Black Friday

At 1:40pm today as I was getting my hair cut, less than one kilometre away a gunman opened fire on people praying in a mosque. We didn’t know this at the time; the woman sitting two seats down from me reported there had been a shooting in Hagley Park. Close enough for us to make a joke about shutting the doors but with no real concern as well, it’s only Christchurch. Sleepy and sometimes shaky Christchurch. Soon, we really were locking the doors and windows. When I made the decison to move here from London in 2016, the spate of terrorist attacks in the UK and Europe had weighed heavily on my mind, particularly with a few kilos worth of new born baby to take responsibility for. I recall saying to a friend who questioned me moving back to an earthquake stricken city, ‘I’d rather deal with environmental earthquakes than…