A Tisket, a Tasket, a Green and Yellow Basket

For the sake of clarity, I want to start by saying that I am, in general terms, an enthusiast when it comes to sport, or sports, as they like to say here. Given that there are indeed more than one of them, I suppose the plural has it. Or has them, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, for the last couple of weeks much of this fair land has been gripped by the final stages of the NCAA men's basketball competition. My in-depth investigation - on your behalf, you understand - suggests that that stands for National Collegiate Athletics Association. That's right - the newspapers and airwaves have been whipped into a frenzy about - wait for it - college basketball.

In a recent chat about sport(s) - (what else is there for men of a certain age to talk about?) - one of our neighbo(u)rs asked me about the state of the college scene in the UK. How was college basketball, for instance? I pointed out that, whilst there may well be some college students playing basketball (and all sorts of other things) in the UK, it got no media coverage at all, because no one was interested.

He looked at me as though I had said something quite inappropriate about his mother. Which I had not. I don't even know the woman. So let's just leave it there, shall we?

Anyway, in case you think I am unjustly persecuting keen young students who are lucky enough to have their PE lessons televised, there is more to it than that.

Because, you see, CBS has been so accommodating of these important sporting events that it has actually - whisper it - moved "The Late Show with David Letterman" back in the schedules. Which is almost like saying something inappropriate about MY mother. For those of us who have reached the prime of life (see my message of 18 March), staying up 'til 11:30pm is bad enough; but 12:30am is out of the question. And so I have been temporarily deprived of my favo(u)rite program(me).

Now, you should know that the David Letterman show is very funny. I make this rather basic point only because my wife does not see it quite the same way. She thinks he is a lecherous old millionaire who reads out other people's mediocre one-liners. Maybe so, goes my retort, but he's still very funny. (You will infer from this that I am a first-rate debater.)

The show is so funny partly because it's always the same: Dave does topical monologue; Daves indulges in comedy banter with Paul Shaffer (his musical director); Dave gets the audience to do something stupid and/or reads out a comedy Top Ten list of something topical; Guest #1 (doesn't get much of a word in); Guest #2 (ditto); band (usually loud). End. Bingo. I don't mean that Dave actually....oh, never mind.

Now, in order to give the impression that we are living a showbiz lifestyle over here, I should mention that we were recently at a party and in the middle of the evening I realised that I was standing next to the one and only Mr Paul Shaffer. I thought briefly about having a chat and then decided against it.

On the way home, I pointed this out to my wife, who hadn't spotted him. "You should have introduced us", she said, "I would have told him that his show isn't very funny".

It's enough to drive one out into the yard to shoot some hoops. Whatever that means.

Big Bang and Fries, Please

The Referee has recently experienced what might euphemistically be called a "significant" birthday.

In the context of birthdays, "significant" usually means (i) that the second digit is zero, and/or (ii) that the first digit is quite large. In my case, both of these apply.

Now, I don't know about you, but in my experience of birthdays where the second digit is a 0, the first digit tends to be a 3 or, on one occasion I can still remember, even a 2. So when it is a larger number than either of these, one is entitled to be a little surprised, not to mention concerned.

But, as I was on the verge of becoming anxious about this situation, the good old New York Times came to the rescue.

This week, the Times reports that astronomers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, have come a step closer to proving what happened in the first trillionth of a second after time began.

As these experts estimate that the universe has been around for something in the region of 13.7 billion years, one could be forgiven for thinking that the odd second, let alone a trillionth of a second, was neither here nor there. Apparently not so.

The news is that there is fresh evidence to support the theory of "inflation" - ie, in the lovely words of the Times, that, in the first trillionth of a second following the Big Bang, the universe grew "from submicroscopic to astronomical size in the blink of an eye".

The journalist rather understates his case by comparing this to "the kind of growth spurt that would alarm any mom or dad". I should say so. You would hardly have time to take your receipts back to Mothercare before junior's waistline had to be measured in light years.

Now, I don't pretend to understand the science of how they work these things out, but apparently it involves mapping microwaves (the waves, not the ovens) in order to build a picture of what our 13.7 billion-year-old universe looked like after a mere 380,000 years, which provides clues as to what was going on even earlier than that.

One of the conclusions of this technique is that the first stars probably didn't start shining until 400 million years after the Big Bang. This is apparently something of a relief to many astronomers, who had been concerned that the previous estimate of 200 million years was "surprisingly early".

Enough to make you feel young, isn't it?

Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Mouse?

In case you don't do so already, I strongly recommend keeping an up-to-date mental list of things and places to avoid.

I have found this to be a very useful technique because, without such a list immediately to hand, or mind, one can easily be swept by circumstances into a situation in which one realises too late why it was that the thing in question was on the list which one has failed to keep to hand, or mind. I hope that's clear so far.

By way of illustration, the top three things on my list, in no particular order, are currently:

(i) hospitals, or any other facility in which medical things are likely to happen;
(ii) nightclubs, or other similar venues in which I am likely to feel insufficiently young and/or trendy (increasingly both);
(iii) theme parks, and any similar attractions at which having "fun" is mandatory.

Well, with the exception of a brief accidental appearance at a trendy downtown Manhattan nightclub - which didn't really count because I left at 9:30, having remembered why I hate nightclubs so much - I had done pretty well at avoiding those places on my list whilst in the US. Until last week.

Last week, I finally caved in to pressure from the rest of the family that we couldn't reasonably live in the US for any period without trying the quintessential American holiday/vacation experience - ie spending a few days at Walt Disney World in Florida. I gave in strictly on the basis, you understand, that this was a one-off experience and it would be best to get it over with (like having your wisdom teeth taken out or getting a vasectomy - see (i) above).

Well, I learned a lot last week, including about my tolerance to take-away pizza. But a more interesting thing I learned is that WDW covers roughly the same area as Rhode Island. That's right - the property owned by WD in Florida is as large as the smallest of the USA's fifty states.

I also discovered that most of the attractions at WDW are constructed from one of two key Disney components - plastic and cheese. Occasionally these two elements occur together, although usually only in the fast-food outlets.

To be fair, most of the attractions are well presented and we found something enjoyable in most of the several theme parks. Having said that, I wouldn't recommend the "Magic Blingdom" - I don't know about you, but watching people drive around in BMWs showing off their jewellery is not my idea of a good day out.

But, being serious for a moment, if I may - consider this. WDW is the largest theme park in the world. It is located in the sunniest and most visited state of the richest country in the world. Each year it welcomes hundreds of thousands of well-heeled visitors, most of whom are Americans, but who also come from every corner of the world. Relatively few of them are people from the north of England wearing football shirts.

This being the case, WDW is in an enormously powerful position in terms of advertising and endorsements. Whoever Disney decides to get in to bed with, so to speak, is going to do very nicely. From my recent highly scientific survey, I can tell you that the two leading organisations benefitting from a conspicuous on-site presence at WDW are Coca-Cola and McDonald's. This is hardly a surprise, particularly to anyone who has tried to eat the food, but it shows a distinct lack of imagination.

Supposing someone high up at Disney decided to do something creative and daring. Supposing they decided, for example, to endorse fairly-traded coffee. Supposing WDW decreed that only fairly-traded coffee was going to be sold across its enormous estate of hotels and theme parks, and supposing it advertised to its hundreds of thousands of visitors what is was doing and why. I can't begin to put any numbers on it, but it's safe to say that the impact on the economic fortunes of independent farmers in South and Central America would be significant.

Is anything along these lines likely to happen soon? Not a mouse in hell's chance.