One thing that’s struck me since I’ve been working back in the UK is how British people don’t understand lunch.

Let me explain. Sweden is a country that is quite rightly not known for its food (unless pea soup EVERY Thursday and Mexican food EVERY Friday is your thing), but they definitely understand lunch. Just off the top of my head I can think of ten places I used to go more or less regularly for my lunch from the office, and I’d sit for an hour or so in the company of my colleagues, pay something between 50 and 60 kronor and have a jolly time.

Singapore, of course, is obsessed with food. There are more places to eat there than there are days in most people’s lives – and again you’d go out for your lunch for an hour and relax.

In Britain, there doesn’t seem to be such a thing as the lunch hour, unless it’s spent shopping. And as for a decent, interesting lunch for under a fiver, forget it. You can get an overpriced sandwich from M&S or somewhere, a burger, a pastie (you don’t want to know) or nothing. And if you want to sit down, you can go and get some processed microwave crap from the pub or go to somewhere like Tampopo, which people here seem to think is the height of sophistication. In fact, it’s overpriced, pretentious and the food is a pale pastiche of South East Asian cuisine.

So all-in-all, I think I might as well just bring my own sandwiches!