Monday

Today's my day off, so I slept in till 12.00!! Wait, it's not that bad. I slept wretchedly last night, went for a walk in the evening but was kept awake by my aching legs and the humid temperature. It's been really hot here lately, but yesterday was humid too, which I don't enjoy as much as I like dry heat - that wonderful warmth that seems to seep into your bones. I hate the way humidity makes you feel hot and chilly at the same time. All night I was throwing the blanket off, getting cold, putting the blanket on, getting hot etc. So I thought I deserved a better sleep.
  In the afternoon I did have a walk at Halswell Quarry Park, but forgot to take my camera so no pics for youse guys overseas. It's quite spectacular, an old quarry that yielded a particular type of volcanic stone, andesite I think, that can be quarried in large flat slabs and so is very useful for building and paving. A lot of bigger buildings in the town were built from it. I'd like to know what's happened to all the dressed stone from the demolitions, probably just gone to landfill - what a waste. There hasn't been a lot of recycling going on; our demolitions people really couldn't care less I think "just level it and dump it" is the motto.
    The city continues to be deconstructed, and we have the usual concerns about that. It's very strange to go down a street and find something not there. I drove out to Sumner the other day, and the huge Woolworths supermarket in Ferry Road is gone, there's just a huge space. It's like buildings are being raptured; if you haven't seen the demolition process it comes as a bit of a surprise to find just a level block of land where a multi-storey building was. It can also be quite pleasing. A building that I hated (it was a boil on the face of the waterfront) has come down and is no more. Hopefully it will not be rebuilt because the soil underneath is too sandy.
  Nothing is constant but change.