Kiwianarama

What happens when you get angry at a muesli bar

Scroggin is the Kiwi word for Trail Mix: a combination of fruits, nuts and chocolate eaten by trampers for rapid sustenance.

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.

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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.

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'Ow do you like ze taste of zat Rainbow Warrior, losers?

Kiwis are really, really good at a small range of minority sports. So good, in fact, that the weight of the entire nation’s expectation rests on the hope that these sports might firmly, and finally, put New Zealand on the map.

It is a heavy burden to bear by our national sports stars who, lets face it, are not altogether the smartest, most well-rounded cookies in the jar.

Which inevitably leads to the one sport in which New Zealand truly leads the international field…Choking.

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Actually, yes, I do like Mudhoney. What gave it away?

Soul Patches (aka ‘Clit Ticklers’), Goatees & Lamb-chop Sideburns – or any other combination of facial hair that wouldn’t look out of place on a sound-engineer mixing an ‘Alice in Chains’ song, for the soundtrack to the movie ‘Singles’, in a recording studio in Seattle circa 1992 – are all still weirdly popular with a large percentage of modern day, Kiwi men.

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