Louisa Herd: The grass is greener back home in Glasgow

The populist, vote-catching rhetoric of Winston Peters has certainly sparked a lot of debate on the pages of the Herald. (If it does the job of catching votes for Mr Peters, surely it must follow that xenophobia is an integral part of the New Zealand mindset? After all, if his tub-thumping wasn't doing what he wanted it to do, he would shut up and ooze back under his rock.)

I have lived in this country for 15 years. Unlike most migrants, I never wanted to come here. I had a close family in Scotland and a job with an excellent salary and inspiring career structure. I lived in a beautiful city of leafy parks and gracious stone buildings, including a 12th-century Gothic cathedral; a city with two top-class theatre companies, the national orchestra, ballet, and opera companies, and several world-famous art galleries.

And, if I felt so inclined, I could go and watch two entertaining football (played with a round ball) teams. Okay, I'll make it three, for any diehard Partick Thistle fans out there. I belong to Glasgow and every day I wish I'd never left St Mungo's dear, green place by the Clyde.

So? I hear you all say. Go home then, you ingrate. It's not that simple. I married a Kiwi I met over there, and fell pregnant. He wanted his child brought up in the unspoiled paradise of New Zealand. Fair enough, I thought. I'll give her a go. It sounds nice.

So I sat through the obligatory interview at New Zealand House in London, conducted by Sir Les Patterson himself, right down to the green teeth and eggy tie.

"What do you do?" asked Sir Les.

"I'm a podiatrist."

"We don't want any of those," he snapped.

"Do you know what a podiatrist is?" I inquired.

"No," admitted Sir Les.

"Well," I said, "if you don't know what one is, how do you know you don't want one?"

Within two months of the birth of my son, I had a job offer in New Zealand. I was the sole applicant. It took a further six months, and pressure from my employer to obtain my licence to practise - this despite the fact that similarly qualified New Zealanders stepped into positions back in Britain with the dust from their cheap OE flight still coating their Jandals.

I then spent six years working in a stuck gramophone, which endlessly repeated the Peters litany of "What are you doing over here stealing Kiwi jobs?" Occasionally, it played, "Why can't you learn to speak English?" with a chorus of "If you don't like it, go home".

I threw in the towel. For the past nine years, I've milked cows. They don't care whether I'm black, white or Hunting MacLean tartan.

People say to me, Britain is so dirty and overcrowded. I'll bet you feel lucky, living here.

Sorry, folks, I don't - and as for your images of pristine waters and lush pastures that you thrust in the sooty faces of us British slagheap dwellers, they really bug me, especially when my mother back home tells me about her local council's user-friendly recycling scheme.

My mother lives in a place the size of Warkworth. Where's our recycling scheme? Where's the real commitment to zero waste? It sure isn't in Clean, Green New Zealand.

The only reason this land is sort of clean-ish is that it has a small population. Our quiet rural road is lined with quarter-pounder boxes and Coke cans. The remote beach near my home is littered with garbage chucked overboard by boaties. You can't blame the Aussies for it. It hasn't floated over from Melbourne. They're not drinking our beer over there - they make enough fizzy wallaby widdle of their own.

It's you lot pooping in your own nest, and nobody seems to care. Dirty Britain, eh? Get off the grass.

Because every New Zealander of faintly Scottish provenance likes to bail me up and tell me about his family castle, I've met more sprigs of the Caledonian nobility here than you could shake out of a Balmoral four-poster. The opportunities to use a bit of Glaswegian repartee on these aristocrats manque are limitless, but so far I've resisted, first because nobody would get the humour in it, and, secondly, at least half the people I'll converse with in a day won't understand a word I say, and talk to my husband instead.

No, I don't attempt jokes. Just trying to make a simple purchase in a shop, or order something on the phone is ordeal enough; hence everyone now thinks I'm a typical Scottish misery, full of porridge and Calvinist doom.

It's difficult adapting to a new country. The people in your new home have different attitudes and mores. You can't step on any toes - you are in their territory now. Every word must be considered before utterance. You must try to speak like them, or at least modify your accent to make it easier on their ears.

In doing this, you lose a little of yourself. I don't realise just how hard it is on me to communicate with Kiwis until I meet another Scot and can speak freely.

I profoundly regret the loss of my family, my culture, and my own people. I did not come here through any choice of my own, and have felt about as welcome in this country as a wee note from the pox-doctor.

Mr Peters has only brought to the surface what many migrants have felt from New Zealanders for years. Unfortunately, married to one and with two Kiwi sons, I'm outnumbered and stuck here - a reluctant ET who would really rather go home.

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Herald feature: Immigration