So there you have it, I have discovered that in moments of extreme stress I still do now what I did when I was 5. I hide under the bed. Obviously I had good reason. At the time something moved the earth, and as usual it wasn’t me.

Unless you have been living under a stone since the end of August you might have read that there was a slight shifting of the Christchurch area early on the morning of the 4th September (and because of this earthquake I’m told that I now have 3 metres further to travel to get to Kaipoi).

What you might not have noticed though is that Christchurch is still (mostly) in one piece and through some complete fluke no one was killed. So this isn’t a ‘please come back to Christchurch, it's great’ article, nor is it another attempt to find a new angle of misery. It is purely a personal account of the happenings of the morning of the 4th September and the following few hours.

If you are reading this then you are probably:

1. In New Zealand
2. Coming to New Zealand
3. A member of my family (Hello Mam!)

So I will not try to explain that you are currently on one of the most active volcanic regions in the world. Nor will I try to tell you that you should quickly jump on the next plane out of here. What I will try and explain is what it feels like to be caught up in a completely unexpected and somewhat sphincter clenching minute or so of madness and the following couple of hours.

So the night had started, as many others, with a couple of beers. You’ll be surprised to hear that it had ended with a few more. So at some point in the early morning of the 4th I toddled off to bed to cultivate my hangover. The only thing about this night that was different to most was the fact that my better half was on the other side of the world trying to educate Belgium about science. As you can tell, she likes a challenge.

So I woke up with a start and sat up in bed. This normally only happens if my stomach is trying to tell me that it is not happy with its contents and that I should be heading off to make a call on the big porcelain telephone. But I felt fine, just a little confused as to what had woken me up. Now I still have no clue what it was, but other people tell me they heard it coming so it might have been the earth grumbling. All I can tell you is that within a few moments of being awake my bed had decided to re-enact a scene from the exorcist, this is when I decided that I was safest with the monsters, fluff and lost socks, under my bed.

There I am under the bed and at this time the world is having a little rattle and I’m thinking this will stop in a sec and I’ll feel daft. The thing is it didn’t stop, it just got bigger. I’ve been trying to think of a way that you can experience the same sort of thing as I did and this is the best I can come up with.

• Step one: Lie face down on the floor.
• Step two: Gather a few friends around, let’s stay about 6 will do
• Step three: Get your newly assembled mates to grab your clothes, lift you 10 or 20cm off the floor and then drop you again, every second, for about a minute.

You can, during step three, do what I was trying to do, which is hold onto the carpet. I’ll warn you though this is difficult unless you have a very deep shag pile, which I don’t. After a minute (I have been told it was only 40 seconds, but what is 20 seconds between mates) it stopped, for a while. It was at this point I remembered that I own a dog, a dog that was now fresher smelling than at any time in the previous 2 years. This was mostly due to the washing powder that had fallen from the cupboard and landed on him.

So there I am standing in the dark, in my pants, talking to a dog that smells of soap. I did then go in search of some more appropriate earthquake survivors clothing. I thought I remembered that there was a torch on top of the fridge, what I was to find out is that firstly there wasn’t, and secondly the fridge was about a metre and a half away from its usual resting place. I discovered this the way I discovered a few things that morning, by walking face first into it. Eventually I gave up walking into things in the house put some clothes on and went off to walk into things in the garage.

By some random act of good luck I found a torch and it even had batteries in it. It was at around this time that the first (and still the largest) after shock happened. I did what I thought was most appropriate, I ran in circles in the front garden not sure whether the house falling on me or the trees falling on me was best way to get squashed.The next couple of hours were spent doing all the things you are not supposed to do. Driving about to check on mates, nosing around the neighbourhood to see what had fallen over, leaving slightly stupid messages on the answerphones of various family members, (Example: ‘Hello it’s just me just thought I’d let you know we have just had a MASSIVE earthquake, but don’t worry’).

It’s now a couple of months since this all occurred, and day to day it often seems like it never happened. This is only possible due to the fact that aside from a couple of poor people who suffered major injuries we all survived mostly unscathed. That is not to say that people haven’t lost a huge amount. There are still many people who don’t know what the future holds, and it’s easy for me to say, but personally, I’m just glad they have a future to be uncertain about. So there you have it a once in a lifetime event has passed.

Should you still come to Christchurch? Well, to put it in perspective, my local pub was open again by 5pm on the Saturday afternoon, although it took me till the Monday to make it down to check the beer was OK, So Yes get your bums down here, just remember what you might think is a tourist attraction might well be someone’s home, so be polite and have some respect.

About the Author: Mick Bates went on a wander from Newcastle, England a few years ago and ended up in Christchurch. Trip advisor on facebook tells him he's been to about 140 cities in 20 countries, so lots more to see yet. He is as miserable as he seems.

 

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