… a large container ship in your garden.
But that’s exactly what happened to Johan Helberg, who was awakened by a neighbour, after said neighbour heard a loud crashing sound.
Initially worried that Helberg might have suffered some sort of injury, the neighbour rushed to his house, to find that the container ship had parked itself in the garden, just 5 metres from Helberg’s home.
Surprisingly, Mr Helberg himself slept through the episode, and only realised what had happened when the concerned neighbour phoned him and woke him up.
The BBC covers this unusual news item here.
The reason for the NCL Salten, a Cypriot registered cargo vessel, running aground in the Trondheim Fjord, centres, according to this later report, upon key navigation alarms being switched off while the ship was sailing through Trondheim harbour. That specialist report also cites several other deficiencies discovered with respect to the operation of the ship, including the officer of the watch falling asleep at the bridge, prior to the ship running aground.
Now at this point, everyone reading this is aware that Mr Helberg had a lucky escape - in his own words, “Five metres further south and it would have entered the bedroom. And that wouldn’t have been particularly pleasant”- an almost British piece of understatement! Tens of thousands of tons of cargo ship crashing through his bedroom would have made this incident far more tragic. But, since the outcome was a much happier one for Mr Helberg, who gave an interview to Norway’s TV2 on the incident, we can, with him, reflect upon the surreal nature of waking up to find a 153 metre cargo ship in one’s garden. To illustrate how surreal this occurrence is, this photo:
pretty much says it all. Though the video clip provided by the BBC in the link above, which includes part of the TV2 interview, has a particularly Pythonesque feel to it. 
The Norwegian authorities are, as can be imagined, not exactly pleased about this, especially after the safety and operational deficiencies they found upon subsequent investigation. The vessel has been declared unseaworthy as a result of the bow damage sustained, and the owners have been informed that they are required to undertake a range of essential repairs and upgrades before the ship will be allowed to sail again.
What we have here can be summarised as “How Not To Operate A Cargo Ship”.
[Note: posted elsewhere by me, but shared here for obvious reasons]