It's possible, in all the circumstances, that the tirade encapsulated in my previous message was enough to turn off a large proportion of my American readers, horrified by my flagrant anti-Americanism. Supposing that that proportion is 50%, and supposing that American readers made up 25% of my readership, until my previous message, I have just lost something in the region of, let's say, one reader, give or take. Ho, hum.
In fact, of course, The Referee doesn't have an anti-American bone in his body. Why move to live in a country that you can't stand? Despite all the little things that annoy one about wherever it is that one lives, one tends nevertheless to form an attachment to the place. When it's the US of America, and indeed New York in particular, that attachment is not difficult to establish. Here are the top ten reasons why.
In other words, please stand to attention (although not in the sense of my previous message), put on an old recording of God Bless America at high volume, and enjoy The Referee's Bumper Top Ten Reasons to Live in the New World.
10 Trains
In the New World, trains are modern, or at least clean. There is always - and I mean always - a uniformed conductor with a nice hat who is very interested in whether or not you have (ie one has) a ticket. And - this is the best part - the trains leave and arrive when the timetable says they will. I can remember only one occasion when my train was as much as ten minutes late, and that was the day after a record-breaking two feet of snow had fallen on Central Park. British readers should note that I am not making any of this up.
9 Guitar shops
OK, I accept that this is something of a niche entry, so I'll get it over with quickly. The Referee has had occasion to visit guitar shops at both sides of the Atlantic. Visit a guitar shop in this country, any guitar shop (probably), and you will find not only guitars, but also staff who are (i) knowlegeable about their subject, (ii) polite, (iii) friendly, and (iv) not troubled by an affliction by which their knuckles drag along the ground. Those who have ever attempted to buy a guitar in the UK of Blighty will know what I mean.
8 Newspapers
Just like the homeland, the New World has two types of newspaper: the serious and the not-so serious. The less said about the latter the better. But here the former are different. They actually make an attempt to report the news without assuming that the reader is such a numbskull that he (or she!) needs to be told what to think about it. And they refer to everbody, and I mean everybody, as Mr or Ms - even bad people.
7 The Stars and Stripes
One of the definitive sights of suburban America is a neighbo(u)rhood of quaint wooden-framed houses, almost all of which have a basketball hoop at the back, and the Stars & Stripes hanging at the front. If one is a Brit - and presumably one will know, one way or the other - it's worth pausing to think what the equivalent definitive sight might be. Whatever your answer, it's a safe bet that it won't include Union Flags aka Union Jacks hanging out in front of houses. In fact, if one does see the national flag hanging outside a house in the homeland, one assumes that the occupant is an eccentric, extremist fruitcake. Worse still, one would, generally speaking, be right.
In recent years, a healthy exception to this rule has emerged, when England's finest are appearing at the finals of an important and meaningful international tournament. Following the recent Euro 2008 non-qualification debacle, this exception is not likely to apply for a while.
6 Motels
Anyone who has tried driving for any distance around the New World - and if you haven't, you should - will know the joy of deciding willy nilly that one has had enough for the day and turning unannounced into the next motel which presents itself, where one will almost always find an adequate and clean room, and sometimes breakfast as well, in exchange for a number of dollars which would probably not be sufficient to buy the coffee machine in the room. (Yes, I know that's all one sentence. Please feel free to breathe where you think it appropriate. No need to do the whole thing in one go.)
5 Holidays
All Europeans who have hung around in this part of the world for any length of time will have noticed that working Americans tend to have an average of about 5 minutes annual leave. This would be enough to make anyone miserable, not to mention unproductive, so the always-ingenious Americans have tended to mitigate the meanness of their corporations by inventing a long list of reasons to have public holidays.
To mention just a few, there's Martin Luther King's birthday (which also happens to be my mother's birthday) (hello mum), Inauguration Day (for the new President, every fourth year), President's Day (which is celebrated on Washington's birthday), Memorial Day (for those who didn't make it back from wars), Independence Day (the less said about that the better), Labo(u)r Day (which is set aside specifically so that Americans can work on their spelling), Columbus Day (which is odd in the sense that the country is actually named after another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci), Veterans' Day (for those that did make it back from wars), and Thanksgiving. On second thoughts, that's all of them. Unless you also include Christmas and New Year's (New Year's what?).
4 Thanksgiving
Notwithstanding the entry at #5 above, there is one particular holiday which constitutes a major contribution to American culture, and not just because we have celebrated it recently. Thanksgiving is not just a very welcome long weekend, but also a genuinely communal event in which friends and families fly and drive huge distances in order to be together, for no other reason than to sit around eating and drinking too much.
In theory, at least, it commemorates the arrival of English settlers in Virginia in 1619. Unless it commemorates the feast which another group of settlers enjoyed with Native Americans in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621.
In practice, most Americans don't worry too much about the precise origins of the feast, at least not as much as they care about eating it.
3 Diners
Now, don't get me wrong. I am as big a fan of the fried English breakfast as the next chap, but there really is nothing like going to a traditional chrome-enhanced diner for breakfast, better still brunch. They really know how to do it. But make sure you go early in the day - by dinner time it's just another restaurant.
2 New England
For a moment, if you will allow it, dear reader, I would like to address just my fellow country-persons, and anyone else intimately acquainted with the UK of Blighty. American readers should go out into the back yard and shoot some hoops for a while, or something.
Imagine, if you will, the homeland, but with the following amendments: (i) all the coastline looks like Cornwall, only more beautiful; (ii) all the inland areas look like the Scottish Highlands, only three times as high; (iii) the open road is, well, open, rather than like a long, thin car park; and (iv) there are no chavs.
I rest my case.
1 Baseball
A serious debate is continuing over here, and I dare say over there as well, about whether the arrival of a certain D Beckham at LA Galaxy will be the catalyst which elevates Assocceration Football from minor also-ran to major player in the world of US sport(s). I can assure you that it won't.
I don't say this because I have anything against Becks (I don't), or because I think his arrival will cause any harm (it won't), but because I happen to think that sport is inextricably linked to culture.
To put it less pompously ("too late for that!" I expect you're thinking), the biggest sports are the biggest because they matter to people, and they matter to people because they come up from the streets.
Baseball is America's pastime not because somebody organised it that way, but because young kids here have for more than 100 years gone out into the street with sticks and stones and anything else that came to hand and tried to emulate Willie Mays or Reggie Jackson or Babe Ruth. As I have argued previously on this site, one can learn a lot about this country from watching baseball, which occupies a similar place in hearts here as football does in the homeland.
Whilst it may not be THE beautiful game, it is certainly A beautiful game, and the thing I will most miss about the New World when I eventually return to the old one.
So, there you have it. Certain readers will no doubt conclude that the #1 entry above confirms that I have finally lost my marbles. You know who you are. It's a fair cop.
For everyone else, should you ever feel a little twinge of anti-Americanism developing, just have a lie down and perouse this list. I guarantee you'll feel better.
