Just Half A Minute

“Do I write 7-4 7-4 or should I put 4-7 4-7, if I write my name first?” my opponent Stacey asked, as she studied the score sheets to be completed for the games of singles golf croquet we’d just completed.

As I looked up across the table and indicated the correct option to her, I noticed the hands on the clock hanging on the wall above her. This happened today, completely coincidentally. It was Ten to One.

“I think I won’t say anything for a couple of minutes,” I said in a low monotone. Evidently, either both Stacey and Jeanette failed to hear what I had said, or they both chose to ignore it.

While Stacey continued doing her entries in the results book, watched by Jeanette, coffee cup in hand, I sat quietly in another world. In another time-warp – a four-year-old warp. The clock pointed to Nine Minutes to One.

We had started our games some where around eleven-thirty/ forty-five-ish. I hadn’t noticed the exact time, and I hadn’t had reason to look or even think of the time. Until then, when Stacey had posed the question. 12:51

I cannot put into words what goes through my mind in these couple of minutes of silence, but Ric Stevens can do it professionally, better than most, as he writes:

 

“…It took 160 years to build the city of Christchurch. It took an earthquake 24 seconds to rip the heart out of it.

Some buildings were reduced to piles of masonry and concrete and twisted metal almost instantaneously. Hundreds of others remained standing but damaged beyond the point of salvation. A century and a half of human endeavour was wasted in less than half a minute.

But nothing of this compares with the human tragedy. In that half a minute, 185 people died or were mortally wounded. Others were maimed, injured, trapped and broken in spirit.

We measure our lives in the numbers of hours, days and years. Some numerical sequences assume a seemingly intolerable burden of loss and tragedy. Think of 1914-1918. Think of 9/11. Christchurch people cannot but think of 12:51 22/2/11.

That hour on that day will forever be a dividing point for Cantabrians. If you were there, the progress of your life will be measured in part by what happened before that time and what came after it.

If you were there, you will instantly know something of the common tragedy shared by all.

The experience is indescribable, but let's try. There is the noise; louder and more frightening than any thunder. There are pure, visceral forces of nature - movements of the elements that no muscle in the body can possibly counteract. There is the choking dust. And there is the fear; always the fear, to be rekindled anew a little with each of the thousands of aftershocks. You cannot fight any of it. All you can do is endure, and for some, at the worst time, to hope to survive…”

As of now (23:06pm on Sunday 22 Feb 2015), four earthquakes were recorded for to-day in the Christchurch region, fortunately  all below Magnitude 2.4, which is thankfully nowhere near the 6.3 of that fateful yesteryear lunchtime: