Tales of grief and rage well up from flood zone
The Christchurch floods have disappeared from the headlines but the clean-up continues. Sharon Murphy says how it is a week down the track: "Been doing a bit of neighbourhood de-gunging. Neighbour's two trailer loads to the dump (all the free skips are overflowing): $215. Thanks CCC. Not. Wanker on a sit-up bike comes past: eight people working to fill the trailers - sewage-infested mud through the pile of stinking soaked memories. 'You can't throw those doors away: they are recyclable' ... I hear reports of a group of people around the river who have lost everything: they have piled the lot up on the riverbank and set a bonfire. That's awful that they are so desperate and at the end of their tether. I feel blessed, sad and angry. Blessed for the help and support given to us. Angry at the spin-and-grin appearances of the PM, who was able to spend 30 minutes on sweeping in front of cameras before he swanned off to a good-news presser ... Three years of behaving well broke, and we had a good clean war for three or four hours, taking out all our anger and frustration about the way life has really been hard, the grief, everything about living in this buggered city. Feels great; lighter. Jane Bowron is going back to Welly, I'm envious, sort of. Another wave of people is leaving now. #overit." (Via Public Address - a guest blog post by Isabel Hitching (Floodland) on Emma Hart's Up Front)
Thankfully, Harrison is still in the building
A reader writes: "On the way to school yesterday a report on the radio revealed that Henry Ford's grandson had died aged 88 and that he was "the last of the Fords". Panicked, my 10-year-old son (a huge Star Wars fan) asked: "Is Harrison Ford dead?"
Alexander, the police have your iPhone
Sideswipe's copper friend Warren at New Lynn police is trying to track down crime victim Alexander Koczor, a 20-year-old German tourist whose white Nissan van was broken into in Glen Innes last month. "We have recovered his iPhone4 and wish to return it to him," says Warren. "He has moved from his Wellesley St, Auckland, address and may be moving to Tauranga to look for work."
