Day 304: earthquake!

This morning I was woken at 7.45am by my little brother. As he is a firm Friday night drinker, hearing from him at this kind of time on a Saturday is not just a pleasant surprise, it also usually means something's up. This was the news. At 4.30am this morning New Zealand time, a massive earthquake (7.1 on the richter scale) shook our home town of Christchurch. So far there were no fatalities but the fronts of buildings had fallen off, huge cracks had formed in roads, sewerage pipes had burst (yuck!) and the water and power was off. Naturally all of us kids were extremely concerned for the safety of our Dad, living as he does on a farm pretty much at the epicentre of the seismic action. He is fine. After many a failed phone call, we managed to get through, and discovered the main damage at the farm was crockery, book shelves toppling and two chimneys reduced to piles of bricks. Dad was shaken (literally!) but safe, and in the very good company of his good friend Jacqui. Our grandparents (both in their 90s), aunties and uncles were fine too, and the cats had appeared but were keeping to the paddocks. Funnily enough while I was watching a news report on the whole thing, one of the shots they showed was a supermarket isle full of smashed wine bottles. Tragic stuff that, wasting all that wine.