I'm from New Zealand – from the lack of flirting to the way fish and chips are served, these are the things that baffle me about Britain (and why TEA drives me crazy)

I come, to quote Men At Work, from a country Down Under. I emigrated to Britain 16 years ago in search of easy access to Europe (ahem) and cultural education. And I'm a fan by and large.

There's a lot to love about Britain: its witty humour; the bracingly inventive swearing. Opening a crisp packet in the pub and putting it down as if it were a rich reward, instead of 26 Kettle crisps divided into eight parts. The NHS. Claudia Winkleman's pony.

But this country is mind-boggling. Sometimes so astonishing.

Of course, it is indecent to complain about an adoptive family. “Why don't you just leave then,” might choke up the comments section, as people understandably recoil at a foreigner giving a royal thumbs down to certain customs.

But just like spending the day at work with spinach between your teeth, sometimes the brief incentive to hear the truth is better than toiling in ignorance.

Tea

Why do we always have to make tea, drink tea, offer tea as if it were a salve for all ailments, whether it's a mild hangover or having your arm ripped off?

It's a drink so offensively tasteless that it hits you around the chops with nothingness. A brown crayon dipped in hot water.

How the British flirt

I'm going to stir up controversy here and say, 'You don't do that.'

The British don't have a great game when it comes to seduction. When flirting does occur, it is teasing, a way to let someone know you are interested. I thought it lost its cachet after high school.

More often, though, couplings seem to rely on knocking back one too many in the pub and then mashing mouths together on a vaguely sweaty, flailing walk home.

What works, I think? I'm just saying: compliments can be nice.

Place fish and chips under heat lamps

This is a sin. Fish and chips are manna from a higher power. But then British chippies take this edible heaven and sweat it under heat lamps until someone comes to claim it, like a sad orphaned puppy.

What should be a feather-light batter turns into a soggy sarcophagus for a fish that honestly deserved a better ending.

Bad Supermarket Tomatoes (and the Easy Acceptance of Bad Tomatoes)

Like a soured red blancmange somehow possessed by the concept of defeat.

Newspapers speak of a heat wave when it is 25 degrees in July

Or what we in the Antipodes affectionately call 'summer'.

The railway system

The efficiency (or lack thereof) and cost of train travel makes you somewhat long for Mussolini.

'Was fascism that bad?' you wonder, two hours into a supposedly short trip home.

The popularity of M&S sandwiches

People go crazy for an M&S sandwich. I've seen WhatsApp threads light up with delight when new flavor combinations hit those fluorescent refrigerators.

All (deliberately?) ignoring the fact that cold kills the flavor and those sad little sammies are boring pabulum.

The worst comes at Christmas, when suddenly every sarnie is filled with some form of congealed pork and entirely TOO MUCH cranberry. I wouldn't mention it if the locals weren't completely evangelical about their quality.

Reader, they are not good. They are not cheap. It's mass production of nonsense and the sooner we stand up to the propaganda, the happier our tummies will be. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, a tasty sandwich is not something sinful that only foreigners do. You deserve better.

Washing machines in kitchens

When I think of “fresh laundry,” I don't jump into the room with a lingering smell of fried garlic and burnt toast.

Scottish pronunciation of place names

I now live in England. I lived in Scotland for ten years. The Scots language is beautiful, as are the regional dialects, from the inscrutable cadences of Aberdonian Doric, the gruff glottals of Glasgow, to the fascinating Dundonian use of vowels, stretched and contorted like verbal mozzarella.

But I would swear that the pronunciation of place names is a trick to embarrass foreigners. Milngavie is a mull man? Culross is coo-riss? Kirkcudbright is somehow kir-coo-bree?

It was purely confusing, buddy.

Arguing about whether to put jam or cream on a scone first

This is a nation of Shakespeare and Austen; of Hume and Locke; by Jesse Armstrong and Armando Iannucci. It is full of thoughts, humor, insight and philosophy. There is so much to discuss. But no.

Instead, let's do six rounds AGAIN, with the smooshy gloop going on top of sweet bread first, as if it were somehow sparkly. Or matters. It's all getting chewed up, folks.

See also: arguments about the best cookies or the right tea strength.

Football chants

I attended my first football match in Edinburgh in the biting cold, enduring a cup of hot Bovril for warmth (it tastes like old bull sweat).

Some guy with a nice hip on the field did something stupid with the ball.

A wildly rude chant rang out through the crowd. Not focused on the away team, on the home team.

It boggles my mind that a crowd of people who probably hadn't put on their sneakers in years felt it right to abuse fit young men who they claimed to be into.

British people complain about foreign influences infiltrating their culture

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones drew their musical inspiration from black American blues and rock. Ska started in Jamaica. Fish and chips come from Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch culinary traditions. Tea comes from Asia.

So let's not clutch our pearls when someone who just watched Friends says “garbage” instead of “crap.” British cultural identity is not slowly being corrupted. We have always been a global village.