The scene should have been awesome, in the original sense of that much-abused word.
Harbour Cone was majestically overlooking it, amid a star-studded sky.
But tranquillity was disturbed by the intermittent whirring of my dynamo torch, the clatter as my glasses, car keys and then the torch fell to the gravel. I wouldn't have been surprised if the clankings of my brain were audible, too.
It was multi-tasking at its worst. I was trying to secure a gate with a stubborn padlock in the dark. This involved frequent windings-up of the dynamo torch to see what was being achieved (very little), trying to decide whether glasses would help, juggling the specs, my car keys, the padlock keys and the torch.
I had visions of the local policeman turning up to ask me what the heck I thought I was doing.
"I am thinking," I would say with my best Richard Prebble impersonation, "about politics, if you must know. It's doing my head in."
At that point I imagine he would have murmured understandingly and proceeded in an orderly direction to find some real burglars.
What was preying on my mind was National's employment relations policy. There is much to be thought about all of this, but the thing which struck me that night was the idea partial pay reductions should be applied in partial strikes or situations of low-level industrial action.
How would this silliness work?
Just think of the endless arguments about how much various bits of anyone's job are worth.
It is a bit rich that politicians want lesser mortals to vote for this, when regardless of their own worth, they get pay rises they never have to argue about.
If they offered to extend the concept to their own failures to meet expectations, perhaps I might be sympathetic. At any given moment it would be too hard to try to work out whether many of them are partially or completely on strike.
How about developing a mechanism to dock MPs' pay every time they make a fatuous statement, break a promise, mislead, deal badly with a constituent's complaint, don't do their homework, smile too much in photo opportunities at the expense of doing something real, behave childishly in Parliament, use urgency to scupper proper debate on law ... Heck, if we thought about it deeply enough I am sure we could save as much as we would get back from those controversial asset sales.
Padlock eventually done up (I think) I departed for the evening.
It was time to park my thoughts.
While I expected the new day to involve a draughty hall (beyond the padlocked gate), some speeches, ceremony and photo opportunities, hopefully it would have little to do with national politics.
And so it was.
The occasion was my friend's 80th birthday and she had gathered some of the many people whose lives she has touched to celebrate with a picnic lunch.
In that magnificent seaside setting we ate, drank and lounged about, warning each other about the need for hats and the risk of sunburn, mostly too late. There was rugby entertainment too; a game of touch played by various adults and two small boys, to much encouragement from the crowd. (There were injuries, feigned or real, but mercifully no talk of groins.) If there was a score, nobody seemed to care much what it was.
The afternoon flowed with banter and more serious talk of friends and family and included a crowning ceremony featuring Jenny Joseph's Warning poem about preparing for old age.
The cake-cutting was suitably hilarious with one of the children jumping the gun and blowing out the first lot of candles. The draughtiness in the hall proved a challenge to re-lighting.
My friend shared fond memories of attending dances at the hall with her late husband, mildly shocked to realise it was 61 years ago now.
The closest we came to dancing was during some stirring bagpipe playing by one of the young women guests.
The offspring, appearing as The Brothers McLean, also made a brief musical debut before one of the group had to depart for an examination and another for dish-washing duties elsewhere.
This performance included an up-beat rendition of my friend's favourite hymn. Possibly the occasion may have gone to the head of the bossiest one in the group, let's just call him the Third Born, who later felt obliged to point out I kept hitting a C instead of an A in every verse when he had been foolishly relying on me to carry the tune for others.
I am sure the centre of attention, who has a lovely singing voice, noted my vocal shortcomings, but she made no comment. In a friendship which has lasted nearly 30 years, there are more important ways of staying on song.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
