Posts by John Farrell
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Home for the last 8 years has been a small house in St Kilda, one of Dunedin's lower lying suburbs. A warm, comfortable place, until the third of June this year.
Over the night before, and during that day, Dunedin had record rainfall. I watched the water rising in the garden, until mid evening, when it was obvious Trisha and I had to leave. We spent the night at my brother James' place.The following morning, I drove back to the house. The water had been inside - not much, but enough to soak the carpet, and the walls. Surprisingly, furniture on any sort of raised foot was OK.
I tried to dry out the carpet, until the loss adjuster told me that the carpet would have to be pulled out, and the walls opened to dry out. I ripped out the carpet, on the Sunday after the flood, and then we had the builder here, opening the walls, while we shifted our stuff out to storage.
We rented a flat in Dunedin's city centre, and squatted there, while the house was dried out, and repairs done.
We moved back in nearly 15 weeks later. 1200 houses were affected. Some still haven't been repaired - ones with structural problems discovered when they were stripped to dry out.
You don't appreciate home, until you have to leave it.
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Story on RNZ this morning:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/289451/no-nz-rapists,-murderers-on-christmas-island
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Key might recognise a fellow traveller.
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to chris,
Almost everyone at the protest will have a camera of some sort - photographing those taking the photographs would be a continuation of the protest - especially if the pictures are shared on social media later, looking for IDs.
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Rob Salmond on the Panel, Radio NZ, today.
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Russell Brown,
Schadenfreude? Sounds foreign.
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The Barnum Effect must be wearing off. (Whoops - I was meaning this as a comment on PT Barnum's famous comment - but now I find psychologists use the term for something quite different).
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Up Front: Stand for... Something, in reply to Bevan,
Really? So where is the referendum on other important issues; and the generous sum of our money spent on solving them? To me the flag is unimportant, and to push this issue now shows the depths of government cynicism.