Day Four – Glochester St near the square

The Scrabble set is out. This is Holly and Amber, making a mockery of my spelling skills. Luckily I have a few years on these guys and so have picked up a few extra words to my vocab, thereby saving my dignity. Yeah I know this is the cheesey-est photo alive, I know they're gonna kill me when they see this, so I'm spelling out the irony just in light of my bad spelling all round.







Panorama view from the inside of cottage central.



Few friends of mine here, Minnie is from Auckland (she had the red cape thing on, over on the right). She lives in an apartment in Freemans bay and part of the reason she’s in Christchurch is that she’s getting some building work done at home. Get this though, she can get a loan for the work done on the house put onto her mortgage IF the house is greater than 45m square. So a few weekends ago we spent the morning measuring the rooms to try and figure out how to squeeze an extra 70 square centremetres.

Kneeling down with his back to the camera is Milton. He works in a café in town is seen here getting his arse whipped in Scrabble by another friend of mine, Lucette who you can’t see from here because she’s inside the house. Both of them live in Lyttelton in a big old house that is apparently pretty run down but wonderful. Haven’t seen it yet.




This is the Art Gallery where the house sits every night and morning waiting for me to collect it the next day. What a great building. Yesterday there was a Kapa Haka group doing a performance right in front of the house. If you know anyone who got a photo of that performance, I’d love love love to get a copy of it.

Day Three - Day Three – Saturday 28 July – Outside the ANZ

Moved just round the corner onto Colombo St under the awning of the ANZ, not sure if the irony was completely clear to the TV cameras that came around today. Apparently it was on the 6pm news – doh I missed it – but man there was a lot of people! Knee deep in it you might say, and I certainly saw a lot of knees.



This is a guy I met called Richard – actually he brought me a beer, so how could I not like the guy. Well he was telling me about how a few years ago he had a conversation with a guy about how the cost of housing was about to go up and that he really should get into the market while it was hot. So he ended up getting into business with this guy and investing in loads of houses in Auckland. Apparently it all went pretty well because now he’s sitting pretty, in fact he’s just come back from a few months in the US (San Fran and LA) where he was hanging out going to parties and enjoying himself. So what’s he doing in Christchurch? I’m pretty sure he comes from here so it must be home to him. Hopefully he’ll come back so that I can get more of the story, but it is a story that I’ve heard a few times.

Later that night I met a guy called Steven (don’t have a photo of him cos we were talking in the Arts Festival Club Bar) who had a different story. He had a well paid job and managed to save ten thousand dollars so he teamed up with a couple of friends and moved into a house in Auckland together. It seemed like a pretty good thing to do until he realised that one of the girls in the house was impossible to live with. She tried to make him stay on but he was determined to get out. In the meantime (this was 1997 apparently) the housing market slumped and so the place was worth less than what they paid for it, so he cut his losses and lost the ten grand but gained his freedom. The next year he got an even higher paid job and went to live in Europe with an expensive girlfriend and even more expensive habits. He now lives in Auckland again, just working in Christchurch for a couple of months, and he seemed a pretty happy guy too. PS he didn’t buy me a beer.



This is a not that came through my window. It says ‘You must be some kind of King, to get strangers on their knees’
I reckon this has gotta be the best title for a book ever thought of. So whoever wrote it, I hope you don’t mind me using this title, thanks for passing it through.









This little girl was one of a family full of red heads.








'nuf said

Day Two- Fri 27 July

So this woman drops an ANZ flyer about home loans in my window, she thinks it’s funny. How ironic. I wish I’d been a bit faster witted to say something about cutting down trees for flyers like this. Too bad.

So two new developments.
1 Went to the Art Gallery where I’d left it set up last night. It looks so cool there, it’s such a weird space and so high. There is something not quite right about a little house sitting in the middle of the foyer and something even more not quite right about an object made with my bad carpentry sitting in an art gallery. I think this is what they call ‘when-will-they-realise-who-I-really-am-syndrome’

2 So anyway, here’s a picture. I like the guy on the left the way he thinks the letter box might magically explain it all. I think Art Galleries give you the impression that it’ll all make sense once someone tells you the secret. I think that’s why I like et al.’s work so much.


3 Comparative sculptural study 3. I like phone boxes. They make me feel like I’m somewhere.


Location location location


And the cutest mother daughter combo goes to…

Day One – Thurs 26 July – Christchurch

Weird day because I was sort of tucked up in a corner of the Square so most of the people who dropped by were stranded travellers trying to get into X-base (other than the bunch of guys playing football on my back lawn).
Had an interesting conversation with Sue from Littleton who reckons I should take a trip out there with the house. The only problem is that I’d need a trailer cos there is no way I’m gonna try taking this thing apart again


So this woman had met me before in Auckland apparently, not that I can remember. Show me your shoes again and I might recall. Anyhow, she now works here in this bar on the left and she brought me some biscuits just at the moment that I’d tagged with Milton who was holding the fort while I went to the loo, Bummer!


This is living proof that Wanganui really is the best town in the world to live in if your sole criteria is the level workmanship of the paving bricks. For the rest of the world, we gotta just suffer.

Comparative sculptural study




Officially the first ever person in Christchurch to come visit, you get the special prize of the $12 pizza. Actually judging by the lack of brown faces round here he’s probably from outta town.



Comparative sculptural study number 2. I bought this tea cup for 20c at the Salvation Army store in town. The guy at the photocopy shop laughed at me when I asked him for directions ‘why would I wanna know where Sally’s is?’ Well buddy, don’t bother looking for green-lipped tea cups for 20c anywhere else in town cos I got ‘em.

The note on the right is from a girl called Kirsty who drew this for me when I was in Auckland. She said she worked in a bar but she looked young enough to still need a baby sitter. Am I getting older? Funny how when you get down this low to the ground any uniform at all gives you a sense of authority. The article above is from NZ Herald all about how rich Aucklanders would like to live somewhere nicer and not have to pay so much.

Wed 25 July – Picton to Christchurch

The number of days I’ve gotten up this early to see the sun rise I could count on one hand, I kept running that saying my mother used to use through my head – red sky at night shepherds delight, red sky in morning shepherds warning – but I really can’t see the sense in it. What’s the difference exactly? Today was like the return of Autumn in Christchurch proving not only my mother wrong but also every one of my friends who insisted I take twenty jerseys with me. So I bailed out the jerseys, the hot water bottle, the sleeping bag, the leather jacket, the possum fur socks, and starting putting together Baby part III complete with new paint job and classy new aluminium corners.
Was working at the art gallery in Christchurch, they have some pretty flash carpenters working there so was feeling a little self conscious about my dodgy building work, splashing on plenty of paint to cover things up. Sure is a nice space though that gallery (at least the back of it is where the workshops are), pity there are so many locks around. These are some pictures I took with my camera on self timer so that I could pretend to be shot at work. Honk! That guy is posing.
Today I was thinking today about how many houses I’ve lived in. Well there was my folks house in Masterton for the first 18 years then a run of about thirty houses since. So apart from the fact that this is the first house I’ve owned, this is also the first house I’ve managed to hang on to. So I figure the idea of moving house but taking it with me isn’t such a bad idea. I mean, it does fit in a car after all. I will count them up for tomorrow and see if I can list every house I’ve lived in. I’m prepared to bet it’ll be greater than the number of girls I’ve slept with. Either way this is potentially a sad indictment of my inconsistent personality.

Goodnight and thank you Auckland

Yep - so that was it Auckland. Saturday was the big send off, had a thousand cups of tea, scones, Peter thanks for the Shortbread coconut men, Caoimhe thanks for the sit-in, John thanks for the pancakes, the chocolate and passionfruit combo was memorable!

Highs and lows? Well, I reckon that's the most intense period of meeting people I've had in a long time, have a bunch of phone numbers and written notes to get through. The Scrabble matches were hard to beat, the guy who wanted to piss on my roof never followed through with it. High street really is fashion capital of inner Auckland, the korean pancakes on Wellesley street which got passed through my window were phenomenal, Jean with her information of Treaty issues had me intrigued, as did the American Architect, the Chilean artist, the school girls on their way to rehearsal, the Brazilian exchange student, Trudy and her pictures, Nicole and Rose for their weird colouring-in drawings.... adios amigos until next time.

Albert Park had the locals looking sideways


Caoimhe and Jen - on great form as usual.
Andriu trying to figure out the mathematics behind it all, he'll get there eventually.

The aftermath - anyone any good with a vacuum?

The dream of affordable homes... voila!

new meetings

This guy - his identity shall be hidden for the moment - was just on his way to getting the snip! Yeah that's right folks, the big snip down there, I thought it only right that I should take his portrait.
Insurance guys see things sideways
best dress man in Wyndham st. with a close second going to those firemen
the original insurance guy. Would you trust him? Course you would

This is what pregnant girls do to keep warm on a thursday afternoon. Look forward to seeing what develops G!