Feels like violent betrayal
When Princess Diana died in a Parisian underpass, I was weeding polyanthus. On that fateful August afternoon in 1997, I’d been busy gardening and, when I came inside to wash my hands, I caught the first headlines on CNN: Diana was badly injured, Diana was still alive, Diana was on her way to hospital, Diana was dead.
I remember it, not just because she was the most famous woman in the world, but because I spent the afternoon glued to the television with a slight sense of regret that, as a radio news journalist, I wasn’t rostered on that day and was missing out on the biggest story of my generation.
Less than a week later I was in the newsroom, preparing for Diana’s funeral, when the international news wires again went berserk. The news broke in capital letters in orange monotype font on our computer screens: MOTHER TERESA DEAD.
Fast forward to the morning of September 12, 2001. I made breakfast and turned on the television but couldn’t make any sense of the coverage – the world’s planes grounded, towers toppling, a cacophony of sirens and screams – until I walked outside and got the newspaper out of my letterbox. The front page revealed that America was under attack.
Another September, in 2010. At 5am on September 4, I was sleeping on the fold-out couch in my cousin Catherine’s lounge when a text message came through from Newstalk ZB. ‘‘Major quake in Canterbury,’’ it said. ‘‘Show cancelled.’’ I was supposed to be filling in for Paul Holmes on the wireless that Saturday morning; instead I spent it listening to stories of lucky escapes.
It was a different story on February 22, 2011, when Christchurch came crashing down.
I found out on Facebook. I was flicking through wedding photos on my laptop (I had got married just three days earlier) when landscaping friends who were putting the finishing touches on their Ellerslie Flower Show gardens started posting desperate status ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ updates from Hagley Park.
And last Monday? I woke just after midnight to two yowling cats and two boys thundering up the stairs to our bedroom. Shortly afterwards, the messenger app on my cellphone began buzzing like a blowfly trapped in a bottle. ‘‘OMG!’’ went the first message from a friend in Arizona. ‘‘We hope all your family and everyone else is safe.’’ I had no idea what she was on about until I checked my Twitter feed.
The medium and the message: how we get our news has changed, but our reaction hasn’t. In the case of emergency, we care only for the welfare of friends and family. I worried for my uncle and aunt who, when their home in Sumner was totalled in 2011, bought a bolthole in Kaikoura instead. I worried for the elderly parents of good friends, for all the lovely ladies I met at the Kaikoura A&P Show a few years back, and for the hospitable fellows who hosted me in Cheviot last spring.
The emotional aftershocks of this week’s quake were felt the world over. We’re currently hosting a trio of young tourists – two Belgians and an American – and all three woke to messages from home: ‘‘Where are you? Are you safe?’’
These are uncertain times. In the spring of 2008, a week before Barack ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿