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.

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.