By Carl Sarney

It’s early on a Saturday morning, which makes it unusual for there to already be pots and pans rattling in the Kitchen of our London flat. But today is no ordinary day for Kiwi’s in London. Today is Waitangi day and being a world away from our home in New Zealand, we feel compelled to band together and celebrate all that we love about it.

I’m lured out of bed by the smell of eggs frying and I find a kitchen full of Kiwis dressed in All-Blacks black scoffing a b&e breakfast ...shortly followed by cans of beer, then off to join the crowd.

Emerging from the tube station exit we find the foot path is crammed with people dressed up as every Kiwi Icon you could imagine. Some of my favourites were: The guy dressed as a double brown beer bottle; the girls dressed as ‘Utter Peanut Butter Nutters’ from the 90’s Sanitarium ads; the guys dressed as all the keepers from The Lion Man TV show (it screens on TV in the UK too); The Beached As Whale; the Pavlova girls; and the guys dressed as New Zealand’s very latest icons – The Crazy Horses gang!

Another popular costume choice was to stick hundreds of cotton wool balls to disposable painting overalls creating a very effective sheep costume. However, there was unfortunately one terrible flaw – cotton wool balls are highly flammable. Not long after the celebrations had started the crowd looked on in horror as one of the sheep suddenly went up in flames.  Another sheep tried to help him, he also went up in flames and when flaming cotton wool balls went flying as they tried to quickly get out of their suits, around 4 more sheep caught fire.

Thankfully, as far as we could see, no one was too badly hurt, but an ambulance was called and there must have been one or two who needed hospital treatment for their burns.

It was quite a shock to all those who witnessed it, but once ambulance staff were on the scene it was time to move on and the party spirit had not been put out with the flames.

It was easy to see why the London authorities were keen to put a stop to this party taking place on the circle line tube trains as it used to – crowded tube stations aren’t designed for parties and there would be a real danger of people falling on the tracks.

Continuing on foot was the only option and as we walked past many of the central London sights on our way to Big Ben for the mass haka that rounds off the day. I was impressed at how the police were able to keep the crowd of thousands under control at the same time as having a laugh with us all and allowing the party to continue (Facebook is now full of photos of Kiwis posing with London policemen who let them try on their bobbies helmets).

The event brought on a great feeling of togetherness and pride for our country and many people I talked to on Saturday couldn’t understand why they’d never been to such a celebration on Waitangi day in all the years they’d been living in New Zealand.

The only thing denting my pride here on Waitangi day was that the ‘Tidy Kiwi’ attitude sadly wasn’t being adopted by all Kiwis. Of course this isn’t helped by the lack of rubbish bins in central London (they pose a bomb threat), but next year I suggest we all take a few rubbish bags with us and show some more respect for our host city so they’ll let us continue the party for years to come.