Posts by Emma Hart
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
because she’s the one who’s been living with all this all these years
She's one of the ones. So is Louise, on whom the article focuses. Louise, while she struggled, wanted her story told. Anke's interviews led to her receiving an apology from the woman I talk about in this column. Angie Meiklejohn is organising a meeting for former Centrepoint children next month. Anke is still getting communications from new Centrepoint survivors, talking about what happened for the first time.
These people were like one massive dysfunctional family. All their stories intertwine. They all feel differently about what they went through, react differently, want different things. But how do you tell Louise's story without touching on that of the actress?
Sympathy, fortunately, is not a finite resource.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Russell Brown,
but she told me about an oral sex technique called the “Centrepoint raspberrry” which seemed to be well-known.
This came up in the interviews, and I have to say, I am curious.
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Oh, Anke, I was just glad to be able to help. And of course that was the hardest thing - that it wasn't about EVIL. It was about ordinary, complex, contradictory human beings, and what it was about the environment they were in that enabled them - or indeed pushed them - to do terrible things. Nobody was unscathed.
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Hard News: Hug Reform, in reply to Tom Semmens,
And of course, we have the home of laconic silence itself – the Spartans, for which we have the following anecdote of silent egalitarianism and respect:
Egalitarian Sparta? Are you actually kidding?
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I was sent this last night; the comment comes from the mother of a friend:
The student union building! Ah such luxury. As a fine arts student in the 1960s and 70s when the Art school prefabs had two toilets and cold water only for 100 students the union was bliss. When Ngaio Marsh directed the first Shakespearian play I worked on the sets in the new theatre and later made masks for Marat Sade.
As parents we marched on the University's governing body to allow the ballroom to be used as a crèche in the daytime. Mothers weren't meant to get an education and if they must they could bus to the town site with there kids. My son was one of the first crèche members and it cut four hours off my busy day. Not much time to lounge on the 70's furniture but did take part in a Jack Body Happening and fenced Australian Uni in the ballroom with the swords.
The 1975 Commonwealth games used the venue then the Art school across the creek burnt down.
It was a pleasure to see those tall trees growing and sheltering the area and I don't relish the thought of its becoming a bomb site like the rest of Christchurch. Hopefully a future generation of students will have the opportunity of complaining about the decor and inconvenience of the 2020s building.
It's all relative.
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Up Front: So Farewell Then, UCSA, in reply to Lilith __,
The foyer toilets also had showers, IIRC.
They did indeed. Very handy for when a mixed-gender group had just "fallen" in the river.
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Up Front: So Farewell Then, UCSA, in reply to Jeanette King,
Wish there were more photos.
I had a quick ferret through Phil’s site. More photos taken in various flats of mine than actually at uni, but there are a couple of the LCR.
This is our corner of the Lower Common Room. Note the way those huge concrete overhangs handily prevent any actual sunlight from penetrating the room. Note the carpet, and the orange couches. Can't see Xeno's pickle, thankfully.
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Up Front: So Farewell Then, UCSA, in reply to Sister Mary Gearchange,
It does make you wonder how Warren & Mahoney stayed in business given their buildings are universally such utter crap.
Bless 'em, Warren & Mahoney's Twitter account has linked to the column and is favouriting tweets calling their building "ugly as fuck", etc. You have to admire that.
Discovering what a Jellybean was (Thanks, Phil!) and that the UCR happy hour staff would actually sell you a jug of the stuff.
They would. Oh gods, the smell.
Thanks, people, for reminding me what the Shelley was called. With a few exceptions, we just treated it as a hallway. There's an architectural success for you.
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Speaker: 11 ways the Opposition has…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Why not join Labour, make a difference?
You mean, like I did in 1987?
And you’re the one who raised being responsible, somehow, for the votes of friends and neighbours.
Let’s leave aside, for a moment, that there was no swing to National in Chch, once you take into account boundary redraws, population movement, and numbers of votes rather than percentages. We’ve been through those numbers several times on this site and it appears to make no difference.
So Chch is a place where Labour has well-supported electorate MPs, but isn’t winning the party vote. It’s a place where, as people have mentioned here, individual MPs on the ground have worked very hard, yet the opposition (as referred to in the OP, not specifically Labour, but the opposition ) haven’t managed to get any traction on Chch issues on a national scale. We had all this discussion about whether builders should certify their own work, and the conversation went alll the way back to ‘leaky homes’, and ignored the catastrofuck with the rebuild down here, that’s happening right now.
There are lessons to be learned here, but they don’t start with “Well you ungrateful bastards should vote for us just Because.”
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Speaker: 11 ways the Opposition has…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Its all very well saying “Well, I didn’t vote National” but your friends and neighbours did, in spades.
So, it's ridiculous to suggest it might be something to do with Labour that people didn't vote Labour, but quite sensible to suggest that it's my fault?
Also, I counted my neighbours' votes, and they bloody didn't.
