The British Hotel has a colourful history and I bet I don't know the half of it. Currently it is a great little bar, popular with locals, serving a small menu of good food.
But the fire is rubbish.
The British Hotel has a colourful history and I bet I don't know the half of it. Currently it is a great little bar, popular with locals, serving a small menu of good food.
But the fire is rubbish.
Near the head of Lyttelton Harbour/Whakaraupo, lies the small settlement of Governors Bay. We use to walk our dogs down by the shoreline and I loved walking to the end of the ridiculously long jetty. But that was a long time ago and the jetty has seen better days. It was falling into disrepair even before the earthquake of 2011, but that finished it off.
There are a lot of birds in our garden, but very few species come to the bird table, unlike in the UK. I mostly see sparrows (non-native), silvereyes (native), chaffinches (non-native), greenfinches (non-native) and starlings (non-native). The starlings are real bullies, scaring every other bird away and demolishing fat balls in a matter of hours. So it was a relief when the Sausage Shed stall woman (who sells the fat balls) gave me a method of putting the starlings off.
I’m writing this on the shortest day of the year (21st June) . I can’t imagine that when this is published the moon will look as amazing as it did at the start of June, but you never know. We were walking up for a happy hour beer and seeing it over the pine trees and the lights of Lyttelton was just magical. Cartoons don’t do it justice, so I hope it is as good tonight.
I often walk up to the summit road above Lyttelton, usually to generate cartoon ideas for Arctic Circle or other comics. The views can be glorious, but even when the weather closes in, it is a great place to be.
Except, perhaps, in an earthquake.
I am very risk-averse.
We are lucky (despite some idiotic actions recently concerning border control and quarantine) that New Zealand is at Level 1. This means all the bars are open normally and Lyttelton has come back to life.
London Street has come back to life apart from those lots that are still empty all these years after the earthquake.
I was in Facebook today (6th July), deleting more of my personal photos (a long process) and came across some from 2011. The boyf and I visited Lyttelton a month after the earthquake and his old restaurant (London Street) and Number 6 were still standing. Only just.
There are no cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand. On Tuesday we moved to Level 1, which means normal life apart from at the borders (where most people coming in have to quarantine for 14 days. Except airline staff, I guess.). People on the boats coming into port aren’t allowed off unless they have been at sea for at least 14 days since leaving a foreign port. Which is most of them.
Getting back to normal is ever so slightly unnerving, as I am sure the virus will be back (how do we keep out something so so small? Humans are prone to error and it only needs a few missteps for the virus to escape into NZ again).
At the same time I am enjoying going back to all the bars and cafes that we love.
Though I’m out being social and not distancing, I’m still washing my hands a lot. And not shaking hands with new people. Which is a really hard habit to break.