Growing Up In New Zealand

There are certain things that mark you as having had a Kiwi childhood. Here's just some of mine:

• The heavy smell of methylated spirits in the classroom from the Banda machine - and the blurry purple copies it produced
• Hat. Shirt. Bata Bullets
• Being growled at by the orthodontist every month because K-Bars and Toffee Milks had wreaked havoc on my braces
• Sneakily opening the cornflakes before the old pack was finished because you wanted to get the free plastic animal
• When they had the Greatest American Hero and all we had was Captain Hotshot
• Tricking someone into typing 58008 into their calculator, then turning it upside down and laughing yourself silly because it said BOOBS
• Playing elastics on a sunny day; knucklebones on a wet one
• Joining your mates on the bus to the Murder House and coming back with a cotton wool buzzy bee
• Getting a pen licence, so you could graduate from a pencil to a fountain pen
• Staying up for Radio With Pictures - then watching the Sunday Horror and not sleeping
• Pulling a sickie on cross country day
• Pulling out your pack of Spaceman "cigarettes" on a cold morning and pretending your breath is smoke
• Watching the Limbs Dancers perform the top song on Ready to Roll because we couldn't get the real video in time