck with the Sunday paper. Small thing number one. No hurry, no fuss, a good cup of tea and plenty of time to enjoy it. It is lovely on the deck at this time of year. The grapevine that grows along the rail is changing colour. The pineapple sage, a large bush just below the deck is smothered with red flowers and the roses that also grow along the railing have a few late blooms. The sun floods the deck making it warm and helping the pots of lettuce and others of flowering plants last longer than they do elsewhere. Usually of course I’m too busy to sit out here longer than half an hour or so at lunchtime.
Oldest son Alex was away for the day working at his job at Rosendale restaurant. He was anticipating a busy day with the Mother’s Day rush. Alex’s job provides enough money for him to pay his own gliding bill. It’s all good. Robert and John went off to get my Mother’s Day present and came back with a trailer load of peastraw for my garden. Not romantic, not gift wrapped, but just perfect. I’ll get onto weeding the rose bed and finishing off my raised beds in the next few weeks. The peastraw will help keep the weeds down among the roses and makes up the bulk of the material in the raised beds. It is just what I wanted.
Later I took the dog out for a walk. Alfie’s a golden lab, three years old and he gets scratchy if he hasn’t had a walk. That’s fine, I need walks too. Not far from here we have a wonderful park. It is at the back of the agricultural show grounds. It’s owned by the council and run as a working farm. There are some walkways, there are lots of horse jumps and a polo paddock and a wonderful pond and wetland with some native plantings. Anyone and their dog can walk over it at will. The only stipulation is that dogs must be on a lead if in a paddock with stock. Well that’s just common sense.
I ambled along the stream and around the pond. Alfie bounced, ran, swam, played with other dogs and chased sticks. Coming back from the pond I was enjoying the way the open land gives a view all the way to the mountains. The sun was warm, the sky was large and blue. I was wearing my new jeans and new bright purple blouse. I was feeling good in my clothes – this is probably a girl thing but it was adding to my enjoyment of the walk.
Across the fence in the paddock with the horse jumps was a man with two small children, a boy and a girl, and a chocolate Labrador puppy. The man walked in something like a straight line. The others didn’t. The children and the dog went round and round in circles. The little girl sat down and called to her father, obviously wanting to be carried. He kept walking. She did a great theatrical sigh, got up and ran after him. Dad smiled and held out his hand for her to hold.
I don’t know anything about them. He may have been taking the children out to allow Mum time to herself for Mother’s Day or this might be a regular Sunday outing. I just know that seeing them, all obviously having a lovely time in this great open space made me smile. Dad, kids and dog, happy in the sun.
Robert my younger son cooked a roast dinner and did all the vegetables to go with it. I made the gravy, because somehow I seemed to have neglected to teach my children how to make gravy. I must rectify that. Robert made an apple and rhubarb crumble for pudding, a Weight Watchers recipe. That was sweet. Alex finished things up by giving me a box of chocolates, all for myself (thereby undoing the Weight Watchers effect, but appreciated none the less).
I didn’t win lotto, didn’t get taken out to a flash restaurant, don’t own a flash car and certainly haven’t got money to burn, but the sun shone and I had a happy day.

Science and ramblings on the mining debate

2010-05-04T04:16:00.000-07:00

I had an odd conversation this morning. I was telling someone I know that I am applying for some science jobs. I am currently working as a nurse, falling back on my first career and working around the magazine but I have a science degree too now and I want to work in science. What I hadn’t realised is that apparently most of the world has no idea what that means.
I am currently applying for two positions, one as a technician at one of the Centres of Research Excellence at Lincoln University and one with the Queen Elizabeth II Conservation Trust. They are hugely different positions. The technician position involves projects to stop the spread of invasive species and is similar to the job I have done previously with Plant and Food Research. The other job is conservation based and involves assessing and helping farmers conserve areas of noteworthy landscape or conservation values on their properties. I consider both of them to be working within science, different branches of science certainly, but still science. When I mentioned science though this lady said, “Oh test tubes and chemicals and stuff.” When I told her about the conservation position she said, “Like the mining thing?”
For any overseas readers the NZ government is currently proposing (or investigating the possibility of) allowing mining on the conservation estate. Does working with farmers to conserve remnant stands of forest or areas with rare lizards equate to stopping the government mining the conservation estate? On one hand I suppose they are similar. The professed outcome is to preserve the natural environment. On the one hand we have landowners doing the best for their land. On the other hand we have the largest landowner in the country, the crown, doing the best for OUR land? Or not. Yes all right, when I put it like that it is only the scale that is different.
Until today I really haven’t given a lot of thought to the debate. Generally remnant stands of bush are in gullies or rough ground, fencing them off actually improves the overall value of the land. Likewise keeping cattle away from waterways and wetlands improves drainage, water quality and ultimately land health, it is a winning situation. We are asking the government to do the same thing with vast quantities of land, areas that have already been fenced off because of their intrinsic and environmental values. We have thousands of undescribed species in these undisturbed areas. Who knows what medical, industrial or other worth may be found here? Truly, we don’t know. Did you know that the mountain weta and other high altitude insects are able to freeze over winter, thaw out in springtime and get on with their lives? Isn’t that wonderful? That attribute has huge applications in medical science. I know of a study of just one West Coast forest tree. The huge tree, I don’t know what it was but I think it was a podocarp, was wrapped in a fine net and using abseiling equipment a young lady student sampled from the canopy down to the trees roots. She found hundreds of species of both plants and insects on that one tree. From memory I think around 1/3 of what she found hadn’t been investigated by science or even named before- she found new species on one tree. That was one tree. Just think what may be out there in the whole forest. Think of the potential benefits to the world from what we don’t even know about yet. Then decide whether a short term gain of jobs from mining the ground under that forest is worth it.
So folks, today I worked out which side of the mining debate I’m on. And I know I want to work in science.

Virgin Blog

2010-04-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

I made the decision a while back that I ought to join the blogosphere which in turn brought on a huge case of writer’s block. I always have things to say, thoughts to share, but the idea of putting them on line brought me to a complete halt.
First of all I had to decide what this blog was for. Was it solely a vehicle for SoaringNZ, the magazine I edit and publish? Was it a chance to rabbit on about my attempts at writing fiction with side helpings of doings of the family? I have decided it is all of the above. I am a multi-talented, multi-faceted woman. In fact I use to sign on to a science forum in the early days of such things as “EXTRAordinary Woman”.
There will be blatant advertising for the magazine here but I hope also to share with you some of the processes involved in producing SoaringNZ. There will be references to writing fiction, I may even share snips and I will be talking about the family and our lives. I’ll also be sharing my everyday things, I hate housework, love walking the dog, maybe share a recipe or two. I discovered a great and simple green fish curry last night.
My aim is to get a post up at least once a week. That seems achievable. As I learn how to do this I also hope to customise the page so it is less generic and more me.
SoaringNZ issue 15 is lodged for posting today so should be in people’s mailboxes by the end of the week.
In the meantime, the highlight of the week was Alex’s 18th birthday party on Friday night. Alex has grown to be such a fantastic young man. I am in awe of his gliding achievements, being probably the youngest pilot ever to achieve a 500km diamond goal flight. He has a quiet determination to achieve and the ability to goal set and work through the steps necessary to achieve it. We are very proud of him. The party was to celebrate Alex although he himself was a little reluctant to inflict a house full of drunken teenagers on the house. So we compromised; he asked some of his friends and we asked some of ours. The carpet is a little the worse for wear and the lawn around where the brazier stood will probably never recover, but a good time was had by all. It was delightful to share the evening with Alex’s friends and friends of the family.
In these days of smaller families and more physical separation within families, kids these days don’t have the hundreds of cousins and the crowd of uncles and aunts to help raise them that my generation did. We are extremely fortunate within the gliding movement to have something that approximates that extended family situation. Within the Canterbury Gliding Club our kids have been raised with a passel of other kids and been overseen and disciplined by a group of adults outside of their immediate family. This is all good. The old adage about how it takes a village to raise a child is very true and these days it is harder and harder to find that village. I had no idea when I took up gliding back in my 20s that I was joining a family. Inside that family are surrogate grumpy uncles, grandparents, sister-in-laws and nephews and nieces. I have also found best friends, flying buddies and mentors. I am so pleased my children are part of this community.
To all my friends – thank you sincerely, for helping me raise my children.

cheers
Jill