Whenever a Brit learns that I’m a New Zealander – grew up there, got the passport, only moved to the UK in 2017 – often their faces scrunch up with confusion: “Why would you live here when you could be living there?”
It doesn’t seem to matter if they’ve been to New Zealand themselves or not. The implication is that I have known the Garden of Eden, even been granted a key, and responded by saying: “Actually, you know what? I’ll take Norwich instead.”
