I rather foolishly agreed to allow Country FM in Dublin to ring me at the normal time that I do a brief weekend preview for them every Friday.
5:30pm on a Friday evening in Ireland is 4:30am on a Saturday morning here. What was I thinking?
And more importantly, what happened to my five-minute nap? After being cut off midway through my first answer on air, somehow I manage to sound someway coherent when they ring back, halfway through a piece where the presenter is reading out items from a 1950s US home economic book. Believe me, it's funny - or as funny as you can get when you've just been woken up at 4:30 on a Saturday morning.
The breakfast room at the Windsor is packed to overflowing as I share a small table with two families from near Cape Farewell as the northern tip of South Island.
It took them four hours to drive here, and they can't believe how Christchurch has been invaded by rugby tourists. "So how do you join the Barmy Army?" they ask.
A couple from Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales have been down with most of the afore-mentioned in Queenstown all week.
Lots of fans from the UK are finding it easier to stay there for the three weeks of the Test series, flying north for each match, than to find accommodation in the three Test cities.
The day of the biggest match Christchurch has ever seen is cool, crisp, but as always, sunny, and as I type this, a tram has passed by containing a full brass band - it's going to be a day never to forget, but not all for the right reasons.
Around lunchtime, for the first time this week, the heavens open - and they stay open.
That doesn't diminish the atmosphere though, as the big matchday entertainment around Cathedral Square picks up.
There are live bands on stage, and two big screens ready for those who can't make it to the game. A walk-through game of chess with gigantic pieces gets a major look-in from people, as does a drive-around by a Queen lookalike. The monarch, not the band.
There are quite a few lions parading around the square too, and the temporary merchandise shop organised by both the Lions and NZRFU is full to brimming. Even Starbucks isn't a place to settle and relax anymore.
Everywhere you go, there are groups of native New Zealanders doing the Haka to entertain passers-by, but as the day wears on, it gets wetter and wetter and wetter.
The Jade Stadium only holds around 40,000, but is still a huge impressive sight.
Finally cross paths with Ger Lawton, who reports - like most sane campervanners I've spoken to this weekend - that it gets incredibly cold at night in his vehicle. Maybe I'm not so jealous of their life on the road anymore.
Forget all those preconceived images you may have of commentators broadcasting away in a nice warm booth, with enough beverages on tap to float the Queen Mary.
My position tonight is at the end of a row of pressmen, in the crowd, with two long long cables worming below the seats to provide me power. I've got a small flip-top table which keeps threatening to spill all my gear onto the row in front of me, and to compound things, there are gales blowing up from the Antarctic, I'm wearing four layers, gloves, a beanie hat kept on by a Lions cap, two pairs of socks and I'm still cold.
The phoneline we have isn't strong enough to allow a clear ISDN line to Dublin, so we have to use a reportophone as back-up. The media centre ridiculously is in the stand opposite the press box, so everybody has to fight their way through 35,000 fans both before and after the game.
It all means far too much hassle for an occasion you'd much rather be able to just fully sit back and enjoy, but as John Motson wrote in his book on how he lived through the last football season, he covers about 100 games a season, and it's a rare day when everything goes totally right.
Mustn't grumble though - I could have been in the open section of the stands, wondering just why I travelled 12,000 miles to be rained on for eighty minutes while watching my team play hopeless rugby. Or I could be positioned on the sideline like Radio Sport's touchline reporter, who constntly mentions in my earpiece that he's getting totally soaked, and he's never seen a night's rain like it. Neither have I as it happens.
As the first-half develops, and O'Driscoll, Hill and O'Connell are nobbled, the rain turns to sleet, then hail, and by the end, it will be snowing.
The Lions play terribly and lose, though most Lions fans stick it out to the bitter end.
Anyone wearing a Lions shirt or jacket for the rest of the night has to put up with playful catcalls from local natives of "Lions, Lions!" or "Why didn't you stay at home!" or "It's the Pyjarmy Army!".
When I'm heading home at 2am, there's still a queue of around 200 - mainly Lions fans - trying to enter one of Christchurch's most popular bars, the Holy Grail.
The Lions' chances of finding their grail have suddenly fallen from slim to none.
Posted by akilduff
at 12:01 AM EDT
