Startled barn...

...is startled. (On the way back to Lake Chelan from the Grand Coulee Dam.)

I hope I'm not going to be too startled myself tomorrow, when I spend a night in Christchurch where they're now past 2,500 aftershocks since the big quake on 4 September - and counting. I'm expecting to see my hometown looking a little frazzled around the edges, but still elegant and calm and beautiful. Fingers crossed.

Then it's the great TranzAlpine train journey right across the island, over the Southern Alps, to the West Coast for a few days - where it will, unfortunately but fairly typically, be raining. Sigh.