On the road again

I got woken from a deep, deep sleep over the night of June 8/9 by what I thought was a series of shotgun blasts right outside my bedroom window. Boomed wide awake I realised the bedroom was filled with bright light with each blast. What was going on in the garden?

I leapt from bed, T-shirted and a bit nervous, just in time to catch another blast and an explosion of light – from a skyrocket! Someone was letting off skyrockets!

The location seemed to be from the vicinity of Ōamaru Harbour.

But why? Someone’s birthday? Someone got the date wrong and thought it was New Year’s Eve?

Befuddled but satisfied that I wasn’t going to find a body in my garden in the morning, I went back to bed and fell asleep again in less than a blink of an eye.

I pondered on it when I awoke, but it wasn’t until I wandered blearily into the local supermarket mid-morning to get a bag of plunger coffee and realised that I didn’t have to wait for entry and there