As the street outside the shop doors turned into an ice-skating rick and rolling thunder, set off by massive lightning stabs, filled the landscape the little girl's fascination had turned to fear and she loudly cried out to her mother "I want to go back to Wellington."
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is saying something.
That sums up just how crazy that brief but brutal weather assault was.
What got me was just how spot on the met boffins had been ... for the night before on the weather show the word hail emerged for our part of the landscape.
A part of the landscape which generally does not get a lot of that icy stuff.
I took the fairly standard approach of "believe it when I see it".
The boffins were spot on, even down to the timing for they said late afternoon and yep, as the afternoon got late the skies got very, very dark.
For there was a low spread of heavy cloud and there were swirling belts which appeared to be travelling in different directions as temperatures and things continued to play up.
And when it hit, it hit.
The landscape became a snowscape and car windscreen wipers faced a daunting challenge.
The volume of ice on parked cars had people scooping it away and after deciding to drive off myself after being lulled into thinking it was easing off I actually came across several cars pulling off to the road side to wait it out.
Which I also did as the barrage was too dicey.
And when I did continue on I spotted several small buckets on front lawns where fascinated kids had decided to collect some "snow".
And a couple of icy little mountains had been built after the hail storm clouds had moved on, for at its peak it was not a pleasant environment to step out into.
It was, for me and several others I've spoken to, effectively a once-in-a-lifetime event.
I have seen and felt hail before but never anything like that.
And from what I've heard neither have any of the region's population of cats and dogs.
It's tough enough trying to explain to a thunder-shaken 3 or 4-year-old what is happening up there and out there but animals?
Nope.
It was like Guy Fawkes night.
Cats and dogs scrambling for shelter and silence.
It was while pondering the panic of pets that I suddenly felt a weather belt of anxiety come through, for I pondered what the paddocked sheep, cows and horses would have done when the ice pellets pelted down.
Of course they'd have done nothing except simply stand there and wait for it to pass, as any outdoor-based creature has no choice but to do.
Except for fish and eels ... lucky old things when the hail arrives.
Just dive a tad deeper and watch the pretty show foaming up above.
And I thought about the first shoots of spring across the fruit-growing landscape.
I guess like any great show there's always a cost involved somewhere.
Oh, and within a couple of hours of the hail retreating there was an earthquake, and the following day a brief but ferocious wind and rain storm.
Funny old thing the weather, for it clearly wanted to have a laugh through keeping its ammo' dry in June and July and delivering it in the blossom of spring.
