“First home buyers Sharon & Barry, 26 & 27 years old, of Auckland (pictured), have had enough. ‘This is the tenth auction we’ve attended this week and, frankly, we’re starting to think we’d be better off moving to the Gold Coast.”

Sharon & Barry paint a picture of the typical New Zealand family trying to get on the property ladder. They have a 2 year old son and a 6 month old daughter.  Barry is a self-employed electrical fitter, Sharon a part time book keeper. Their combined income, while average for New Zealand, on OECD rankings sits somewhere between a janitor from Copenhagen and a nursing student from Mexico City.

“We’ve saved for 5 years for a deposit, explains Barry, and we’ve secured a loan from our bank for $450K. All we want is to buy our own four bedroom, quarter acre slice of the Kiwi dream. In Herne Bay. Or maybe Westmere. But no further out than Grey Lynn, I don’t trust the schools out there. Too many immigrants.”

“Sharon & Barry have lost every auction they’ve been to. “They’re always won by fat-cat property investors or people who can actually afford the houses. How is an average Kiwi family like us supposed to get a foot on the property ladder? Its just not fair. And I want to know what the government is going to do about it.”

The story inevitably concludes with a weak counterpoint – a photo of a bearded hermit in the kitchen of his run-down, but large, old castle. Despite being surrounded by chicken bones, discarded tissue paper, and absolutely no friends or family, he still enjoys a good old laugh at those silly Jaffas by declaring, smugly, “Look what $150 grand buys you in Invercargill!”

History

A quarter of an acre is 1000 square metres, or for those of you who still read newspapers, 1 billion-infinity square feet. F**king massive, in other words.

The dream of owning a family home on a quarter acre property is hard-wired into the Kiwi psyche, dating back to the early days of colonial immigration, when large tracts of land were stolen legally purchased from local Maori by the British government, subdivided into quarter-acre plots, and offered for tuppence and a boat fare to rugged young Englishmen prepared to sail half way round the world to shear sheep, spear whales, and suppress their emotions for a living.

But like so much Kiwi mythology there is a gap between perceived history, and modern reality. In the 1800s only 3% of the world’s populations lived in cities. By 2050 more than 70% will live in cities. Modern economies are driven by thriving metropolitan centres with medium & high density housing and good public transport. Yet the overwhelming majority of kiwis still believe it is their birth right to own, as their first home, a 7 bedroom, 400 square metre mini-Versailles on the city fringe, with 3 car internal garaging and a tennis court / touch-rugby field. Homes on such a grand scale are clearly at odds with rational town planning. But more importantly, you pretty much need a ride on vacuum cleaner just to keep on top of all that carpet.

Desperately seeking space from each other, many Kiwis choose to live in sprawling suburbia ever further from city centres and their place of work. This variation of “living the dream” is referred to as “getting away from it all” (“it” being the “rat race” that is central Auckland – a city so empty most weeknights that The Quiet Earth was filmed without blocking off a single street) and inevitably leads, in those who chose to live it, to excessive whinging about the price of petrol, and traffic congestion on motorways on which nobody forced them to drive.

As a result, since the 1960s the size of the average Kiwi house has more than doubled, and house prices as a ratio of average salaries increased around 500%, such that, today, New Zealand’s primary productive export is no longer dairy, wool or Crowded House albums, but money. As in “everyone’s hard earned money” – bleeding out of the country in interest payments to offshore banks, servicing mortgages nobody can afford.

Fortunately most New Zealanders are protected from the worry normally associated with a slow financial apocalypse by their poor grasp of financial literacy, and an almost lemming-like belief that “She’ll be right.”

For the rest, there are plenty of affordable, inner-city apartments and townhouses that make great first home buys, without leveraging up to the eyeballs. These properties tend to be popular with recent immigrants, Kiwis returning from overseas, or anyone else from the 95% of the rest of the world quite happy to live in 50 to 100 sqm, close to cafes, bars, shops… and other people. Otherwise known as ‘community’.

But on the positive side – and an asset which is more prominently featured in tourist and immigration brochures than the low average wage or high rates of aggravated assault – New Zealand does have a lot of quite nice cafes, bars and restaurants.

Noticing the disparity between the quality of hospitality venues, and the subsistence income of the people working in them, the New Zealand Labour Government, sometime in the late 2000s, legislated mandatory time-and-a-half pay on public holidays – a fairly standard piece of law in larger, overseas economies.

In response, New Zealand’s “nation of small business owners” set about passing on this increased cost to their customers. But not, as even a half-wit, Year 10 Economics drop out would advise, by spreading the price increase through-out the year. Rather, in a fit of protest – and demonstrating the collective intelligence of Michael Laws’ talkback radio audience – the majority of businesses instead chose to add a surcharge to the bill, of anything up to 20%, on public holidays only.

So if you find yourself in Nelson or Coromandel for a beach wedding this summer, relaxing with friends over cold beers, platters and a little easy listening dub-reggae, or soaking up the vineyard atmosphere and sharing a few plates of tapas on Waiheke Island, brace yourself for the arrival of an eye-watering bill, which is usually followed by a brief, boring conversation along the lines of, “shit, I forgot it was a public holiday.”

As a fair-go nation of skinflints, who already struggle with tipping, and dividing the cost of a eating out with friends, this experience can leave a sour taste in the mouth of most New Zealanders.

There are, of course, a few obvious ironies to the surcharge:

1. Public holidays are among the busiest days of the year in the hospitality industry. If you can’t turn a profit, at normal prices, when you are at your busiest, then you are probably in the wrong industry. Or just plain stupid. (More likely both.)
2. Time and a half must be paid on public holidays to workers in all industries. But you don’t see a 20% surcharge added to the price of petrol station pies, or t-shirts with pictures of New Zealand on them.
3. The surcharge is almost never applied in cities, where there exists fierce competition for customers. It is, however, very popular in remote, holiday destinations where cafes have a captive market. Usually at times when these holiday destinations are at their busiest (see point 1 above).

New Zealand diners could probably reverse this trend, if they voted with their feet, or kicked up more of a fuss. But Kiwis are a notoriously ‘fuss-averse’ people, and will do anything not to make a scene, or stand out in a crowd.

So if the axiom “a country gets the service it deserves” is true, New Zealand may just have to put up with 20% buggery, in the form of public holiday surcharging, until we learn to assert ourselves with approximately 80% more balls.

Easy to make, it is popular with children and wiry, bearded old men – the sort who spend many days at a time in the forest, trapping possums and disposing of bodies, and are therefore unlikely to have wives at home to make them sandwiches.

Interestingly, the term Scroggin is not unique to New Zealand. It is in fact one of the few things we share with, of all places, Iraq. That, and some nice beaches, a fondness for breezy footwear, and a collective mistrust of infidel foreigners taking over our land.

An unusual sounding word, most language scholars believe that Scroggin is a hybrid of the words Noggin and Scrotum. Some attribute this to early trampers in Iraq and New Zealand, who used to carry servings of trail mix, hung around the neck, in a small pouch made out of a sheep’s scrotum. Other’s suggest that it is merely a colloquial way of describing how the healthy, low GI snack fills you up from your head, all the way down to your toes.  Or, in this case, your balls.

Either way, it is generally accepted that the only reason anyone eats this dried up bird seed is for the chocolate.

A lovely cake tin made from Number 8 Wire

Number 8 Wire is, literally, a gauge of steel wire, popularly used in rural fencing. That’s fences around paddocks, not two gay farmers fighting each other with floppy swords.

But in New Zealand, the phrase, like other local oddities (women’s rubgy, Invercargill, our tender, ‘hands on’ approach to animal husbandry), has a deeper, more spiritual connection with the land.

Allow me to explain.

Apart from a few notable exceptions, historically, New Zealand has always been last in the queue when it comes to importing vital industrial materials, tools and technology (also fashion and attractive immigrants). Lack of proper equipment in the early days fostered in Kiwi blokes a knack for ‘getting shit done’ using whatever basic materials were readily and easily available to them at the time. In a country with 60 million sheep to fence in (and 10,000 natives to fence out) the most abundant of these materials was Number 8 Wire.

Out of this history grew the myth of the Number 8 Wire mentality (aka Kiwi ingenuity): that New Zealanders, particularly the men, are practical, lateral-thinking, problem-solving types, capable of inventing, or fixing, anything¹ with whatever junk they have lying around in the garden shed.

It is no surprise that this concept first became popular during the late 1980s, coinciding with season one of the hit US television show, MacGyver.

And while most talk up Number 8 Wire mentality as a positive aspect of Kiwi culture, others argue that it is merely putting a brave face and positive spin on our cultural and industrial isolation – that New Zealand would be economically much better off  if we had just imported, and learned how to use, the proper equipment in the first place. Like some fuck-off big Seimens heavy machinery. Or a few Japanese robots.

Because while it may get you from A to B, the rest of the world has shown an annoying, but not all together surprising, lack of desire to drive a car, fly a plane, or use a computer made out of thin loops of steel fencing.

1. Note this does not include emotional problems

The bridal party went for an informal, sporting look.

New Zealanders like to paint it black; whether it’s the angry hairdos of the heavily-lesbianed Auckland media set, farmer’s woollen vests, over-barbequed sausages, or even entire fasion labels.

But nowhere is this more important than in the uniforms and names of our national sports teams. Adhering to this naming convention, with it’s limited vocabulary, has led to an inventive, if largely slapstick branch of New Zealand humour.

History

The origin of our national sporting colour, like so much of New Zealand popular culture (binge drinking, repressed homosexuality, domestic violence), can be traced back to rubgy.

The first sports team to represent New Zealand internationally was the 1st XV rugby squad that toured the United Kingdom in 1905. Their formidable talent, combined with a low maintenance, easy-wash uniform, led the British press to dub them the ‘All Blacks’. Following the success of the tour, the colour quickly became a badge of honour back home,  forever associated with international recognition – very important for a small, insecure country determined, at every opportunity, to ‘put itself on the map‘.

A menacing colour, black also fitted well with the ‘hard’ image colonial New Zealand men at the time had of themselves, and of many of their women.

And, like my wife said shortly before she left me, “Once you go black, you can’t go back” (she was talking about shoes, right?). So important, now, is black to the All Blacks, that it has taken on an almost superstitious ominence. Forced to wear marl grey against France, during the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the All Blacks choked. Well, it was either that, or they were just a bit soft in the head.

Adoption

In the years since 1905, other sporting codes have adopted the national colour that, technically, isn’t a colour. Only, with a limited number of permutations for which the word ‘black’ can be mangled into a pun, the names of some of New Zealand’s national sports teams have begun, at times, to sound more like a parody of themselves.

Some examples;

• The Black Caps – not so much ‘caps’ these days as ‘crash helmets’, but in fairness, they are sometimes black – even if they’re worn by sissies.
• The Black Sticks – field hockey, a sport that doesn’t even deserve the effort of coming up with a witty reference.
• The Black Sox – we’re not sure if the New Zealand softball team actually wear black socks, but if they did, with white trainers, it would be, like, a major fashion faux pas.
• The Ice Blacks – (see ‘field hockey’, above)
• The Tall Blacks – somebody please give the guy who came up with the name for the NZ basketball team a job writing for Radiradirah
• The Black Cocks – yes, the badminton team actually called themselves this.. for about a month.

Exceptions

There are two notable exceptions to this rule.

Women’s sport - which, as everybody knows, isn’t really sport – has tended to follow the convention of naming themselves after Ferns. We can only assume this is because women like to be difficult. It was begun by the most popular women’s sport in New Zealand, Netball – a sport best described as basketball for women who like to grunt. Over the years other sporting codes followed suit, except, interestingly enough, the butchest of all women’s sport, rubgy (I know, gross right?), who endeavoured to keep a hairy foot in both gender camps by calling themselves the ‘Black Ferns’.

The All Whites is the chosen name of the New Zealand soccer team, which has done little to help dispel the popular notion in New Zealand that soccer is still just a game ‘played by poofs’.

Irony

Although the ethnic mix of the All Whites is, fittingly, all white, the All Blacks are not, by the same logic, all black. Far from it, actually. For while some of the best talent in the team comes from New Zealand’s Maori and Pacific Island population, the majority are still honky Canterbury farmers.

In fact, during the 1960 tour of South Africa, Maori were deliberately excluded from the national side, in deference to the host nation’s enlightened and ‘not at all likely to fail’ policy of apartheid.

The irony of sending an all white rugby team to South Africa, and calling them the ‘All Blacks’, is not lost on New Zealand history. It is just one of the many classic bloopers of our distant, and usually unrelated ancestors, over which Maori & Pakeha banter good naturedly – like Irish men in a pub discussing the fastest snail – instead of getting bogged down in an endless cycle of apology and blame. It is New Zealand’s good humour on these topics that demonstrates such an impeccable record of race relations. No, really. Seriously.

Other such classics include;

• Whitey owns the beaches now, nyah nyah nyah! (Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004)
• What’s the (Bastion) Point?
• Can I have your autograph? Just kidding, it’s a legally binding treaty! (Treaty of Waitangi)
• Look, I’ve got your nose! (and by nose, I mean Auckland)
• Four seats on the council? I thought you wanted four sheeps! Sorry, Flossie’s already moved into her new office. Oh well. Lamb kebab anyone?

That, that, dude looks like a lady.

A rose by any other name; although the word bogan is uniquely Antipodean, the lifestyle it describes is a universal phenomenon. Formerly, and perhaps more affectionately, referred to as ‘salt of the earth’ or ‘the working classes’, every country has bogans, they just have different names for them. Terms of endearment, including ‘White Trash’, ‘Chavs’, ‘Rednecks’, ‘Pikeys’ and my personal favorite, ‘The Great Unwashed’.

In New Zealand, the word bogan is, like Russell Crowe, a regional peculiarity which, although of nonspecific trans-tasman origins, we are happy to let Australia claim the dubious honor of inventing. But that doesn’t make them any less of a Kiwi cultural icon.

Indeed, New Zealand bogans share much in common with their Australian brothers: permy mullets, Winfield cigarettes, a love of V8 engines that borders on erotic, and jumbo-sized chilli bins full of pub rock. And while appearances can be intimidating, the New Zealand bogan is generally a friendly & hard working member of society. If a little smelly. But definitely much less likely to stab you for an iPod, or ‘just being Abbo’.

A bogan’s sound moral compass is guided by their strong, if sprawling, matriarchal family structure, as can be witnessed on New Zealand’s longest running television documentary, Outrageous Fortune. They have a civic sense of duty and work ethic, underpinned, out of neccessity, by a high rate of breeding, and an aspiration to someday own a wire-fenced, quarter-acre bungalow in Henderson of their very own.

Bogans are good with their hands, and like to spend quality family time on said front lawn, dismantling automobiles, or building half of a boat. The young members of a bogan clan are thus raised with a keen mechanical ability, which makes them highly employable (when they leave school at 15) at panel workshops, petrol stations, or any franchise of the Mag & Turbo Warehouse.

But if bogans work hard, they like to play even harder. Well paid trade jobs, and low rent in the western suburbs, leaves bogans plenty of disposable income to fund loud, boozy weekends at Piha, nights at the Speedway, and a wardrobe of finest suede and leopard print.

Recent years have in fact seen a trend that can best be described as bogan pride. The lifestyle has been glorified, nostalgified even, and the word bogan reclaimed as a badge of honor – a way of deflating it’s originally intended power to insult.  It is also a cynical way for ad-men to sell beer to rich university students with a fondness for ‘slumming it’.

But even middle aged corporate types are not immune to the appeal of going bogan. With the introduction of elasticated waistbands to Armani black skinny jeans, and the Karen Walker organic-cotton Jacques Daniéls collection; bankers, teachers, even politicians can make the 10 yearly pilgrimage to an AC/DC in concert, without sacrificing their commitment to sustainability, comfort, or style.

A point worth noting, because, as a political force, Bogans should not be underestimated. Some even suggest that the anointed bogan Queen, Paula Bennet - currently a high ranking Cabinet member – may one day go all the way to becoming New Zealand’s first bogan Prime Minister*.

Should that day come,  resistance will be futile. Better to spit out that posh Riesling all over your copy of Mindfood, put on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and embrace your inner bogan.

His name is Shane. And he wants to party.

* – although John Key sounds bogan, often acts bogan, and may even have bogan blood, his $10 million mansion in Parnell disqualifies him from actually being bogan.

Aren’t I lucky, I got a chunky bit.

The phrase “clean, green New Zealand” does not, as is often mistakenly suggested, refer to our high standard of environmentalism. Far from it, in fact. Nor does it refer to the colour of our deepening national envy for Australia.

It refers, rather, to the state of our healthy, if oddly coloured, collective colon.

So why, then, are we blessed with such a loose and Kermit-coloured national stool? The answer lies in a powdery, mulched seaweed drink. A drink that is perhaps as much of an icon of the 1990s as Seinfeld, or the Pulp Fiction soundtrack… Spirulina.

On it’s own, Spirulina is, for want of more prosaic language, f**king gross. Think crushed aspirin and tugboat barnacles. But blended into a smoothie, with (that other popular local green) Kiwifruit, banana and juice, it is almost palatable, leaving a quirky tang in the mouth that leads you to believe it must have some non-specific healthy properties.

You’ll find Spirulina smoothies on the menu of any urban cafe that plays a lot of dub-reggae, and has dreadlock-haired waiters with armfuls of vaguely Polynesiany tattoos. When taken regularly, along with the caffeine of a flat white coffee, and a little light exercise (say, netball or social touch rugby), it stimulates the kind of almighty bowel-motions that are the stuff of legend in the Retirement Village wastelands of Pakuranga.

However, it should be noted that any actual health benefits Spirulina may possess - beyond contributing towards a good daily shit – are at best speculative, and, at worst, homeopathic. There’s probably some waffle on Wikipedia about antioxidants – beta carotene this or lycopene that. Frankly, this author is just too lazy to conduct even the most cursory soft of internet research that passes as balanced journalism these days.

Perhaps a cleansing Spirulina smoothie will provide the kind of load-lightening relief I need to get off my heavily impacted arse, and write some facts, instead of just making sh*t up all the time?

Don’t count on it.

Please hold, I have someone on the other line.

You thought the world had stopped using land-line telephones years ago, right? You were wrong.

Like retired English couples, and migratory Godwits – it turns out they all just came to New Zealand to die.

So why, in the 2nd decade of the new millennium, do New Zealanders still talk to each other on such a dated piece of technology? Are we especially susceptible to microwave radiation this close to the South Pole? Or is the New Zealand accent so bad we can’t even understand ourselves without a crystal clear line?

No. The truth is, we never had a choice. Although it’s not for want of trying.

In fact, since the 1980s -those heady days of Gloss and brick-handsets that look like field phones from M.A.S.H – New Zealand has been desperate to go mobile. Desperate to stay technologically apace with the rest of the world. And desperate to be able to reply, “no look, see, we have mobile phones too,” to the boast-deflating statement, “yes, you’ve already told me about Eftpos, like, a hundred times.”

But New Zealand is a victim of it’s own size. With a population that for most of the last 20 years could support 2 or less players in the mobile network market, competition to drive down call prices has been about as serious as a commitment from Millie Elder to stay off P.

And although the situation appears to be marginally improving (there are now 3 mobile networks, after comedian and robot impersonator Rhys Darby started one in 2009), call charges are still so ball-retractingly high, that the typical mobile phone conversation in New Zealand goes something like this;

(ring ring, click) ”G’day.. yep… yep… ok, shut up… Bye.” (click, dial tone)

Which means that the only way to have a meaningful conversation in New Zealand, still, is to use a landline. Or possibly a fax machine.

Fortunately, for those Kiwis who clung on for a reason to own a cellphone, text-messaging, introduced in the late 1990s,  presented an affordable option that, unlike a owning a pager, wouldn’t get you beaten up for being a tool. However this lead to an unusual sort of feedback loop in the marketing of mobile phone plans. Vodafone and Telecom, noticing the popularity of text messaging, took this to mean that Kiwis must be just ‘mad for texting’ (not that the outrageous call charges simply left them no other choice) and started building impossibly high text allowances into their monthly plans.

Even today, consumers are faced with a choice, for around $30 a month on the major networks, between either 20 minutes of inclusive call minutes, or something like 6000 free text messages. And while you could quite comfortably blow the call allowance everyday just waiting for the phone to pick up,  even a 13 yo girl with 3 thumbs and a new boyfriend couldn’t get through 6000 texts a month.

So until such time as New Zealanders get the sort of unlimited mobile call plans on offer to the rest of the world, don’t be alarmed if you hear an unusual sound coming from the hall of many New Zealand homes. A sound that may be eerily familiar to you, as that classic mobile ringtone ‘Old Telephone’.

Chances are it is, in fact, an actual old telephone.

"I told you it was undercooked.."

New Zealand is situated on the Asia-Pacific Rim and, by drawing on it’s geographical and historical culinary influences, has adopted a unique style of fusion dining, fashionably known as ‘Asian Rimming’.

And by far and away the most popular of all the Asian Rim foods, since it’s introduction in the 80s,  is Sushi.

History

Sushi arrived not long after a period of great upheaval and uncertainty over New Zealand’s place in the world. Trade regulations within the European Union tightened in the late 70s, such that our historical trading partner, Britain, decided she preferred the garlicky, arrogant taste of French butter to our humble, mild-mannered blend. Nervous, and facing a growing mountain of congealed, unsold dairy, New Zealand began establishing ties with new, geographically closer, trading partners.

The United States looked promising for a while, until, in 1985, David Lange told her she had uranium breath and to kindly f**k off. And while Australia remains a fair weather trading friend, the single largest commodity we export there (hard working, educated New Zealanders) is, like oil, a finite resource.

Which left us with Asia. And so, at some unspecified period during the 1980s (or specified, if you can be bothered doing the research.. which I can’t), in a bold attempt to appeal to a potentially massive new trading partner, New Zealand got a big-time case of yellow fever.

This manifested in a number of ways..

Japanese language studies quickly became more popular at secondary school than the traditional favorites of French or Spanish, as bookish middle-class kids were encouraged to learn a language that would further their business career, rather than just something to help them get laid while backpacking around Europe.

Government immigration policy shifted, from the historic approach of herding in an endless stream of land-grabbing, limey Anglo Saxons, to opening the gates, as it were, to families from Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, on condition that they a) build large houses and prosperous businesses, and b) have no idea how to drive a car between them.

But by far the most successful Oriental introduction, was the food. And of the many wonderful dishes to reach our shores – Pork Balls, Chicken Feet, Mystery Meat Salad, to name but a few – it was Sushi that we really took to our hearts. Raw fish, seaweed and sticky rice. It’s popularity can be explained for the same reasons it became such a hit in that other well known Pacific Rim location, California; proximity to fresh seafood, a background of exercise and healthy eating, and a middle class population desperate to appear worldly and cultured in spite of their obvious pastoral, frontier roots.

And for New Zealand, particularly, it at last provided an viable, alternative lunchtime snack to the staple ‘meat pie and chips’.

Not-History (aka, The Present)

Sushi remains as popular today as ever. For Kiwis living abroad (except those in Australia, California or, clearly, Japan), a trip to the local Sushi Bar sits high on their mental list of “shit I’m going to do as soon as I get home” (alongside ‘have fish & chips at the beach‘, ‘eat some Vogels toast‘ and, of course, ‘chill out to some homegrown dub‘).

And while you can now get Sushi in places such as London, as any Kiwi will proudly, and usually uninvited, tell you.. “It’s not as good“.

Sushi vs BMI (click to enlarge)

However, there is an unusual irony to all this sushi consumed, both here and in The States.  For what is perceived as a ‘healthy option’, after 25 odd years of lunching on raw salmon every day, we have somehow eaten ourselves into the prized position of 3rd fattest nation in the OECD (as illustrated by this excellent graph).

That’s if you believe in the Body Mass Index, that is. Which is about as accurate as diagnosing cancer with an Amethyst Crystal.

Or, for that matter, a lump of raw fish.

Sorry mate, you can't park there.

New Zealand Crown Law¹ permits only one mode of fundraising for charity^b.  To collect money for, say, a new Surf Lifesaving clubhouse, or indoor toilets at a local primary school, organisations must set up a barbecue at a busy Saturday shopping location and sell fried meaty logs to an unsuspecting public.

Colloquially, this is known as a Sausage Sizzle.

Certain charities try to boycott, or mess with, the Sausage Sizzle law.  A tactic of SAFE - the animal rights group popular with man-hating vegans and Capoeira dancers – is to draw in a hungry crowd by displaying life-sized photos of tasty-looking pigs. But it is a trick. They do not have any delicious pork sausages to sell, just a bunch of whiny rhetoric about how food should be allowed to roam free in the forest or something. Which is kind of funny, when you think about it.  Not like their spokesperson, Mike King, who stopped being funny back in 1994.

That aside, Sausage Sizzles are an effective source of revenue, timed to coincide with the short, hungry space experienced by shoppers between morning tea and lunch. And, by combining the serious work of ‘doing something for the community’, with the fun of a barbecue, a Sausage Sizzle is the ultimate mix of business and pleasure, contributing towards the kind of Zen-like state that all Kiwis aspire to achieve in their work/lifestyle balance, a.k.a “Living The Dream”.  Other examples include “Jandals at the Office”, “No Tie at a Wedding” and “Checking Emails from the Beach”.

But putting on a Sausage Sizzle is actually quite a serious business. There are rules. It can take several years study at a tertiary institute like the University of Auckland University of University Technology (slogan.. “Did we mention that we really are a University?”) to become a qualified Sizzler. The Re: Sauce Management Act - a gargantuan set of policy that makes the Magna Carta look like a drycleaning flyer – lays out specific guidelines, including;

• A Sausage Sizzle must be positioned between 10 & 20 feet from, and upwind of, the store front door of either a Warehouse, a Bunnings or a Mitre10 Mega.
• Any tomato sauce provided must contain black bits, taste of candy & be served in unmarked, 4L plastic bottles.
• Napkins must be exactly 10% absorbent and  90% waterproof.
• Bread must be at least a day old, white, and cost less than 10c loaf. Each slice should also be manually stressed the night before, so that it breaks apart evenly as soon as it’s wrapped around it’s designated sausage.
• Entertainment may only be provided in the form of either a) an 80s ghetto blaster playing dub/reggae, or b) an old man blowing a harmonica.
• Child labour is compulsory.
• Signs and banners should be designed in Microsoft Word, with ample Clip Art, then printed at home and sellotaped together.
• Sausages must contain no more than 5% meat or (preferably) meat by-products, from inorganic, factory-farmed pigs only.

Interestingly, the shortest section of the Re:Sauce Management Act is the part covering Hygiene & Food Safety, which simply states..

“Cook everything till it’s black, and you should be sweet as.”

Sweet as indeed. But sweet as what? We’re not quite sure. Like the question “What really goes into a sausage?”.. sometimes it’s best not to ask.

1 – Section 22b, clause (a) of The Treaty of Waitangi (1840ish, I think. The whole thing was a bit vague, apparently).
b – Telethon, it should be noted, was not a charity. It was a joke.
* – Some experts go so far as to suggest that Mike King was never really funny at all.