London: Wild Waitangi Day
 

I chanced to stumble into the annual party-celebration of New Zealand's Nation Day (Waitangi Day, celebrated in London with guston on the Saturday closest to Feb 6) with the focal point a drunken party in front of the U.K. Parliament and which starts officially when Big Ben strikes 4pm and then lasts into the night.

Crossing Parliament Bridge from the South Bank i noticed huge groups of mainly 20s types spilling out of pubs, beer cups in hand and could hardly walk thru the area.

Then i saw a huge crowd that took up all of the square in the middle of normally busy roads, which police had blocked off, and everyone had lots of beer and empty cans were everywhere.

This was serious drinking going on, but the crowd, though jovial, seemed fairly well mannered. Nevertheless loads of police and police vans were stationed nearby.

At points Kiwis, scaled the rather slender light poles in the square to the cheers of the mob - it looked rather dangerous to me, with very pissed looking folks on the top of a slightly swaying pole. But the cops did not seem bothered by it.

Waitangi Day marks the signing of NZ's founding document in 1840 at the town of the same name - this marked NZ's official entry into the British Empire.

Apparently such celebrations in New Zealand itself are much more sober - in fact have become often the target of protests from indigenous Maori tribes about their status, etc.

But if in London on the first Sat closest to Feb 6, you can see the festivities in front of Parliament Squares as all the apparently tons of New Zealanders flock from Shepherd's Bush or Earl's Court or wherever to celebrate New Zealand.

I must say that these kiwis were a grungy lot by the looks of them

and a drunken lot as well

Ah those were the days! But seriously, many of those drunken kiwis were probably some of the best of our uni graduates on their OE (overseas experience). It's a tradition for Kiwis and Aussies to spend a year or more in England once we have finished our degrees. Unfortunately for NZ many stay in England. However most come back finally and do the mortgage and kids thing!

Have you not yet realised that anything involving the British, or he British diaspora, will involve vast quantities of beer?

It's our defining trait. We get pissed.

Did not the Pilgrims come from England? Those well known drunken louts?

And Temperance societies and Methodists as well

I will admit however those Brits who do drink drink like fishes

Some people, of course, can compensate in other areas for their temperance in relation to alcohol. One British politician once described another as "intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity": and you could find various intoxications among the Pilgrim Fathers and their inheritors, I don't doubt.

Wikipedia says that Waitangi Day also sees a Kiwi Pub Crawl on the Central Line of the Tube

starting at Paddington Kiwis supposedly take one drink at a pub near the near 27 stops - going clockwise and ending at Temple

Apparently most do not stop at all 27 but still - avoid the Central Line on Waitangi Day