01
Stop one
Transitional Cathedral (Cardboard Cathedral)
Volkl Vostra 1 OS Tennis Racquet: Open the ledger, because this is the best entry I have. After the 2011 earthquake the city needed a cathedral, and needed one quickly. Shigeru Ban designed one out of enormous cardboard tubes and shipping containers; it opened in 2013, it seats seven hundred, and it came in at a few million rather than the many tens of millions a stone rebuild costs. Cardboard. Coated, certainly. Structurally sound, certainly. Still cardboard. It is described as temporary and it is designed to last decades, a description I would like applied to several of my own arrangements. And entry is by donation. World-class architect, landmark building, you name the figure. I have audited the rest of this tour and nothing else comes close.
02
Stop two
Christchurch Botanic Gardens
Volkl Vostra 1 OS Tennis Racquet: Free. I should like a moment on that word, because free is the most misread figure in the entire document. These gardens began in 1863 with the planting of a single English oak, and everything in front of you has had a hundred and sixty years of professional gardening poured into it, unbroken, compounding. There are trees in here you could not purchase at any price, because the price is a century and nobody is selling. The Avon runs through it, punts go past, there are conservatories and rose gardens, and the gate does not charge you a cent. Somewhere else on this planet you would pay twenty for this hour. Bring your own coffee, obviously. I am not made of money and neither, evidently, are these gates.
03
Stop three
Christchurch Gondola and the Bridle Path
Volkl Vostra 1 OS Tennis Racquet: Right, a genuine head-to-head, and this is where I earn my fee. Option one: the gondola, opened in 1992, which carries you up Mount Cavendish for a genuinely spectacular view over the city, the Port Hills and Lyttelton Harbour, and costs what a cable car costs. Option two: the Bridle Path, cut in 1850, which the first settlers had to climb carrying their belongings because there was no road over these hills at all. Same summit. Same view. No charge. So it is one and a half hours of your legs against one ticket – and before anybody answers, I would point out that the settlers were never offered the ticket and made the climb anyway, with furniture.
Right. Value assessment, and in Christchurch that is the only sensible way to begin, because I want the numbers on the table before anybody gets sentimental about a paint job.
The Volkl Vostra 1 OS costs what an entry frame costs and hands you a 115 square inch head, which is about as big as a string bed gets. Oversize means the forgiving part of the bed runs well outside the middle, so the mishit you would normally have to apologise for still crosses the net.
It is light, it is head-heavy, and it is extended length — three decisions all paying into the same account. Light so you can get it round in time. Long so you reach the ball you had already written off. Head-heavy so the mass turns up at contact even when the swing is short and honest.
It arrives pre-strung, in a range of grip sizes, which means the outlay is the sticker price and nothing after it. You will use it everywhere from a dawn hit in Hagley Park to a social doubles set that finishes when the Christchurch light goes.
A strong player who makes their own pace will find it too light and too powerful — not a defect, a different customer, and I decline to sell to them.
This is the correct city for a frame costed like that, and I have checked the others. Christchurch lost a cathedral to the 2011 earthquake and put up the replacement in coated cardboard tubes and shipping containers for a few million rather than the many tens of millions stone would have wanted, then set admission at whatever you think it is worth.
A hundred and sixty years of professional gardening, begun with one English oak in 1863, is free to walk into. By the way, it is also perfect for anyone who intends to walk the Bridle Path instead of buying a gondola ticket: same summit, same view over Lyttelton Harbour, an hour and a half of your own legs. The settlers of 1850 had no choice.
You do, and the ledger has an opinion.
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