Unsafe

I took a wee walk around the block late this afternoon.

My bruised bits feel good it's just the ribs I need be gentle with. They've been pretty good today. I even managed to hang a little washing. It hurt but settled ok. I think the trick is not to do too much.

This house is red stickered and a couple of minutes walk from me. If you look closely you'll see the classic step-wise cracks in the bricks. Bricks that unfortunately in the case were structural, not facade. The people who lived here are gone.

Edit: Dad saw my blip and says "The letters on the gable I. O. O.F. stand for ?Independent Order of Oddfellows?. I can vaguely remember the organisation that was a sort of lodge that helped its members and was probably set up in depression years and before there was Social Security. There is a bit about them on the Net. The place was probably a meeting hall or headquarters that has been turned into a residence. Sadly it could do with some help now itself".

I had an interesting conversation with a lovely gentleman just down the road. He's lived in the area all the life and told me a lot about the geography of our area. Our land has so far fared well.

I checked the soils maps and knew I live on a small area of very different soil. Turns out we're on a raised sand bank. When John was young it was an obvious feature of the landscape but over the years the council and developers have flattened it so it merges into the rest of the landscape. The Sandridge Hotel a couple of kilometres away was thus named after the feature it's on the edge of.

We also have a number of artesian water ways in the area. In the days following the February earthquake John and his wife carted water by the bucket from one the local wells they knew about. Should we face anything like it again I'll be heading around the corner to join forces.