The Referee Down Under

The Referee finds himself in Australia.

I don't mean by this that I am undergoing some sort of spiritual awakening which was possible only by travelling halfway around the world and wandering off into the outback. Oh no. I mean only that I find myself in Australia for a period, for reasons which are not important for the purposes of this message.

For the purposes of this message, let's assume that I have made all the effort of travelling over here for the sole purpose of writing pithy and erudite comments about the cultural differences between opposite corners of the New World. This is, of course, not the reason, at least not the only one, and you are not about to read any such comments, but please see if you have it in your heart to humour me on this point, at least for the time it takes to read the next few lines.

After considerable research and analysis of empirical evidence, The Referee can reveal the shocking and unexpected news that not all corners of the New World are the same. It turns out that, rather like babies and pet guinea pigs, each former colony has its own personality, distinct in interesting and subtle ways from each other as well as the Motherland.

And so, for your edification and delight, gentle reader, The Referee is pleased to present Interesting Cultural Differences Between the New Worlds, or Ways In Which Australia Is Not The Same As America.

1. Chocolate

I'm sure you'll agree with me that there are few cultural barometers which are as important (or as good to eat) as the stuff our American friends insist on calling "candy". Imagine my delight then, when arriving at my first Australian supermarket, to find that a good 90% of fare in the confectionery department was just the same as that which might be found in a similar establishment in the UK of Blighty - Kit Kat, Dairy Milk, Turkish Delight, Bounty, etc. I immediately bought up a job load of my personal favourite - Maltesers - and scuttled hurriedly back to my hotel room to devour them in peace. Better still, the establishment in question was good old Woolworths and, even better, I noticed that the locals referred to it as "Woolies". I realised I had landed in civilization.

2. Football

Regular readers (imagine that!) will not be surprised to find that I was keen to investigate the health of the Beautiful Game over here, as well as the terminology employed by the locals to refer to it. I had an idea that this was another corner of the world given to using the s-word but, given the seriousness with which I take my role as your correspondent, dear reader, I wanted to hear it for myself. I was therefore very pleasantly surprised to learn that the world's most popular game is commonly called football over here.

But this discovery was soon tainted slightly when I realised that almost all other sports here are called football as well. In fact there are four Oz footballs: Association, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Australian Rules. In other words, almost everything is football unless it's cricket (and the less said about that the better).

(By the way, The Referee was lucky enough to attend an Aussie rules game the other day - a local derby between two Melbourne teams, Carlton and Collingwood. It was fast, physical and exciting. The pitch was enormous and there were roughly 300 players on each team. But the (oval) ball bobbled all over the place in an ungainly fashion, as did the players, who often ended up in a heap of bodies - the Beautiful Game it ain't.)

3. Body Odour

I can't really pretend that I have discovered an empirical difference between New World body odours as such, but equally I can't resist sharing with you the following story. For reasons that will become obvious, some of the details have had to be obscured.

The Referee was travelling the other day between two Australian cities, let's call them Adelaide and Melbourne, with a certain national airline beginning with Q, let's call it Qantas. Although it's a very short flight, I was mildly dismayed to find myself in a B seat on a Boeing 737 (which, as you jet-setters out there will know, is to be avoided for the same reason as E seats - ie that you are squashed in the middle between two fellow passengers, who tend to be either rather larger than the space afforded by the seat, or taken to spreading their elbows out of their own space and into yours, or both).

On this occasion, neither of these appeared to be the case, and I thought for a moment that my luck was in. How wrong I was. As I settled into my B seat, I noticed almost immediately a very odd smell, which at first I couldn't place. After a couple of minutes I realised that I was dealing with two smells mingled together in a very unpleasant way - it turned out that the chap in A was emitting a very strong mixture of tobacco and body odour. The result was nauseating and almost sweet. (If I was one of those people who write the labels on the back of wine bottles, I would say that there were strong notes of chocolate, but that would of course be ridiculous.)

I realised that I wasn't going to be able to deal with this for the whole flight and that I would have to employ defensive tactics. I reached up to the little air nozzle that sits above aeroplane seats and turned it up full, pointing directly at my nose. I calculated that perhaps this would direct the offending odours downwards before they reached my olfactory awareness. It didn't.

Becoming desperate, I decided that I would have to go on the offensive and turn the nozzle to the left to point at the chap sitting in A. But clearly that might have looked a little odd to say the least. So I compromised by pointing the air slightly to my left, but not so far as to suggest that I was actually pointing it at him. Needless to say, it made no difference at all.

Mercifully, by the time I had finished fiddling we had arrived in Melbourne and I dashed into the airport terminal, gasping lungfuls of lovely, fresh air.

And so, there you have it. The Referee encourages his fellow country-persons to remember that not all the colonies have panned out the same.

Please also remember never to sit in the middle seat.