Christchurch1

Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I really do.

Over the years, as I’ve grown up, I’ve tried to avoid the fact that it was in Christchurch.

I guess my boyhood memories have not been very happy ones. I remember a city that was cold, unfriendly and not at all welcoming to a small boy fresh in from the country. I wasn’t used to schools that had more than 20 pupils, where nobody really seem to care whether you turned up or not. Certainly there was no sense of community, just variable friendship and competition. Furthermore, the winters, living down by the edge of the Heathcote River, were anything but warm and comfortable. Much of it had to do with the fact that our house was not insulated and, as a consequence, was an icebox in winter. I guess most houses in those days were like that.

And so, as I grew up, and learned to live with the cold, that bitter dampness which oozes from the soil and worms its way into your bones, the viciousness of the Christchurch winter finally hardened me up sufficiently that I could tolerate it. But I never really got used to it. The boy from the Maniototo, used to temperatures so cold that they would freeze washing on the line after 2 pm, still suffered when faced with living in the swamp. And, probably because of the cold, I never really got to like Christchurch very much. I was, more or less, happy to overlook the long warm summer evenings, when the light hung around, reluctant to leave, and left its vestiges in the atmosphere until well after 11 pm. I was happy to overlook the long soft, shuffle of the Norwest wind in the silver birches around the city. I was happy to overlook the golden glance of the late afternoon light as it slid into second base under the oak trees in Hagley Park. I was really happy to overlook the distant roar of a jet taking off from Christchurch airport, a roar carried scuffling and argumentative across the city in the late afternoon light. I was happy to overlook the eerie sound of a steam train blowing its horn in the sepulchral hush of the predawn silence.

I took all those things for granted, preferring to overlook them in favour of the unhappy things; noticing that whenever I biked to school it was inevitably into the teeth of the Nor’wester and coming home always seemed to involve staring down a southerly storm. Funnily enough, I met somebody who lived out near the beach, who remembered having exactly the same struggle. Perhaps the wind scurried around town, seeking out any schoolchild on a bicycle, and making their life miserable.

But sometimes, just sometimes, to really appreciate a place you have to see it through somebody else’s eyes.

The longer you live in a place, the more you come to take it for granted, and the more you tend to stare at it through the eyes of misconception and preconception. The longer you live in a place, the more you tend to see it through the eyes of the people who live there, and adopt a kind of generic view. The more you live there, the more you tend to buy into the saccharine view of the local tourist board, with its carefully contrived preconceptions and illusions of the city. There seems to me to be a belief, held by some, that Christchurch is essentially Little England. Certainly, on the surface it may appear to be such, but brush the dust away, gently scuff the detritus covering the manhole cover and lift it, and what reveals itself as anything but genteel, quaint, English restraint.

Christchurch is a Jekyll and Hyde. By day it is Dr. Jekyll, elegant, educated, fraightfully English and possessed of the best possible taste. It moves in a considered and logical way. Far be it from Christchurch to behave with the least possible decorum. By day.

By night however, Christchurch becomes Dr. Hyde. Walk around the back of Cathedral Square at 2 am on a Saturday morning, or take a walk down Hampshire Street in the middle of the night. Then things can be extremely sinister. Or even dangerous. I have friends who, attempting the latter, have been chased by  crazed natives waving spears. True. Ihave been accosted in Poplar Lane by drunks who seemed to know me, and as a consequence, had a desperate need to bring about my demise, or at least a condition somewhat close to it. However, being drunks, they were relatively easy to avoid and evade. I imagine that most cities have this Jekyll & Hyde quality. It is probably something in the nature of cities. Certainly Cape Town, my other favourite city has this dual personality. I have often wondered whether, when too many people live too close together, some sort of negative group ethos develops which leads to unnecessary violence.

And then, whenever I seem to be on the verge of leaving Christchurch, of walking out on her, she raises an eyebrow and shows me her true beauty, that alluringly exquisite sensuality that has kept me enthralled all these years and helped me to overlook her damp swampy heart and psychotic tendencies.

This evening, I decided to show a friend around the town. As you do. For my money, the best drive seems to be up the hill, through Cashmere, around the Summit Road, down into Lyttleton and back through The Tunnel. As good luck would have it, the Nor’wester,  which had been buffeting the city for several days, had piled up enough clouds to the east to have a break, a glorious atmospheric kitkat, and leave a clear space above the Southern Alps. There forming above us, as we set out to climb to the Summit Road, was a classic Canterbury Nor’west arch. What is more, there was enough of a gap above the horizon to ensure at least 20 to 25 minutes worth of amazing light. It was going to be spectacular.

We drove along the Summit Road, marvelling at the light. We both commented that if we could be bothered, we should be getting our cameras out and photographing it. That is, after all, what photographers do. But the ennui had well and truly set in, and to be blunt, I wasn’t sure I could be bothered.

But somewhere, over the top of Mt. Pleasant, it all got the better of me. The clouds had stacked up above Pegasus Bay, rank upon rank of them, huffing and puffing, full of sound and fury, and probably signifying nothing. But, oh, they were beautiful. I couldn’t take any more.

I pulled the truck to a halt. I leaped out, reached into the back, and assembled my camera. The virus had infected me and I was in a hurry to make an image.

I actually made 126. I couldn’t help myself. The extraordinary opera unfolding above me was too good to be true. The pomp and circumstance marched across the sky and, being a photographer, I had to record it. I had to document it, I had to report it, I had to be a witness, to bear witness.

And so, for around 15 minutes, the clouds and I danced. I, the wallflower sitting at the back of the dance hall, content to be the observer, to be the one allowed to see but not participate, made photographs as fast as I could go. Christchurch was wearing her glad rags, and I was the chosen paparazzi. I felt honoured. Welcomed. Accepted.

And eventually, it was done. She flounced out to sea, exit stage right,  and the spotlights fell away. But the essence, the the golden soul of the Norwester arch was imprinted on my memory. And in my camera.

And I remembered. I remembered how alluring Christchurch can be, how unbelievably beautiful she really is, and how much in love with her I still am. In spite of her often freezing heart and sociopathic tendencies, in spite of my wanting to believe ours is an arranged marriage, I am still madly in love with all the different personalities which are her.

But I still forget. I really do.