I have an AMPLIFIER in my lounge again. It has been repaired! And because Cedric repaired it so blardy well, it was too much for my poor old speakers and they were breaking up under the strain of simply switching the damn thing on. So I semi-swapped my speakers with Reg for some seriously large muthas more fitting to the output of my Sansui amp.

Finally, after what feels like 6 months, I can once more enshroud myself in the sound of Pink Floyd in the dark and contemplate the answer to Dougie’s big question.

But I am still only 41.

I hadn’t mentioned anything about the earthquake/tsunami that devastated southern Asia 3 days ago and claimed countless lives. I was thinking what I was going to say about a situation that can only really leave one almost speechless.

We live in a country on the Pacific Rim of Fire (no, nothing to do with Pam’s Vindaloo poem, sorry). Once upon a time, there was no open sea to have a rim around it - the earth’s continents were vastly different and clumped together in a place called Gondwanaland.

When Gondwanaland broke up (OK, so it didn’t happen overnight, but it DID happen) there must have been some phenomenal earthquakes, huge standing tsunami waves and an amazing level of violent destruction left in it’s wake, if this weeks twitch in the tectonic plates is anything to go by. I guess people didn’t go to the beach so much 200 - 300 million years ago. Not that there were many people then anyway. No wonder Africa is skinier today, the whole continent had a famine.

Many will weep at this huge loss of human life and ask their Deity why, oh why would a loving Deity murder so many of his children in such a brutal way? The answer is, of course, that it’s nothing to do with [Deity] and everything to do with a 4 billion year old chunk of hot and cold rock doing what hot and cold rocks do every few hundred years - make the earth rock and roll and wash away the evidence.

Just like Mt Vesuvius. Just like the hurricanes of the Carribean and the tornados of Midwestern USA.

So, what makes this perfectly natural public outpouring of grief for the numbers that have died this week greater than it was last year when 50,000 people died in an earthquake in Iran? Is it because this time it’s close to home? Is it because it’s happened in a holiday spot beloved of many Kiwis? Do these factors make it of more relevance to us or is it simply because the media has a greater access to graphic portrayal of the devastation that has ravaged so many people and the ability to feed it into our homes, our lives, our heads?

Man is still holding his own when it comes to destroying himself, though.