Last Tango in Rongotea

The bustling centre of Rongotea

Well folks, it's almost the end... or more precisely The End. Harold Camping has crunched the numbers and he has no "Plan B," so I guess that settles it. I've been digging through my old files to find an ancient Jack Chick tract - you know, the ones with the "sign on the dotted line and be instantly saved" form - but no luck so far. Just in case the Lord overlooks me on the 21st, being so busy and all, I've been looking for a safe bolt-hole to avoid the worst of the cataclysm that begins at about 6 o'clock Saturday evening. I daresay there'll be tsunamis and volcanic eruptions just as the Camping Christians are raptured upwards, so a celebratory beach barbeque is probably out. My little town is perched far too close to the fleshpots of Auckland to feel secure... it seems obvious that the fire and brimstone will be particularly heavy over the top half of the North Island and, well, I'd put good money on an extra-thorough pounding of the Laidlaw College campus, and even worse at that Baptist joint where Tim Bulkeley teaches...

So, where to go? I'm thinking of heading to Rongotea (Ron-go-tee-uh), where the maternal grandparents once lived. It's a fairly long drive, but I should be comfortably ensconsed by 6pm. Why Rongotea? Well, nothing much has happened there since about 1937, and most New Zealanders - even those who live in Palmerston North - have never heard of it, so hopefully it's low on the Wrath priority list. Plus, there are no nearby fault lines, volcanoes or vulnerable coastline. I've hired an abandoned cowshed, and have a survival kit ready (Pepsi Max cans, peanut butter, the complete DVD collection of Babylon 5, a copy of the The Message Bible, and a battered Windows XP laptop to follow the global catastrophe.)

So I don't expect you'll be hearing from me on the 22nd, what with you lot all being knocked off by the Armies of Heaven (with the possible exception of Larry and Velvet) and me being either ruptured raptured, or incommunicado in the town that time forgot.

Either way, have a nice weekend...