Julie Paton: Drought? There's no drought

The drought's over, now did you hear the story about the bloke who used his barbecue to smoke fish.

The February burst of rain made for a pleasant start to autumn, with green grass and happy cows on the farm - and everything always looks better when you have full water tanks.

But some boffin at one of the television news networks forgot to look out the window and decided the Northland drought story needed an update.

Bruce had a call from farmer friend Damian, who said, sounding slightly puzzled: "I've got this TV crew here, and they want some footage of an empty silage bunker to go with this drought story they're doing - my bunker's full, how's yours looking."

Bruce began replying: "Well, we've still got silage, but if they take the maize bunker from this angle it might look empty ... but wait - why are they doing a drought story? Haven't you got plenty of grass?"

Damian replied that indeed yes, his paddocks were lush and green. "Put them on the phone," said Bruce, so Damian passed the phone to one of the TV crew.

"Why are you guys doing a drought story?" Bruce demanded. "There's no drought!" Look around, he told them, look at all the grass. "There's no drought - now, bugger off and find some real news to report."

I think the drought story was duly shelved, and just as well too because the next day rain began to fall and didn't let up for a week.

I had to laugh when I heard about Auckland's water restrictions after all that rain because of sediment in their reservoirs, and heard the advice on cutting down water use.

With the rain, the fire ban was lifted, sparking my pyromaniac husband's favourite time of year.

It was a long, dry summer, with a couple of big, out-of-control accidental fires in our area, and he conscientiously adhered to the rules.

Apart from one inadvertent slip-up, when Bruce brought home loads of fish from a five-day fishing trip and decided to smoke some.

He finds the smoker frustrating because on our breezy section the flame blows out and needs constant relighting.

So his clever shortcut is to use the barbecue. Some fish was smoking out on the deck, when our son looked out the window and yelled: "THE BARBECUE! THE BARBECUE!"

He ran in the opposite direction, grabbing his younger brother in passing, and disappeared out the back door.

Bruce and I ran to the barbecue, stopping aghast as we saw a fiery inferno, 3m-high flames licking at the pergola, another small blaze crackling merrily on the deck itself.

"Water!" we screamed, and ran.

Panic does odd things to the brain. I ran to the laundry to fill a bucket from the tap, forgetting we had a swimming pool around the corner I could have simply dipped my bucket into.

Bruce grabbed the hose around the corner, but yanked so hard he broke the plastic tap fitting, rendering it useless.

I poured my pathetic bucketful on the deck fire, as the barbecue blazed, gas bottle explosion imminent.

In the heat of the moment (ha) my fear-addled brain switched on and recalled our fire extinguisher.

I ran and seized it and wrestled to work out how to operate it.

Luckily the manufacturers realise people's brains turn to mush under pressure so it's as simple as spraying bugs, and it extinguished the inferno in seconds.

We bought a new fire extinguisher the next day. A new barbecue is on the shopping list, too. And the fish? Once the barbecue cooled down, Bruce lifted the charred and blackened smoker's lid - and discovered two perfectly smoked fillets.