10 Observations of the Travelling WebStress

1. Everything in New Zealand, or certainly where I’m based, ‘does what it says on the tin’. They don’t mess about with advertising here that may mislead the consumer as to the purpose of the retailer; shop names are self explanatory. Alongside Pack n Save (where, as you trundle around a no frills warehouse that has more in common with Homebase than Sainsburys, savings are in abundance until you get to the checkout where you have to buy loads of bags to pack your shopping in) and, I have also ventured into Food Town, The Warehouse (which is, in fact, a warehouse) and The Number 1 Shoe Shop and Liquorland. Easy for foreigners and the more in-bred of locals.

2. Everything you could possibly want from a supermarket belongs to someone called Pam (I currently have Pam’s soya milk, Pam’s cheese, Pam’s tin foil and Pam’s washing up liquid but I drew the line at buying my boyfriend burgers from her. There’s just something a bit wrong about buying frozen meat produce from the same person who’s trying to sell you cleaning products.

3. Ribena tastes the same…

4.…But Heinz beans really, really don’t. Especially ones claiming to be from an English recipe. Whatever English recipe they’re adhering to it certainly isn’t one for mixing beans with tomato sauce.

5. Radio advertising is an eclectic mixture of cow de-licing solutions, John Deere tractor bargains and people telling you they used to be a ‘hoon’ (sometimes in relation to the advert, sometimes just for a bit of background info) and tend to know nothing of how to keep a sales pitch short and snappy.

6. Radio programmes themselves can use words like bugger, butt crack, jap’s eye and bastard in general chit chat and no one bats an eyelid.

7. According to law, if you are turning left at a set of traffic lights you have to give way to oncoming traffic turning right which is totally idiotic and pointless and often results in hairy near misses, especially as Kiwis seem to apply the rule infrequently and erratically (as they too believe the rule is idiotic and pointless).

8. Kiwi drivers seem to think the hard shoulder is, in fact, another lane and tend to drive in it most of the time. I did question that maybe they were just being considerate in letting other people pass but after doing nearly 10 hours of driving I am beginning to realise that they are just taking ‘drive on the left’ to the extreme.

9. Corrugated iron seems to be as fashionable here as sheep. If you can make it out of corrugated iron, they do. Signage, shop fronts, entire buildings are made out of the damn stuff. And it comes in pretty colours too.

10. New Zealand rock music is not to be recommended as being introduced to the outside world. Think Nickelback with a few Bon Jovi power chords and a good helping of heart wrenching emo thrown in for good measure.