Let me be absolutely clear about something: this is not a political site. It does not do politics. You may have imagined the odd pseudo-political comment buried in one or two of the messages here. But that was just your imagination. Perhaps you are the sort of person who imagines things. I don't know.
Having got that of his chest, the Referee is free to share the following message without fear of being misinterpreted.
I find that New Yorkers know quite a lot of things about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as I like to refer to it, or the UK of Blighty, as it is more formally known. One of the things they know is that it rains a lot over there, and in any case a lot more than it rains here.
This turns out not to be true. In fact, delving into the language of the great Eric Olthwaite only very briefly, if I may, the average annual rainfall in NYC, at 1,124mm, is almost twice that in London (611mm). But, as residents of the UK know only too well, those millimeters are spread nicely through the year - about 2 every day - with a couple of days off in the middle of the year, which we Brits like to call "the summer". In New York, however, most of the annual millimeters fall on the same weekend.
We just had that weekend. It rained heavily and constantly for two days and nights. Everything was cancelled, even Asocceration Football. (Americans do not appreciate - yet - that part of the joy of the "beautiful game" is standing under a corrugated iron roof eating a cold meat pie in the pouring rain while blokes in long shorts slide around in pools of mud.)
As a result, we had nothing to do. My two sons decided to spend Saturday afternoon watching what they now insist on calling a "movie".
Now, at this point, some of you - as though the readership of this site could properly be described in the plural - will be bemoaning my lack of parenting skills. You will be saying to yourselves something along the lines of "Well, when my children were young, they were never allowed to watch TV on a Saturday afternoon. Oh no. In my day, when it rained at the weekend, we amused ourselves with parlour games or teaching the children to speak Cantonese". To those people, I can only apologise. In our house, if there's nothing to do and the kids want to watch a film, they watch a film. Sorry.
Anyway, as my two sons were settling down in front of the TV, I overheard an animated debate about the certificate which the film had been given - apparently displayed on the screen as "PG". They were discussing whether this meant that they would be allowed to watch it in the cinema or not.
In a spirit of helpfulness, and because I thought it might assist in keeping the noise down a bit, I asked whether they knew what the initials "PG" stood for. As quick as a flash, and with a confident grin, my younger son - 7 years old - announced: "Poop government".
I have no idea what he meant by this. Being a 7 year old boy, of course, he would not discuss it any further. But his confident air in announcing this phrase made me think I must be missing something.
So, being a 21st century kind of chap, I Googled it. Not just "poop" and "government", but the precise phrase "poop government". Nothing. Not an episode of Spongebob. Not a new kind of Pop Tart.
Of course, if you were to Google it now, you would get something. You would get me going on about the fact that, when you Google it, you don't get anything. Google is funny like that.
And so my new favo(u)rite phrase remains a mystery. As they like to say over here, "Go figure".
