Public Address: Southerly

Gerry Brownlee: “I Like To Knock Cats Off Tables”

David Haywood — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:24:00 +1300

Guest Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, talks about his favourite hobby.
Coo! After a hard day of driving my digger and smashing historic buildings in Christchurch I find there's no better way to relax than knocking a cat off a table.
We have three moggies and they're always climbing over the furniture. As you well know, I have hands like plates of meat, and if I ever managed to give one of my cats a wallop they'd be knocked halfway into next week. But the sods are too damned quick!
One night my wife and I dimmed the lights in our sitting…

Liveblog: Moving House (Literally)

David Haywood — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:25:00 +1200

Today's the day that our riverside house leaves the river and the Residential Redzone. It will be cut into several pieces and trucked to its final destination in an empty paddock in lovely Dunsandel.
I'll be live-blogging the events of the day (the whole exercise will take at least four days). You can read the latest update by clicking here.
08:00: Here's our house resting on two trailers as at 8 am this morning. The plan is to crane off the roof, separate the house, hitch the trailers to trucks, tow the house from the section, park it beside the…

Bricks and Mortar

David Haywood — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:14:00 +1200

The trouble with writing about a large(-ish) building project is that after doing hard physical labour all day, and then paperwork all evening -- you somehow don't much feel like doing anything else. It turns out that there is nothing quite so impossible for me as dealing with building consents until 2.30 am, and then making light of my bureaucratic travails in 2,000 amusing words before bed.
But happily the document shown below has afforded me a spare hour before midnight today.

Above: The seldom-seen completed To-Do list.
Yes, the preparations for the house relocation are complete. Although somehow this…

Village People

David Haywood — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:35:00 +1300

On Sunday we moved into the Linwood Park Temporary Earthquake Village (to give its full and rather magnificent name). This was the first stage in our return to normality and I suppose it should have been a joyous occasion -- but I confess to having felt pretty devastated as we finally left the Avon River and our happy life there. This was goodbye forever. It hurt.
However the earthquake village does have its compensations. If you don't live in Christchurch you may not be aware of the horror stories of would-be renters: a hundred applicants turning up for a single…

Deconstruction and Construction

David Haywood — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:47:00 +1300

The preparations for the relocation of our house from the Residential Red Zone to its new location in Dunsandel have been going unexpectedly well (hopefully this statement isn't tempting fate too much). The first items on my list have been several demolitions that will allow the relocation company to access the buildings that we want to move.
The first rule of 'before and after' photographs is, of course, to take the 'before' photograph. Alas I became so excited at liberating the heartwood rimu and assorted useful Edwardian fittings from beneath the earthquake wreckage of our woodshed that I inadvertently broke…

Coming Up For Air

David Haywood — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:52:00 +1300

We don't seem to have had the easiest of babies. My son, Bob, was once described by a plunket nurse as "the worst baby in Christchurch"; his little sister, Polly, is -- in my estimation -- only very marginally better.
Not that it's her fault. It transpires that, like her brother, she's allergic to dairy products. But not only dairy products -- she's also allergic to soy products. Oh, and eggs. And did I mention her really inconvenient allergy to wheat?
All in all, it's taken us a while, and a whole bunch of tests and experimentation to figure everything…

Things to be Grateful For: A Snowy Morning

David Haywood — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:09:00 +1200

Above: Bob's tree platform in the back garden

Above: the hedge behind which lurks the washing line

Above: Bob's tree platform and playhouse

Above: one of the peach trees

Above: the front garden looking out onto the river

Above: our house as seen from the footpath

Above: an excited four-year-old in the front garden

Above: my life as a (sled)dog

Above: intense concentration is required for igloo engineering

Above: the finished igloo

Above: igloo interior

Above: a very tall snowman (seconds before tragedy strikes)

Tower Insurance Have Some Bad News For You

David Haywood — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:35:00 +1200

I was going to write about how we found our house. To tell you the story of how it took us nearly two years to find just the right spot to make a home. To tell you how we visited universities all over the world who were keen to recruit my wife -- in New York City, Berlin, Stanford, and York -- and then decided that the best place to raise a family was back in Christchurch beside the Avon River.
But all that has rather flown out of my head this morning. Instead I'll tell you about our insurance…

One Hundred and Thirty-one Million Reasons to Copenhagenize Christchurch

David Haywood — Tue, 31 May 2011 22:49:00 +1200

Perhaps the most common theme on the shareanidea.org.nz website (a council-run service for collecting ideas on the rebuilding of central Christchurch) is the suggestion to dramatically improve the city's cycling infrastructure. Although only one submission actually mentions the word 'Copenhagenize', this would be the verb that many engineers would employ to describe the overall process of designing a cycle-friendly city.
If you haven't come across it before, 'Copenhagenize' arises from an urban planning philosophy that was implemented in Copenhagen in order to promote the use of bicycles (and also walking) as a form of urban transportation. The success of this…

That CERA Rumour

David Haywood — Tue, 17 May 2011 23:35:00 +1200

So the rumour (which I've now heard from six separate sources) is that CERA is going to demolish all houses within 100 metres of the lower half of the Avon River -- and turn it into a giant park.
By my estimation this would affect some 3,000 households, and given the high proportion of families in this area, would displace perhaps 10,000 people. Naturally enough, it's a pretty upsetting rumour if you're one of these people.
Mind you, that's not even to mention the destruction of heritage housing. There are six 100-year-old residences along the river bank just within the…