Last week, the sun hurled a chunk of itself our way - a coronal mass ejection big enough to rattle satellites and light up my phone with aurora alerts.
All this happened the week I turned 60 and was about to become a grandfather - a phrase that still sounds like it belongs to someone with sensible shoes and strong opinions on lawn edges.
Some men celebrate these milestones with cruises or golf.
Or maybe a hair transplant.
Me? I drove to Middlemarch with three tripods and an early birthday present of ISO 800 film.
By the time I arrived, Christchurch had an aurora, Invercargill had an aurora, even Tekapo had an aurora.
My phone filled with gleeful photos from colleagues teeming with green curtains and smug captions.
All while Strath Taieri lay under a slab of cloud so thick it looked load-bearing. Nothing moved.
The sheep weren’t moving, the clouds weren’t moving and my optimism wasn’t moving.
After an hour of cloud-scowling, I retreated to my hot tub and doomscrolled Windy.com, flicking through satellite pictures like a man trying to bargain with the atmosphere.
There I was, on the brink of grandfatherhood, peering at blobs of grey pixels and muttering "come on then" to the sky.
So much for dignified ageing.
Just after midnight, a breeze arrived - a Middlemarch wind, unyielding, rolling up its sleeves to push the weather toward Oamaru
Out I got, dripping and hopeful, setting up cameras by headtorch: tripods, cables - the customary ritual of faith. Then waiting.
Astronomy is mostly waiting. The photographs are just receipts.
At two in the morning, the clouds tore open.
And the sky switched on.
What followed was spectacular: green pillars, violet rays, light climbing straight out of the paddocks behind the house.
My place in silhouette, one amber window glowing like a coal.
The whole heavens quietly breathing above the Taieri.
Twenty-four hours before starting my 61st orbit of the Sun, not yet a grandfather but clearly old enough to know better, I remained there smiling in the cold and up all night realising I had to be at work in a couple of hours.
Another aurora. Another year.
The wind moving through the tussock, the river dark below the hills and the old farmhouse, my home for a new decade standing dark before a sky full of light.
There’s still hope. Even at 60.
