Good to share a laugh while shooing away the door-knockers

DON’T you love Saturday’s story about the emotional reunion between crowbar hero Jade Lynn and stabbing victim Marteine Robin, who told him he was ‘‘a f...ing hero’’ when she was reunited with him to thank him for his bravery.

Round here we call Lynn the crowbar hero ‘‘Cro-magnon bar man’’ because there was chaos on the streets till the heroic missing link arrived on the scene to up tools and try and fend off the knifer. I also love how, in the heat of the moment, Robin phoned her mother to describe her kidnapping as being ‘‘truck-napped’’.

Imagine going about your ordinary business when, suddenly, a knife-wielding maniac blunders in broad daylight into your day.

And I think we see strange apparitions living next to the red zone.

Earlier in the week I was startled to arrive at the intersection of Peterborough and Colombo streets to find a large stationary truck with the entrance and signage of the Convention Centre perched on the back. It seemed to hang in the balance, suspended in time and space like so many other pieces of the surrealist jigsaw puzzle salvaged and carted off from the mangled interior.

Some days it feels as if central city residents close to the red zone might be performance artists living in the middle of an art installation. The theme? Deconstruction, but without a Creative New Zealand grant.

The other day I thought I saw what I thought was a pair of EQC workers sauntering up the drive. Imagining they had turned up to inspect the artesian water feature now running under the house, I quickly responded to their knock, glancing at their natty apparel and thinking, since when did EQC chaps start wearing suits and pork pie hats?

One was perusing a clipboard while the other clutched what looked like a religious tome in his hand as he fixed me with a toothy grin. I cut to the chase asking, ‘‘What religion are you’’, to which he replied, ‘‘Jehovah’s Witness’’.

As I was preparing to politely extricate myself from the encounter he managed to get in: ‘‘Do you ever wonder why the world is in the state it is?’’

I said it was a mystery to me, that the answer was a birdcage, and nodded my farewell.

Two minutes later there was a knock at my other door and I whisked opened the curtain to see the same chaps standing on the step looking perplexed at my human facsimile.

I gestured to the back door grinning and said: ‘‘That was my evil twin you met before,’’ and, bless his cotton socks, the toothy guy quipped back that I was better looking than the other one.

‘‘You’ve got to laugh,’’ he said – and we did as they went on their merry way.

SUDDENLY, from all corners of the neighbourhood, came an avalanche of texts putting out a general compound alert. ‘‘Mormons on loose!’’ one shrieked, while another was more philosophical, reflecting at some length for a text: ‘‘I was about to text you lunatics were on the prowl, when I heard your door open and the sound of freakish laughter. I need to be more cheerful when I shoo them away.’’

The perk of working from home is that you can organise your day as you please – in other words, fritter away endless hours procrastinating.

So feeling distracted by Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Witnessi, I was overcome with an urgency to hang up my new map-of-the-world shower curtain.

With mission accomplished and with paws poised over the keyboard, another text came in, this time from Simon, of the Garage People, to ask if I could ferry him over to Bishopdale to pick up a canary. His other one had stopped singing and needed moral support in a sea of bullying budgies.

Being geographically retarded, I confessed I didn’t know how to get to Bishopdale, so Penguin, who delivers circulars in our area, was enlisted as a navigator, as was Lorraine, for female support.

During the circuitous route I boasted to Lorraine about my new map-of-the-world shower curtain and she remarked drolly, ‘‘Maybe you should have bought a map-ofChristchurch shower curtain, and then we’d know where we were going.’’

Eventually we arrived, so with one canary, one Penguin and three humans we made our way back to Garage headquarters to install the canary in her new gaff.

Simon got out of the car philosophising that this would be ‘‘the easiest bird I’ve ever picked up – and this one won’t take me for everything I’ve got’’.

Lorraine couldn’t restrain herself from piping up from the back seat: ‘‘She’ll still cost you.’’