A few weeks ago – seems a lifetime – I set out on a bright Christchurch morning to meet the editor of this estimable magazine for lunch.

I had been away from New Zealand so long that I had forgotten a few key facts:

(a) if it’s sunny & cold in the morning, it will be sunny & hot at midday

(b) it never takes any time to get anywhere

(c) you can park outside

Applying UK principles, I got up on the decidedly nippy morning and donned two layers of possum merino. [If this sounds like a product placement, I only wish it were (email address below). ] After a solid morning working through the 30 metres of assorted books still mouldering in our house, I rushed away to meet the revered Fr Thomas.

Operating on English time, I whizzed past the spectacular beauties of the Park, and through the extravagantly flowered streets of Fendalton, and arrived outside the rendezvous (a posh delicatessen, where everybody enunciates nicely) with a full 15 minutes to spare. By then I was sweltering in two layers of possum merino like a polar bear at a party. (Actually, I look more like a potato sack these days, but potato sacks stay in the shade.)

I then attempted something I would never have contemplated in England. With a mere 15 minutes to spare, I drove down the road to the Mall, parked up, found a clothes shop, found a white T-shirt I liked, put the money on the counter, changed into the T-shirt, collected my receipt, went back to the car, drove back to the restaurant, parked up and was still there, cool and collected, before Brian.

You have to believe me when I say that felt miraculous.

Cut to a couple of weeks later. It is grey. It is sort of raining. It is, as usual, neither cold nor hot. In England:

(a) if it starts out grey and sort of raining, it will be greyer and slightly more raining later on

(b) it will always take longer than you think

(c) you would be better off parking at home

I am meeting a friend for coffee, but first buy a hot-water bottle. Yes, it has grown so grim in England, the centrally-heated capital of the world, that the humble hottie has reasserted its usefulness. It will be warming-pans next, mark my words.

I do not park anywhere; that would be plain silly. I get dropped off. I walk up the hill in the rain, dodging through crowds, trying likely shops. In English shops you have a great range of choice. But the item you want is always out of stock. When I get to hell, I know it will be a store like these, with many kinds of lava lamp and no soap. If you do corner a terrified shelf-stacker he will deny all knowledge of the stock. They might have it at Hemel Hempstead. But I will not shop in Hemel Hempstead, which is an even lower circle of hell. The queue at the till is too long for mere enquiries.

It’s the same at the next high street shop. The unsatisfactory shopping experience is an endless loop.

If I try another shop, I will be late. But then my friend is late, because of parking (see rule c, above). The café is crowded, each table a hermetically sealed unit of Englishness, with invisible signs over each one, reading “Don’t even think of addressing me!” I ask a non-English person if we can share her table.

My friend is Ugandan and has had a great deal of sadness and difficulty in her life, but her smile brightens the day. She settles in to enjoy her coffee extravagantly and she tells me how every day she thanks God and counts her blessings. She ticks them off her elegant fingers as she speaks.

And I think of the multitudinous everyday blessings of life in New Zealand, so generously provided and so much overlooked.

Praise the Lord and go shopping!

Imogen de la Bere is a Kiwi writer living near London.

imogen@attglobal.net