Sorry, I'm leaving New Zealand

Friends, family, readers, weirdos, It is with an actual tear in my eye and a butter churn in my stomach that I announce I am leaving New Zealand later this year.

This is not a decision I have taken lightly, mostly due to the job and the friends I have accrued (like a commodity) while living over here. I can hand-on-heart say that, on leaving the dear old motherland, I had absolutely no idea that such a fate awaited me; a fate of such brilliant opportunity on both the friendship and work scales. The fact both are so intertwined and linked just pays testament to each.

I'll be leaving on an Air New Zealand flight much like this oneBut I shall save the emotional rhetoric for four months time (If only to spare the Kiwi readers from looks like yet another pre-OE goodbye ramble). Instead, I want to explain why I have made the decision I have made, at least while the reasons still come clearly enough for me to note them down in a coherent fashion.

1. I miss my mummy

My family and I (or just "my family", seeing as I'm included in that collective and don't see why I deserve mentioning twice) have always been close-as. When I left Britain in 2008, I wasn't really thinking straight; I wasn't really prepared for how long distance I would have to fly to get a Wii tennis game in with dad, go dinosaur hunting with sis*, go walking or cycling with mum or crash the sailing centre my bro works at for an evening cruise round in a boat. It's true to say I have done most of those things while living here (guess which one I haven't. Go on, guess), but it's also true to say that Te Whanau o te Wirihana aren't around these parts quite enough for me right now. I also have 1001 bloody good besties back in Britain and I want to hang out with them a bit more regularly. Some of them.

Do not park your Greek scooter here, do not use the stand and do not leave it unattended2. I miss Greece

While Greece has deffo changed in my five years down-under, it's a great example of the type of place I could and would visit when my holidays weren't spent flying between EnZee and the YouKay. Plus, I've never had a shit meal in Greece (a realisation I came to in Irkutsk, having survived on barely-cooked chicken kiev for seven whole days). I have never been to Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Croatia, Denmark, Turkey, Ikea... you get the picture. Last year, my brother cycled to the Netherlands. I want to go on crazy long-weekend adventures like this.

3. I miss Britain

New Zealand, in particular Waitakere, has become a true second home for me. I loved living out in Swanson when I first got off the ship. Even living in Auckland city, I often head out to the ranges just for a whiff of bush as "I'm addicted to the smell".

Now, I want to feel like that about where I am from, where I was born. Great Britain is great, I know that and I want to see that. There's only so much of this brilliance one can get reading the Mail online.

Avoid theme parks during school holidays when one must pick little children off one's soles like pieces of chewing gum4. I miss my theme parks

All 52% of my degree dissertation marks were awarded to a radio "documentary" on theme parks through the ages. I am a pathetic, front-row queuing, superfan of Alton Towers. I know enough twists and turns of the Nemesis Inferno** that I can realistically dream that I'm on it and I offer an excellent cover version of 'Its A Small World' from the shower.

I miss my theme parks. They are mine.

5. New Zealand is amazing

New Zealand: You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leaveA drunk Irishman (photograph that for rareness points) once warned me off migrating to KiwiLand on the basis that it is run, completely and mercilessly, by gangs. I shrugged this off as some kind of smarmy political statement on Helen Clark's governing style, and came along anyway.

A friend said to me this week "there's no place like home", which I started to agree with. But then I stopped him short, because there is a place like home. And this is it. NZ has become my home and it is just like my home. It's just a little bit too Hotel California, so I am breaking free while I can.

* New Zealand is mysteriously terrible for dino-hunting ** The wily theme park spotters amongst you will notice that this is Thorpe Park ride