And then there was the Man from Hokonui ... Or that's what Mum called him.

He was a new acquaintance, purportedly from the Hokonui Hills down south, and had a bottle of the real McCoy, Hokonui. This drink was famous for being illegally brewed in the backblocks, New Zealand's very own version of moonshine.

For some reason one night, they'd dragged the kitchen table into the centre of the lounge and perched on chairs around it, perhaps the supplies more readily available. Anyway they weren't sitting there long. The Man from Hokonui had scoffed the entire bottle of moonshine on his own as the others were reluctant to imbibe a drink with the reputation of skinning your eyeballs at twenty paces. They were drunks, but not suicidally so.

Old Hokonui moonshine.

On finishing the bottle, he went quiet for a nano-second, then out of his mouth came this hairy, piercing, blood-curdling yell. His eyes had lost the pupils, all you could see were the whites, and then he revved into motion. Slowly he took to his scrapers and began to run around the table, nostrils flaring, complexion of a zombie, though still yelling this earth-shattering scream. The boozers all either jumped out of his way or were pushed out of their chairs.

They were going down like nine pins. There was no stopping this thundering maniac. Blowsy buxom barflies were scattered everywhere; assorted inebriated sots were forced to open both eyes; the normals clutched each other for protection like babes in the wood. His running became more manic, the sound was ear-splitting, party-goers were in suspended animation, his velocity increased.

We kids clung to the wall, doing our best to be insignificant. Luckily he didn't seem to notice us so we remained vertical, but he kept roaring around in circles, bottles flying, drunkards scampering, my mother with her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. No one had any idea of what to do.

He kept this up for what seemed like a lifetime, but must have been roughly two minutes, then dropped down on the floor, inert. Relief was visible on the faces in the room. But was he dead?

The kids who clung to the wall.

Mum didn't want to find out. She ordered the men to deposit him outside and locked the doors so he couldn't get back in. The party gradually sprang back to life, but the spark was definitely gone and after a couple of hours they all decided to go home. The danger must have passed as the madman hadn't tried to enter our house. When they finally left there was no sign of him. No one knew from where he came or where he went.

When they all got drunk, the entire party would burst into song, usually mordant Irish tunes, as well as lively ones. They always saved the cracker for the end of the night, drunkenly assuming the kids couldn't hear the thunderous noise emanating from the lounge. Mum was always the instigator. While she began the ditty, the rest would join in to sing as loud and raucously as possible:

"Cats on the rooftops

cats on the tiles

cats with their assholes wreathed in smiles

some with syphilis

and some with piles

revelling in the joys of copulation. Hey!"

Those parties were memorable.