What you really don't want to find....

..is, when you turn up to work on possibly the bleakest day of the year, many many policeman preventing you from entering your street, let alone your building.

'Hmmmm, dead hooker in the carpark, I presume?' I nearly say to the officer of the law who was guarding the street. Thankfully, I didn't point out just how much of a blessing it is that I didn't harbour a desire to join the policeforce when I grew up.

Instead I asked, 'What's happening?'

'We've found something that's not very nice.'

'A dead something?'

Blank stare.

'When can I get into my building?'

'You can't. Or that one, or that one or that one.' He said just a little too smugly.

It was a little exciting before the first coffee, after the 16th the novelty was wearing a little thin. Especially when it transpired that the 'not very nice thing' was, apparently, a bomb in a carpark building. When I heard that, I knew what a colossal waste of time this was going to be.

That's because we don't do bombs in New Zealand. If it had been Baghdad, or any western city with a population of over three million, hell yeah, I would have been scampering away as fast as my little legs could carry me.

But a car park building in New Zealand? How thoroughly unambitious.

The bomb squad dogs were called in, (how does that work? If Rover blows up, it was a bomb?), and eventually the bomb robot blew up a large tin that used to instant hold instant coffee which had been wired into a power socket in a car park building.

And nearly three hours later, I finally got to go to work.

Now I am wondering who I can invoice for those three hours?