For once I have reached the end of the day and I am not too tired to scribble a few words. For the last two weeks my mind has been full of infinitely detailed minutiae related to our café renovation. For requiring that level of detail I have to thank our builder. He is the one who built the flat that we are living in, and it hasn’t moved or cracked despite the alarming levels of ground force acceleration that we have suffered.

My days are full of chasing things up, such as: finding out the exact placement of an electrical feed into an appliance, where do the dwangs (a new word for me, and quite a nice one) need to be for the basins, is the tap hole on the right or left side, where do the security cameras go, are the light switches in the toilet automatic and finally (it won’t be the last question) how long will the fans operate for in the bathroom?

At 8 am last Monday I started marking out all the electrical fittings around the whole building with the builder. It was cold, I had had only one coffee, we seemed to be moving the same lengths of wood out of the way all the time, but finally at 11am we finished. That builder sure does love his detail! He is prepared for us to make the odd minor mistake along the way but he is desperate to avoid any big ones. Although I grumble about it a bit, in my heart I know he is right, and we should end up with a great result.

I inherited all sorts of crappy wiring and circuitry and design faults in our old place and we coped as best we could, so this is a great chance to get it right. I am a bit of a bar-fly at the moment as I go to various places and see how they have things laid out. I was in one bar a few weeks ago and I sneakily took a photo of the back bar on my phone, almost embarrassing and a bit stalker-ish.

Speaking of our old place we managed to get in to the building last week for an hour. The email actually said we would only have ten minutes, but the reality was pleasantly different. I’m not sure pleasant is exactly the right word though. Four of us went in and I must admit to being very nervous about it before hand. We drove down Madras, along Lichfield to the Excelsior corner and parked up. We had innumerable briefings, donned hard hats and hi-vis vests and wandered inside accompanied by a USAR man.

The USAR guy was great we worked on all the important things first, like the till system and back office computer, and two of us concentrated on gathering up all the artwork. We were well prepared, with gloves and face masks but actually it was ok. The masks became annoying quickly so we just got on with it. The smell was unpleasant but not unbearable

Anything that had wires attached that couldn’t be easily removed got the wire cutter treatment, all in the name of efficiency of course. We stacked everything up by the door and then made a few runs to the van, which ended up being full to the brim. They wanted us to limit the amount of time we were under the verandah. Surprisingly we were allowed up onto the top two floors, and what a sight it was. The top floor especially was just a complete disaster zone. Items strewn everywhere, a whole table had gone missing, presumably now in the rubble of Ruben Blades.

The view from my desk was great, (do I really mean that?) I could see virtually all the way to Fitzgerald Avenue down Lichfield Street. I could see where the old ANZ Chambers building was, the Excelsior which has cracks everywhere, and the old Civic which was obviously built like a brick shit house and looks to be fine. We grabbed a few photos and personal possessions and scarpered downstairs. What was surprising was that some intrepid soul had tagged the inside of the windows on the top floor, and on the walls, and had stolen 20 cases of wine. We have been so reassured by the Police and CERA and the council that everything in the red zone was completely secure and yet every day there are more stories about thefts. Go figure.

Outside we were waiting for another group of people to finish and I just looked up and saw our broken building, holes gaping in its side, leaning weirdly, and I have to admit I burst in to tears. That building held so many memories; it had my hopes and dreams inextricably tied up in every brick, in every stick of furniture, in every cup, plate and glass.

So we are moving on, and up. I am still waiting for my material damage claim to be paid out by the insurers, but all of a sudden they seem to be operating at a snail’s pace, and the loss adjustor is now using equivocal words like “your settlement is under consideration” whereas before all correspondence was phrased with more certainty. I have committed a considerable sum in the new property, and by doing so I am mitigating the losses of the insurer, can’t they just pay out?

My energy has run out tonight, I have a series of meetings tomorrow signing off on furniture, electrical fittings etc. etc. and a Sydenham regeneration meeting in the evening. In the back of my mind there still lurks the knowledge that we have a 23% chance of another big earthquake. It may well happen, but I can assure you that this city and its people do not need it. We are coping with the new normality; we have enough energy to do the minimum that we need to, but no more.  Enough already.

We hope to reopen the cafe at the end of June/early July, dependent on receiving consent from the council this week.

Be safe

Rob