Here I am again. Lodged in my bunker, thinking about the earthquake last week. I was tired when I came home late from the movies last Saturday night: my eyes were closing in the opening scenes of the film! Anyway, I crashed onto the bed and immediately zoned out into La La land. When I woke the bed was shaking and being somewhere between consciousness and deep sleep, I couldn’t figure out which end was up. Err, the bed is shaking, okay, why would it do that? Maybe those noisy neighbours getting home late are hooning around in a really crazy way, crazier than usual, in that rusty pick up truck, sound system on mega, mega high, transmitting thump-thump music to the whole of the Northern Territory. Well, by the time I roused myself and got out of bed the shaking had stopped – that’s good – go back to sleep. I was back in coma-land pretty quick I reckon.
Now the quake was about 6.4 on the Rickter scale. It’s a bit of a worry when you are so dozy you don’t even know you’ve been through an earthquake! Am I loosing it? she wonders. Haven’t slept through a quake since I was a kid in the Southern Highlands (NSW). They were only occasional then, but when one shook us up a bit, Mum, being a New Zealander, would remind us of how they had them all the time back in New Plymouth, and there’d be ornaments flying everywhere, bookshelves falling . . . These days apparently they stick down precious ornaments with Blu-tack to keep them in place when the Earth Gods rumble around down below. Can you imagine – ‘This is my Limoges porcelain, darling, with matching Blu-tack.’
