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... not sure why, yet at the moment I am being asked by many people, friends, colleagues and even strangers, why on earth am I living in England?
To me it's easy - I absolutely love living here! Sure there's a few things that I could do without (crime, idiots, traffic congestion, smog, and rude people - though you get that in virtually every country), and at the moment there are more things here that I would miss.
I love being able to go to the variety of plays / musicals / miscellaneous shows that are always on; the number of museums is just phenomenal, I'm pretty sure I'll never see them all, and they usually have free entry; the variety of music groups / individuals is just fantastic and usually cheap (unless you're a Madonna fan!). In New Zealand you just do not have the scope of the entertainment that you do here, nor do you have the range of restaurants, and unless I decided to live in the North Island, the weather is pretty much the same as in the UK. The daylight hours in summer are nearly two hours longer at the end of the day (fabulous to watch Shakespeare in the park, sun setting as the play finishing and amble off to the tube in still warm weather!), though in winter it starts getting dark at 3:30pm - though what the heck I'm at work 5 days in 7 so that doesn't really matter!
The food may be a lot fresher in NZ, though if you go to the markets and farms here in England you can get some pretty darn tasty food! Even the wide variety in restaurants is incredible, well not in Woking (Nepalese, Chinese, Indian and all the major takeaways and that's about it really), up in London, from Eritrean to Polish, to NZ to Russian! It's great fun taking a stroll through Soho or down King's Road - both people watching and aroma smelling!
Scenery wise, NZ is incredible... as no doubt everyone knows from watching the various films made there (LOTR, Narnia and that Samurai one with T.Cruise).. a couple of pics that I took here from a trip back, stunning aren't they! Though the UK does indeed have some stunning scenery of it's own, not yet photographed by me, though will be!
It's just at this point in time, apart from all my family being there in NZ (cept Uncle R who's in Dublin), it does not hold any appeal, though in 5, 10, or 80 years time, who knows!