It's time to face the not-so-final curtain

And so, dear reader(s), the time has finally come to face the not-so-final curtain.

As one door closes, another door opens.

Into each life some rain must fall.  

In order to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs.  

Actually, I have no idea about that last one, but I'll ask my loyal manservant, Javier.  

As per my previous message, things are moving on in the fiction business.  A novel or two, some short stories, it's all going on.  

That being the case, I am hereby moving my online presence over to jonpayne.org.

I pledge to keep blogging over there with news of my fiction activities.  And, if you're very lucky, and I'm having a slow week, I promise occasionally to drop in an illuminating blog post about the shape of American states or my own vulgar take on TV healthcare ads or hilarious gifts one can buy for ones pets online.     

It's been an almost-decade of on-and-off merriment, illumination and discovery.  I hope you've enjoyed it half as much as I have.  If not, I'll settle for a third.

So, here's your mission, should you choose to accept it: please join me at:

jonpayne.org for all my fiction writing activities;

@jon7payne for my writing-related tweeting.

Let me close with a few words from the Grateful Dead: "What a long, strange trip it's been".  Amen.

Mea culpa, pending something de novo

I am getting the distinct impression, dear reader, that we have now technically arrived in the spring of 2014, albeit that you wouldn't be able to guess that fact from spending any time outside anywhere on the mid Atlantic coast of the US of America.  Nevertheless, and regardless of the weather, I must admit to a dereliction of blogosphere duty for a year or more, for which I can only apologize.

There are a number of possible reasons for such dereliction of duty, which might include (i) I had become trapped under a large and heavy object, (ii) I had joined a monastery and taken a vow of literary abstinence, and/or (iii) I had lost my typewriter (whatever that is!) to a band of marauding Cossacks.  The truth, that I took a year off to write a novel, is only slightly less implausible than any of these three possibilities.

To those readers who have been waiting breathlessly to read 'Hamish and Veronica Take Manhattan', as trailed in my previous message, I owe yet another apology.  No such story exists, except in my fevered imagination; but I suppose that without fevered imagination no stories would exist of any sort. Anyhow, my regular, slightly less-fevered, imagination has labo(u)red for a year to bring you a novel entitled 'The Shores', about a tragic bombing incident in the fictional beach town of Canterbury MA.  Watch this space, so to speak, for news about that.

For now, in a thinly-veiled, in fact totally un-veiled, attempt to whet your appetite (when did anyone 'whet' anything other than an appetite?) (on second thoughts, don't answer that), I bring you the following extract, which introduces our protagonist.  Enjoy.

…

Memorial Day, exactly one year before the explosions.

Jimmy Twelvetrees pedalled up the hill as fast as he could, his shoelaces dangling dangerously close to his bike chain, steering with his right hand and momentarily holding a piece of toast in his mouth, so that he could use his left hand to adjust his headphones.  He saw old Mr Crabtree step out into the road just in time to swerve around him, almost losing his balance, and then regaining it enough to wave his toast in the air.  

“Morning, Mr Crabtree!” he called back over his shoulder, optimistically.  As usual, Mr Crabtree ignored him.  “Miserable old bastard,” Jimmy said to himself.

At the corner of the park, Jimmy had a quick look around and, seeing no one nearby, cut onto the footpath that ran across the park, past the sign that read ‘Strictly no bicycles, roller skates or ball games’.  He had calculated, several summers earlier, that, while technically breaking parks department by-laws, or some such thing that is of no concern to 17-year-olds, this shortcut saved him a good 5 minutes over going all the way up Park Road and across on McPherson Street.

Jimmy arrived at the depot at 3 minutes past 6am.  Mr Gupta was already out front, looking at his watch.  

“Come on, Jimmy!” he called. “You’re late already!”  

“Sorry, Mr Gupta!” replied Jimmy, with a smile, as though pleased with himself.  “The dog ate my homework.”  

“OK, if you say so.”  Mr Gupta rolled his eyes and gave Jimmy a friendly slap across the back of the head, which his young employee tried to dodge as he ducked inside to pick up his pile of papers.

“Anything special today?” asked Jimmy as he emerged back out into the early morning sunshine.  

“No,” said Mr Gupta, “just the usual.  But remember: just ‘cause it’s a holiday, folks still want their paper on time.  So, no slacking!”  

“Yes, sir, Mr Gupta!” barked Jimmy, with an ironic salute.  

“How’s your mom?” asked Mr Gupta.  

“She’s OK,” said Jimmy.  “You know, the usual.”

“OK.  Well, send her my regards.  Now, go on, shoo!” called his boss, as Jimmy climbed back onto his bike, balancing himself, newspapers, headphones and toast.

Mr Gupta smiled and watched Jimmy swerving from side to side as he disappeared down McPherson.

Jimmy loved being a paperboy.  It was easy, it paid pretty well, it was outside, he could ride his bike, he could listen to music.  Today, because it was a special day, he had chosen a classic: The Ramones’ Rocket To Russia.  

Jimmy loved being a paperboy even more on holidays, because he could arrange to finish his deliveries right down at the bottom of King's Road, at the intersection with Queen's, from where it was a short ride along to the Family Diner, where he could get as much milkshake and pancakes as he wanted.  He would get a booth in the window and take all the time in the world.  

Sometimes, if he was lucky, he’d be there on the same day that Alice Crabtree, granddaughter of the miserable old bastard, was working her waitressing shift.  

Alice was smart, funny, cute, cool, she even had OK taste in music.  How could there be a better girl than that waiting for him out there?  Surely unrequited love would have to be requited eventually, he thought to himself.  And in the meantime he would try to work out what requited meant.  He made himself laugh.

Even if Alice didn’t come into the diner, he could always ride back via the boardwalk and check out how the ocean looked today.  Which was not a bad consolation.

All these thoughts were bouncing around Jimmy’s head as he took a left and headed downhill along King's Road.  The Ramones were hitching a ride to Rockaway Beach, his absolute favorite.  He sat back in the saddle, breathed in the sea air deeply, and lost himself in rock ‘n roll.  
...

OK, that's your lot. For now.

Who is Jimmy Twelvetrees?  

Will he get hooked up with Alice?  

Why would anyone want to bomb a peaceful beach town?  

What does that have to do with the local paper boy?  

What difference does it make?  

These questions, and maybe some others, will be answered in 'The Shores'.

The Referee's Top Nine Popular English Baseball Idioms

Well, it's that time of year again, dear reader.  The time of year that The Referee begins to suffer from a highly personalised and specific ailment I have invented for myself which I like to call Baseball off-Seasonal Affected Disorder, or B-SAD.  This is a particular type of listless melancholy that sets in every year in November, as soon as the World Series ends, begins to lift slightly in March during spring training, but only disappears completely on opening day, usually in early April.

This year, I have decided to take action against my MLB-related malaise by sharing with you something remarkable that brings together two of my very favo(u)rite things: baseball and the English language.  And so, without further ado or preamble (only joking!), it is my pleasure, as well as my self-medication, to share with you The Referee's Top Nine Popular English Baseball Idioms.

We all like to use a good idiom.  In fact it's probably true to say that we each use multiple idioms every day without even noticing that we're doing it.

Do you want to chew the fat?  I've been burning the midnight oil.  You're barking up the wrong tree.  I'm under the weather.  He's pushing up daisies.  I'm all ears.

But how many of us ever stop and think about the origin of the idioms we use?  I'm amazed at how often they have their roots in sport(s).

We'll beat them at their own game.  The ball is in your court.  That's below the belt.  Keep your eye on the ball.  Don't jump the gun.  That was below par.

One sport, baseball, aka America's pastime, seems to provide many more idioms than any other.  And not just in American English, but also in British English and in English-speaking countries generally, despite the fact that baseball is not a major sport in most of those countries.      

In case you think I'm overstating this case, I'd like to present to you The Referee's Top Nine Popular English Baseball Idioms.  A top nine not because I can't think of 10 (there are many more than that) but rather one for each of the regular innings in a game of baseball.

But, to make it interesting (imagine that!), and to continue my long-standing commitment to both your education and entertainment, dear reader, I will not only list my Top Nine, but I'll also give you the original baseball meaning of each phrase, and demonstrate its popular (non-baseball) use in a helpful and highly realistic sentence.  I bet you already can't wait to get started.  Me too.

Just to make things easy to follow, each line is labelled a, b or c, as follows:

(a)  Baseball meaning
(b)  Popular meaning
(c)  Use in a sentence, or paragraph.

Got it?  Then let's play ball.  (Ooh, there's one).

1.  Touch Base
(a)  To touch, step on, or otherwise make contact with the plate, or "bag", to ensure that the runner is "safe" and can't be run out or tagged out.
(b)  To make sure one connects with or stays in touch with someone else; to arrange to be in contact.
(c)  Veronica was already sitting at a corner table when Hamish arrived. "Hi." she said sheepishly, "So glad we had chance to touch base while you're still in town."

2.  Ballpark
(a) A baseball stadium.
(b) A broad estimate, usually of something so large that a "more or less" approach won't make much difference.
(c)  "My pleasure" said Hamish, a little bemused by her tone. "So, what are we talking about? I mean, just give me the ballpark, you know."   

3.  Left field
(a)  Relating to the left side of the outfield, as seen from the point of view of the hitter and catcher, when facing the pitching mound.
(b)  Something unexpected, out of the blue.
(c)  Veronica looked down quickly at the delicate white table cloth, in order to disguise a rapidly advancing blush. "Well...". She hesitated before looking up again. "I'm worried that you might think it's a little, you know, left field."

4.  Big league / major league

(a)  Top-level professional baseball, as opposed to the minor, feeder leagues (AA and AAA).

(b)  Serious, professional, senior.  

(c)  "Bloody hell!" snorted Hamish, propelling a morsel of complimentary Italian bread out of his nose and into his empty wine glass. "Just tell me. I like to think I'm a big league kind of guy. I'm sure I can take it." 

5.  Cover all bases
(a)  To ensure that all the infielders are in position in terms of being ready to make contact with the base and so run out the hitter / runner.
(b)  To make sure one has thought of everything and/or is fully prepared.
(c)  "Well," continued Veronica, pretending not to notice the nasal projectile. "I just wanted to make sure we covered all the bases, so to speak, before you go back home." This time she looked him straight in the eye. 

6.  Get past first base / get to second base

(a) To achieve a base hit and run round at least to second base.

(b) To make more than basic progress; especially to get further in a romantic encounter than, well, first base.

(c)  "Oh, I see" said Hamish, hoping that he had got the drift, without being sure. "It's just that, at the party, it was pretty clear that you had no interest in getting past first base, so I didn't want to push my luck."

7.  Throw a curveball
(a)  A pitch thrown with topspin which dips dramatically before it reaches the strike zone.
(b)  Do something unexpected or out of the ordinary.
(c)  "I know, I know." Veronica sounded a little exasperated. "It's just that, you know, you arrived with whats-her-name..". "Elspeth" he interjected. "Yes, Elspeth" Veronica continued. "And so I didn't think I should throw you a curveball, in the circumstances".  

OK, hold that thought.  It's now time for the 7th inning stretch.  I realise that that occurs in the middle of the 7th inning, not at the end, but please bear with me.  There is a limit to how far one can take an analogy, you know.  

For the uninitiated, the 7th inning stretch is a break in the middle of the 7th inning when the crowd is encouraged to get up and stretch, and sometimes to do a little dance, etc.  This is often accompanied by some jaunty music, just to get you in the mood.  Those nice people in major league baseball are very careful to look after their crowds as well as their expensive players. 

Anyway, by way of our analogous 7th inning stretch, I send out kudos in the direction of the marvellous film "Zombieland", which I was re-watching recently with the Littlest Referee.  As a responsible parent, I think it's important from time to time to sit down with ones young children in front of a good zombie apocalypse movie.  

There is a splendid scene in the house of Bill Murray (played by himself) when Columbus (the nervous nerd male protagonist) and Wichita (the confident gun-toting female subject of his admiration) share a tentative first (and only) kiss.  The build up to the kiss goes like this:

Wichita: You know, between you, me and "What About Bob?"... you're actually kinda cute.
Columbus: You think so?
Wichita: Yeah. I mean, you've got the guts of a guppy, but I could hit that.
Columbus: Really?
Wichita: Or at least give you the intentional walk to first.

Now, an intentional walk happens when the pitching team, usually under imminent threat of conceding runs, decides that the next batter up is too dangerous to be allowed a regular "at bat" because he is likely to get a hit and allow his team to score.  Therefore, on instruction from the dugout, the pitcher deliberately throws 4 "balls" outside the strike zone to the catcher, thus allowing the batter (who just stands there looking bored and chewing) to take a walk to first, which is in any case the outcome when a pitcher throws 4 balls, including when not intentional.  I trust you're keeping up at the back.

In other words, the concept of getting to or past first base is so engrained in popular non-baseball usage that Wichita is able to mangle it by introducing the concept of an intentional walk, and any casual baseball fan, and I dare say almost all Americans, would know exactly what she meant.

OK, now that we have all stretched, and perhaps enjoyed a little dance (you know who you are), let's press on.

8.  Play hardball
(a)  Play baseball (which uses a small, hard ball), as opposed to softball (which uses a larger, slightly softer ball) (and is played principally by female teams, at least in the US) (and involves a frightening and bizarre underarm pitching technique which has to be seen to be believed).
(b)  Play or negotiate hard, in order to get exactly what you want.
(c)  "Oh, I see" said Hamish, again, starting to catch up. "And I thought you were just playing hardball with me. You know, because you weren't all that interested." "I know" Veronica blushed again. "But I invited you here today because I am interested. Very. In you."    

9.  Step up to the plate
(a)  Prepare for your "at bat", ie a batter's appearance at the plate.
(b)  Be ready to take on a responsibility.
(c)  "Well, in that case, I have no choice but to step up to the plate" beamed Hamish. As he was speaking, a waiter hurriedly arrived at the table, apparently to take an order for pre-lunch drinks. But Hamish didn't let him get a word in: "We'll be needing Champagne, please".

And so, gentle reader, there you have it. The Referee's Top Nine Popular English Baseball Idioms set out in nine innings.  I hope those of you who might have been sceptical about the impact of America's pastime on God's own language have been duly convinced.

And, as a major bonus, entirely free of charge, those who were able to string together the scene set out in the lines marked (c) have just enjoyed the opening salvos of my forthcoming debut romcom novel, "Hamish and Veronica Take Manhattan".  You might say it's a screwball comedy.

Today I'll Mostly Be Using The Future Tense

Let me reveal a secret: I love language. I love not just how it sounds and how it's used, I love in particular the fact that the way we use language can change the world around us, and language can tell us things about the world around us that we wouldn't otherwise have known.

Now, dear reader, I can guess what you're thinking.  You're probably thinking "What is he going on about now?", or "Why does he never write about interesting things?", or something along those lines.  Both are good questions.  On we go.

By way of introduction (no, the above paragraphs are not introduction, they're pre-amble, which is different), let me mention that the differences between American English and British English are well known and well documented.  I don't propose to go on at length (!) about tom-ay-toes and tom-ar-toes and all that.  It is what it is.  And most of what it is is differences in vocabulary.

Differences in vocabulary (pitch v field, courgette v zucchini, tarmac v blacktop) are important to know.  For example, if you're a Brit travelling in the US of America, you probably are well aware that Americans use "sidewalk" to indicate what you would call a "pavement"; but it might also come in useful to know that Americans also use "pavement", but to them it means the surface of the road.  Equally, depending on what you get up to whilst travelling over here, it might be useful to know that Americans use the word "suspenders" to indicate what Brits would call "braces", ie something to hold up mens' trousers (aka pants) rather than womens' stockings.

And so, dear reader, if this was just any old expat blog, I would go on about vocabulary differences at length and we could all have a good laugh about what would happen if you mixed up your suspenders and your pants, etc.

But, as my hardcore following will know, The Referee tries to dig a little deeper, in order to give you the in-depth inter-cultural commentary you so richly deserve.

That being the case, I want to mention something much more subtle about the way that Americans use English and see if it doesn't indicate something interesting in outlook and points of view.  There are multiple potential subtle differences, of course, but I want to focus on one I've noticed often recently, and which stood out on a recent visit to the cinema, aka movie theater.

The Littlest Referee was keen to take me to see a film and I was happy to go along; (it used to be the other way round).  On the way in to the cinema, the very polite young ticket chap said the following: "Theater 7 is going to be upstairs, and the concession stand is going to be open up there".

Think about that for a moment.  Ignore the spelling - I'm spelling "theater" that way just to be consistent with who the speaker is.  (There appears to be a pattern of Americans anglicizing French words, but don't get me started on that.)

He said: "Theater 7 is going to be upstairs".  I had to force myself not to ask "Where is it at the moment?", as though concerned that Theater 7 might not show up in time before we arrived at the top of the stairs, only to find ourselves on the brink of a frightening vortex full of anti-matter, whatever that might be.  But I didn't, because that would have been a little mean to the poor chap, not to mention confusing.

Instead, I thought about that fascinating use of language, which is a very common American way of speaking.  I have noticed it most often in the context of what you might call customer service, in the widest sense - at the cinema, in a restaurant, when asking directions, etc.

The thing that occurs to me about this phraseology is that the speaker is putting him or herself in the shoes of the listener.  It is, I think, a manner of speaking employed when the speaker wants to be helpful by describing for the listener what they are about to experience, rather than simply expressing facts that the speaker happens to know.

Did the ticket chap at my local cinema believe that Theater 7 was not yet in place but would be so at some point in the near future?  Of course not.  What he was doing was describing for the Littlest Referee and myself what we were about to experience in the next minute or so.  We would go up the escalator to the 2nd floor (which can be found where a Brit would locate the first floor), and then we would make our way, via the concessions or otherwise, to door number 7, and behind that door we would then discover our destination, and that destination was Theater 7.

This reminds me that I have no idea why Americans use the word "concessions" to describe food and drink places.  Answers on a postcard, please.

But, more importantly, I like to think that, as the inventors of customer service, in movie theaters, diners, drive-ins, etc, the Americans have unconciously developed a manner of speaking which is empathetic to the needs of the listener.

And so, that leaves me to say only that I am going to be signing off this message, at some time in the near future.

There it is.  Told you so.

Return of the Son of Monkey Glue

Richard Dawkins, the notable British evolutionary biologist and Oxford don (not pictured, left) was recently in DC to speak at a gathering labelled the "Reason Rally", which claimed to be the largest ever gathering of secularists, humanists, atheists and the like.  According to Barbara Bradley Hagerty, religion correspondent at NPR (National Public Radio, for those reading this from outside the US of America), Dawkins had been invited as a keynote speaker in part to improve the public image of the secularist community.

This gives me a thin but nevertheless arguable excuse to return to one of my favo(u)rite topics: the age-old (and, in my view, pointless) argument between science and religion about how we got here and what it all means.

But, before I launch into that, let me say the following by way of preamble:

1.  My first thought on hearing about the "Reason Rally" was to wonder what the collective noun for secularists, humanists and atheists might be.  A "Proof" perhaps, or a "Laboratory", or maybe a "Curmudgeon".  A curmudgeon of secularists.

2.  Inviting Richard Dawkins to represent secularists in order to improve their image is, may I humbly suggest, rather like hoping Newt Gingrich might improve the image of conservatives.  Or like inviting Basil Fawlty to address a conference of hoteliers.  All are well qualified, certainly, but none of them is exactly a pin-up.  Is that the best they can do?  Isn't Beyonce an atheist, or Ryan Seacrest?

3.  I have, as those numerous (!) keen followers of this august organ will be aware, held forth on this topic before, in my messages of 11/25/05 and 12/26/05, to be precise.  You might be wondering if I'm going to say anything different this time.  The answer is no: I'm going to say the same things, in a slightly different way.  Am I, you might then reasonably ask, going to keep going on about this same topic interminably?  The answer is yes: I plan to keep going on about it at some length until someone listens.  Don't hold your breath.      

So, here goes.  In a nutshell, the approach taken by The Referee, for what's worth, is that the age-old argument between science and religion about the origin of things - by which I mean everything - is essentially a non-sequitur.  In other words, the question raised by one side is responded to by the other side with an answer which is in fact about something else.  This is followed inevitably by confusion.  And this in turn is followed by a boring and protracted round of everyone insulting everyone else's beliefs, as though we were all talking about the same thing.  We weren't.  Let me explain.

The essential point, IMHO (as those young people say), is that the question of HOW we got here is not the same as the question about WHY we are here.  The first is mechanics, the second is meaning.

Why does this matter?  I'm glad you asked that.  Here's why:

Scientists are qualified to answer questions about HOW.  Theologians and philosophers are qualified to answer questions about WHY.  The origin of the non-sequitur, it seems to me, is that both groups have consistently attempted to get out of their own lane and answer the other guy's question.  Or, worse still, both have, in their own way, tried to pretend that there's only one question.

Let's say, by way of example, that you bumped into the Archbish of Canterbury, perhaps having a crafty pint in the margins of the General Synod, and you sidled up to him and asked him to explain the physics behind the Big Bang.  What do you think he'd say?  I'd like to think that he might pass on the question.  I'd hope he would refer you to someone more qualified than he on this point.  A physicist, for example.  He might perhaps offer you some wisdom on the theological significance of the event, but it's a fair bet that he would leave the physics to someone else.

Looking at the vice versa situation for a moment, does Mr Dawkins respond to out-of-lane questions  with such humility?  No, he does not.  In fact, when the decorated astrophysicist and non-God-botherer Martin Rees (Lord Rees of Ludlow to you and me) suggested in his book "Our Cosmic Habitat" that there are legitimate questions of faith and meaning that "lie beyond science", Dawkins apparently responded by asking "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?".  A classic example of pretending there's only one question.

I wish I could say that my fellow God-botherers have all acted as humbly as I imagined Dr Williams would.  Alas, they have not.  Whilst there are very many, perhaps a silent majority, who get it, a very vociferous minority have been just as guilty as Dawkins et al in terms of getting out of lane, just in a different way.

The key here is Genesis.  Not the complicated hippy prog-rockers turned balding millionaire charity crooners, but rather the opening book of the Bible.  Too many of my fellow God-botherers have failed to limit themselves to WHY, and have proclaimed Genesis as a book of HOW.

Here's the key question they need to consider: what if Genesis was never intended as a book of mechanics, but rather a book of meaning?  If that's the case, which very many of us God-botherers believe it is, then there is no threat from science, including evolution, since these are matters of mechanics.

In other words, a win-win becomes possible.  Suddenly, one can conceive of both a Supreme Being who created us, and a body of scientific knowledge that is gradually discovering how She did it.

Or, if I may, scientific discovery becomes a matter of uncovering the "Fingerprints of God", which just happens to be the title of a book by one Barbara Bradley Hagerty.

"Aha!" I hear you cry, as you emerge briefly from your boredom-induced slumber, "so The Referee is an advocate of Intelligent Design".  No, he isn't.  Here's why.

ID, as those of us in the know like to call it, attempts to take on science in a battle to find the bits that scientists can't explain and then proclaim that as proof of a creator.  There are numerous problems with this, amongst my favo(u)rite of which are: (i) it's just another attempt to answer the other guy's question, & (ii) given that scientific discovery constantly moves forward, it's not a brilliant plan to base your argument on things that scientists haven't discovered, yet.

If the existence of God depends on gaps in science, what happens when those gaps are filled by new scientific discovery?  Does God suddenly cease to exist?

I prefer not to take on science in a battle for supremacy.  I prefer to invite it round for a nice cup of tea.

That is about the limit that my simple brain can deal with.  If you feel the need to get into this in a more serious way, then I would suggest avoiding the ID-peddling anti-evolutionists at Seattle's Discovery Institute and instead directing your attention towards the lovely people of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge, where you will receive some real science, and maybe even a nice cup of tea.

Which leaves me only, as I have done before, to remind you of the wisdom of plant-pot wearing Ohio electro popsters Devo on this issue: "God made man, but a monkey supplied the glue".

And, with that, may I wish you a very happy Spring break post-equinox holiday vacation.  Amen.

Keep Rancho Clean

By way of preamble to this message, I'd like to make clear that The Referee has for many years been a fan of Woody Guthrie.  I want you to know that I'm not one of those Johnny-come-lately types who latches on to trendy things because someone at Rolling Stone or OK! magazine decides they're hip.  Oh no.  I'm a hardcore fan.

"How hardcore are you?" I hear you ask.  I'm glad you asked that.  Well, I'm so hardcore that one of the Little Referees (who are not so little as they used to be) is named after Mr Guthrie.  And the other is named after Mr Dylan, who looked up to Guthrie as his hero, famously visited him in hospital in New York when he was suffering with complications related to Huntington's disease, and wrote the wonderful Song to Woody, which was one of the few original songs on Dylan's debut album "Bob Dylan" in 1962.  In fact, it is often said that Dylan moved to New York from his childhood home in Minnesota at least in part to seek out his idol and visit him in hospital before he died.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

For those not too familiar with the great man, Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma in 1912 and died in New York City (so good they named it thrice: see my message of 18/9/06, or 9/18/06, if you prefer) in 1967.  In the interim he wrote hundreds of great American folk songs, most famously "This Land Is Your Land", often played with the words "This Machine Kills Fascists" emblazoned on his guitar, and is considered by many people who know about these things to be the Godfather of modern American folk music.

Why am I going on about this?  A fine question.

Well, the Information Steve Heighway has recently been abuzz (abuzz?) with an extract from the great man's notebook scribblings from 1943 (or 1942; there is disagreement in some parts of the blogosphere about exactly which year he wrote it.)  (Note here the use of the semi-colon, the Godfather of punctuation: neither a comma (let's pause for a moment) or a colon (look what's coming next), it says "let's pause for a moment before we see what's coming next"; and (there it is again), because it's often misunderstood, it's also criminally under-used.)

Anyway, where were we?  Oh yes.  Woody's notebook, in which he used two pages, right in the middle of the book, plus lots of scribbled illustrations, to set out his "New Year's Rulin's" for whichever year it was.

And what a great read they are.  A couple of things are immediately noticeable.  Firstly, there are 33 of them.  I expect it's true for most of us that we attempt at best 2 or 3 resolutions at this time of year: "I'll go to the gym more often, possibly"; "I'll be nicer to the children, or not"; "I'll be slightly less offensive to chuggers and salespeople this year".  Perhaps it takes a great man like Guthrie to take on ten times the number of resolutions that we mere mortals can muster.

The other thing that strikes one is that Woody's rulin's are so, for want of a better word, elemental.  He doesn't mess about with avoiding gluten or donating a larger proportion of his income to charity.  Oh no.  He focuses instead on more basic and urgent concerns, including "Take Bath", "Change Socks", and "Wash Teeth, If Any".

That last rulin' perhaps suggests that Mr Guthrie had intended that his resolutions would not just be for his personal use but would also one day be read by the likes of you, dear reader, and me.  Otherwise, why bother with "If Any"?  Presumably, even in the early 1940s, people were aware how many teeth they had, give or take.  And, if one had no teeth at all, one would almost certainly have noticed.

Whether or not the rulin's were intended for wider consumption, I for one am grateful for the work of the folk who look after Woody's huge archives of song lyrics and other writings, for preserving his down-to-earth resolutions, which perhaps put into perspective the rather pale, post-modern angst of our twenty-teens new year concerns.

Amongst my favo(u)rite rulin's are "Read Lots Good Books", "Listen To Radio A Lot", "Keep Hope Machine Running", its close relative "Stay Glad", the spectacular "Dance Better" (how I wish) and, especially relevant for those us with a rather, shall we say, expansive domestic management style, "Keep Rancho Clean".

And so, for this year, I have resolved not to dream up 2 or 3 lily-livered post-modern whinges that I have only a limited intention of addressing.  Instead, I am going to attach the New Year's Rulin's to the wall of my office (AKA Message Central) and do my level best to embrace each and every one of them with the gusto they deserve.

And so, a belated Happy New Year to all.  Stay glad, read lots of good books, and blogs, and keep your rancho clean.

Elvis Buys His Tree Here Every Year

So, where were we?

After 3 years and 7 months, The Referee has finally decided to retire from his self-imposed retirement and get back on his blogging horse, if you will.

And so, those of you who have missed reading pointless and rambling stories, who have longed for unfathomable tangents, who have pined for the almost criminal over-use of parentheses (that is to say, brackets) (see what I mean), you need to wait no longer.

No doubt you, dear reader(s) (note the optimistic plural), are wondering why The Referee entered his self-imposed retirement in the first place, and why he has now retired from it.  Both fine questions, if I may say so.

The answer to the former question is far too dull for an action-packed organ such as this.  The latter question, however, can be answered by a simple road sign.  Let me explain why.

I have long been fascinated by the search for the perfect retail moniker, that is to say, shop name.  Creative retailers the world over have often entertained their customers with comedy names for their establishments.  You know the sort of thing I mean.  Herr Kutz the barber.  Paws for Thought the pet shop.  Wok this Way the Chinese restaurant.

My personal contribution to this list occurred to me in a recent visit to Washington DC's national zoo.  While communing at the orangutan enclosure, it came to me, like a Damascene revelation, that orangutans would make the perfect logo for my aspirational chain of tanning salons, which would be named Orange-U-Tan.  If no one else has already done it, I'll be off as soon as I've finished this message to register the name Orange-U-Tan with whoever it is that registers the names of tanning salons.  Presumably the Federation of Authorized Tanning Salon Owners, or something along those lines.

Anyway, this remained just an idle (some would say pointless) (others would say worrying) obsession, until I heard a rumo(u)r that, right here in what the locals like to call the DC Metro Area, there was a Christmas tree selling establishment with the glorious name of Elvis Buys His Tree Here Every Year.

Elvis Buys His Tree Here Every Year.  Could it really be true?  If so, this was enough to cause me both to seek it out for my own arboreal acquisition purposes, and to emerge from retirement into the warm yuletide twinkle of the blogosphere. How could I wallow in retirement in front of the Fox Asocceration Football Channel, with such rich nuggets of American popular culture almost begging to be mined for your edification?

And so, loading up Mrs Referee and the Little Referees in the back of the RefereeMobile, I set off to find the place where Elvis buys his holiday (don't get me started) tree.

Sure enough, only a matter of minutes from Chez Referee, we spotted clear evidence that Himself had been seen nearby, in the form of a roadside sign that is well known to the locals.  Better still, the folks who run this establishment could not have been nicer or more helpful, they had some top notch trees, one of which we purchased and, to top it all, the sounds of Barry Manilow filled the advent air.

The only downside of the whole experience, which dawned on me as I studied my receipt on the way home, was that the name of the establishment was actually Suzanne Eaton Christmas Trees of Florida.  And the sign was just a sign.  Still, they were fine people, and maybe, just maybe, they had at least one very special customer.  And I'm not talking about The Referee.

Either way, for better or worse, I was already out of retirement.  I'll let you decide, dear reader, whether that's a cause for glad tidings, or bad.  Or something inbetween.  Middling tidings, perhaps.

Which leaves me only to offer something on the true meaning of the season.  I'd like to think it's the time of year for spending time by the fire with family and friends, for thinking back to a time when the King walked among us in person and wondering if, in a sense, he still does.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one.

Jolly Hockey Sticks

For reasons which are complicated and also too dull to relate on a site as dedicated to thrills and entertainment as this one is (!), The Referee recently found himself at the Coliseum in Nassau, Long Island to witness the New York Islanders being hammered at home by the Ottawa Senators. The visitors from north of the border looked superior throughout, so much so that the Islanders were lucky to come second, as they say.

For those who have not already spotted it, I am of course talking about (ice) hockey. (Ice) hockey is known here and in Canada as "hockey", such that if one wants to refer to hockey, one has to say "field hockey". Luckily, I rarely want to refer to hockey, and therefore this additional requirement is not particularly onerous in my case.

I have nothing more to report about Islanders 2 Senators 5 that can't be derived from the score or the brief synopsis above. I do, however, want to relate some of the things I learnt about (ice) hockey that evening, a sport about which I had not previously thought or cared very much at all. Whilst not all, or indeed any, of these things might be accurate, they are at least heartfelt, and that ought to be more important.

And so, The Referee is proud to share with you, dear reader, his hard-researched 5 Things You Never Knew, And Still Don't, About (Ice) Hockey:

1. There are 250 players on each team, although each player is on the ice for an average of only about 10 seconds each. For some reason no one ever thought to build a door in the dug out, so substitutes have to fling themselves over a little wall, hoping to land on their skates rather than their rear ends.

2. All (ice) hockey players have elaborately broken noses. By this I mean that these are not common or garden broken noses, the sort of injury that could befall anyone. Oh no. These are noses so comprehensively and numerously broken that they appear to be marking out a new slalom route for the benefit of a passing downhill skier. How could I tell this from the stands?, you are wondering. Well, I was lucky enough to meet a legendary former Islander before the game. He had clearly once been a good-looking chap, before the slalom bulldozers had moved in.

3. All (ice) hockey players fight, all the time. Except in the game I saw, in which no one so much as raised a question about the masculinity of his opponents. Obviously, fighting is bad, and The Referee was not in the least disappointed not to witness any. Although this to some extent restricted his ability to research the full extent of the game of (ice) hockey for your benefit, gentle reader.

4. The following point might say more about the age and constitution of The Referee than it does about the nature of (ice) hockey, but for quite a proportion of the game I couldn't actually see the puck as it skimmed at high speed across the surface of the ice. It appeared that this was not a problem shared by most of the crowd, since there was a good deal of ooh-ing and aah-ing some seconds before your correspondent had worked out what was happening. Ho, hum.

5. All (ice) hockey players fight, all the time.

Just before his visit to the Nassau Coliseum, The Referee received the news that he was to be summoned to return to the Motherland, AKA the UK of Blighty, without further ado. Again, the reasons for this are much too dull for an entertainment-heavy organ such as this. Suffice to say that The Referee's US odyssey would soon be at an end.

As I left Long Island and contemplated an impending return to the green and pleasant hills of the Motherland, I allowed myself a small and appropriate celebration. "Jolly hockey sticks", I thought.

The Phantom Tollbooth

I will say again here what I have said in a number of messages on this site: The Referee does not do politics. Or rather, he does not use this site to promote any particular political perspectives. That is not about to change.

It is, however, nigh on impossible to have lived in this country over recent years without taking at least a passing fascination with the oratory style, shall we say, of the 43rd President. As you, discerning reader, will be well aware, this a well-trodden path, which is not enlightened in the least by The Referee trampling it down a bit further. However, the following alleged quote came to my attention recently and I felt that it would be remiss of me, perhaps even churlish, not to share it with you.

It is alleged by some - not necessarily The Referee, you understand - that on 1 February 2000 the august news organ that is the New York Times quoted the 43rd President as follows:

"I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth".

I don't think any of us could disagree with that.

Dames on a Plane

Everything that follows is absolutely true.

I make this point at the outset not because The Referee makes a habit of telling fictional stories on this site. He doesn't. When you live in this country, why make things up, when reality is so much more entertaining?

No. I make this point only because I want you, gentle reader, to be assured that The Referee had truthfulness and accuracy at the forefront of his mind, when recounting this tale.

The Referee often has occasion to travel to and fro between his two adopted cities, New York and London. Most of the time this journey is pleasant and uneventful. On other occasions, it is a little more memorable. The following recounts an example of the latter.

As a final preamble, I should mention that I tend towards a particular airline whenever possible because, in the humble opinion of The Referee (and he is, after all, The Referee) it is superior to any other airline making this journey. So as not to show favo(u)ritism, I will assign this airline a code name for the purposes of this message. Let's call it, say, Virgin Atlantic.

So, I was heading to London on an overnight flight from New York. I was planning to be very busy immediately on arrival and was therefore hoping for a quiet flight involving sleep and not much else.

Imagine my horror, then, when, immediately on arrival in the lounge, I noticed a group of about 25 or so New York ladies of, shall we say, a certain age, behaving in an exuberant manner and taking pictures of each other. As I sat eating a pre-flight dinner (in order to maximise the time available for sleep on the flight, you understand), all but one of the ladies in question launched into a rousing rendition of "Happy birthday to you".

I have to admit, in all honesty, that I was not thinking "How nice. I hope whoever it is has a lovely birthday". Oh no. I was thinking something much more along the lines of "Please God - I need some sleep - please don't let any of them be seated near me".

I dare say, dear reader, that you are already ahead of me.

As soon as I arrived in my section of the plane (I have to admit that it was one of the posh areas near the front) it dawned on me that every seat apart from mine was occupied by one of the ladies. Worse still, I was seated right next to the birthday girl.

To get a sense of what followed, imagine, if you will, a remake of that Hollywood classic "Snakes on a plane" starring the original cast of the St Trinian's films, and you won't be far out. Except that the ladies in this case were dripping with furs and jewellery. And - how can I put this delicately? - those who had left God's work intact were in a significant minority.

The ladies had no idea what to do with a seat belt. Some of them apparently had no idea that it was a requirement to sit down while a plane takes off. I was required to become the official photographer for a number of charming group shots, whilst the crew (ie the folk that used to be called "stewards" and "stewardesses", but now seem to be called something else) tried to wrestle them into their seats. I was told with some enthusiasm that there were another 25 ladies on another flight - perhaps I should be grateful, I pondered, that I'd only got half of them. I was told that some of them had never been to London before, and that they were off to Windsor castle - I wondered if it was strong enough to withstand the onslaught. I was asked if I was married, and, when I replied in the affirmative, the lady in question shouted "Never mind, girls, he's married!".

Although I consider myself a patient person, I thought that I might be about to lose my marbles. Just as I was starting to lose them - and at this point we had only just reached cruising altitude - a glimmer of hope emerged. One of the ladies reached into her handbag and marched around the cabin shouting "Who wants an Ambien?". (For those not intimately familiar with the world of American medical TV ads, Ambien is a popular sleeping pill.) To my great relief, she received a number of positive responses, and soon there followed a hysterical banter about who was going to take the pill first, and no, no, you take it first, and I'm not taking mine until you take yours. Five minutes later, the cabin was silent.

After enjoying blissful sleep for all of 3 or 4 hours, I was woken by sleepy chatter about the crown jewels and where they might be viewed. I decided not to chime in to assist with the answer to this question, since that would reveal that I was now awake again, hence drawing attention to myself. So instead I lay very still and listened whilst one of the ladies pointed out that one of the others was wearing some of the crown jewels, right now, on the plane. It turned out that she was not joking. The lady in question admitted that her husband had given her a necklace which he had bought from Sotheby's and which had originally been given to Victoria by Albert. I couldn't help thinking that the phrase "more money than sense" had been coined for this moment.

Imagine my relief when we finally reached Londinium and the end of my torment was in sight. I gathered my things and sneaked away as quickly and quietly as I could. As I did so, several of the ladies were engaged in trying to revive a lady for whom the Ambien had apparently been particularly effective. As I left, they had had no success.

Suddenly, the American obsession with unnecessary prescription drugs didn't seem so bad after all.

A Special Relationship: Part 2

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.

A Special Relationship: Part 1

As all my regular readers (!) will be well aware, November marks the two year anniversary of The Referee sending messages from the other side. To mark this auspicious occasion, The Referee has decided to offer, at no additional charge, not one but two Top Ten lists. The purpose of these lists is to give you, dear reader, a summary of the best and worst things about being an Englishman (or Englishperson, these days!) in New York.

Coming soon, my top ten things about living in the US of America.

For now, however, I am proud to present the top ten things that drive me to distraction about this great country. In other words, please sit back and enjoy The Referee's Bumper New World Bottom Ten:

10 College sport(s)

What is the point of college sport(s), as distinct from professional sport(s)? Please don't feel the need to answer this question; it's rhetorical. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against young folks running around in the open air and enjoying themselves between college work, or indeed instead of it. But what does that have to do with anyone else? I don't know about you, but I played a good deal of five-a-side football whilst at university. No one ever turned up to watch it, not even my mother (hello mum). Why on earth would I expect crowds, TV cameras and cheerleaders? I wouldn't. Bonkers.

9 Stairs

There are a lot of places in the great city of New York where there are flights of stairs right next to escalators. Grand Central Terminal, to give the station its official name, has many of these. The interesting thing about this scenario is that it presents the traveller with a choice: stairs or escalator? What do New Yorkers choose? I'll tell you. On the basis of my highly scientific research into this issue, which involves looking around when I get off the train in the morning, I can tell you that New Yorkers choose the escalator, at a rate of at least 90%. I sometimes wonder what percentage of that 90% are the proud owners of expensive gym memberships. In New York, the chances are that many are, perhaps most. To those people, I say simply this: try the stairs - it's free!

8 Boxing Day

For a country that prides itself on celebrating Christmas with style, Christmas is not celebrated with much style over here. In particular, as soon as Christmas day is over, it's over. Mention the phrase "Boxing Day" to most Americans and you will get a blank look (unlike Canadians, who observe it with some enthusiasm). So Americans are deprived of not only the best and laziest day of the year, but also that great British tradition of taking all week off work, eating far too much and watching old films on TV until next year.

7 The word "program(me)"

This might seem an obscure one to those who have not spent much time in the New World, but bear with me. Those who have done so will know, if they search the deep recesses of their consciousness, that Americans use the word "program(me)" all the time. About anything. Leave aside for now the fact that the locals here run out of enthusiasm for spelling this word just before reaching the penultimate letter. Everything here is a program(me). My elder son plays in a soccer program(me); my younger son eats pizza for school lunch once a week, and that is a pizza program(me); my wife teaches an art program(me). If I stand up and walk around the room for a while, I am quite convinced that I could legitimately say that I was executing my personal circulation program(me).

6 Halloween

What is the point of halloween? For a start, it is decidedly odd to make such a fuss about All Hallows Eve, when hardly anyone marks the day that follows it, AKA All Saints day. That aside, why encourage children to dress up in stupid costumes, act obnoxiously and eat too much "candy"? Most of them do all those things with no encouragement at all.

5 Live radio football commentary

One of the greatest joys of my life - and I mean this sincerely - is listening to live football commentary on BBC Radio Five Live. Don't ask me to explain this. You will either understand it, or you won't.

I appreciate that this is a point about not living in the UK, rather than living in the US of America as such. But, for whatever reason, whilst it is possible to listen to most BBC radio output online, try listening to live football commentary from outside the UK of Blighty and you will get only an automated message saying something about "contractual obligations".

I have often wondered what precisely is in the contract in question to prevent those of us living overseas from listening. Presumably it says something along the lines of "In no circumstances should live commentary of Hereford v Scunthorpe in the first round of the Carling Cup be broadcast in Turkmenistan, in order that the rights may be sold separately to the National Turkmenistan Broadcasting Corporation, for local transmission to the numerous Scunthorpe fans in that part of the world". The problem with that, of course, is that there are not too many Scunthorpe fans in Turkmenistan, so local broadcasters are not interested, so there is no local transmission, so it's not possible to listen.

I have heard it said that people living overseas can't expect to have access to all BBC output because we don't pay the licence fee. In fact, we can't pay the licence fee. I expect I'm talking for a large number of ex-pat footie fans when I say that I would gladly pay the equivalent of the licence fee just to get access to football commentary on Five Live. So, come on BBC, take my money!

4 Medicine

After two years living here, I still cannot begin to fathom the American approach to all things medicine. Something close to half of all the commercials on TV here are for drugs: to treat hair loss, erectile disfunction (whatever that is) (simmer down, ladies!), "stubborn belly fat" (this is true), insomnia, and countless other ailments. But none of this is available over the counter. So almost all these commercials end with the phrase: "Ask your doctor if "Stand To Attention!" is right for you".

Then, presumably, when you next go to see your doctor (which, for the average American, is in the next five minutes) you are supposed to say "So doctor, do you think "Stand To Attention!" is right for me?". And the doctor says, "Well, the last patient I gave it to is still standing to attention three months later. But, yes, I'm sure it will be fine. Here's a prescription for the next 20 years". And then the doctor receives a fat cheque from Erections R Us, the makers of Stand To Attention!, and everyone is happy.

3 Tea

I have written before on this site about the difficulties of getting a half decent cup of tea in the New World. Well, despite two years of personal intervention on my part in terms of introducing numerous Americans to the concept of a teapot and suggesting that they fill it with something that one can actually taste, the situation at the national level is just as dire as it was. It remains the case that, in most beverage-serving establishments in this country, a request for tea is likely to be met with a cup of hot water presented alongside a Liptons yellow label tea bag. If you're lucky, your Liptons yellow label will be delivered on its own saucer. Perhaps The Referee is losing his touch.

2 The suburbanisation of the Beautiful Game

Here's what (association) football means to me, and has meant to me since I was first taken along to a non-league game at the age of six (hello dad). Long shorts, mud, rain, cold tea, meat pies, old blokes in flat caps and no teeth shouting helpful advice to the referee relating to his eyesight and his parentage. It means total commitment to one's team, the belief against all the evidence that they are the greatest team in the world, and a hatred almost as passionate directed towards any visiting team.

But what does (association) football mean (if anything) for the average American? Well, it probably means something more along the lines of clapping politely as a gaggle of 7-year-old girls skip happily around an elementary school playing field in the leafy suburbs, whilst sitting on a folding deck chair and shouting encouraging but incomprehensible phrases such as "Way to hustle!", whatever that means.

At least "The referee's a wa**er!" is grammatically correct.

1 Disney World

Consider for a moment, if you will, all the worst bits of the Big Country: excess, self-centredness, obsession with money, a lack of awareness of the rest of the world, a rather annoying over-confidence, etc. Then imagine that all those worst bits were somehow fashioned in plastic, covered in melted cheese and dropped in a field in the middle of Florida. Then imagine that you had to part with thousands of dollars in order to hang around in this field for a few days. Then imagine that, to your horror, your children thought this was a really good idea and lobbied you to do it all over again. Well, kids, it's not going to happen. Get over it. I am never going there ever again. Period. Whatever that means.

So, there you have it. I hope you feel better for having read my Bottom Ten. I certainly feel better for having written it.

American readers need not despair. I love your country really. Top Ten coming soon.

October

As Oscar Wilde most certainly didn't say, there is only one thing worse than the Yankees losing in the play-offs, and that is the Red Sox not losing in the play-offs.

Looking for a New England

It goes without saying, and indeed typing, that one of the essential activities for those from Old(e) England when visiting (or living in) this country is a visit to New England. Preferably, this should take the form of a tour of several or all the six States which make up the beautiful and historic north eastern corner of the country.

(Now, in the days before the Information Steve Heighway (without which this site would not exist, of course), I could have had some fun by asking you to name the six States of New England. Thanks to the good people of Google, however, my fun has been curtailed. But here's a suggestion. Just for fun - no prizes or any of that nonesense - British and other non-American readers (imagine that!) should resist the temptation to Google it and try to guess the six using only their grey matter. The answers will appear at the end. But there'll be a couple of clues along the way.

Go on - do it now, before you read any further.

OK, let's move on.)

So, this summer, The Referee and family decided to make the traditional pilgrimage north and east to see what we could find. We decided to start on the coast of MA, then inland to NH, and then back east to the coast of ME. (You will note that I am writing in code in order not to spoil your fun.)

Well, it was just as beautiful and peaceful as we had imagined, in part. On the other hand, it was also strange and over-eventful...

1. MA

I cannot over-recommend to you the beautiful villlage of Rockport MA which, like St Ives in Cornwall - another of The Referee's favo(u)rite places - is both a fishing village and an artists' colony, as well as the proud owner of some lovely beaches. We spent a very happy couple of days there, staying at a wonderful B&B (the Old Farm Inn) which, having been there since at least 1705 (as the home of one Cpt William Woodbury), must be one of the oldest buildings in MA, and indeed in the US of America. But Rockport is most famous for "Motif #1", an old red lobster barn on the harbour, so-called because it is said to be the most-painted object in the country. I don't mean that it is often re-decorated, I mean that... You know what I mean.

2. NH

From there we drove north and west into the spectacular White Mountains, which are not particularly white in the summer, but a popular place to ski at other times of the year. They are notable primarly for (i) Mt Washington, the highest point in New England (and, at 6,288ft, half as high again as Ben Nevis, the highest point in the UK of Blighty), and (ii) the Mt Washington Hotel, which sits at the foot of the mountain in the town of Bretton Woods, and which hosted the famous post-war financial conference which goes by that name.

(It has also been said by some that the spectacular hotel was the inspiration for Stephen King's novel The Shining, although Mr King himself in the introit to the book explains that the inspiration was a hotel in Colorado, which seems to rather scupper that theory.)

Anyway, it's a remarkably beautiful area - like the Scottish Highlands on steroids - and we enjoyed a fascinating day taking the steam railway up to the top of the mountain, which the engineers were keen to explain is the second steepest railway in the world, after one in Switzerland. When you're going up the section which has a gradient of over 37%, you take their word for it.

The locals like to say that Mt Washington is the home of the world's worst weather. This might seem impausible at first but, being something of an anorak for this type of thing, I was pleased to learn that it holds the world record for the faster-ever recorded wind speed: 231 mph.

3. ME

Then things started to go awry. We had booked ourselves into an apparently beautiful little cottage, on the coast, in the middle of nowhere, in upstate ME. Sound idyllic? That's what we thought.

The first sign of trouble reared its head when we arrived in the nearest metropolis, let's call it Little Inbred. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that the good people of this area are completely uncivilised. But - this is true - the man employed by the local chamber of commerce to give out tourist information warned us to be careful about the locals, who were not always particularly welcoming of outsiders. For a town where there was clearly absolutely nothing going on except tourism - and there wasn't much of that - this was quite an admission. (The chap in question, who, it seemed to me, was doing his best in difficult circumstances, was wearing a t-shirt proudly advertising the local Lupin Festival 2007.)

Feeling rather unsure about whether we'd done the right thing, we set off in search of a supermarket. Since Little Inbred clearly had nothing at all to offer in this department, we decided that, before finding our cottage, we would have to check out the nearby settlement of Imarriedmysister. It quickly became clear that Imarriedmysister was a much more happening place, boasting not only a supermarket but also a parking lot, a couple of fishing boats and a dog with almost the requisite number of legs. We came away relatively pleased, in all the circumstances, with our haul of some long-grain rice from the 1970s and several potatoes with some lovely green shoots.

Without going into boring detail (imagine that!) about the accommodation in question, suffice to say that, on arrival, we quickly concluded that life is not always like the internet. Perhaps that's a blessing. But this place was not only different, it was also dirty and it smelled (although not as badly as the chap on my flight to Melbourne - see my message of 8 August).

We then did something which we hadn't ever done before, but which was actually rather fun. We had a family meeting, and we made a democratic decision. The unanimous decision was that there was no way we were going to spend a week in this place - we would stay only that night and leave again first thing the next morning.

After an unpleasant night, on the floor in my case (the kids were so spooked out by their creepy room that they got in our bed and refused to get out), we packed up and drove off, to nowhere in particular.

I don't know if you've tried this, but there is something strangely invigorating about driving with a car load of stuff and children without any idea where you're going to spend the night.

To cut a long story short (too late for that! I expect you're thinking) we were taken in like waifs off the street by the wonderful Carl at the Old Farm Inn back in Rockport MA, and spent a lovely few days there back on the beach, eating at the same restaurant every night, followed by the same walk to admire the wonderful harbour and Motif #1. Perfect.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that things which look like they're going to go wrong sometimes turn out better than they would have done if they had gone right, if you see what I mean.

And finally, the answer to the quiz is, of course: Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachussets, Maine and Rhode Island. But then you already knew that.

Can A-Rod Save Baseball?

I don't know about you, but The Referee tends to be the sort of person who is not at the centre of things. I am generally the last to know when something important happens, and I'm probably not there at the time.

So it was recently when I slipped out to Australia for five minutes (see my message of 8 August 2007) that, whilst I was over there, or under there if you prefer, two important and long-awaited baseball records were broken back here in the US of America.

Now, you might actually have heard about the first of these record-breaking incidents, which received a good deal of media worldwide, including in Oz, a country which takes about as much of an interest in baseball as Americans take in Australian Rules football. However, unless you live in my adopted country and take a keen interest in these things, you are less likely to have heard about the second piece of baseball news I am about to report. But I suggest that this other news will ultimately become more important in the great sweep of history. And, this being The Referee, dear reader, I am not going just to suggest this - rather, I will demonstrate it using complicated math(s). Oh yes.

The first piece of news, of course, is that, on 8 August, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants hit the 756th home run of his career, thus breaking the record of 755 held by Hank Aaron since 1974. You might be interested to know (!) that the third person on the list remains the great Babe Ruth, who hit 714 homers in his career, and headed the all-time HR list from 1921 until Aaron overtook him.

(By the way, although the record was broken at AT&T Park, San Francisco, in a game against the Washington Nationals, the record-breaking ball was caught by one Matt Murphy, a Mets fan from New York who was there only because he was on the way to Australia. Spooky, or what? In case you are looking to make an investment, the ball is currently up for auction and is expected to fetch half a million dollars.)

Those who are not close to these things might reasonably expect that this amazing record-breaking effort might have been accompanied by celebrations across the world of baseball. This was not the case, only because Bonds is one of a group of players widely suspected of taking performing-enhancing substances from the late '90s until the baseball authorities began testing for them, which was amazingly not until 2003.

Let me make it clear that The Referee is not going to comment on the veracity of these allegations. I have nothing to offer in that department. All I know is that the record books on the single-season HR records make interesting reading. The record for home runs in a single season is also held by Bonds, an amazing 73, set in the 2001 season. The odd thing, statistically, is that the next five records in that list were also all set between 1998 and 2001, all of them by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both of whom have also been alleged to have been involved with inappropriate substances. It seems odd, to say the least, in a sport with a history of more than 100 years, that the HR records should be bunched in a span of just four years. (Ruth's best ever in a single season, by the way, was 60 in 1927 - the 8th best all-time.)

On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Barry Bonds is a great player and one of the best hitters of all time. I can only speak for myself on this point, but I have no doubt that, even if The Referee was to take a good quantity of every performance-enhancing substance known to man, I would never be able to hit a baseball out of a stadium 755 times or anything close to it. In fact, just watch a live major league baseball game as hitters face a small, rock-hard ball arriving at over 90 miles per hour, and you'll be amazed that they ever hit it at all.

But, you are thinking, what was the second record I promised, and how can it be more important that Bonds' new record? I'll tell you.

On 4 August, just three days before Bonds hit number 756, one Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees hit the 500th home run of his career. Rodriguez, universally known here as A-Rod, thus entered the fabled "500 club", becoming only the 22nd player ever to do so, and the youngest. (As I write, A-Rod has 45 home runs this season so far, and has now entered the top 20 list for career home runs.)

Bonds is now 42 years old, which is about the time most baseball players hang up their romper suits, even those who have pickled their vital organs with human growth hormone - allegedly. A-Rod, however - and this is where it gets interesting (I promise!) - is only 32, and can expect to play for another decade, if he stays healthy. None of the other current players near the top of the career HR list is anywhere near as young as A-Rod. In fact, one has to go down to 64th on the list (Andruw Jones, currently on 366) to find someone younger than A-Rod.

Put all the above together, and you can see why many commentators believe it is just a matter of time until A-Rod takes the HR crown from Bonds, which would be widely popular, including amongst those who believe it still really belongs to Aaron, because it would be aided only by the unnatural number of sunflower seeds which players are able to consume during games.

But how long will we have to wait? I'm glad you asked that.

A-Rod has phenonemal numbers, as they say. His single-season record is 57 home runs, whilst playing for the Texas Rangers in 2001. And his season average, in the 14th season of his career, is 44. That includes hitting no homers at all in his first season (with the Seattle Mariners) and only 5 the following year.

Let us suppose, for the sake of this scientific experiment, that A-Rod keeps up his average of 44 for the rest of his career. If he does, The Referee calculates that he would reach Bonds' record-breaking 756 after another 5 and a half seasons, or in the early summer of 2013, to be precise.

On the assumption that Bonds will hit a few more this season and then retire, A-Rod might just need until the end of the 2013 season to top the list.

Of course, it's quite possible that he will not keep up his impressive average for that long. But The Referee prefers the view that we have yet to see the best of A-Rod, whose average may even improve over the next few years, as he climbs up the top 20 list, passing such greats as Mickey Mantle (13th), Reggie Jackson (11th) and Willie Mays (4th) on the way.

And so, there you have it. Keep your eye on the HR top 20, but don't hold your breath. And remember that you heard it here first.

As we often say in our house, "Let's go, A-Rod!", whatever that means.