Why Joan Bull and why a Pom Thesaurus?

I'm sure you've all heard of John Bull, the quintessential Englishman. Well Joan Bull was the headmaster's secretary/school nurse at my primary school in England. She was renowned for liberally applying iodine to all our cuts and bruises (this was, after all, the 1960s), the result of which is that Downend Primary School children were easily identifiable in the community by their permanently mottled purple faces and limbs. She too was quintessentially English. When I first arrived in New Zealand some years ago, much of the language was a complete mystery to me, so the following blog hopes to bring all sorts of contributions from migrants like myself, the sort of things that Roget would have thought of, if only he had come from Eketahuna.