The news game

Tim the weatherman checks his appearance in the mirror, carefully skews his tie slightly off-centre and tussles his hair once more. Wearing his trademark cheeky grin like a badge of honour, he waits for the right moment before turning to face the camera.

The floor manager makes his standard hand movement (index finger raised in a classic ‘up-yours’ gesture) and Tim turns around with a well-rehearsed air of surprise.

“Hullo Noo Zild, gosh it’s nice to see you. Been a bit of a cold old day up & down the country, but we’ll find out more about that a little later on in the bulletin. I’m off for a cup of Bell Tea and a Gingernut and I’ll see you in about 20 minutes. But right now it’s six o’clock.”

As the credits start to roll, Tim looks over to the news anchors with two fingers up in the air.

“And that, boys and girls, is how you do it. Two points for me & we haven’t even started yet.” With a smirk, he turned on his heel and sauntered off to the green room.

Scenes from a mall

For the last month I've been spending 2-3 days a week working at the Quake Box in City Mall. This little stint has now come to an end - the Quake Box gets moved to a new location this weekend.

It's been... interesting. So here, in no particular order, are some random incidents and photos from the central city in recent times.

Congratulations! It's a...

... hole.
Yep, we're now the proud owners of a hole in the ground.

Given that in the whole of last week we only added a fence, it's nice to see some progress. Already we're a day behind schedule - this digging was supposed to happen last Friday - but at least it's a glorious, muddy start.

Ready, Set, Build

It seems like just the other day I was lamenting the lack of rebuilding going on... oh wait, it was! That may be true for the city centre, but around the edges and out in the suburbs, repairs & new constructions are getting underway.

Just across the road from my PO Box used to be a bookstore, art gallery & dairy. This is what it looked like on March 17, 2011...

Here's the same site today...

Memories on Madras

During a break in the recent Music & Crisis conference someone approached me and asked how the rebuild was going.
'Rebuild?' I laughed. 'We're not up to rebuilding yet, we're still in the demolition phase.'

And every week, it seems, another notable building gets added to the demolition list, some to predictable outcry and plaintive petitions wanting signatures. Other petitions have already been sent off in protest. 

However, on Monday we reached a milestone - the reopening of Madras Street, from Tuam St onwards. Traffic was reportedly busy all day long, and has been ever since too. But I wanted to walk not drive, so I could take some pictures and contemplate the empty spaces at my leisure.

The journey started at C4 for a compulsory coffee, after which I headed towards the freshly-opened roadway.

It's the latest craze in inner-city abandoned sites - the open-air basement bath-house.