Editorial: Pardon me while I hunker

"Here is the weather forecast for the entire North Island: A weather bomb. Good evening."

The warnings sounded serious. On television they were delivered with grave faces and in the print media they used frightening, emotive language such as "severe", "potent" and "pack a punch". The MetService stressed the severity of the event.

We were advised to batten down hatches but we don't have any so we just closed the windows and put the wheelie bin in the garage. It had just been emptied, making it even more likely to become airborne.

With no hatches, we chose, when crunch-time came, to hunker down instead.

Then we waited. Waited for the weather bomb to explode. The night was still. The calm before the storm? Soon the house would be straining, creaking, swelling with the power of this event but, for now, it was silent and the air was still.

During a restless night, a Ted Hughes poem starting blowing around inside my head. It captures well the feelings of events about to strike us:

"This house has been far out at sea all night,

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,

Winds stampeding the fields under the window

Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose;"

The authorities were already warning us not to walk around outside. Hughes' words drove the message home: "Once I looked up - through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes."

His images punctuated my restless night: "The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guy-rope."

"The house rang like some fine green goblet in a note that any second would shatter it."

But, outside my head, outside the house, still nothing.

At dawn, the birds chirped and whistled as usual, clearly unaware that their feathers would soon be ruffled, that their attempts to fly would see them describing sweeping backwards arcs.

As the day lightened, there even appeared patches of blue sky and the air remained still. More waiting. Peaceful, eerie.

In the still air I cut a generous bunch of roses. After the bomb, they would be shredded to spaghetti so we might as well enjoy them indoors as we sheltered. I arranged them in a vase. Still nothing.

Then, mid-morning, the situation slowly changed. Trees starting swaying - still gently - and rain started to fall. We hunkered down as directed, which was a bit exciting as we had never really hunkered down before: it was the sort of thing you heard about other people doing on news reports.

In fact, I'm still not entirely sure that I know exactly what hunkering down is so we may not have done it correctly. But I still enjoy the phrase.

Anyway, there we were, suitably hunkered and ... well ... well ... little happened. Yes, there were squally winds but we've had those before. There was no "seeing the window tremble to come in".

The worst of the bomb had obviously avoided our place. A bit of a fizzer.

I am sorry for those around the country who suffered damage and I don't criticise the authorities for the warnings.

In fact, I would like to thank them not only for playing safe but also for giving me the opportunity to experience hunkering down and for using the word hunker (and variants thereof) so often in a column.

And now I'd like to close by saying hunker, hunker, hunker.