the beginning and the end

I grew up in a junk shop, got my education after school from piles of dog-eared comics in the corner of my mother's shop, learned the psychology of selling on my mother's knee. She'd figure out what something was worth then add a bit on, to be knocked off later so the customer felt like they were getting a bargain. If my mother had no real idea what something was worth she'd charge either 35c or $3.50, or if it were really unusual or particularly ugly, $35. Often too, my mother would abruptly withdraw items from sale, much to the frustration of customers. Sometimes she'd figure that if someone was so interested in something, it must be worth more than she had on it, and it would go home to be packed away in the garage indefinitely. Or sometimes she'd refuse to sell purely because she took a dislike to the customer.

At fairs and garage sales I was my mother's apprentice, some would say accomplice. "Go ask that man how much it is, he'll give it cheaper to a cute little girl," she'd say. Without fail we would be at the head of the queue at every church fair - the art of getting to the front via careful elbow positioning and waves to invisible friends further ahead was a useful skill which later held me in good stead at concerts and band gigs. We would head to different ends of the white elephant stall once in. Divide and conquer was the rule, as well as grab first, decide later.

Getting first into garage sales was important too, but the story that my mother once ran over a man who kept getting to garage sales before us is exaggerated. She merely nudged him gently with her car as he tried to dash past and he tripped over entirely of his own accord, and not without a certain dramatic flourish.

After the viciousness of garage sales, I preferred auctions - they just seemed more straightforward. My mother loved them too as the scope of items for sale was so wide. On one occasion she bought over 40 mannequins and a lifesize fibreglass donkey, and at another auction about 20 telephone boxes. Auctioneers loved my mother, if she wanted anything, she just kept on bidding to the bitter end. "Swings and roundabouts'" she'd say, if she paid over the odds. The odds were usually in her favour anyway as she picked up things that no one else wanted such as the cartons of replica coinsets she got from a fire sale auction in the 1970s. I think she must have bought the entire world production of them -  thirty years later she was still steadily selling them to the children and grandchildren of the original purchasers. When my mother died we found more mouldering cartons of them in the back of the garage; my sisters tried to sneak them into the rubbish skip but I furiously dug them out and continued to sell them.

When I decided to open a shop of my own, my mother and I went to a Smiths auction where we bought two old wooden display counters from Ballantynes. I put them in my shop in High Street (Red Fish Blue Fish next to the iconic Galaxy Records). One counter was from the haberdashery department and had a brass rule along the top. In the other counter we discovered a drawerful of very expensive chocolates which we ate and replaced with spud guns and fake moustaches. When I closed the High Street store, the counters sat in my garage until my mother died and left me her shop. At the Village Junk Shop my counters got a new lease of life displaying souvenir spoons and rusty tobacco tins, broken watches and postcards from holidays past.

Later I moved them over to Lyttelton for God Save the Queen!, a Village Junk Shop/Red Fish Blue Fish hybrid. The haberdashery counter held all the treasures of past lives including Victorian photos (aka instant ancestors), thimble collections, and rose patterned tea cups, while the other had whoopee cushions, stretchy aliens and clockwork mice.

That all came crashing to an end last Saturday. The haberdashery counter along with the remaining stock (including the last few boxes of coinsets) was smashed to pieces. The other counter was rescued in the nick of time (ask no questions as to how) and now sits in my hallway patiently awaiting its next customer.

 goodbye God Save the Queen! and all that went before...

recovery operation

It was a pretty black Monday, the 13th of June. First, a pretty major 5.7 quake and just as we were recovering from that, its mean big brother roared in, cutting power, crashing down walls, breaking spirits.  From my verandah I looked down the road to see the dust rising from the front wall of my shop now smashed to the ground.
The convent was in similar state. The walls of the chapel now almost completely down, the beautiful stained glass windows  twisted and smashed amongst the rubble. Two pairs were still standing and appear to be holding up the walls.

We rescued the ones lying broken on the ground (one window still missing in action) - now the tea towel money will go towards their repair not salvage. Harder to fix will be that fragile sense of optimism and normality that was just starting to appear...

On the wall just behind the ice cream van, you can see a bit of the faded graffiti that was a deciding factor in buying the convent - God Save the Queen. Elsewhere there was another piece which read Punk's not dead - a sentiment which appealed to my husband's '70s punk rocker past.

This is the kitchen of the chapel, formerly a sacristy, which has been completely destroyed. To the right of that is my 5 year old's store (he's following in his mother's shopkeeper footsteps) which looks like it may also be red-stickered.

going, going, gone...

The shop after the June 13 earthquakes.

The convent post-quake

This is the chapel of the convent after the February 22 quake (and subsequent aftershocks)  - things got a lot worse after the June 13 shakes.

Stronger City

This poem by Gertrude Ryder Bennett, which was put on a plaque in Napier after the 1931 earthquake, is still relevant for 21st century Christchurch. And now available in tea towel form!

The convent pre-quake...

Christchurch, Sure to Rise from the rubble

My earthquake tea towel. Ironically, the much loved Edmonds Sure to Rise building (which I passed by on the bus to school every day and which was demolished by developers in the '90s) is unlikely to rise again, but I am hopeful that Christchurch can transform itself into a new beast from the rubble of the old.

This is a slightly selfish tea towel. I'm not donating the profits to the Red Cross, the Mayor's Fund or any other charity. The proceeds from these go into saving something of mine destroyed by the earthquake.

You see, last March, St Patricks Day to be exact, my husband and I bought a splendid 1930s brick convent and chapel in Lyttelton. We sold all we had to buy it  - because how many chances do you get to own something like that?

It was, still is, stupidly huge - 16 bedrooms, 3 staircases, 2 sacristies, and a holy water font in the priest's loo. There were cloisters and a refectory and a grotto and an ambulatory (which I'd never even heard of before). In short it was 1500 square metres of pure indulgent ridiculousness.

Our 5 year old son had a room that was just for clocks (he was more-than-slightly obsessed with them for a while there); my husband found a beautiful if woefully out of tune 1880s Bechstein grand piano (an online auction bargain) that fitted perfectly into the bay window of the library; I finally had a home for my 6-foot pair of scissors and my life size fibreglass donkey.

The chapel had been painted yellow, blue and pink - raw colours that fought against the beautiful Gothic stained glass windows with their crowns of thorns and bleeding hearts and words of Latin. Our first few months there were spent getting the chapel replastered and repainted, ripping up the nylon carpet to polish the floorboards underneath, and most importantly getting the windows repaired and protected.

By 11pm on Friday 3 September I had finally finished and furnished the chapel, bar the final clean which I was saving until morning.  The first earthquake struck in the early hours of September 4, cracking the chapel walls and covering the floor in plaster (at least I hadn't vacuumed already) but everything was still standing.

After the February 22 earthquake however, all was lost - the end wall of the chapel collapsed completely, and the rest of the convent, which had suffered only cosmetic damage first time round, cracked up and will have to be demolished. The cheapest option, and one which my insurance company was counting on, is a bulldozer straight through it all, smashing everything of interest and historical importance.

I love the old buildings of Christchurch tremendously. It would be comforting to think that architectural features and materials can be salvaged and re-used to give soul and a sense of history to the new Christchurch.

I can't save the old Girls' High buildings or the licorice allsort apartments but I can try to save the stained glass windows of the old Sisters of Mercy Convent in Lyttelton, one tea towel at a time.