Oh that weather

Photos of storm damage at the NZ Herald, linked by vilakins - near the end is my absolute favourite, taken in Ponsonby, haunt of rich people who like coffee, showing devastation of a shop-window dummy. Or perhaps a failed Auton invasion.

There wasn't as much wind as that down in the Waikato - no trees down at our place this time - but we had torrential rain and discovered that the drainage at our new house wasn't done properly at all. We were almost flooded out two nights in a row. I was outside at half past ten last night with torch and shovel, trying to divert water from pooling dangerously close to the laundry door and wishing I had sandbags to use. Our driveway turned into a cataract and I drove the cars up to park at the top, where there wasn't so much water, before we started work on digging a drainage channel right across the drive and reinforcing it with a dam made of fenceposts and the gravel we'd reserved to make a path - whatever came to hand.

Some drainage contractors came out (very promptly!) to put a new trench and pipe in yesterday, but the rain that evening bucketed down even harder and the runoff coming down the hill overflowed the new drain and went straight on as if it wasn't there. They will be back next week with a digger and a bigger pipe. I'm hoping we can put across the point that the drainage should have been put in properly at the start (i.e. in the right place - where the water goes) and we won't have to pay for the work ourselves. Though the contractors definitely need their fair pay, because they're doing a great job for us and they're not the same people who couldn't be bothered doing the work properly the first time.

My partner and I are both so short on sleep...