And Now, From Ronco...

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

Culturally, NZ is not vastly different from the UK. The sense of humour is very similar, they like to take a drink, they appreciate fish and chips. 

It's not a major culture shock, is what I am trying to say.

But then occasionally, I will bump smack-bang into something that is just WEIRD. Which brings me to today's subject: Soda-Streams.

When we were staying in the guest cottage with Macca at the weekend, one of our party disappeared into the kitchen. At which point I heard a noise like this:

FAAAAAAARTTTTT-BLAT-BLAT-FAAAART-PUMP!!!

"Well SOMEONE'S not feeling well," I thought. And then, "I hope that person didn't fart all over the cucumber and yoghurt dip!" Because priorities.

But in fact, no actual farting was taking place in there. It turns out there was a Soda-Stream in the kitchen. 

If you do not remember, the Soda-Stream was one of those weird kitchen appliances that everyone had to have for about 5 minutes in 1981. It's basically a doofer that allows you to pump gas into regular tap water, to turn it fizzy. Then you could add little syrups to it, so you could make lemonade, or limeade, or even something that tasted like Coca-Cola.

In fact, as a 10 year old, MY version of Coca-Cola was even BETTER than the real thing, on account of I cunningly altered the ratio of water to syrup. My version was about 50% syrup. Drinking one glass of my Coca-Cola was like doing a line of cocaine and then sticking your finger into an electrical outlet.

But alas, such delights were not meant to last. You had to keep buying little gas cannisters, you see. Otherwise, after a week or so of pumping, your Soda-Stream started to sound like this:

pppfffaaaaaaaart

And you ended up drinking flat Coca-Cola water. It just wasn't the same. After a while all of our respective parents got sick of it (around the same time they all got sick of "Arctic Roll" and "Babycham") and Soda-Streams were consigned to the bin of forgotten 80's tat.

But NOT here in NZ! Here, it is some weird bizarro version of reality where people still LOVE making Soda-Stream drinks! Soda-Stream even sponsors high quality tv show and human car crash "Married At First Sight NZ".

I wonder now what ELSE lurks in New Zealand? Will there be tv adverts for the Ronco Record Vacuum? The K-Tel Hair Magician? For a Richard Clayderman collection from TeleDisc?

How about Babycham? Arctic Roll? There's got to be Arctic Roll, right? Right?

Disappointed.

S.