Christchurch City Libraries Blog

Standing in the oldest, coldest,  darkest bach we’d ever holidayed in, I slipped through the cracks in time and touched Canterbury history.

I could hear the woman who had lived in this south-facing abode berating her husband at night: “Get me some wallpaper to cheer this place up!” she wailed.

So he did. Five different patterns. One for each room. Which could explain how she ended up with a bedroom papered in a Beardsley print of partly dressed  nymphets.

Sloppy word choice will get you every time!

Recommended reading: Baches & Cribs

Assignment 3: What’s your Canterbury bach horror/love story?

Today as a society we feel pretty strongly about circus elephants. Kiwi kids are less and less likely to have the chance to see a real elephant unless they go to Auckland Zoo or travel abroad.

In 1934 things were a lot different, and I have to admit it made Christchurch seem a pretty colourful place as shown by this picture of Wirth’s circus elephants being watered in the Avon river between the Armagh and Victoria bridges.

The first Townend begonia house

One of my favourite places is the Christchurch Botanic Gardens.

I love the conservatories – Gilpin House with its freakish carnivorous plants and Townend House, filled with flowering plants (including a glorious array of begonias).

Townend House was named after Christchurch heiress Annie Quayle Townend. She owned ‘Mona Vale’ and funded the  establishment of  St Paul’s church in Glenmark.

Townend House today

More botanical delights:

• Christchurch Botanic Gardens images and books in our collection
• A 1958 map of the Botanic Gardens
• Gordon Gee’s  botanical illustrations

So what’s your Christchurch landmark of choice?

Meeting the animals at Canterbury's A&P Show

It’s a Canterbury tradition, isn’t it? Every year we’re up at sparrows on Show Day. We bundle the kids into the car and head to the showgrounds munching marmite on toast as we go.

There’s always a queue. We bump over the paddocks and get mixed messages from people waving orange flags. We park, slap on sunblock and head to the entrance pockets jangling.

The animals are happiest early in the day. The rides are best before lunch. The nor’wester arrives at noon along with the chips and hot dogs. We buy up Christmas presents at the stalls before we leave exhausted, sunburnt and full of memories. The A&P Show is what Canterbury’s all about. Brilliant!

Necrology – a list of notable people who have died recently

Melvin Brieseman, 1934-2010
Canterbury Medical Officer of Health for 30 years
Solomon Burke, 1940-2010
Soul singer, evangelist and undertaker whose music career was revitalised in the new millennium
Stephen Cannell, 1941-2010
Writer, producer and director who brought his subversive gifts to The Rockford Files and The A-Team
Philippa Foot, 1920-2010
Philosopher who challenged the notion of moral relativism and addressed the hot topic of medical ethics
Eva Ibbotson, 1925-2010
Children’s author of magical adventure stories who drew on her memories of life as a refugee
Simon MacCorkindale, 1952-2010
Actor who specialised in roguish charmers and was once hailed as the new Errol Flynn
Benoit Mandelbrot, 1924-2010
Mathematician and father of fractal theory who developed a new way of looking at the world
John Masters, 1934-2010
Christchurch war hero
Claire Rayner, 1931-2010
Writer, broadcaster and agony aunt who drew on her own experiences to tackle every topic with matronly assurance
Brian Southam, 1931-2010
Publisher and leading expert on the work of Jane Austen who authenticated the author’s only known play
Joseph Stein, 1912-2010
Social worker who became a Broadway writer and turned a set of Jewish stories into Fiddler on the Roof
Joan Sutherland, 1926-2010
One of the most celebrated opera singers of all time
Norman Wisdom, 1915-2010
Britain’s most successful screen comic after Chaplin, whose slapstick talents won him affection around the world

Information can be interpreted in many ways, kind of like statistics, you can make it mean whatever you like with the right ‘spin’.

David McCandless has sought out the weird and the wonderful for his book, Information is Beautiful, and by using colour, graphic art, charts, inter-connected diagrams and humour, he brings to life all sorts of random and interesting information. And it is indeed beautiful.

Like the Guinness Book of World Records, you can spend hours pouring over random information, wondering why and how anyone thought to collect and analyse that type of information.

You learn which countries top the charts for being #1 for rollercoasters, going to the cinema, using the web, car theft and cheese (hint, choose from South Korea, Iceland, Malaysia, Venezuela and Australia).

You can read the timeline of internet viral videos (how many have you seen?), find out the most common break-up times on Facebook, work out which Hollywood and Bollywood movies are the most profitable, compare the size of the Aral Sea and Lake Chad from 1978 to 2008 (they’ve both shrunk considerably more than you’d think), discover the most popular US girls’ names (and what tv shows influenced when new names debuted on the chart), learn which Hollywood actors which would be far better than Kevin Bacon to play the game “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon”, and find out what facial hair says about a man.

Lose yourself. Learn something. Laugh out loud. Share this book with others.

Lost for an idea for dinner? Richard Till has the answer.

Till, along with fellow Cantabrians Brett McGregor and Jo Seagar, will get you in the mood for Show Week when they appear at Keri Woodham’s Books and Bubbles on Sunday.

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a foodie then there’ll also be cooking demonstrations at this year’s Canterbury A&P Show.

If you want to cut to the chase and just get the recipes, think library and grab a bundle of recipe books or  try our chef and recipe website listings.

Cantabrians  have adopted a close relationship with the concepts of seismology, the scientific study of earthquakes. How often can we hear people dismissing a “3.0″? Well if you want to find out more here is the electronic resource for you.

Science Reference Center provides access to a multitude of science-oriented content. Topics covered range from the usual suspects – biology, chemistry and physics,  to other scientific endeavours like earth and space science and environmental science.

• Over 500 science videos
• Over 10,000 scientific images
• Full-text science reference books and magazines

You can access Science Reference Center and many other useful premium websites from home with your library card number and PIN, or at our community libraries.

On my first day in New Zealand, ten years ago, I joined the library – so beginning my personal Cantabrian history.

My very first book was A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth – all 1349 pages of it. But I soon tried some Kiwi authors – Lloyd Jones, Fiona Kidman, Shonagh Koea, Joe Bennett. However my favourite is Laurence Fearnley (not Cantabrian, but I swear every book mentions Christchurch - if only in passing!).

Christchurch libraries saved my sorry immigrant life. And people do read  name badges. I know I did. Irene did my membership. Thank you Irene.

Recommended Reading: Anything by Laurence Fearnley.

Assignment 2: Name your favourite Canterbury author.

Christchurch poet Victoria Broome  has just been named on the shortlist for the Kathleen Grattan Award for her collection Big Red Engine.

You can get a taste of her work at a book launch at South Library this Saturday: Broome is one of The Poetry Chooks, who will debut Flap: The Chook Book 2 in the Sydenham Room at South Library.

Fiona Farrell will speak and I’m sure Victoria, along with  Catherine Fitchett, Barbara McCartney and Christina Stachurski, will  delight and entertain. Well done, chook!

• View event details
• Read the first Chook Book collection
• Visit the Hagley Writers’ Institute website
• Read about the Kathleen Grattan Award