The Lyttelton Report: the old, the new, and the canine

It’s all go portside at the moment, as we at Lyttelton Library watch the repairs proceeding apace from our temporary perch up the hill in the Recreation Centre’s Trinity Hall on Winchester Street. The in-progress library now has a dashing white coat of paint (goodbye pink!), lovely new double-glazed windows, and a smart new resident outside…

This gorgeous bronze sled dog, nicknamed Hector, was sculpted by Mark Whyte and stands guard by what will be our new customer entrance. He’s looking towards Quail Island, where his real-life predecessors were housed and trained. Hector is there to recognise and celebrate Lyttelton’s contribution to exploration in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and he symbolises the courage, commitment and comradeship of all those involved. (He’s also a hit with local kids and tourists – it seems the thing to do is have your selfie taken with Hector wearing your sunglasses!)

Meanwhile, inside the library, the new spaces are starting to take shape. Here are a few shots of the work in progress:

Looking at the new children’s area (old entrance on London Street).

Looking at the new entrance on the corner of London and Canterbury Streets.

Main library space with newly opened up porthole view over the harbour.

We’re enjoying our current sojourn in sunny Trinity Hall (particularly with Jenny the giraffe watching over everything) and looking forward to next year, when we’ll be back in the heart of things (and the Saturday market) again!

Lyttelton Library is due to reopen in March 2017.

Lyttelton Library’s temporary home, watched over by Jenny the giraffe.

More information

• Opening hours of the temporary Lyttelton Library
• Photos of the temporary Lyttelton Library
• Antarctic exploration and Christchurch

Jo,
Lyttelton Library

Happy birthday, Christchurch City Libraries!

Canterbury Public Library building, Circa 1903-1907, CCL Flickr

My family and I moved to Christchurch at the beginning of 2009, and one of the first things we did – as you do – was go to the library and sign up for a membership. The staff probably cringed when they saw the five of us arrive, but they were so nice and helpful and friendly, it was amazing.

We had gone into Central Library because the concept of more than one library in a town was a bit unknown to us, and after we collected our cards we set off exploring…

Storytelling pit, Children’s Library, Ground Floor. 1995. Flickr File Reference: Arch52-BWN-0026

Did you know there was a WHOLE ROOM just for children? An aisle of science fiction? (Our favourite) young adults had it’s own space! There were heaps of CDs and DVDs. And magazines. There was even an upstairs with a whole floor of non-fiction… It was bliss.

And when we went to the beach we found a library.  Then another one when we did grocery  shopping at Bishopdale Mall, then another one out at Diamond Harbour (where we got the best ice creams this side of Pleasant Point). After 20 years of living in small towns in New Zealand, Christchurch City Libraries was a revelation.

New Central Library, Flickr File reference: 2015-03-26-Plaza-Day-new

Well, we all know that the Central library built in 1982, is no more. And like a phoenix rising  from the ashes, a new library will be built on Cathedral Square. Hey, that could be a good name for it: The Christchurch Phoenix, what do you think?

So what other milestones has the library seen in it’s 157 years:

• 26 May 1859 opens as the Mechanics Institute library, based in the Town Hall. Membership was for paying members only, and the subscription was set at one guinea per annum or seven shillings and sixpence per quarter
• In 1863, the library moved to a new wooden building on the corner of Cambridge Terrace and Hereford Street.
• Canterbury College took over the running of then named Canterbury Public Library in February 1874.
• In 1920 a travelling library service to country areas was begun: boxes of books, which were changed quarterly,  were sent to places like Darfield, Mayfield, Culverden and Hinds
• Uncle Jack (Librarian Ernest Bell) and Aunt Edna (Edna Pearce) created a children’s radio show on 3YA in the 1920s, broadcasting stories, plays, poems and songs
• In 1948 ownership of the Library was handed over to the Christchurch City Council (after decades of wrangling, in true Christchurch fashion!)
• 1952 – finally – free borrowing introduced
• 1975 first computerised lending system introduced
• 2 February 1982 the Governor-General, Hon. Sir David Beattie officially opened the new Public Library building on the corner of Gloucester Street and Oxford Terrace. Warren and Mahoney were the architects and C. S. Luney Ltd was the principal contractor for the building
• 1989 Christchurch City Libraries starts Australasia’s first public library online catalogue
• 1996  last card catalogue unit taken away
• 2001 Ngā Pounamu Māori centre opened
• 2009 150th Anniversary celebrated in many ways, including the provision of free wifi
• 2014 Central Library demolished
• 2017 New Sumner library due to open
• 2018 Opening of the New Central Library

Happy birthday Christchurch City Libraries – may you have many more!

Books for babies 20th anniversary, 2011, Flickr File reference CCL-2011-02-07-Books-For-Babies-20-P1040243

• See more photos
• Read more about the old Central Library
•  Learn more about it’s history

Arrivals and departures

The Universe can count itself lucky that there were no cameramen on hand to record my New Zealand arrival 15 years ago. Months of wailing, breast beating and sad partings had taken their toll. Add to that a Harare detour, a missed connecting flight and a night spent in a Perth Airport Transit Lounge, and what emerged at Christchurch Airport Arrivals Hall umpteen hours later was not a pretty sight.

However, I am looking forward to Christchurch Photo Hunt Competition, with its theme: Arrivals and Departures – the journeys that have shaped us.

Kiwis are great travellers, and worldwide there is a growing trend for people to live away from the countries of their birth. According to an article in the Jul/Sep 2015 Destinations magazine, approximately 3% of the world’s population live outside of the countries in which they were born. Frankly I would have put that figure higher given the teeming masses at the airports I frequent on my annual trips back home (wherever that may be). Maybe I am just seeing the same tired old passengers again and again?

If you are looking for inspiration to get your photographic juices flowing, we have masses of beautiful photography books, and I have a fair smattering of  of recent reads on the topic of coming and going – and running on the spot:

On coming home: Kiwis often travel out and wing their way back at some stage in life. Paula Morris has written an excellently researched little book on this topic: On Coming Home. It is a tiny book of only 76 pages about the author’s return to Auckland to look after her ageing mother, herself an immigrant. Arriving and departing is inextricably linked to our concept of Home, and this book comes with an outstanding bibliography. Norris’s mother sums it up like this:

My mother: I’m not a New Zealander.

Me: You’ve lived in New Zealand for forty years.

My mother: If I lived in China, would it make me Chinese?

On the lure of the new: The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop is the book I wish I had written. In this novel Charlotte uproots from Cambridge, England, to Perth, Australia, where her husband has landed a lecturing position. It is a book about people who just do not transplant well. People whose rope of yearning is so strong it starts to pull the corners of their mouths down. I have always known that I am not really a mover. Yet here I am. This book was written for me.

On to-ing and fro-ing: Justin Cartwright grew up in South Africa, but lives in England. Several of his books are about the pull that South Africa still exerts on him. Books like White Lightning, To Heaven by Water and more recently Up Against the Night. In Afrikaans (and indeed in the book White Lightning) he is disparagingly referred to as a “soutpiel”. This is a man who has one foot in England, one foot in South Africa – and I leave you to work out which part of his anatomy is in the salty Indian Ocean.

On staying put: My choice here is Tim Winton‘s latest book Island Home: A Landscape Memoir. This is a beautiful song of praise for how the land that we love makes us who we are – in this case the land is Australia. You get the distinct feeling from this book that Tim Winton would wither away if he had to live away from his beloved country.

But don’t think that you have to be the world’s greatest Frequent Flyer to enter the Christchurch Photo Hunt. Maybe you just went on a picnic from Sockburn to Spencer Park and you have a great photo of it. Maybe someone took your photo as you left on the bus from Worcester Boulevard (in the good old days) to take your place at Uni down south.

Help us flesh out the full panorama of all our arrivals and departures over the years. Every Picture Tells a Story!

We need new names: WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival

Zimbabwe came as close as it is ever likely to get, in having one of its daughters win the Man Booker Prize, when in 2013, NoViolet Bulawayo was shortlisted for her first novel We Need New Names.

I loved this book long before I read it, I concede maybe for all the wrong reasons.

I loved the author’s name – even if you do nothing else, say the word Bulawayo several times. Let it roll off your tongue, a slight stress on the “way” syllable, feel its roundness roll out like the Matopos Boulders that, as a tourist in Zimbabwe, you would most certainly visit. Beautiful.

I loved the title. It is a book in which names are very important.The names of characters, like Prophet Revelation Bitchington Mborro; Paradise, the squatter camp; DestroyedMichigan for Detroit; Bastard and Godknows who are Darling‘s friends. In politically volatile Africa, even the names of streets and buildings can change almost overnight. To this day, my Durban taxi trips require some verbal fancy footwork: If I say “Can you take me to Aliwal Street”, the driver will answer : “Do you mean Samora Machel?” If I ask for Samora Machel Avenue, he will always reply: “Oh, Aliwal Street”. But we get there in the end.

I also loved the book cover, so funky, so bright, so youthful. Because, NoViolet Bulawayo, born in Zimbabwe, is young and this is her first novel and it is quite brilliant.

And then I read it.

It is a book of two halves, the first part set in the euphemistically named Paradise, a squatter camp in Zimbabwe. The second half is set in America where Darling, the main character, has been taken  by her Aunt – with the promise of a better life.

As with all fiction, there is what is happens and there is how what happens is described. Many awful things happen. Do you want to read about a botched attempted abortion with a wire coat hanger on a young girl impregnated by her grandfather? No you do not. Do you want to read about the words Blak Power smeared in faeces on the bathroom mirror of a house that has been broken into? No you do not. Do you want to read about a lonely father, estranged from his daughter, dying of AIDS in a shack in Paradise? Probably not. But read it you will, because it is beautifully written and finely observed and has nuggets of joy and laughter and empathy the likes of which you may not have beheld for a very long time.

For me it is mainly a book about leaving a place where you were born, your homeland, and making a life in a new place and all the excitement and yearning that  accompanies this migration. The fullness of lack is contrasted with the emptiness of abundance. For make no mistake, people left and are leaving Zimbabwe:

Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost. Look at them leaving in droves.

And then there is the writing. Interspersed with staccato juvenile backchat,  there are long repeated sentences whose Biblical cadence make you feel those passages could be sung. Her writing has few conjunctions and she favours repeated words for emphasis. She has killer similes and metaphors and for all the sadness of the subject matter, you will laugh. She is doing something different with English and you should read it to see what you think. As the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart) is quoted as saying:

Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.

It is a book with a forcefield all of its own. When I went to place it on my shelves, first I put it between The Lord of the Flies and Things Fall Apart. No, not there. Then I tried it between The Lower River and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs To-night. No not there either. Finally I placed it between The Grass is Singing and Cry the Beloved Country. Two classics. And that is where it belongs.

But I have saved the best till last. NoViolet Bulawayo is appearing at the WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival  in Christchurch this weekend. Sure you can read the reviews, of course I recommend you read the book, but you could actually meet her and hear her speak.

Writing comets like this do not often traverse our skies.

 

Been there, done that

“Never go back,” they say, “it’ll be completely different.”

Nobody told that to Ellis Hock (the main character in Paul Theroux‘s latest fiction offering The Lower River.) Actually, at the time he decided to return to Malawi, hardly anyone alive was still speaking to Ellis. So back he went, to the place where he had once been so happy.

And don’t tell me you’ve never done this: gone back to a place or a job or a man. Or even a hairstyle. I know I have. So, understandably my heart was heavy at the realisation that our Christmas Book Discussion Scheme novel was The Lower River. I did not anticipate a festive read.

Indeed, it was the first of the books that we have read together that my group really disliked. They loathed Ellis, hated the snakes, found it incredibly tense and in parts repetitive. But, and here is the rub, everyone acknowledged that it is sweaty-palms well written. The dark tension ratchets up to the very last page. The “Never Go back” brigade score big time here.

At exactly the same time, the cutely titled To Timbuktu for a Haircut crossed my path. This details a true journey through West Africa (Mali in particular) by Rick Antonson. It has all the chaos that is a hallmark of African travel, endearing characters and the same underlying tension that by the end of the book was escalating to its current sad situation. Antonson loves Africa and yearns to return to Mali. But right now he would not be allowed in.

The Hired Man is not set in Africa, you may be relieved to hear, but is a novel by Aminatta Forna  that is set in Croatia. The main character, Duro, never leaves Croatia. His going back is not about place, it is about time. His past is as real to him as his present. Towards the end of this very gripping read, he says: Some people can never forget, some people choose not to remember.

Some thirteen years ago, in my first year as an immigrant to New Zealand, every night I said to my husband: I want to go home. That is correct: Every. Single. Night. So the topics of going back, or moving on, or running on the spot, are very dear to me.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: there are books that say Never Go back. There are books about Moving On and there are books where no one goes anywhere at all. But where is the book about going back and loving it? Does such a beast even exist?

Bishopdale is back!

I can, I can, I know I can!

Bishopdale, the little library that could, is back.

In the same spirit as The Little Engine That Could: I can, I can , I know I can, Bishopdale did.

If you were about in those life altering months after the 22nd February 2011, you might remember Bishopdale as the glue that held the northern suburbs together. It was the first library to open after the quake and one of only two libraries open in the whole of Christchurch. It was a pulsating hive of activity. Think overjoyed customers, accompanied by  recently unleashed children, attended to by chocolate-biscuit fuelled staff,  knee deep in a gazillion returns and you have just about got the stereophonic measure of it.

And then it all stopped on the 4th November 2011: the premises did not meet the building code.

But now it is back, just down from where it was before, and what a great little space it is. Not just open, but open and welcoming and trialling several new initiatives that will keep the Bishopdale customers ahead of the pack.

Yet when you stand in the new space, you can’t help but think back to the Bishopdale that was: the maze-like arrangement of the non-fiction section – where it really was possible to become quite seriously disoriented, the lone public computer at the back of the library (the choice of those of furtive intent), the lovely little posies of flowers on the issues desk, the staff toilet door that could be locked from the outside – and thereby hangs a tale or two….

Not everything has changed though. There’s still the same lovely library staff, the same excellent service from Christchurch Libraries, the same neat selection of items and the same beautiful art work on the walls.

Bishopdale is back , ready to create new memories. Can’t wait to see you there!

Destination… Airport

Have you visited your airport recently?

Not for anything to do with travel, but just to hang out. Because the clever airport rebranding folk have come up with The Airport Visit as something to do. Just for fun. I kid you not. Actually, there’s quite a bit to be said for it. More interesting than a day in Sockburn and cheaper than a trip to Phuket, an airport is a bit like a mall with benefits.

But what’s it like to be at an airport with no travel purpose in mind? It certainly enhances the appeal of the book  100 Places You Will Never Visit. But, no matter what, I love airports. Alain de Botton beat me to what could have been my dream job when he landed the position of Writer in Residence at Heathrow for a week. But there’s nothing to stop me from blogging from Christchurch International Airport, so here goes.

You’ll be spoilt for choice insofar as cafés are concerned. I settled myself in with my cappuccino and got right down to my favourite airport activity – people watching: retired travellers endlessly checking boarding passes, harried mothers with overexcited children, cool businessmen praying they don’t get seated next to them on the flight. And weaving their superior way through this mêlée are the pilots, co-pilots and flight attendants. Perhaps not quite a glamorous as the Trolley Dollies in the latest TV series PanAm, but surely free of suspender belts at least!

Air travel is a peculiar beast – lacking the romance of train travel or the languor of a cruise, it has failed to generate a body of literature to commend it. My best find is the evocatively named Airports and Other Wasted Days. But sitting in a terminal, you have to marvel at how much air travel has changed. Time was when people dressed up to fly overseas, like the passenger in this old Christchurch Airport 1950 photo who is wearing furs and a hat and is surrounded by men in suits and uniforms. Now it’s baggy pants and Crocs all the way.

Now I know that a trip to the airport is not going to be an easy option to sell to the kiddies (some of whose friends have parents who are actually going to travel with their children) and I never said  an airport outing would be cheap. All I’m saying is: you too can get that travel buzz, buy chocolate coated “Sheep Dropping” raisins at a Duty Free, smell of three conflicting perfumes, wave to a pilot, misidentify jets to trusting youngsters and do it all on a spectacular caffeine high.

And what’s more, not once in the whole outing will a whining child say to you:

“Are we there yet?”

“Should I stay or should I go?”

When The Clash wrote Should I stay or should I go in the 1980s, they did not intend it to refer to earthquake struck cities; nevertheless it would make a fitting anthem for Christchurch in these post-quake days. There’s so much coming and going, and to quote The Clash:

If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double.

A library is the perfect place to bear witness to these great migrations of people. In a single day in any one library, you could meet up with The Stayers, The Goers and the Inbetweeners.

The many new arrivals to Christchurch come from all over the world. This week alone I have met (and this to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas): three from New Guinea, two Irish builders, one English rose. The latter had arrived a mere three hours earlier and had come straight from the airport to Central Library Peterborough to use the internet and take out books on tramping around Christchurch and Kiwi cooking. I’m grouping them with The Stayers because that’s what I hope they will do.

Some people have thought it all through and decided it is time to go – usually to The Land of Oz. Not the whole country mind, just the bits on the edge like The Sunshine Coast and Western Australia. Oz might as well not have a middle as far as most Goers are concerned; it’s all about the sunshine, the salaries and the surf. Actually, put like that it does sound great, but I do hope they’ve been told about Capital Gains Tax and the possible effect of migration on pensions. If you’ve decided to move on, the library has heaps of resources to help you, like Living and Working in Australia.

What with all this moving around, there is bound to be some fallout. And here it comes: the parents who have been left behind – The Inbetweeners – doomed to a life of both staying and going. They have lost their children and their grandchildren and instead have been gifted iPads, Smart phones and e-readers. This is a huge technological hurdle for many of them. But they are so proud of their clever off-spring who have landed lives in Australia and talk of how it is only a matter of a few hours’ flying time to meet up again. I smile, because I do that already and am now best friends with a pair of flight socks. They ask if we can help them with all their new gadgets. And, yes, we can. Several libraries around the network offer drop-in computer classes tailored specifically to this group. Just phone 03-941-7923 and our wonderful Fingertip staff will help you out. Alternatively, check our Classes and Events calendar.

But moving around isn’t about age really. Eileen Hall was 93 when she sang Should I Stay or Should I Go in the film Young@Heart. Have a listen, it’s great. And if she could get up on a stage and belt that out at 93, who is to say that The Inbetweeners wouldn’t make a great go of it in Woolloomooloo (or wherever)?

Red, Red Whine

Perhaps I will!

We’ve been Red  Zoned and despite all the confusion, misery and dislocation that this implies for thousands of us, I personally am just blown away by the superior adaptability of the English language, which has moved these words from a noun phrase to a verb phrase in half the time it takes to spit out the word “liquefaction“.

Turns out that moving from one suburb to the next is almost as fraught as the move from country to country, and I should know. Gone all our dreams for our home, gone our plans for the future, gone our little bit of paradise. Instead we join the legions of pale, sad people driving slowly down your street in search of a replacement dream.

But in the interests of taking it one day at a time, we do know one thing: we will have to rid ourselves of piles of  useless **** (insert here rude word of your choice that rhymes with “trap”) that we have hoarded over many  years.

So, where else do you turn in situations like this other than to our fantastic libraries for help? I think I know what I need right now, but I lack the energy to track it down. So I’m turning to you to suggest some reads for me. What could I be reading that might satisfy at least some of the following requirements:

• Help me clear the clutter;
• Make me feel that this purging is a spiritually rewarding path to take that will result in a new improved me;
• Transport me to a world of pioneers who relocated and lived to tell the tale;
•  Make me laugh!

I’ve loved all the recent blogs on getting back your mojo, but have to warn you that I am about as far from bouncing back as I could possibly be and that on a good day a gentle seep is about all that I can manage.

The truth is, this could have been the world’s shortest blog yet – just three little words:

Red zoned – help!