It’s a summer Sunday in a beer garden in Islington, London, at drinks organised by Ivan, a friend visiting from Sydney.

Ivan is inhaling some soggy crust thing covered in gravy and some hard-looking peas. Underneath is meat flown in from New Zealand, washed down with a pint of some warm, brownish swill.

He looks supremely happy.

“Would you ever move here?” I ask him. Normally Ivan lives in North Bondi and does things like swim in the sea each day.

Ivan doesn’t hesitate. “In a heartbeat,” he replies.

But speak to a British person and they’ll tell you the country has gone to the dogs.

There is now a level of gloom and despair in the UK, the likes of which I’ve never seen.

But as an outsider (and admittedly also an anglophile), there are still things about this country that are so completely wonderful, they keep me coming back year after year.

People are friendly

The stereotype that Brits are stuck-up or aloof couldn’t be further from the truth. Every time I am lost in London (frequently if I don’t have data on my phone), I’m staggered by how helpful and friendly complete strangers are. They will walk blocks out of their way to make sure you get to the right pub – and then they’ll offer advice on whether it’s a good pub or you should have picked the Kings Head to meet your friends instead.

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I even interrupted someone’s jog to get directions. The sweat-soaked man was clearly in full steam going towards Regent’s Park but stopped, used his phone to direct me to Euston, then THANKED ME for giving him the opportunity to “rest”. (Brits are also the only people who apologise to you when you bump them with your backpack on a crowded tube.)

Try interrupting someone’s run in Sydney – they won’t stop for you. They will never stop for you, except maybe to hiss at you or give you a dirty look.

They are friends for life, eventually

While they are helpful on the street with directions, it can take several years before a British person will invite you into their home for dinner.

In my experience of working in London, friendship with British colleagues went like this: British colleague has too much to drink at a pub and tells you some big secret from their childhood (really not that interesting!), then spends a year avoiding you at the office because they are so embarrassed, until the next time you get drunk with them, and it happens again, until five years later at work they offer to make you a cup of tea, and then a year passes and then you go for lunch, and a year later, dinner.

A lot of British people take a while to warm up – but once they do, you’ve made a friend for life.

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They are good hosts

If you’re a guest at a British person’s house, you are guaranteed to be offered, at a minimum, the following comforting items: a cup of tea, a digestive biscuit and a hot water bottle. British hosts don’t just want their guests to be comfortable, they want them to be snug and cosy. This snugness extends also to the way they decorate their “loos”. The first house I lived in in London had carpet in the toilet! British people are also the only nationality who not only have a vast array of books in their toilets but have a separate genre to read while on the toilet (called “toilet books”) that tend towards PG Wodehouse-style light wit or a collection of one-liners by Winston Churchill.

The people on TV look like normal people

In Australia and America, everyone on television looks like they’ve come out of the same factory that made Ivanka Trump: glossy hair, perfect makeup, sharp suit, slim. Not in the UK! The people on TV look like newspaper reporters. What a shock it is to turn on the television news and see the reporter has knotted his tie too tight at the neck and looks as though he’s going to choke, or that his jacket doesn’t fit properly, or that the buttons at belly level are straining (who can concentrate on what he’s saying about the Irish backstop when the real drama is whether his shirt is going to pop open on air?), or that she probably needs to brush her hair, or that her mascara is a bit blobby or her eyes slightly crossed.

British TV people – they’re just like us!

There are still proper newspapers

Across the US major newspapers are closing, while in Australia some cities, such as Brisbane, are only serviced by one newspaper (owned by Rupert Murdoch).

But in London there’s an embarrassment of riches, with 12 daily newspapers and 11 only-Sunday ones that cater for readers across the political spectrum.

Sunday newspapers are a particular treat. You’ll need until Wednesday to get through them. In Australia the glossy supplements are as thin as gruel and the Sunday papers can be read in the time it takes to brew the coffee.

You can ramble

OK, forgetting the cost of getting to the countryside (£70 for a return ticket to Dorset!) once you are there, and if the weather is good, there’s nothing better than to walk through the countryside, across fields and farms, into bluebell dells, through unexpected woodlands, or along a river, or across a moor – until you arrive at some ancient pub and can sit by the fire drying your muddy boots and enjoying something starchy and comforting. There are an estimated 140,000 miles of footpaths and bridle paths in England and Wales that are considered public rights of way – a right established for commoners in 1217.

This network of paths and walkways, and the right to ramble on them, is one of the best – and most unique – things about this country.

The pubs

You can drink in them alone, with a good book or newspaper, and not be hassled. You can bring in your dogs. There are snugs and nooks and small rooms to make it feel as though you’re in a cosy room at a friend’s house. Across the UK, pubs sell beers and ciders that are brewed locally. Lockout laws in Sydney mean drinking and staying out late is now a proposition tangled in new laws and red tape, and the proliferation of poker machines at the expense of the live music scene have killed off some of the culture, while the average British village pub still has a strong sense of community.

• Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist