Queen Anne desk/Earthquake monitor

This is a snippet of my lovely desk that sits beside the bed. My family are originally from England but either they sold all their lovely furniture before coming out here in the 1950s/60s or they didn't have any family antiques. I suspect the latter. Anyhow I have rectified this by this purchase and have owned it for about 5 years. I like it a lot.

It is currently doubling as a seismic instrument (I am in Christchurch NZ, home of the September 4th, 7.1 quake). If you have any doubts about whether the house is shaking or not, and to be truthful we are usually quite aware of this, the little "tongues" on the handles bounce up and down going clink, clink, clink and give an indication of the fact an earthquake is happening. We are now quite used to this sound in the night.

I took the photo this morning and thought about how yesterday had seemed pretty stable and today was going well. Just as I sat down to blip this, a nasty jolt hit. Geonet shows me it was a 3.0 and that in fact we did have some shakes yesterday. No doubt the desk would have indicated this had I been in my room at the time!

We are in good heart however some of the demolitions are a bit sad. My city will look a lot different in a year's time..... Karen