KEY POINTS:
Could this be our winter of discontent?
With eye-watering food bills, petrol bills and sky-high debt - and with the worry of more bad news to come - we might excuse ourselves slipping into a slough of despondency.
Yet there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful. The country is as full of smart, creative and talented people, and their exhilarating ideas and achievements, as it was a few months ago when summer promised it might last all year and the housing boom looked, well, safe as houses.
Enough gloom. We say it's time to let the light back in. Canvas' inaugural Happy List, a collection of praiseworthy people, places, ideas and accomplishments, should remind us that no matter what the cost of a block of cheese or a tank of gas, New Zealand Inc is still in business.
Some of our choices will seem obvious, some will not. There are omissions too. There is no All Black on our list. They don't make us happy. They lose at World Cups before leaving for huge contracts in Europe. Nor are there any politicians or economists. They don't make us happy either.
We make no claim to it being a comprehensive list then, just one we hope will help readers look beyond the winter's more sombre headlines. Our criteria were simple: who and what makes us feel good.
You are here
Forget your Navman. The phrase "it will put us on the map" is the original Kiwi geographical invention. Just have a gander at, for example, Te Kuiti and Gore. In the former, the towns' fathers and mothers saw fit to put it "on the map" with a giant shearer on mainstreet and, in the latter, with an enormous trout.
Then there's Kawakawa, which put itself on the map with a dunny, albeit a flash dunny designed by artist and architect Frederick Hundertwasser. New Zealand, of course, has been on the map since 1644, as have most of its towns and cities for at least 100 years.
But putting ourselves "on the map" has become, if not a nationwide obsession, then certainly an amusing game of quirky, small-town one-upmanship. And who needs a Navman to work out where you might be in the country when you're driving past a giant sheep dog made from corrugated iron? Or a jumbo gumboot? Or a gargantuan carrot? You know exactly where you are: you're on the map.
Roasted addiction
Time was, where Britain went, we went. She was our mater, our Mother England, and if Mummy liked extra strong, milky tea with two lumps five times a day, then so did we. We can only be thankful the old dear cut us adrift in favour of the EEC back in the early 1970s, leaving us free to fall in love with the only beverage worth its caffeine: piping hot coffee.
You could say the rise of our coffee culture reflects our independence, our escape from our colonial roots and the dreary cuisine it bequeathed us. Our food and wine are now world class. But it is the high quality of our coffee and cafe culture - and, of course, our cherished flat white - that sets us apart from almost everywhere.
It's what we really miss most when we're overseas. When we're at home, well it's now entirely possible that, whatever town and city you live in, you can throw a brick in any direction and hit a temple devoted to the beloved bean.
House of fun
Not so much the building as what Vector Arena permits. This is a case study in 'build it and they will come' which really begs the question: What the hell took so long?
Remember the bad old days when what passed for good times was Elton John and Billy Joel at a rugby league ground? Or Dame Kiri warbling on a barge? Or Metallica in a tent? Cheers, but nah. For just a smidge over $71 million the arena has already hosted assorted punks, metallers, crooners, wrestlers, Mouseketeers and, ummm, Elton again.
Oh, and don't forget it's finally given our railway network somewhere useful to go. And all that in its first year.
The shining city over the hills
Them and us. That's how most of the country sees it. The "them" are Aucklanders - Dorklanders and Jafas usually - and the "us" are the real New Zealanders ... well so those living south of the Bombays think.
Aucklanders, of course, couldn't care less for such absurd ill-will. They know they are the special people. They know their city offers them the best the country has: the greatest opportunities, the best-paid jobs, the most sparkling harbour, the finest restaurants, the coolest bars, the widest range of shopping, the best schools and universities, the most interesting and diverse range of people ... we could keep going, but we won't. We're too busy enjoying ourselves in the country's pre-eminent metropolis.
State of grace
It used to be that one man and his dog was the same as the next. It used to be, too, that the country prided itself - if a little too self-consciously, perhaps - on this, its all-for-one egalitarianism.
It might be, in the wake of the "reforms" of the 1980s and early 1990s, that some men and some dogs think themselves better than the rest these days. Well calm yourself, it doesn't matter!
Happily, this is still a country that takes care of its own, whether we be pedigree or mongrel. Since the passing of the Social Security Act of 1938, the welfare state has been guaranteeing us a roof and a meal no matter what.
Sure the system's been kicked about and criticised. Yes, it has its imperfections. But it was a solemn pledge the country made to itself and has actually kept. Back in the 1930s, the man who made it happen, Michael Joseph Savage, called it "applied Christianity". Seventy years on - and in a now largely secular country - it still is.
Buy, sell, gossip
Community. When you were growing up it was about chatting over the fence to the neighbours about the best time to dead-head the roses or swapping gossip about an unusual run of bad luck for the Smiths at number 45.
Some reckon those days have gone - they haven't - but New Zealanders have certainly found new and improved ways to gather together, swap advice, share gossip and blather to each other for hours on end - especially on Trade Me and its sister sites.
Trade Me certainly revealed a previously unidentified passion for buying, selling and trading tat at all times of the day and night, and has made a few people, Sam Morgan mostly, a packet.
However, Trade Me and its spin-off site, Old Friends, have more than a quarter of us as members, making it the biggest, most interesting neighbourhood the country's ever seen - and it's there to help, too. Canvas recently heard of a woman leaving the country who, soon after giving her cat to friends in another suburb, learned it had disappeared without a trace. After placing an ad on a Trade Me messageboard, a third party contacted her to say her dear moggie was alive and well and living with them. Now that's what we call a happy ending.
Just like a Hitchcock movie
The birds are back. Yes, you no longer have to go bush to see and hear tui, fantails and wax-eyes - they're coming to you.
Tui are, of course, the great survivors, but anecdotally their numbers are growing in the 'burbs, and they're being joined by piwakawaka (fantails) and waxies.
Perhaps it's because of the growing native bird life in the Waitakeres and other green areas. Perhaps too, it's due to the semi-tropical garden craze of the 1990s, which is now providing maturing native vegetation.
Whatever it is, some old, indigenous favourites are rejoining the urban dawn chorus. Performances given daily. At your house.
* Here's Canvas' tip for attracting fantails into your garden: wet a wine cork and rub it against the neck of the bottle, making a high-pitched squeak similar to the peep of the piwakawaka.
Flaming mo
By turns, Corporal Willie Apiata's moustache is warm, self-effacing, fierce, determined and stubbornly retro.
Yes, our VC-winner's moustache is hairy proof that "the old ways" endure, our fondest self-image captured in facial fuzz with a touch of ginge. It's so recognisably us that you could put a frame round it and hang the damn thing on your wall alongside Mickey Savage's benevolent smile.
So, all those jokey Mo-vember handlebars be damned, this is the real deal in its perfect, uniformed setting, a man's 'tache. Long may it bristle.
I think we're alone now
Even if you carried a chair to our highest point, stood on it and peered through the mightiest pair of binoculars you wouldn't be able to spy a foreign shore. Not even on tiptoes. Not even if you jumped. That's isolation for you.
We live in the region that was once marked "there be dragons" on maps and that's pretty damn cool in itself. Distance protects us from snakes, crocodiles and Africanised bees. Distance allows us to keep our distance. But best of all, without it, your OE would be just another ferry ride. Go find a dragon or taniwha and give it a big hug from us.
Put your hands in the air ...
If you're breaking out your freakiest styles any time soon, as a DJ drops a bomb on the dance floor, take a moment to clock the gear being used, because chances are it'll be some high-tech, high-cool Kiwi DIY.
Serato looks like a standard, grooved record that can be scratched like an itch, but the vinyl is blank apart from a constant time signal which allows your MP3 library to be played like Mum's old 45s.
Many have tried, but it took a couple of Aucklanders to get the science right and now the biggest names in the business are asking Santa for one of their very own. Good on ya, fullas. We wave our glowsticks in appreciation.
Doing the tuatua twist
Who says you can't get something for nothing?
A free feed of kai moana is as Nu Zilund as a cabbage tree. Hell, it's our birthright and, with 15,000km of coastline, there's room for everyone. It's no wonder that, for as long as people have lived here, they've thrown nets, cast lines and scraped shellfish from rocks - which is probably more important than ever, given the price of the stuff in the shops these days.
It also means we get to head for the beach which, after all, is our second home whether we've got a bach there or not. And what could be more uniquely, satisfyingly Nu Zilund than heading to the nearest patch of sand at low tide and doing the "tuatua dance" - that strange manoeuvre where you twist on the spot and your feet sink into the sand so you can feel for tuatua with your toes?
Frock on!
The year was 1999. London Fashion Week opened and "The New Zealand Four" - Zambesi, Karen Walker, World and Nom* D - revealed themselves to the wider world for the first time.
Looking back, it was a watershed. The beginning of us - and the world - taking our fashion seriously. Up to then our contribution to global style had been, er, the wife-beater and sky-blue Stubbies. Embarrassing really.
However, in the last decade New Zealand's fashionistas have done us proud on the world stage - and at home. Not only do they offer well-made and designed clobber for a reasonable price, their sterling work also means we no longer have to wait a season or more for the latest cuts and colours to arrive here from overseas. Frocking brilliant!
Whistling Dixon
Give that man a pint of the white gold! It seemed wholly apt Scott Dixon should have to chug a bottle of milk (as is traditional, apparently) to celebrate his win at this year's Indianapolis 500 motor race.
Apt, because for us, he'll be forever young - and Kiwi kids should always wear a milk moustache.
It really does seem only yesterday that Dixon was a chubby, freckled, ginga kid with bog-brush hair, though of course he was a very fast, chubby, freckled, ginga kid with bog-brush hair.
Actually it was in 1993 when, as a 13-year-old, he became the youngest driver to race a single-seater car in a national motor-racing championship.
Now, at 27, he's the winner of the most prestigious American motor race of all, the largest single-day sporting event in the world. While some of us might not understand the attraction of driving around and around and around a circuit for 500 miles (805km), we do understand - after our disastrous sports results in 2007 - how hard it is to win on the big stage. And the bugger's so affable about it too.
Other New Zealand sports stars (read All Blacks) might learn a thing or two from him about how not to, well, milk it when they finally win the big one.
Chairman Wow
The Waitemata ... what really needs to be said?
Gorgeous isn't grand enough and a gift from the gods is a tad egocentric, so let's just settle on a contented sigh and some silent contemplation on our good fortune as we sniff that salt-laden sea air.
It even comes with a picture perfect volcano squatting right in the middle (no surprise really, we're fair groaning with their magnificence - just don't worry yourself over where the next one will pop up) which comes with the added bonus feature of looking pretty much the same no matter where you're standing.
But if just looking is grand, try getting out there. Sydney Harbour? Pah. Wellington? Nice try. One glimpse of our gulf and you know you're home.
Shut up and listen
We may be mouse-sized, but don't we love a good roar?
No matter the issue, no matter the location, and no matter if it's got nothing to do with us, it's a dead-set cert a Kiwi will climb onto a soapbox and gleefully tell everyone what they're doing wrong. Even if no one who matters listens. Bless.
The world needs our gentle, public-bar wisdom, so we send frigates to Mururoa, cause Olympic boycotts, ban bombs, legalise prostitution, stay away from Iraq, go to China, give women the vote, bleat about non-integration then travel overseas to flat with our own kind while bursting into a haka at the drop of a "chur bro" ... well, we matter, dammit. Look, we're down here ... someone give us a wave would you?
We got you, babe
Okay, get it off your sparrow chest and say what you will about Nicky Watson because we say a lot. And that's the thing, despite the constant bile storm directed at her, Our Nicky just keeps on keeping on. She's over-exposed, over-endowed and all over the place all of the time.
So we anoint her as flagship of her kind: a testament to stickability, unintentional humour and our ongoing fascination with the siliconised career-path. If she wasn't around we would be a lot less happy. Happy now?
Conchords dawn
New Zealand TV execs might have missed the flight. But the Flight of the Conchords still landed themselves a moocho big deal with American cable network, HBO. Apparently being from Wellington doesn't bother the Yanks. Go figure!
Meanwhile their hilariously silly show, which is to go to a second series, was named in last year's top 10 TV shows by both Time and Entertainment Weekly magazines, and the pair also picked up a Grammy for best comedy album in February. Nice.
But the real feel-good gift to the rest of us from our "fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo" is that, post Lord of the Rings, they've reminded Americans (and the rest) that we still exist. There's already been a knock-on effect: South Auckland rapper Savage recently said the Conchords had opened the door to him in the US, leading to a multimillion-dollar deal with major record label Universal Republic.
The Conchords also offered Bic Runga her "big break" in the US as opener for the duo's recent LA gigs. Doubly nice. Now all we need is for that top bloke Murray to stand for parliament and manage the country too. Surely he'll know what to do about the price of cheese.
Top shelf
With lashings of grass, asparagus, and gooseberries; a nose like Jimmy Duante; and the staying power of Kiwi storming home in the Melbourne Cup, our sauvignon blanc is screw-topped sunshine.
Subtlety schmutlety, we like stuff that tastes of something, and our savs are definitely chocker with something. Booze, usually.
It's yum-yum from first sip to that last swirl of the dregs and, as the cherry on top, it's usually created in our favourite holiday destinations. Genius. Of course, too much of a good thing can be damaging to your wallet.
Super fly
Don't you love how our runner is always the easiest to spot? Not just because he's way behind the others, but because he's wearing black.
It made Johnny Cash cool, it made Batman scary, it's the best shade for little dresses, and it's what all the best sunglasses are wearing, and they're always cool.
Yes, black is the non-colour of classic styling and intimidating mystery - and it's incredibly slimming. And somehow it's our sports teams who have absolute dibs on it.
They even wear it in the searing, midday sun so everyone knows we're bloody serious about keeping it. Whoever allowed this to come to pass, we salute you. You've made us extremely happy.
The write stuff
C.K. Stead is not, repeat not, a curmudgeon. But if he was, we'd still treasure him.
He's one of the last of our mid-20th century men and women of letters, a living link to the giants, to Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame and Allen Curnow. He can be translated into the populist: his book Smith's Dream became a film, Sleeping Dogs, which really kick-started the New Zealand film industry in the late 1970s.
But his literature, his poetry, essays, short stories and novels have added substance and meaning to the country's inner life beyond the merely popular and he's extended our literary tradition too. Yes, he calls a spade, well, a goddamn shovel when he wants to. Is that curmudgeonly? No, but it makes him an uncompromising and unique New Zealand talent.
You gotta have faith
And people thought Radiohead were all clever-clogs by offering up an album for a koha? Sheesh, we've been doing it for ages.
Just steer your car in any direction and sooner or later you'll pass a ramshackle shelter on the side of the road housing a stack of tomatoes or flowers or vegetables guarded by nothing more sophisticated than the box you leave your money in and your conscience.
This is the stuff that reminds us we live in one of the least corrupted nations on the planet. When this dies, it'll mean that a little part of us has died as well.
