It would be a ruin to waste this

Bravo, Joe Bennett.

Your column Beautiful truth revealed in a pile of stones (Dominion Post, April 18) hit so many nails on the head.

Probably the biggest one – for me anyway – was the beauty of the ruin ‘‘as evocative as a Mayan ruin in the jungle’’. Some relief in the clearing as, according to your reference to Messrs Bland, Korprut, Krohm and Glasse, they keep building a uniformly dull, surrounding architectural forest.

I like the reminder, too, of a culture that arrived then imitated itself and how it had lived on the other side of the world.

The cathedral has now been split open. Rubble has taken over, weeds are the lifeforce, no longer is there a sense of a culture – or even religion – being contained within its shadowy precincts.

The layers of generations that have followed the building of the Christchurch Anglican Cathedral have likewise moved in a myriad directions.

A ruin in the square is a brilliant reminder that the past is the past. So come on, Joe Bennett. Time for you to stop being an apathetic muse (your quote ‘‘in my apathy I chose to take no part in the political life of the city’’) and make sure the ruin stays .

. . a ruin. And leaves a bit of spare cash for EQC to support those unfortunate people whose home repair jobs have proved not to be repair jobs after all.