Ōtautahi / Christchurch Daily Photo

This building (well ruin really) is on Madras street right by the NG building. I spent a few hours walking around the city this lunchtime and it’s still a surreal experience. Sometimes I think ‘wow did this really happen?’. It still seems so odd that my city has suffered so much loss and destruction. And yet, at the same time, I can go about my business most days of the week and turn off to what I see – I have to some extent become de-sensitised to constant road works, cranes, ruined buildings, half de-constructed buildings, pop-up food and coffee stalls, and very damaged homes. After a while it becomes the norm. But then, I have those moments when it all just seems too weird to be real.

I’m not sure what the green graffiti art is supposed to be, some kind of monster perhaps? A reference to something I’m not aware of maybe? Whatever it is, they were pushing their luck doing it on that wall!