Earthquake weather #2

An amateur video captured the first of the recent spate of earthquakes to rock the environs of stately Riddled Manor. It was 2.30 p.m. and Another Kiwi was just recharging his mental batteries* after a long afternoon of Minesweeper, but the monkey butlers do not understand the concept of 'power nap' and were attempting to arouse his interest in a range of party hats.

In the aftermath of the tremor we have received any number of anxious e-mails and texts**, so I should take this opportunity to reassure our readers that none of the delicately-poised Riddled research apparati was left misaligned any more than previously, and although the smooth aging of the Christmas Ale was disrupted, head brewer Space-Time Eddie was able to assuage its agitation by the adroit use of a brewer's technique known as "late ratting" where the details are beyond my ken. Material damage was limited to the collapse of the spacious West Wing Lean-to, otherwise known as the Insurance-rort Annex.

The psychic damage, however, is harder to dismiss. AK was clinically traumatised by the collapse of his bedside table with its glasses of three different varieties of gin, and is refusing to emerge from under the duvet until someone shaves his leg.

It does not help that the library pixies, on the pretext of catastrophic realignments in the 740-750 sequence of shelving, have opened a new portal between their fractal inter-Dewey dimensions and consensus reality, entering and exiting under AK's bed. Evidently miniature ponies are a trigger for some people. Who knew?

Eventually tigris had to emerge from the Chief Editor's broom-closet office (it has its own whiteboard and snack-vending machine) and tell AK to buck up his ideas and harden up and go back to work, because No she was not going to refill his hot-water bottle. Everyone seems to be spitting out text-lettered tapeworms at the moment but I am told that this is a new advertising concept from the research team and not to worry about it.

Also whose is the Rottweiler under the bed? Is today Bring-your-pet-to-work Day? Why no I do not believe it is.

So we gave AK his own narwhale horn to hold while tigris held a baby over his head. It turns out that babies are liable to pee if they are held in the air and squeezed and jiggled, but we couldn't be expected to know that, so no hard feelings, right AK?

* Just saying, some people's mental batteries are compact high density lithium-ion tech while others' are Voltaic stacks of copper / zinc / brine-soaked cardboard.

** for any number n < 3.