From a descending aircraft, every country is England. Quirks of etiquette and language barriers don’t come across from 12,000 feet up, where the landmasses below invariably look like grassy jigsaw puzzles, breaking occasionally for the light grey of a cliff-face, or the sprawling black string of a road network. William Blake’s description of England as a ‘green and pleasant land’ with ‘pleasant pastures’ and ‘mountains green’ (there were fewer adjectives available in the 19th Century) is evoked everywhere when looked at through a cabin window. If the quietly stunning view that you get from that altitude – once described by Postal Service as ‘a patchwork of farms slowly fading into the ocean’s arms’ – had a taste, it would be the taste of a brilliant roast dinner undermined by a cloudy cider. It would sound like a Britpop-Elgar mashup. It would feel like Australian sporting success. It’s a sight that’s as quintessentially English as the word ‘quintessentially’.

“Paul,” you’re thinking, “there’s no way that this claim has any basis in objectivity. It’s just that you experienced England from the air before most other places, so you’re comparing what you see when you touch down in a country with one of the countries you’re most familiar with.”

“Besides,” you’re continuing, “it’ll also be a product of the fact that you haven’t been to a topographically diverse range of places. It might be true that regions of mid-lateral Europe and the Northeast USA look basically comparable to the home counties from above, but good luck trying to wring aerial views of the Lake District out of an approach to Cape Town, or convince anyone that the frozen majesty of the Sakha Republic reminds you of nothing more than rural Surrey. You can’t just report your incredibly specific observations and act as if they hold for everyone, always.”

Listen: shut up.

Anyway, me feeling this way is probably brought on by the fact that 2017 was the first full calendar year I spent as a resident of the USA. Two things that have resulted from this are: a) I’ve been on board planes much more frequently than in any previous year of my life, and b) I’ve quite suddenly discovered that England feels like home. Despite never understanding what Britishness was my whole life, out of nowhere I feel it constantly: in checkout lines at the supermarket, during stilted conversations with Lyft drivers, while teaching, and always, always, always at parties. My national sentiments used to be exhausted in the distance between Shetland and Gretna; Leeds and Cardiff belonged to me in 2017.

I know, I know: it’s pointless and made-up to ‘feel’ like any nationality. Don’t worry, I too have collected that Woolly Leftist scouts badge (right next to the woggle, between the patches for ‘Advanced Mentioning of the Quality of Cuba’s Healthcare’ and ‘Aren’t We the Real Terrorists Anyway?’). But pointless or not, I think most of us do (and if you claim that you primarily feel ‘European’, you’re either lying or unbelievably dull). I’d say the test is this: what is the geographical range of places from which someone could hail, such that, if you met them on a foreign holiday, you’d think: ‘Oh! Like me’? Previously, if I met someone from London while in Rome, I’d be like: ‘Greetings, exotic traveller! Tell me of the customs of your people! I understand you recently hosted an Olympic Games – what fun! You’re not part of the ICF are you?’ But the further away it gets, the closer it feels, and now I just ask them if they knew my Gran.

So, the first new thing I experienced this year was:

1: Britishness

Here’s some of the most British things I’ve actually caught myself saying out loud this year:

“If you don’t have gravy you need to get out of my face.”

[To a man standing quite hard on my foot in the subway] “Sorry, do you mind if I… Sorry. Sorry.”

“Well, this is probably the most poorly-organized queue I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, over here they call it The Great British Baking Show but that’s objectively wrong.”

“I can tell that you’re upset, Mrs. O’Hara, and condolences about your son, but the Corn Laws are hardly going to enforce themselves, now, are they?”

But what other new stuff have I discovered this year? The following:

2: Yoga

Way back in 2001, Geri Halliwell invented yoga in a bid to become one of our top five favourite Spice Girls, and since then, it’s went from strength to strength. This summer, only a decade-and-a-half later and still in good time for it to count as a legitimately interesting blog experience, I joined my friend Sheniece at the yoga class she attends.

First things first: the yoga instructor was late. She mentioned something about a family emergency but unprofessionalism is unprofessionalism. In my career I’ve been faced with occasions in which friends and family have invited me to weddings, deathbeds, and thinly-veiled cries for help, and I’ve steadfastly ignored them all to get on with what I do best. Yoga is almost as important as academic philosophy, so I would expect the same commitment from the instructor. Unfortunately I can’t remember her name, because she made next to no impression on me or my life and, as a person, simply does not matter. Let’s call her Herod.

Anyway, it starts off well enough. Yoga is like exercise, except not unpleasant. If lifting weights or running is the equivalent of a drill sergeant for your body, screaming homophobia at it as it degrades itself to demonstrate conformity, yoga is more like a lover or an accountant, gently helping it sort through piles of paperwork in a co-operative, supportive manner, or making it cum. No analogy is airtight.

Still, while it’s not quite as punishing, over the course of a yoga class the poses and contortions you’re doing do ramp up quite a bit, from the point where you’re sort of thinking ‘This is simple, why am I being taught how to breathe?’ to ‘Oh, never had this part of my body be higher up than that part of my body before. Well that’s scary, then’. The poses are called out so serenely and unremarkably by the instructor – I think yoga might promote calmness, or something – that you feel as if the implication is that you will of course be able to touch the top of your skull with the sole of your foot. In this context, it’s easy for someone who’s new to yoga to make simple mistakes during difficult portions of the class, right? And if other members of the class were to find this at all amusing, they’d only be proving themselves to be childish, infantile babies who just totally lack maturity and can’t act like grown-ups, right? Exactly. Thank you.

There’s a bit in the class where you’re supposed to strap your arms together, press them against the wall, walk the lower half of your body towards the upper half, and then push up, until you are upside down and touching the wall with your whole body. While attempting to do this I made a simple and understandable mistake, and Herod – who, as we have established, I feel no ways about, really – suddenly morphed from the pleasant-if-nondescript tutor she had previously been to unleash a torrent of what can only be described as poisonous, poisonous bile.

When stalking a colony of gazelles or zebras, lions will sometimes make an initial attack on an unlucky member of the group (not always because it’s weak or elderly, by the way; it can sometimes be random and not a reflection on how capable the animal is at sprinting through the Savannah or properly maintaining a Shirshasana headstand). Then, following the herd at a distance and watching while its chosen prey gradually succumbs to its wounds, the lion – and this is where it makes me laugh that people call lions brave because they’re actually cowardly, petty little bitches – will savage the unfortunate beast as soon as it’s isolated from its colleagues. The reason I mention the apparently unrelated behaviour of lions is that I’m quite cleverly introducing a metaphor for how the instructor was about to treat me.

I had tried to place my body flatly against the wooden panels, using the tautness of the strap to gird my elbows in order to support my weight, just as I had been instructed. Unfortunately the strap had unravelled as I pushed my legs up over my torso, causing my arms to unexpectedly slump to the floor. My neck buckled into an awkward angle as my weight piled on top of it, and my legs came halfway back down, bringing my crotch within centimetres of my face. My shorts were quite loose and the more opportunistic yogis in the hall may have seen a small amount of buttock. It sounds less dignified than it looked.

Skulking over to my portion of the wooden wall with her teeth borne (remember the lion thing), Herod summoned all the cattiness she could muster, and spat: “Uh oh, looks like you’ve got yourself in all sorts of trouble here!” She could barely contain her delight. Sheniece kept to her own headstand but the man to my immediate right snorted condescendingly. He had actually opted to go with the much-easier shoulder stand, rather than even attempt the headstand, so I don’t know what he was laughing about. I don’t want to criticise anyone’s physique but he was a disgusting mess.

“Let’s see if I can give you a hand here,” she went on, bringing my legs to the floor and retightening the strap. “It is quite difficult so if you want to try something else instead, you can.” Huge smirk on her face, of course. I think Sheniece had mentioned my nationality to Herod when they were chatting at the start of class, but let’s not get hysterical: there’s simply not enough evidence to say whether her behaviour towards me did or did not constitute a hate crime. Only she knows her motivations for sure.

Don’t let this unpleasantness cloud your judgement about yoga though, because it’s really quite good. 9/10

3: New Places

New London, Connecticut:

In my previous section I adopted the role of a dickhead for comic effect, which makes me worry that the legitimately positive things I have to say about this place will come across as ironic sneering. They’re not; I sincerely loved my trip here in September. The harbour area offers some gorgeous Atlantic views, the town centre is picturesque, and you feel able to have a chat with people in shops. Feels much more like America than Manhattan, and if I can generalize from New London to Connecticut, ‘The Constitution State’ defies my general impression that, the more literal and specific the state’s official nickname, the less worth visiting the state is. (California is ‘The Golden State’. South Dakota is ‘The Mount Rushmore State’.)

Okay, just one thing though: the river that runs through New London is called the Thames, but it’s not pronounced like ‘Temms’, it’s pronounced like ‘Thames’. The ‘Th’ is a dental fricative, rather than a hard ‘t’ sound, and the whole word rhymes with ‘games’. Why not just call it The Great British Baking Show while you’re at it?

Southampton, England:

I have heard that Southampton is nicer than Portsmouth. I will say that that doesn’t reflect fantastically well on Portsmouth, and leave it at that.

Ithaca, New York:

Gorges.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

A city that’s interesting and fun enough in its own right that, frankly, it should just shut up about the Liberty Bell at this point.

Oban, Scotland:

Probably the destination I should have built this section around, but I literally only remembered that I visited here in 2017 five minutes ago.

Washington D.C.:

Not even part of a state. Pathetic.

4: Coming Up With This Amazing Joke:

When you get home and go straight to bed:

Next Week Paul Tries: realistically, a 2018 retrospective is most likely.