Benidorm (Featuring An Idiot From Thatto Heath)

"What time is it, Stephen?"

"Quarter to nine."

Sunday. Breakfast is on between 7.00 and 10.00 so as we drag our weary, slightly hung over arses out of bed we reckon we have just over an hour to get some food down us before heading to the beach.

Except we don't. At some point while I am in the bathroom (having carefully closed the door so that it might have half a chance of re-opening) the realisation hits me that I have forgotten to put the clock forward on my mobile phone. It was certainly 8.45 in Manchester, but here in Benidrom it was most definitely 9.45. Despite my extra care with the door, we have missed breakfast.

So, the beach it is. A day before the flight, and remembering that the plan while here was to do as much of nothing as possible, I spent an unreasonable amount of money in the Waterstones in Liverpool. Usually I can just wave a gift card around in the likes of Waterstones and WH Smiths. So predictably dull am I that if ever anyone bothers to ask what I might like for a birthday or for Christmas, there is a 90-odd% chance that I will suggest a voucher for a book store. That's not a hint. Nothing I say is a hint, unless you're going to do it.

Anyway somehow I was as good as voucher-less (there was actually about £3-something on my last Waterstones card) when I bought ANOTHER Grisham novel, YET ANOTHER Bill Bryson tome, and one by an author entirely new to me called Jeremy Dyson. I'm trying to broaden my horizons. Or something. I remember wondering how I could have arrived at the point where I needed actual English currency to obtain books in Waterstones, and then I looked into my wallet and found a gift card for HMV that had been there for over a year, and one for Gamestation which may very well pre-date the original version of the Atari.

So where were we? The beach. I'm not good with sand or water so what am I doing here? Correction. The wheelchair is not good with sand or water so what is it doing here? I'm stuck with it, but fortunately there is enough of a wooden ramp to help me get within jumping distance of a pair of loungers and a parasol. Beaches all seem to have those ramps with grooves in which jolt you each time a wheel hits one. I don't know whether it is meant to slow you down so that you don't mow down a passing toddler, but whatever the reason it makes it more awkward. Awkward is the beach's middle name.

We pay 12 Euros for the privilege of lounging around all day in that spot. An old man who knows almost no English other than to ask for money (my Dad used to say that about me and my sister) walks by and collects a small fortune. It's quite busy here, but thankfully everyone seems to have the same idea as us (i.e. to do nothing except maybe read) so we are not disturbed until one of the old man's colleagues, similarly challenged with her English, walks by to check that we have indeed purchased tickets enabling us to do nothing.

Somewhere in the middle of Bryson's first chapter a drinks vendor wanders by. His English is slightly better than that of the man selling loungers and parasols. Aswell as asking you for money, the drinks vendor knows how to shout the names of beverages at you very loudly;

"Coca-Cola, lemon (suspiciously pronounced limon but we'll let him have it), Fanta, beer!" he booms at regular intervals, scouring the beach for someone who might be interested. There is a huge supermarket not two minutes walk from where we are yet he does a roaring trade. Such is the nature of people, they will pay more for their drinks if it means they can have them brought to them by loud, pushy blokes rather than have to cross the street just off the beach.

One particular set of customers are winding our drinks vendor up somehow. They've asked for something that our man hasn't got and it's prompted a bit of a tantrum. He storms off to get the right drink for his bemused customers and as he goes about completing the transaction, he begins throwing items of his belonging to different parts of the beach. One such missile gives a fright to a pair of sunbathing girls nearby, while another lands on the lounger of his customers as he fannies around in his bag, probably looking for the requisite change. The woman buying the drink is not put off by this. There is no way that she is walking the two minutes over the road don't forget, so she calmly picks up his discarded goods and hands them back to him. He walks on grumpily.

In terms of causing a disturbance he's nothing compared to the vendor we encountered on the beach in Alcudia. Every day the same chubby, middle-aged lady would patrol the area trying to sell her liquid refreshment in the same aggressive manner. And her English was worse;

"Melon and melon and melon and a melon and Co-Co!" she would bellow, which we presumed to mean she had some Coke somewhere on her person which might be for sale. We dared not ask. This was a very scary woman. I swear one afternoon I had drifted off to sleep (nursing another hangover, no doubt) and her overly-enthusiastic brand of salesmanship actually woke me up. We lay at different parts of the beach on different days, but there was no escape from her town cryer act.

Back in Benidorm it is time for lunch. Having missed breakfast this is the first chance we get to visit our restaurant. We're full board and at a fairly hefty price too I might add, so it would be nice if there were something palatable on offer. Even better if the service was something approaching acceptable. We wait to be seated and are greeted by a short, balding man we assume to be the manager. Head waiter at least. There is something slightly sinister about him. He reminds Emma of an actor she has seen in films playing eastern European characters. I can confirm that he does. Google Peter Stormare and you will get some idea of what greeted us every meal time.

Lunch is more cheese and ham related products and while Emma has gone back to the buffet for something or other I notice our movie villain head waiter has a slight quirk upon greeting some of his dining guests. A couple walk in and he smiles at them happily, turns to the gentleman and says;

'Ello sirrrrrrrr'

.......before switching his gaze and coming out with the quite brilliantly inappropriate....

"Ello lovvvvvv"

He's calling him 'sir' and her 'love'. What's more he is doing it in a such a way that the botched pronounciation only accentuates the faux pas. Or whatever the Spanish is. I have no idea which customer service courses he has been on. Later that day, one of the waitresses manages to top up Emma's glass of Diet Coke with half a glass of regular Coke. She hasn't even asked for a top-up. In fact, she has declined the offer.

Back at the hotel bar in the evening the live music is getting worse. Comparisons to Raw Sex are entirely superflous at this point but that is as best a description I can offer you of the type of entertainment on offer. A very old man bashes away at his organ (oh, really) while half a handful of people scarcely notice. The white-haired grape-face from last night is back again and he has managed to age even more. Again we don't stay long.

The only new bar we visit thereafter is the Western Saloon. My sister had told me that she and her friends had had a 'riot' in there when she last visited Benidorm. That may be an unfortunate term at the moment but that is exactly the one she used before the residents of Tottenham decided to start tearing their neigbourhood apart. Perhaps she is something of a prophet. Anyway, for 'riot' read Irish duo performing the kind of patriotic ditties that one needs to be highly innebriated to enjoy. One of the men consumes a ridiculous amount of lager throughout his performance without really showing any ill effects. It's quite phenomenal.

Aware that they have utterly screwed up the theme by inviting this dubious pair to their establishment, the Western Saloon staff make a bit of an effort by dressing up as cowgirls. Now this is mildly diverting to me but there is no wheelchair access to the bar and so, another ludicroulsy large vodka or two later, we are on our way again. Back to the same old karaoke bars from last night, avoiding Uncle Kracker and trying instead to add to my repertoire.

There's time yet.

Benidorm (No, Not The TV Show)

By the time we check in to Hotel Riviera we have missed lunch. We're full board, but lunch is only on till 3.00 and we're not going to make it. So the plan is to get in, get a quick change and freshen up, then go out and find somewhere to eat while sizing up some of the local entertainment.

Standing between us and our first proper meal of the last 20-odd hours is the fact that I am stuck in the bathroom. It has a sliding door which I am sure is supposed to make access easier, but I have pulled it too far over and it has become separated from it's runners at the bottom. I don't realise this until I am ready to come out, and so I at least have the consolation of being in a fit state of dress during my ordeal.

And ordeal it is. Emma's not Bob The Builder, so she can't fix it. She has to tell the staff at reception that I have managed to get myself stuck in the bathroom. It's like a scene from 'One Foot In The Grave' that doesn't make the editor's final cut. A few minutes of contemplating spending my week in a small but reasonably well adapted bathroom pass by before the hotel's handy-man is knocking on the front door;

'Hola.' I hear him say, gruffly as he enters the room.

He begins tugging at the top of the door in what passes as an attempt to assess the problem. Predictably it doesn't budge. He mumbles something in Spanish, probably aimed in the direction of Emma since there is a whacking great door between the two of us. His voice is raised at the end as if he is asking a question, and the fact that she has no clue what he has just asked or how to answer it does not deter him. He continues to chunner on in Spanish as if we understand him perfectly. Soon, he is answering his own questions, nodding and saying 'si' to himself after every misunderstood utterance.

Finally, after several minutes of pushing, shoving and banging he identifies the problem. Mercifully, he is able to re-attach the door to it's runners quite quickly after this, and it is not long before I am released from my temporary confinement. For the first time I lay eyes on him and I am quite taken aback by the sheer magnitude of his moustache. It hangs for miles either side of his face. It's like something from a cartoon;

'Hola.' he offers as I sheepishly roll out into the main bedroom. I nod a hopeful nod of grattitude, but any real expression of my thanks for his efforts is clearly going to be eaten alive by the language barrier. So that's it. He leaves, but just as we are about to leave the hotel and get a now rather delayed lunch, the receptionist calls the room to say that he will have to come back for something not quite specified. We wait a few more minutes but he does not return. A few more, still nothing. Perhaps he is tending to that enormous moustache. Or freeing some other idiot biff from his bathroom.

And so we walk for a few minutes, around the corner from our hotel. It is noticable that there are a number of bars closed. Some have signs outside proclaiming that Saturday is their day off and I remember thinking that, as close to British pub culture as this place so obviously is, closing bars on a Saturday would never work at home. Well I say culture. It's not really. Benidorm is a place so utterly devoid of it's own culture that it has to be seen to be believed. It's a slice of Britain, most likely Blackpool, picked up and plonked into a hot climate. Though they are closed on Saturdays, it is telling that some of these bars are actively advertising the fact that they show Eastenders and Coronation Street on their big screens through the week.

Lunch is a simple cheese and ham toastie affair in a place called 'Beefy's'. The girl serving there possibly knows no English. She's exceptionally quiet and seems utterly indifferent to our presence. There is one other couple in here. If Benidorm has a reputation for being rowdy and loud then they didn't mean this place. We tip her a Euro or two in the hope that she might smile.

Opposite Hotel Riviera is a place called Uncle Ped's. This dubiously named establishment really should attract more custom than it does, given that one can buy a bottle of Budweiser here for 1 Euro. That's less than 90p which, for those of you unfamiliar with the price of alcohol, is what is known as 'bloody cheap'. It is here that we start our first evening in Benidorm. The aim is exploration so we won't have to hang around here for long, despite the fabulously cheap beer. There's more evidence of Benidorm's Britishness, with screens lined along the walls showing pre-season football friendlies involving Liverpool and Arsenal. The other customers are mostly young families. Something to be avoided.

As we leave Uncle Ped's we notice that there is some live music on back at Hotel Riviera. Remembering our enjoyment of the wonderfully tacky live acts on show in Alcudia all those years ago, I suggest to Emma that we call back in for one drink and take in what Brian Potter might refer to as 'the turn'. We sit down at a table in the nice outdoor bar I noticed on the way in, and the waitress brings our drinks. She pours half a bottle of vodka into my glass and offers me a barely visible amount of orange juice with which to dilute my lethal tipple. The first three or four sips are barely palatable. They are pure vodka, strong enough to kill a herd of rhinos. It is only after that fourth or fifth go that I am able to squeeze enough of the orange juice into my glass to adequately take the sting out of the thing.

Two long-haired, probably local men are playing in a makeshift performance area. I would hesitate to call it a stage. In fact, I would hesitate, think about it twice more and finally decide that it is not a stage. Among the hits they belt out are The Police's infamous 'Every Breath You Take'. The singer is certainly taking the Sting out of this, but puts the top hat on it by playing the Black Eyed Peas' 'I Gotta Feeling' where the instrumental should be. Even P-Diddy didn't screw this song up this badly, and yet it is greatly entertaining. We love this sort of crap.

A man sitting opposite catches my eye. Not like that. But I can't help but notice him. He must be in his 70's, and he has a mop of bright white hair shaped into the most outrageous mullet. It's the kind of hairstyle that only the Gerry Francises of this world truly believe they can get away with. Emma calls it wretched, and it really is. His skin, wrinkled to within an inch of it's life, is dark purple, possibly as a result of too much sunshine. He looks like a black grape, and for some reason I can't stop looking at him. Like he's a car accident.

The 'turn' plays on, but when the vodka is gone we walk on in the general direction of all the noise. We end up in a bar called 'Morgan's', in which there is another 'turn' in full swing. This lot are a Queen tribute band, and they are quite a draw. There are no seats in the house, so we order our rhino-strength vodkas and find a seat outside. Helpfully, there is a screen above the outdoor bar showing the entertainment. They call themselves One Vision after the old Queen number, and consist of three men and a woman. I'm being picky when I point out that I can't ever remember a woman being in Queen, but 'Emma-Louise' certainly adds something. She's dressed more like a vampire than a member of Queen, but she can certainly belt out a tune. Though 'We Are The Champions' is cut criminally short to my mind.

Soon they are replaced by a trio calling themselves Joyful Joyful, and their 'thing' is to rattle of numbers from the Sister Act soundtracks. This really isn't my 'thing', and I'm distracted by a man trying to sell flowers. One man has already bought flowers somewhere else, and tries to sell them back to the flower salesman here. His female companion just laughs, and I'm blown away by such romanticism. Nevertheless I decline the offer when he gets to our table. If I know Emma she can think of nothing less romantic than me buying her flowers from a pushy chancer in a tacky European bar.

And so to our last stop, The Last Stop. This is the sort of bar that I was promised I would see so much of and enjoy so much. More vodka kicks off the Karaoke Tourettes and before you can say 'Uncle Kracker is a one-hit wonder but doesn't half go down well when people realise they remember it' I'm up there, belting out my country/pop party piece. Emma makes a remark about how I always sing the same songs and I make a drunken promise never to sing the same song twice while we're here.

When I am not on stage there is much else to baulk at. A 10-year-old girl belts out a torrid version of Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face'. Now call me old fashioned but I think there is something inherently wrong with a girl that age singing about getting people hard and showing what they've got but it doesn't seem to bother the adults responsible for her. They're egging her on and taking photographs despite the risque lyricism. I start hoping that they haven't noticed how inappropriate this song really is because I dread to think that they know and have just let her get on with it regardless.

A man called Paul sings with an older lady called Norma. They offer us the most tuneless version of 'I Got You Babe' I have ever heard, and to make matters worse he adjusts something on the inside of his shorts in the middle of his performance. I'm assuming that Norma is his mum. She pretends she hasn't noticed which is probably best for everyone. Other 'highlights' include Scouting For Girls' 'She's So Lovely' performed in the style of Joe Pasquale, and a Scottish folk version of Status Quo's 'The Wanderer'.

And this is it. This really is Benidorm.

Benidorm - The Journey

Well it must be at least two months since I went on some berserk travelling escapade, so thank God for the sake of this column that Emma and I spent a week in Benidorm recently.

The idea was to do nothing. As exciting and as much fun as it was the American trip was hectic and hard work at times. We needed to get away to somewhere where we could just lounge around a lot, where it would not be possible to run out of petrol on the freeway or get hopelessly lost on the local transportation. While this may not seem like fertile ground for what is fast claiming to be a travel journal, it is surprising how much can happen when you are doing nothing.

Our flight was Saturday morning, August 6, but the adventure begins a day earlier. For both Las Vegas and last year's Florida expedition we had used possibly the only wheelchair accessible mini-bus in the western world to get to the airport. Believing we were playing it safe we had booked it again this time, but receive a phone call late on Friday afternoon informing us that our booking is cancelled. The lift on the bus isn't working. Oh, and sorry, and all that.

All of which means that Emma will have to drive us to the airport. Now this is not a particularly great inconvenience to her as far as the outward journey is concerned, but it means that she will have to be a little careful about how much she drinks on the final evening. Our flight home is the following Saturday at 11.45am, meaning she will have to be fit to drive home from Manchester by about 3.00 in the afternoon. This may not seem like such a big ask, but she has previous in this field.

In 2004 we went to Alcudia in Majorca for a week. On the last night there we decided to go out with a bit of a bang. It was a place with several 'social attractions', and the long and the short of it is that we were still in one such establishment at gone 4.00 in the morning. We had to be up by 6.45 to get on the coach to the airport. At a certain point I decided that enough was enough but Emma steadfastly refused to come home. She was well past the point at which sensible communication was possible and so, in one of the less intelligent of my drunken moments (and there are MANY to choose from), I left her there.

When I woke up in the bed alone at 6.45am with the alarm blaring away you can imagine my anxiety. What I had forgotten was that our room was split into two separate parts, and to my relief I found her in the other side flat on her face, completely dead to the world. Thankfully, what with all the arsing around that surrounds air travel, she did not have to drive us home until much later in that day but nevertheless, that journey was 'interesting'. The memory is still clear enough that I'm quite certain she will never make that mistake again. She wouldn't have had to worry about it but for a broken lift, but then this is us and our travels so it was always going to happen.

So she drives. Thankfully you can arrange this sort of thing online these days so it is fairly simple, right up until the point when the machine fails to register my debit card. Thus the car park barrier is not inclined to raise at this point, and somewhere along the line Emma pushes the wrong button and ends up having a parking ticket spewed out at her. We might have ended up having to pay for the parking twice had we not spoken to another silly machine to explain the mix-up and quote our booking reference number. It would be fine, the voice said. Right.

An example of my infamy is waiting for me in the queue for checking-in. I bump into someone I used to go to college with about 15 years ago. He is with his wife, someone else I used to know because she worked in a pub I used to go in about eight years ago. I have a friend who relentlessly tried to get off with her every week for about two years. I don't think he ever achieved it, sadly. I never knew that she and my former college friend were together and I remember thinking that the world is smaller than I had imagined. They have one, maybe two little people in tow and a conversation about the last 15 years is crammed into about 20 seconds until it is our turn to check-in.

The flight is going to be delayed. We are hit with this bombshell even before we have a chance to lug the suitcases on to the conveyer belt. Instead of leaving at 7.00am we will be leaving at 9.00am. It is now around 4.20am and suddenly, Benidorm seems a long way away. We go through the usual charade of the check-in girl asking Emma stupid questions about whether I can walk (she never bothers to ask if I can speak for myself, they never do), and go off to find something to do for the next three and a half hours before the revised boarding time.

Having not had much sleep we decide to go for a much-needed brew first. Though the tea is expensive they try to sweeten you by offering you free refills so long as you keep your cup. That probably proves cost effective for them on the whole, but given the amount of time we spend sitting around in airports they might just have picked the wrong mark in the pair of us. Welcome though a very early morning brew is, it is not long before I declare the holiday officially open by going for a pint of lager. The thought crosses my mind that 5.50am (which it is by now) is a tad too early to be consuming alcohol but I've never been one for conformity. We find a seat in the obligatory overly expensive airport bar and go about the difficult business of passing the time.

Maybe it is something about drinking at that time of the morning that brings out the very strange in people but Emma has the misfortune of standing next to one of those people who talks to you as if he has known you all his life despite having never met you. He also assumes that you know all of his friends and family by name and can therefore put any rantings he might have to impart on you about them into perfect context;

"I was just saying to Carol!......" he begins

Who? Never mind.

"No, I mean, I was just saying to Carol about them two women behind us, if I ever get like them you can shoot me."

Turns out that the two in question had been bitching about something or other and Man At Bar had obviously found them a little too intolerant for his tastes. He goes on to order Carol a glass of wine and when asked what size glass he might require, replies;

"Ooh, large one I think. Doesn't matter, Carol's paying!"

Good old Carol. Finally Emma manages to escape Man At Bar but it doesn't help that when she attempts to pay for the drinks (no, it's my money I'm just lazy and have trouble seeing over bars from this height) she is met with a classic 'computer says no' moment. The girl has to swipe a card and type a pin number or some such arsewash just to get the till working, but when she does so it refuses to co-operate. 'Till Closed', it tells her. Computer says no. Man At Bar talks more about Carol.

Emma leaves me to pay a visit and then an even more terrifying demonstration of my infamy ensues. Emma hates this about me (among other things, probably) but it is fair to say that we can't go anywhere without someone knowing me or at least thinking they know me. I'm expected to remember them all and to my shame I hardly ever do. But they have an unfair advantage in that I have a distinctive feature, shall we say. Quite often, however, I am not the man they think I am and it turns out that in fact that they have just seen some random bloke in a wheelchair and decided that I am him. Either way, we spent an inordinate amount of time on nights out and such like being delayed because I am having pointless conversations with people I may or may not know.

As I said she is elsewhere so she misses this one, and we're not really going anywhere anyway. The terrifying thing is that the person approaching me is carrying an enormous machine gun. Two armed police officers are patrolling the area and as they walk towards me one of them approaches me, quite matter of factly, and asks me if I live in St.Helens. I look at the size of his gun (stop it) and decide that I don't really feel I can say no. I would have agreed to almost anything. I feel like Lieutenant George when he was asked for his hand in marriage by General Melchet.

He tells me that he has seen me 'in town'. I find this worrying because anyone who has only ever seen me 'in town' will no doubt be convinced that I am an alcoholic manic depressive prone to sporadic outbursts of unnecessary aggression. This is not the sort of impression one would wish to give to a police officer carrying an offensive weapon. There isn't time to explain, however, that I am not like that all the time (shut up, I'm not) and so instead we just discuss the fact that he lives in Wigan now, but is also from St.Helens. I decide against offering him my sympathies for his current choice of residence.

Emma returns from the ladies and conveys an amusing tale about how she has to wee standing up. My view is that she should be grateful for the ability to do so, but she's not happy because not only is the toilet seat noticably absent, but the door won't lock either. A few pints later we are on the plane. It doesn't seem all that long since we arrived, because beer will do that for you. It makes time go quicker. Another pint and it might very well have been time to come home.

The flight itself is uneventful until we land. At which point we notice that water is dripping from the ceiling above our seats. Forced so sit there and wait until they have retrieved my chair from the hold there is very little we can do about it except vigilantly avoid the occasional heavy drops. Laughably, we are 'assisted' by an announcement advising us that 'passengers requiring wheelchair assistance should remain seated'. Really? What else are we likely to do? I'm so glad you told me that because now I won't have to go crawling down the aisle like some demented Orang-Utan!

Much fannying about on the internet had led us to a company who had the decency to offer accessible airport transfers. Unlike the mini-bus company on this side, they are true to their word. A short, middle-aged man holds a sign with Emma's name on it. As we pass through Arrivals, past the crowd of people waiting to pick up passengers, I notice a woman holding a sign that simply says 'BALD MAN'. There's a moment when I think she might be referring to me but there's no time to consider it any further. Our driver is lugging our suitcases through the crowds and he is not stopping for anyone. He leads us past a huge queue of people waiting for the lift and we are left with no choice but to follow. He's single-minded. He's got his passengers and he's buggered if he is going to let anyone get in the way of him finishing the job off.

Close to Benidorm, he drives us through a very narrow road which looks like it belongs in the middle of nowhere. I am thinking there can't possibly be anything even resembling a holiday resort anywhere near this shady, dusty road. Later, Emma tells me that she thought he might be taking us somewhere quiet so he could murder us without fear of being seen. However, we reach the other end of the road and suddenly there are bars and hotels and holiday-type things to be seen. Given the bad press Benidorm gets I am pleasantly surprised. This is exactly the sort of place that one could spend a week in doing absolutely nothing.

He drops us off at Hotel Riviera, newly refurbished and looking rather nice actually. Nothing flash, but certainly acceptable in comparison to some of the places we have stayed in on our relentless journey around the world. It's unbelievably, searingly hot as we move up the driveway to the main entrance to check-in. There's a nice outdoor bar area that I make a note to make excessive use of during our stay. It's about 3.00pm local time. Must be time for a pint.

The Wasp

I'm not meant to be here. I'm not meant to be anywhere. If anyone asks, you ain't seen me, right? I just had to share this with you.

I've just had another of those 'why do I bother?' days. Increasingly these days, I am starting to feel like the wasp who flies headlong into what he thinks is an open window, only to slam into the glass at high speed. Unlike the wasp, I never end up splattered, just a little dazed. In time, usually within a few days, I have forgotten all about the slam into the glass and I come back for another go. Always with the same result. What follows is another such example.

Two days ago Emma took the car to the Renault dealership on Sherdley Road for it's MOT. I never gave this a second thought until she informed me that not only had the car FAILED it's MOT, but that it would cost £450 to make it roadworthy again. She's driving down to Buckinghamshire to see her family at the weekend so she has to have the car. No choice. She doesn't have the money, so I pay.

All well and good. Except that within a day those nice people at Renault are back on the phone to Emma to let her know that actually, there is something else wrong with the car and well.....it's going to cost £511 for the car to be roadworthy again. And seven pence. Having just forked out over a grand for our holiday in Benidorm (yes, there will be blogs when I can summon the life force) an additional £511 (and seven pence) is nobody's idea of a fun spending spree. Yet still, I puff out my cheeks and reason that since I am fortunate enough to be able to afford it at the moment I will write a cheque or wave a debit card and just neglect to look at my bank balance until the next pay day arrives.

So this morning we go together to pick up the car. Only we don't. They hand us the keys, deliver the usual speed-waffle about what they have 'had' to do to it to bring it back to life, and send us on our way £511 (and seven pence) lighter. Some spark has parked it too close to a railed fence that runs along the back of the car park so Emma has to roll it forward in order to get my chair into the boot. She does this without too much fuss, but when it comes to turning the ignition key a second time to actually get the thing started, it's having none of it. There's no sound, no lights are coming on, nothing. Now, I'm no Charlene Mitchell (come on boys, you remember?), but I'd say that means it's buggered.

So, not only have they charged us an outrageous fortune (and not of the kind Shakespeare wrote) but they have handed the car back to us in a worse state than it was when we took it in on Monday. Late for work and losing flexi rapidly I storm back into the office, positively seething. I haven't been this angry since.....ooh.....four days previously when the staff at Manchester Airport tried to explain to me why my wheelchair was at baggage reclaim (it's a whole other blog, that one).

"How is it possible for you to charge me £500 and give the car back to us in a worse state then when it came in?" I demand to know of the Customer Relations Assistant Manager or some such garbled job-title faeces.

"Sir, we don't actually check the battery during an MOT" he replies.

I'm as stunned as any forgetful wasp can be at this point;

"Don't you think you should check it for that amount of money?" I am about to ask, before Emma, usually the one to kick off first if there is any complaining to be done, calmly strolls in and asks the Customer Relations Assistant Arsehole what might be going on.

"Battery is flat." I say. I've gone a bit John Cleese by now and follow up with;

"And they are going to charge us EVEN MORE than the £500 we have already paid!"

"Sir, nobody is saying we are going to charge you again but if there is a problem with the battery then it will be chargeable."

Come again? You're not saying you are going to charge me but it will be chargeable? Do you mean chargeable as in you will be able to re-charge the battery and get the fucking thing working again? Or do you mean chargeable as in you get your grubby hands on ANOTHER extortionate amount of money that your dimwit mechanics have not come even remotely close to earning?

Undecided what he means, I just spout;

"Shut up, you and I both know we are going to pay extra for this so don't take the piss out of me."

"Sir, I'm not I....."

Emma leads me away, and they offer to take us to work. I won't stay in the car with them for the whole of a ride to Liverpool because I am far beyond the signpost marked 'fuming'. So they drop us off at the train station and I try to forget about it.

And I do, until the cakes are mentioned. There is something of a tradition in work for buying cakes. There has to be some semblance of an occasion to mark, but it need not be a very important or prominent one. My coming back to work from my holidays is reason enough. So yesterday I said I would get the cakes in.

However, having turned up an hour and a half late for work because of the aforementioned car shenanigans it slips my mind. By the time I am reminded of it, close to lunchtime, I don't have the time to go out and get them. You see I've made a mistake and I'm busy fixing it. Not a grave error, but one on the scale of...say.... a forgetful wasp flying into a pane of glass. Either way it is something that needs fixing because otherwise I dwell on it. And you know what happens when I dwell on things? I start blogging.

By mid-afternoon every other piece of office banter (and one or two Facebook posts) are about how I promised everyone cakes and failed miserably to deliver. Deepening my predicament here is the fact that I have left my ruck-sack in the stricken, flat-batteried, £500-to-fix car so I have nothing to carry said cakes in anyway. A couple of my colleagues kindly volunteer but by then it is mid-afternoon and once I have fumbled through the 257 20p pieces in my wallet to scrape together enough cash for the cakes (it's all gone on that fucking car) it's getting a bit late. Sure enough, my colleagues return without cakes because there are none at such a ridiculous hour of the day.

Why do I bother? Wasp. I will try again soon. I promised.

So then I'm stuck on the train between Prescot and Eccleston Park. Apparently some 'vandals' (do people still use that word? do 'vandals' go 'courting'?) have stolen the signals. I have had to get the later train anyway because I've worked longer hours to get everything sorted in the wake of my incompetence (I'm off tomorrow and Friday), so it's after 6.30pm when we eventually pull into Thatto Heath station.

When I do the guard asks if he can help me off the train, but he gestures as if to do so without the aid of a ramp. I think he was just going to try to pull me off (please) and hope that I did not become separated from my wheelchair (which as you may have guessed by now was successfully reclaimed from fecking baggage reclaim the other day). I ask him to look for a ramp, but my problems don't end there.

He places the ramp between the train and the platform, but puts his foot right in the middle of the thing. As I approach the part of the ramp where his foot is still placed I ask him to move it while I roll down the ramp. What does he do instead? He reaches forward and tries to pull me forwards by the shoulders toward the platform. Clearly he agrees with the Manchester Airport staff in their view that I have no real need to be seated in my wheelchair while I am moving.

The chair tips slightly to one-side, then the lean becomes more pronounced until it's Dukes Of Hazard stuff, rolling sideways down the flimsy ramp, back wheels in the air, guard looking frightened and flapping away unhelpfully all the while. Eventually, and I still don't know how, all four wheels find the platform and my arse is still in the vicinity of my seat.

And this is not untypical of the type of treatment I get from railway staff in Merseyside. Why do I bother?

Cos I'm a forgetful wasp, is why, and do you know what? I'll be back for another go soon.

Las Vegas: The Last Stand

As I write this it is August 2, some 66 days after our last full day in America. I didn't quite expect it to take this long to transfer the events of our rip-roaring road trip to the web, but I knew that the full story was still going to be something approaching epic.

So, it's the final day of our travels across the western United States. We have plans to see The Script at Mandalay Bay this evening, but are hungover enough to laze around in the hotel room till gone 11 this morning. We finally surface and start looking for somewhere to watch the Champions League final. It kicks off at 11.45am local time so there isn't long. Hennessy's, an Irish bar on the corner of Fremont, seems a reasonable place to start. It's not. It's pretty close to empty, and a rather too laid back man informs us that since the game is being shown on the FOX network, it won't be on in their bar. They can't afford it, clearly. Damn you Rupert, your influence is everywhere.

With all other avenues seemingly closed at this point and with so little time left, we settle on the sports book at The Golden Nugget. It's just next door to our hotel, where I had already paid a visit to the sports book and placed a $10 bet on the game. I needed the scores to be level at half-time, but Barcelona to be winning by full-time. It was 7/2, which for the maths geniuses out there among you is 3 and a half to 1. Still confused? You're such a girl. Basically, if both of those outcomes were to materialise I would win three and a half times my stake (that's the $10). So, $35 in other words.

Well, you need something to make watching Manchester United play in a Champions League final bearable. There's not enough time now to fully do justice to even an attempt at describing my contempt for Manchester United so I won't try. Besides, there is already too much football talk in this column and it's about a holiday in Las Vegas after all.

We are left with little option seating-wise (I was shrewd enough to bring my own), and find ourselves perched in front of a row of small screens. Most of these are positioned somewhere in the sky and all but one are showing baseball. There is always baseball going on somewhere in America, it seems, and in a Las Vegas hotel sports book there is always going to be at least 27 televisions showing whatever baseball happens to be going on.

We are near to a bar area (good news) which also serves food. I approach the bar and, since we have not had any breakfast and it is getting pretty close to lunchtime, we decide to order chips. Fries. Whatever. Unfortunately there is only one man serving and he seems doggedly determined not to notice that I exist (bad news). So desperate is he to avoid me that at one point I rack my brains to try and remember whether I might have got drunk and asked him out at some point last night. If I did I have really bad taste. Not only is he not my type, he's just downright rude and ignorant. Poor effort.

We are very close to kick-off when he finally acknowledges my existence and I am able to place my order. Instead of giving me a ticket with a number on it he asks my name. He's the one being a bit too forward now, if you ask me, but I want my chips and I want to watch United lose so I tell him. He asks me to go back to my seat (I'm in my seat you speccy knob!) and wait until he calls my name. I expect very little. I wait.

In the meantime a large group of men wearing either Manchester United or Barcelona shirts have entered the bar and somehow managed to blag the best seats in the house by the larger screens. It's the US sports book equivalent of towels on loungers I suspect. They must know the people who had been sat there previously. Anyway, despite their differing loyalties they seem to be getting on famously. There is no anymosity but then why should there be? How much can a group of men from America care anyway about the fortunes of one team from the north west of England and another from the Catalan region of Spain?

When the action starts they start whooping. They shout wholly inappropriate things like 'yeah, go Barcelona!' or 'whoooo, yeah Rooney baby!' and it reminds me of my shame at actually attending an NFL match or two at Wembley. This is how the American armchair viewer must feel when he sees the New York Giants going up against the Miami Dolphins in London. Large groups of people who can have absolutely no strong feelings either way about either team getting themselves all in a lather about a game they have a rudimentary knowledge of at best. All very undignified.

Barca score first, which means I need United to score by half-time to stand any chance with my bet. They do, and it's Rooney Baby. Or someone. I have never before even half-celebrated a goal by that granny-grabbing little wiener unless he's scored it while playing for England. Even then I begrudge it a little. But money and the kudos of being right are at stake here, so I allow myself to crack half a smile. Either that or the chips which have now finally arrived have given me a bit of wind.

The second half is a Barca masterclass, all of which I can enjoy without even a shred of guilt. The whooping is decidedly one-sided by now and one middle aged woman who you'd think might know better actually leaves in a full on strop when Barcelona's third goal goes in. The whistle goes, I'm $35 dollars better off (plus my stake, you remember the $10?) and I won't have to listen to any of my United supporting friends crowing about being European champions when I get back home tomorrow night. It's a win-win.

The afternoon is spent trying and failing to spend my winnings in the casinos on the strip. We need to get to Mandalay Bay by 6.30 and it is the very last stop on the journey. Rather than head straight there we had decided to get off half way down again and take in some liquid refreshment. Inevitably we would end up where we needed to be. What we had not reckoned with is the endless amounts of stupidly laid out walk-ways, lifts and unfathomable crossings which litter the bottom end of the strip. It took us the best part of an hour to walk the last part of the journey and in that time we did not have even a moment to take in another fabulously refreshing vodka and orange.

Finally we arrive at Mandalay Bay and join the queue. There is another wheelchair user waiting with us and when the usher arrives he takes us both through a side door, down a passageway towards a lift. The lady must have been listening to me and Emma talking along the way because she interrupts us with;

"Oh excuse me, I'm sorry, but are you guys from England?"

"Yes." I answer.

"Oh that's so cool, I was just saying to my girlfriend here that I have another girlfriend who lives in England."

She delivers this news as if living in England is the most revolutionary thing a person could do, and that the chances of an American actually achieving it are roughly the same as that of being killed by a slice of cake;

"Oh really." I say, trying not to sound too much like I am humouring her;

"Whereabouts?"

"Wales."

I am not a religious man as you know but I will swear on whatever you would like me to that this is the actual answer she gave me. To have the myth confirmed that there are Americans out there who think Wales is in England is just the most fabulously satisfying yet somehow depressing and annoying turn of events.

"Wales is not really in England though, is it?" I point out.

"No? Oh, I'm sorry." she says.

"It's ok. I'll let you off but I am not sure the Welsh would."

She is led to a row that is fairly central to the stage but I'm not so lucky. We are a long, long, long way up in the clouds in the House Of Blues and Emma and I are asked to keep moving and eventually arrive in what can only be described as a rather crappy location at the side of the stage. There is a particularly amorous young couple sat next to us and I remember wondering what their disabilities might be. No signs of any wheelchairs, canes, sticks, not even a good old fashioned limp in the brief moments they are detached from each other. Sex addiction is my best guess.

There is a perfectly pleasant warm-up act playing on stage. I can mostly only see the top of his head but he strums his acoustic guitar expertly and sings songs about love and angst of the type only a melancholy lunatic such as myself could endure, never mind enjoy. But I like him. Deal with it. I can't remember his name, but I like him. I can't remember the name of everyone I have ever liked. Can you? Honestly?

Somewhere in the middle of his set I get the munchies and head to the small kiosk at the end of the row of seating. I'm used to either salty or sweet popcorn but in the absence of either at this unique little location I settle on cheesy popcorn. Think Wotsits with an extra 'this is going to make you sick' kick. Emma tries them but declines any other offer I make for her to help me with the huge, cone-shaped bag. Half of it will be picked up by the cleaners when we leave our hotel room tomorrow afternoon.

And so to The Script. For the uninitiated they are a fairly successful Irish band who sing songs about love and angst. Right up my street then. Actually, they are and always were Emma's choice but there is much to enjoy with the likes of 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved', 'Falling To Pieces', 'For The First Time' and the agonisingly brilliant 'I'm Yours' belted out at volumes loud enough for you not to hear the whooping from the crowd. Maybe they were Manchester United fans and just didn't have the stomach for it.

The Script's guitarist, rather than it's singer, does most of the talking in between numbers and at a certain point he begins to annoy me. He's warming to his task as guitarist/compere and I'm sure at one point he is convinced that he is Ardal O'Hanlon. He's not. He's not even Frank Carson. Stick to the music, son, and you'll go far. Well, you have already got to Las Vegas, which isn't exactly round the corner from Dublin, now is it?

The singer's role, other than singing, is mostly to strut around stage as if he would eat himself were he made of chocolate. Or even liquorice. He's too vain for my tastes but Emma seems taken with him. I'm not the jealous type so I don't make an issue of it. Besides, it would be a little rich to pick a fight about that now when I'm fully aware that I'll be at some English venue screaming and crying like a bitch next time Joss tours the UK.

Anyway, it's our last night and there is no way in the world we are falling out tonight.

Fremont Street

By the time we had got back to the Fitzgerald from the Hoover Dam it hardly seemed worthwhile heading back out to the strip. As useful as it was, the Deuce had become something of an ordeal. It took over half an hour to get even half way down the strip, and it was usually time spent trying to avoid getting into too deep a conversation with a local drunk while wedged in the middle of large groups of impatient gamblers.

So, we decided to stay on Fremont Street. The best way to describe Fremont Street is that it is like a smaller version of Las Vegas Boulevard. It likes to be referred to as the Fremont Experience, but is basically a few long streets lined with casinos, bars and maybe the odd (ahem) gentleman's club. Like the strip it has street entertainers and people in fancy dress whose real purpose always manages to escape me. Is it enough that someone hangs around on the corner of a street dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow? Is that classed as entertainment? I can hear you shouting 'yes'. Whatever, it catches the eye whether you like it or not. More on which later.

The centre-piece of the Fremont Experience is the huge Viva Vision canopy. This covers the pedestrianised streets (this must be the only place in America where nobody drives) and is roughly around the length of five football pitches. A quick glance upwards and you will bear witness to some pretty impressive light shows which are projected on to the underside of the top of the canopy. Currently showing is a tribute to Queen, with 'We Will Rock You' blasting out at a billion decibels followed by 'Don't Stop Me Now' while couples everywhere have the obligatory argument about whether it is actually called 'Mr Farenheit. Who knows? Probably not even Freddie. No point asking him anyhow.

Similarly unable to speak for himself is Jim Morrison, former front-man of The Doors and fully paid-up member of the 27-club which someone completely invented last week after the untimely death of Amy Winehouse. She was 27. Who knew? 'Break On Through (To The Other Side)', 'People Are Strange' and of course 'Light My Fire' all get an airing during the next, Doors-related illuminated spectacular. That might be more your thing than Freddie's mob, but personally I can't find it in me to idolise a man most notable for exposing his penis on stage and simulating oral sex on his guitarist. If I did that I'd be arrested. Assuming anybody noticed.

Now, I am nearer to death than either you or I are comfortable with, so at this point I should tell you that drinking beer in the casinos had been making me terribly sick. I'd have one or two, and then feel like I had something stuck in my throat. Please. So, I would begin to cough and.....well......before you would know it I'd be struggling to breathe. I'd rush to the 'restrooms' and begin wretching up half a pint of what Rik Mayall once famously referred to as green globules. It's an entirely nasty business which happens to me every few months or so and is no doubt an indication of the impending death of my kidneys. Are you worried yet? Me neither.

Anyway, like an addict who values the brief high over his long term preservation I had been enduring this problem for days. But enough had become enough, so what do you do? You switch to vodka and orange, is what. This may not seem like the most medically sound suggestion for overcoming such a problem, but I'm on my holidays in Las Vegas. I might never be here again and it works for me. Besides, they tasted glorious and reminded me of my younger days spent racing to oblivion with Mr Reid. I didn't always win the race.

Emma and I gamble away very little of our money in the name of cheap shorts in such esteemed establishments as The Golden Nugget, The Four Queens, Binions and Main Street and get predictably and tongue-twistingly messy. That's drunk. Lest there be any doubt.

We go back outside and take a walk down the length of Fremont Street and it's big white, light-show-displaying canopy. There's a woman dressed as a pirate. She's not Jack Sparrow. I know this because she has breasts and she has them exposed. A brief double-take ensues and then a glance to Emma to see if she's noticed. She has and she just laughs it off. I decide to stick rather than push my luck as we go past the gentleman's club next door to Binions.

Instead we spend a pleasant while watching people in comedy fake pink mullets belting out rock songs by Roxette or Guns'n'Roses. I genuinely can't remember which. Both, I'd reckon. I can tell the difference but the pink mullets cloud everything. The last time I saw a fake barnet like that it was attached to the head of the in this case aptly named Pink (P!nk for afficionados and fecking nerds) as she writhed around some pole in some showy, musically deceased manner. That show got much better though. Fabulous Janice Joplin tribute set.

I digress. Some of the other people watching have been here long enough to go through several cans of lager which they have rather untidily discarded. I remember thinking that any longer than half an hour watching some of these bands would send me over the edge, but then if you ask the people gathered here they might not necessarily recommend spending three hours in a casino playing electronic poker so that you can get cheap vodka. It takes all sorts. In any case, any decent lawyer could argue successfully that I am already over the edge. It is just me or does this blog seem a little erratic by normal standards? I can't be arsed to edit it, frankly, so screw you.

We eventually arrive at a pizza place that doesn't have any pizzas, and so trot all the way back to a more expensive place just outside the Fitzgerald where the evening began. Lights, vodka, spew, pink mullets and all......

The Hoover Dam

It's the penultimate day of our Stateside sojourn and we still have one more major landmark to visit.

The Hoover Dam is around 25 miles from Las Vegas near the border between Nevada and Arizona. It was built in the early 1930's to combat heavy flooding in the western United States and to provide irrigated water and hydroelectric power. Today it helps service large parts of Nevada, Arizona and California, though interestingly not Las Vegas.

On the short journey we are able to take in the spectacular sites of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. Lake Mead is situated very close to the Colorado River and from the freeway up to the Hoover Dam you can't help but be captivated by it's bright blue splendour. We make a note to visit should we ever find ourselves back in this part of the world one day. For now though, we press on to the Hoover Dam in all it's giant, concrete glory.

There's a little confusion in parking the car. After an uncomfortably brief security check - think Checkpoint Charlie without the threat of being shot - or even searched - or bothered at all in any way come to think of it - no, just think of a white hut - we are pointed in the general direction of a myriad car parks. We somehow manage to miss several of these and end up having to drive right around the whole Dam complex. Or the whole damn complex, if you prefer. Anyway, eventually we make a ludicrously sharp right turn and manage to find a space somewhere in Arizona. A kindly parking attendant advises us that if we move on a little bit further we can get a bit closer to the Dam and the Visitor's Centre. Center. Whatever. Those responsible for naming American tourist attractions cannot bring themselves to come up with any better term than Visitor's Centre (Center) for anything remotely resembling a place where information can be gleaned.

We decline this kind offer, mostly out of sheer can't-be-arsed-ness, and instead move out into the Nevada mid-afternoon heat. It is utterly stifling, but the good news is that it's all downhill to the Dam and the Visitor's Centre. I'm not offering you the alternative spelling this time, Dam you. Oh, I've done that gag before, too. You'll have to forgive me, I'm not myself at the moment. Well, I am. Maybe that's the trouble.

So anyway, we follow the steady flow of tourists to the bottom of the slope. There are clocks on each side of the road, one of which shows the time in Arizona while the other shows the time in Nevada. This is because the state line runs somewhere through the middle of the Hoover Dam site, but is rendered slightly pretentious and unnecessary in my view by the fact that it is exactly the same time in Arizona as it is in Nevada. It all put me in mind of Homer Simpson hopping in and out of the American Embassy in Australia. Technically accurate, but somehow cretinous.

In truth the views of the Dam on the way down to the Visitor's Centre are not the best if you happen to be a wheelchair user. The walls are very high and there is a rail on top of the wall also. At certain points you can just make out the vast concrete surrounding you and get an idea of it's sheer depth, but you might find it more interesting to ignore the Dam at this point and focus on the water flowing around it. It's an incredibly scenic view. Honest.

As you might expect (except perhaps at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles) there are organised tours of the Dam available. However we choose to explore at our own pace. It's cheaper and you don't have anyone barking information at you, nor do you have to worry about whether every nook and cranny in the bowels of the place will be wheelchair accessible. Does one have nooks and crannies in one's bowels? Anyway.....

It proves to be a good decision. The Visitors Centre is a most marvellous place, full of interesting exhibits charting the history of the Dam from it's inception under the Presidency of Calvin Coolidge (although it was the brainchild of Herbert Hoover, the then Secretary of Commerce and future President, hence the name), to it's completion and opening in September 1935, to it's present form. Hoover had to fight to convince his government colleagues and other influential politicians of the time that the Dam was necessary. Most of the flooding had taken place in the west of the country, causing the eastern-based politicans in New York and Philadelphia and the like to adopt a stance that was distinctly 'I'm alright, Jack.' They viewed the flooding and other issues associated with the Colorado River as a 'Western problem', and did not consider it in the national interest to spend so much money on addressing it.

It was left to Franklin Roosevelt to carry out the grand opening, but it is the more human stories which really grab the attention. With a workforce of some 5,000 men and on site accommodation for only 480, the large majority were left to find shelter for themelves and their families elsewhere. The plan had been to house the men in the newly built Boulder City, Nevada, but that was before the Presidential order came to begin construction of the Dam before completion of the new city.

Sadly, 96 men lost their lives during the construction of the Dam, while another 16 deaths are associated with the building of the Dam. They include surveyor J.G.Tierney, who drowned while looking for a site for the Dam well before work got under way. Horrifically, many of the bereaved families never saw a cent of life insurance money as the deaths were attributed to pneumonia and other conditions caused by spending so much time on the construction site. If you fell off some scaffolding or were hit with falling debris well.......maybe your wife and children would see some form of compensation. Maybe. If not, not.

From the top floor viewing area I get a real sense of the vastness of the place. It's an awful long way down. Seven hundred and twenty six feet, in fact. It doesn't compare to the Grand Canyon but then being man made it never could. Yet looking out from behind the glass at that sort of height is still a pretty awe-inspiring experience.

We finish with a rather disappointing lights show which aims to display exactly the broad range of land now serviced by the Dam and the ways in which it helps provide power and water. However, the small theatre, dull-as-death voice over and Kindergarten model design are all a bit underwhelming if truth be told. It is perhaps for the best that we did not visit that theatre first or we may very well have given up on the whole thing and decided just to go back to Vegas to get lashed in some more casinos. You can get vodka and orange for free, you know?

I'm glad we didn't.

The Grand Canyon

I have to tell you, I haven't been looking forward to writing this piece.

It's all but impossible to describe to you the awe-inspiring grandeur of the Grand Canyon. Not only that but I'm under a great deal of pressure. I'm told that the ending to my last piece was crap, on top of which I am not feeling at my best today. A weekend of heavy drinking has not helped my already fragile state of mind. I'm not exactly focused, here. If only I were a tortured genius this sort of thing would come naturally. Alas, I'm not. I'm just a balloon with nothing else better to do on a Sunday evening. Sting once said that writing was it's own reward. Sting's a tosser.

So anyway, if you are still there I'll have a go at it. Since the Grand Canyon is situated in Arizona, some 290 miles from Las Vegas, we were on the road early. Our trusty sat nav estimated that the journey would take around four and a half hours. Double that for the return journey, add on any further delays (meals, our leaky bladders etc...) and it is easy to see why we had to be away early. This was going to be an all-dayer, in the non-alcoholic, lots of driving around sense of the term.

We had been told by the rude concierge that the South Rim would offer the best tourist experience. On the West Rim you can find the famous Skywalk, a glass bridge suspended 4,000 feet above the Canyon. Now those of you familiar with my lame attempts at wordsmithery (sorry, I really do detest myself today so you are just going to have to put up with this) will know that I once experienced the glass floor in the Jorvik Viking Centre in York. That is placed some three feet or so above a miniature display of the ancient Viking digs, yet this was enough to make me feel slightly woozy whenever I ventured on to it. So, can you really imagine me pushing around on a glass brige 4,000 feet above the Grand Canyon? I really wanted to, but I was utterly convinced that I would get there, pay my $30 or whatever to get on the Skywalk, and then find that I couldn't actually do it.

We chose the South Rim.

The roads between Las Vegas, Nevada and Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona are fairly benign, uneventful territory. There was very little of the winding, mountainous terrain we had to endure on the way to Palm Desert, so let's skip four and a half hours to the entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park, where we parked up and had lunch at the McDonalds there. McDonald's get everywhere. We were lucky to get any food whatsoever after Emma ordered our meals, then promptly forgot what ticket number she had been given.

"I gave the receipt to you." she said, incorrectly. Some eight hours later the receipt turned up in her handbag. Who'd have thought it? Anyway, just a few minutes along the road from McDonald is the IMAX cinema, which shows a 34-minute 'presentation' (pronounced pre-zentation) charting the history of the Canyon from the original Native American inhabitants some 4,000 years ago, to the madcap antics of Major John Wesley Powell who began battling the Colorado River to explore the Canyon back in 1869. The actual boat in which he and his crew made their epic journey is on view in the Visitor's Centre just outside the IMAX theatre.

The film leaves you in no doubt as to how treacherous the River was for those trying to explore the Canyon in the middle of the 19th century, and leaves you with more fairground thrills as it takes you on board a modern day white-water raft. In between times there is a fair smattering of death, disappearance and ugly wildlife on view as every aspect of man's relationship with this natural phenomenon is crammed into such a short space of time.

And so to the Canyon itself. Just when you think you are there, you are not. You have to buy your car park passes from the Visitors Centre and drive on another couple of miles to the proper viewing areas. We parked at Yavapai Point, but knew from the map that there was good, fully accessible viewing at Mather Point. Despite the sun beating down on us the whole day, it can get quite windy when you are 6,000 feet above the Canyon. I actually put my jacket back on. Well anyway, sunscreen is such a ballache. We turned on to the main pathway at the edge of the Canyon and Emma stepped over the rocks and dirt to get a closer look and some photographs. I was sat around 20feet back at this point but I could still see the ludicrous majesty of the thing. It would get more eye-opening as we walked along.

It is 1.7 kilometres from Yavapai Point to Mather Point and we took the walk slowly, taking in the breathtaking views along the way. Some strange individuals had seen fit to step out on to the very edge of the Canyon, dangling their legs over the edge as they just sat there, enjoying the spellbinding glory of the place. Like the Skywalk, their endeavours are something that I can only look back upon and wish that I had the brass balls to be able to do. And the wheelchair access, obviously. The IMAX film had led us to believe that we might encounter the odd snake, but instead visible wildlife was restricted to some reasonably sized lizards and great condors, soaring above the rock in the most matter-of-fact manner.

Finally we reached Mather Point, and I got to take my first real close-up look at the Canyon. I can describe it as nothing other than dizzying. And I mean that in both a good and a bad way. At first it fills you with awe, but within a minute or so of looking out over the sheer, vast open-ness of the whole thing I was starting to feel a little bit odd. I got to the point where I wanted my stomach back and actually had to take a push back. I went back for more at regular intervals and I have to tell you that at no point did it get any less bewilderingly beautiful.

We walked just a few kilometres and only stayed on the Canyon for a couple of hours, yet if you are travelling from somewhere a little closer you could easily spend all day there. The Canyon is 277 miles long and 18 miles wide, offering plenty of opportunity for walking, hiking, and general exploration of it's magnificence. It really, really has to be seen to be believed.

We got back to Yavapai Point and the car, ready for the long, arduous journey back to Vegas but knowing full well that it had been completely worthwhile.

Road To Mandalay - Via A Rude Concierge

We're up early again on Wednesday. It would turn out to be the last full day we had available for doing nothing except getting drunk at casinos. Something to make the most of, I'm sure you'll agree.

Before we leave the Fitzgerald we have a trip to plan. We have set aside Thursday for the trip to the Grand Canyon, and Friday for a visit to the Hoover Dam. The latter is much simpler. It's only around half an hour to 45 minutes drive from Las Vegas and, according to the literature, can probably be done in an afternoon. The Grand Canyon, on the other hand, is over in Arizona, fully 300 miles from Las Vegas!

Understandably, Emma's a little concerned about the drive. On the way into Palm Desert from San Diego she had to negotiate some pretty scary roads. Tiny, winding, narrow roads which cut through the mountains around the Coachella Valley. The views from there are both breathtaking and terrifying all at once. To my continued dismay, Emma kept pulling into the specially designated rest areas designed to allow slower drivers to allow the nutcases to pass. Given the lofty location of the Grand Canyon, the drive was going to be tricky.

So we explore the possibility of letting someone else drive. We thought it logical that the hotel would run some kind of excursion. We expected that the biggest barrier to getting on such an excursion would be access. Holiday excursions are almost always taken using highly inacessible coaches and we have been very lucky indeed on the odd occasion whenever we have found one equipped with anything resembling a lift. Yet on this occasion access was not the biggest problem. In fact, it wasn't the problem at all.

The problem was money. We approached a very rude female concierge who informed us that a ticket for the Fitzgerald's Grand Canyon excursion would set us back $170. Each. The rude concierge did not seem to think this should be a problem for us, and began dismantling any alternative to this that we might have been able to come up with. We had literature from several other places along the strip which advertised the Grand Canyon trip at as little as $75-80. Not cheap, but not $170. Each.

"Oh, they tell you that's the price, but it really isn't." began the rude concierge, shoving another copy of the Fitzgerald's Grand Canyon excursion leaflet into Emma's face;

"See, what happens with those ones you have there is you pay that lower price right there, but your place is not guaranteed. They'll bump y'all off if they find someone who'll pay more." she added, pointing and nodding for America.

So, if we were not to take the car (and we were still seriously considering that option at this point) we would either have to pay $170 (yes, you know, each.....) or else pay around half this but risk turning up at some ungodly hour of the morning to find that our places have been given away to the highest bidder. Despite the rudeness of the concierge, we had to at least pay some respect to the notion that she might actually know what is talking about. It's her job to know these things, but on the other hand it is also her job to be pushy and rude, and to try and sell us the Fitzgerald's own trip at all costs. At $170 actually. Each.

In retrospect we mulled over this for far longer than I am now comfortable with. But then that's because I have been home for two months and I know that it worked out ok in the end. The deliberations dealt with, we decided to pass on the Fitzgerald's excursion and look out for a better deal. Worst case scenario, we take the car. Either way a trip to the Grand Canyon was going to be a 13-hour job including all of the travelling. But reason has it that you do not fly 8,000 miles from home to falter 300 from one of the most awe-inspiring sights in the known world.

Much of the rest of Wednesday is a blur. We went into almost every hotel on the strip once again, played as much free electronic poker as the time allowed, drank as much criminally cheap alcohol as our bodies could stand and generally had a right good old time of it. We walked all the way down to the end of the strip at Mandalay Bay, just because we wanted to be able to say that we had been in most if not all of the famous hotels on Las Vegas Boulevard. We got lost in MGM Grand, also visiting Excalibur, New York New York, Paris, Treasure Island (again), Caesar's Palace (again), Mirage (again) and so on.....

At Mandalay Bay we happened upon the House Of Blues, the hotel's theatre and music venue. They were selling tickets to see The Script on Saturday. They were $34 each. About five times less than we could have been paying to get on that bus to the Grand Canyon in the morning. Staggered at being able to buy tickets to see a band that we had heard of for less than $150 (we've seen Elton John anyway and I'd take the bullet over Celine Dion, frankly) we coughed up straight away. I remember being slightly disturbed by the salesman repeatedly informing us of the procedure should the gig be cancelled for any reason. Set-backs like we had endured on our trip so far teach you to be suspicious. It didn't quite affect Emma in the same way. She was delighted.

I'm afraid I can't remember much thereafter of that Wednesday. We never did find an alternative excursion to the Grand Canyon, so resigned ourselves to travelling there by car early in the morning. Though we headed back on to the Deuce before 8.30 pm, we had still managed to put a good eight or nine hours drinking and gambling time behind us that day.

Under such circumstances, the memory gets a bit hazy.

Return To Vegas

So go on admit it, this is what you have all been waiting for? You don't give a rat's arse about California. About tense bus journeys, buses that think they are boats, expensive steak houses or any of that crap. You want me to talk about Las Vegas, don't you?

I'm going to whether you like it or not. It's Tuesday morning and we are due back in Vegas today. We have five nights booked at the Fitzgerald Hotel on Freemont Street. What is more, we have tickets for a show tonight at the Imperial Palace Hotel on the strip. It's a Motown-themed show, but essentially it is four lads from Australia singing on a stage. It worked for the Temptations, although they almost certainly were not Australian.

We have a leisurely breakfast at the Best Western, listening to some well-travelled old timer vent his spleen about the price of fish in Paris. Or something. I wondered at that moment whether he had ever been to Ruth Chris's. I notice a tip jar on the breakfast counter. Like many Americans who prepare your food for you, the chef wants paying twice for doing his job once. We decline and move on.

Freemont Street is a couple of miles off the strip. Despite this, you are still fully aware that you are in Las Vegas when you amble along it towards the many hotels to which it is home. Just like the famous strip at Las Vegas Boulevard, Freemont is all bright lights and casinos. It is here that you will find the famous Vegas Vic, the neon sign resembling a cowboy which was originally built outside the Pioneer Club in 1951. In the interests of equality, there's a Vegas Vicki too.

We pull into the Fitzgerald and stop to ask the Valet to impart his wisdom to us on the subject of parking. He advises us that we can park just around the corner, but that if we so wish we can stop the car in the valet lane for now so that we can register our arrival. Provided someone waits in the car. Probably best to choose the someone who doesn't need to lug a wheelchair out of the boot to go inside and register, so I wait. And I wait. And I wait.

It's probably about 15 minutes later but feels like 10 times that when Emma finally emerges from the hotel, all registered up. There is just time to go to the wrong room (having read the number as 420 instead of 620) before we get a quick change and are back out on to Freemont. Thankfully we never make it into room 420, and nobody seems overly disturbed by our repeated efforts to break in to their room using entirely the wrong key.

The in-room literature had advised us that there would be a bus leaving from the corner of Freemont regularly to take passengers back down to the strip. Emma has forgotten something from the room so while she makes the journey back to pick it up I go off investigating bus stop locations. I meet her back outside the Fitzgerald soon after and report that I have found the stop. The 'Deuce' travels right the way down to Las Vegas Boulevard from this corner of Freemont around every 15 minutes. It would turn out to be vital to the second part of our stay in Vegas.

It's incredibly busy. It seems that almost everyone staying on Freemont has decided that they're only going to be there to sleep, and that the main action is back down on the strip. We reach the Deuce before anyone else has boarded, which is handy because there is only space enough for one wheelchair user close to the front of the bus. There's a seat-belt which the driver insists on fastening around my chair. He also insists on knowing whereabouts on the strip we want to be dropped off. He obviously needs as much notice as possible for the arduous task of pressing a button to make the lift flip out from the doorway.

It takes longer than we had expected to reach the strip. The Deuce leaves Freemont at around 3.30 pm but it is after 4.00 by the time we disembark just outside The Mirage. The show starts at 7.30, but the doors open an hour earlier than that and we have been advised to get there in plenty of time. We cross the strip towards the Imperial Palace where we play a few games of electronic poker and enjoy a bit of liquid refreshment. We have chips and burger in a sports-themed fast food joint somewhere in the massive bowels of the place.

We make our way to the theatre level and are met by a burly usher. He says something to me and I shoot something back matter-of-factly, just making tedious small talk in that polite way that people have;

"Oh, you're from New York?" he says.

"I'm from England." I answer curtly, and he laughs in my face. I seem to have had the misfortune to happen upon the only American who not only appreciates irony, but is a formidable exponent of it. Never before in the history of mankind has a Lancastrian been duped by the ironic wit of an American. It is indeed a landmark event.

He shows us to our seats, which are placed at a table close to the front of the stage. That's all very well, the only sticking point is that the seats face across the theatre rather than to the front towards the stage. Either we will have to spend the entire evening twisting to face the front, or we will be watching the walls instead. He lets us take our alcohol in with us, which at first I consider to be a bonus. It is only later that I realise how costly it would turn out to be.

There's still around half an hour before the show starts, and a waitress comes over to offer us drinks. It's table service, there being no visible bar accessible to customers. We still have the drinks that we brought in with us, and we're not speedy drinkers anyway. Drinking is a marathon, not a sprint;

'Would you like some drinks, sir?" asks the waitress.

"No thanks, we're ok for now." I answer, gesturing to the half full bottle in my hand. She nods politely and flashes me an exaggerated smile. The kind of smile you can only get in America. She wanders off to enquire as to the drinking needs of someone at another table. I take a swig of my beer and think nothing of it, but it will be the last I see of a drinks waitress that evening.

All of which makes it all the more fortunate that the entertainment is of a high quality. Human Nature might just be four lads from Australia belting out Motown classics, but they are top drawer at what they do. I say lads, they are actually slightly advancing in years. The leader, Phil, looks to have made it way into his 40's despite his attempts to stay youthful via the gift of hairspray. Brothers Andrew and Mike are much more like what you would expect from what is essentially a boy band, but the fourth member, Toby, is something else entirely.

It's not overly cruel to suggest that he does not have boy band looks. His nose puts me in mind of someone who might earn their living in the front row for Saints but, to give him his due, his singing talents are extroardinary. He's the bass, and he reaches notes that are so low that Rolf Harris would struggle to replicate them on his Didgeridoo. That's a musical instrument, you know?

Pretty soon they are in full flow, belting out all the classics from 'Reach Out (I'll Be There)' to 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' to 'My Girl'. The latter rendition sees one poor audience member (possibly planted but that is an overly cynical view, and this column does nothing but what it says on the tin) dragged up on stage to sing along with Andrew. The plant notion is only backed up by the fact that, while she's no Diana Ross, the unfortunate audience member is not as truly terrible as you might expect someone plucked from the audience against their will to be.

Yet even that effort is outshone by Toby's ritual humiliation of one woman in the audience. He begins talking to 'June' between songs and somewhere along the line he comes over all Theopolis P Wildebeast. He's touching himself inappropriately, singing and speaking in an absurdly low tone, and generally behaving in a manner which might be deemed sleazy were it not so comical;

'Who is this fella with you?" asks Toby as he threatens to jump into the audience;

"My ex-husband." quips June, either playing along with brilliant comic timing or so taken with the perfectly resistable Toby that she is about to ditch her other half before the flight home;

'Can you shut your eyes for this bit, sir." Toby asks the man accompanying June, to howls of laughter, most of it just a preferable alternative to the mortifying embarrassment that most of us feel at that moment. Throughout the rest of the show Toby makes several more references to June, all of which are met with more laughter. The audience are writing their own jokes by now but thankfully the standard of the singing never drops.

By the end the four of them are in the audience shaking hands and trying to make blatantly reluctant people dance with them. I can't see Emma at this point, as she is hiding behind some kind of metaphorical sofa. She hates anything like this and all I am thinking at a time like this is how awful it will be if one of these goons drags her up on stage and makes a public spectacle of her. She'll never forgive me for existing. That's how these things work, isn't it chaps?

Human Nature are in the casino straight after the show for a meet and greet, but we can't take the excitement. We're still relatively sober because at no point during the show does another waitress come over to our table and enquire about whether we might like any more drinks. We have one or two more in the casino, get back on the Deuce and turn it in for the night, with attention turned to tomorrow, and trying to find a way to organise a trip to the Grand Canyon.....

Palm Desert

I was quite surprised to end up in Palm Desert. We booked this holiday three months in advance and all along, right up until the moment that Emma typed the postcode (zip code? feck off, postcode) into the sat nav (GPS? feck off.....) I had thought we were going to Palm Springs.

In actual fact Palm Desert is a city close to Palm Springs. Palm Springs is a little more famous and has more places to visit but Palm Desert is a little more upscale. That is the exact definition of the difference given by Yahoo Answers. Except that I put the word 'visit' in instead of their word, which was 'go'.

Anyway it mattered not. We were only there because it was the nicest looking place we could find somewhere between San Diego and Las Vegas ahead of our return to the gamblers paradise. We just wanted somewhere we could spend a day doing nothing much of anything. The previous week spent getting lost, running out of petrol and arguing with irate commuters had taken it's toll. There was a point when I thought we might not make it and should just head straight over to Vegas. The sat nav mysteriously directed us on to what, on the face of it, appeared to be a random, rather grand looking ranch. Thankfully, after finding itself at a dead end the sat nav took hold of it's senses, spun us around and miraculously righted itself. There wasn't much point trying to spend too long trying to figure it out. We were just glad to be on the right track once more.

Palm Desert is everything I expected Palm Springs to be. Hot, peaceful, idyllic. We arrived at our Best Western hotel (right next door to a Holiday Inn, proving once and for all that they do exist in California) early afternoon, and after a quick lunch at John's cafe (Mexican, believe it or not, although a cheese and ham toastie is pretty much a cheese and ham toastie wherever you are) were relaxing by the pool. Doing nothing. Mission accomplished.

We must have got cocky. As we got to early evening we decided to DO SOMETHING. Yes, I know, fraught with danger but there it was. We had decided and there was no going back. All I had done that afternoon was plough through the larger part of a John Grisham novel but now I was ready to go back out there into the big wide world. Well, the big wide California anyway. A place where things go wrong as a matter of course. It would not let us down.

On arriving earlier we had noticed a steak house across the road by the name of Ruth Chris's. No 'and' there, you'll notice. That is not my grammatical duncery at work, that is exactly what it was called. I can't imagine why. All I can come up with is that Ruth and Chris had some kind of Lennon & McCartney type row about whose name should come before the ampisand. Maybe things got a bit tasty and Ruth won a points decision to have her name placed first. Chris had perhaps scored a late blow and managed to negotiate the removal altogether of the ampisand.

We had considered that it might be a little more classy than the places we had eaten at up to this point. With that in mind Emma wore the most beautiful long, turquoise dress (she says it's green) while I even put a proper shirt on. We weren't playing games. This wasn't a Sunday tea-time drive to McDonalds near the petrol station. We strolled over to Ruth Chris's, a task made more difficult by some bizarre pedestrian crossing arrangements and a strong wind. But it would be worth the effort, right?

Wrong! Ruth Chris's was beautiful inside, improbably grand in it's layout and decor and for a fleeting moment we thought we might be in for a highly agreeable evening. We sat down and waited for the complimentary waters. Soon after our waitress arrived with the menus. Oh the menus. Damn those menus. Now, I am not a tight person by any stretch of the imagination. I can often be seen trying to throw my money away on everyone else's beer. However, if I told you it was $23 for a piece of chicken you might start to get an idea of what the entire bill would have totalled.

It was an a la carte menu from which everything had to be ordered individually. No set meals here, which just made it even more awkward for an un-cultured oik such as myself. Want mash potatoes with your chicken? That'll be another $8 then. Or anything else for that matter, mashed or otherwise. Salad? French fries? Sweet potatoes? Spinach? Asparagus? Broccoli Au Gratin? Broccoli Au What? Whatever. Eight dollars apiece, at least. The wine is always the most important part of any meal that Emma and I enjoy, and a bottle of house red here would have taken the bill well over the $150 mark.

A brief and frankly painstaking discussion ensued. The negotiations were highly prejudiced by the fact that there was a Domino's Pizza outlet just over the road, a short distance from the Best Western we were going to have to return to at some point in any case. Excruciatingly, we opened up the debate to our waitress, whose only advice was that there was a cheaper steak house a few minutes drive from here. Suddenly there was no discussion to be had. We gulped down the waters, and the cokes we had also ordered during a more optimistic time. The waitress must have thought we had no money at all because she insisted on giving those away for free along with the water. We left quickly, trying not to laugh at our ludicrous predicament. It was a futile endeavour.

As I waited in the lobby for the Domino's man to arrive with our pizza I did something odd. And just plain.....wrong!! I'd already decided I was going to pass the time by browsing the internet in the lobby, but I couldn't just be happy with that. Ladies and gentleman, look away now if you cannot stand to learn that I..........CHECKED MY WORK EMAIL. I can't explain why, my best guess being some kind of wild paranoia that my taking more than a day off from work at any one time will doubtless result in the complete undoing of anything I have achieved to that point, resulting in my having to totally rebuild every spreadsheet, database and word document I have ever caught sight of.

There were no dramas. I breathed out and resolved that I would never again check my work email while in a nice hotel 8,000 miles from Liverpool.

There was too much salt in the crust in the Domino's pizza. But it was reasonably priced.

San Diego: Top Gun, A Seal And The Gaslamp

Sunday in sunny San Diego, California. The threatened continuation of storms from earier in the week has failed to materialise. It's not exactly baking hot, but it's t-shirt weather. We opt for a stroll down the harbour.

San Diego is a seaport city founded by Spanish settlers in the 16th century, and was part of Mexico until 1850. It is famous for it's U.S. Navy association and it is here that you can see the oldest active ship in the world, the Star Of India which is thought to have circumnavigated the planet no less than 21 times. That's like from where you are now to Barrow-In-Furness.

Which putrid geekery leads us to the San Diego Maritime Museum, and the possibility of taking a tour by sea. We find the tour salespeople every bit as pushy as those in Los Angeles, but these people are fortunate enough to be armed with accessible tours that might actually be of some use to us. Within minutes we have agreed to buy tickets for the SEAL, a large bus which at certain times of the day is convinced it is a boat and has the bollocks to prove it.

First though it was on to the Kansas City BBQ, an otherwise little known bar which is notable only for the fact that it was the setting for scenes filmed for Top Gun. Legend has it that director Tony Scott was absent mindedly cruising around San Diego looking for possible filming locations for the 1986 Tom Cruise cheese-fest, when he happened upon this unremarkable establishment and asked if they would be interested in closing down for a couple of days to allow filming. Disappointingly, this is not the bar in which they filmed Cruise's much mocked and painful rendition of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling', but some other schmalzy nonsense which Emma did explain to me when I was not really listening. She lost me at 'hello'. No wait, I'm butchering some other Tom Cruise film there.

Regardless, Emma is under strict instructions from her Dad not only to visit this bar but to pick up the obligatory souvenirs. As we enter I'm disappointed to note that it is not really a bar as such, but more of a cafe. I suppose the name Kansas City BBQ implies as much, but then I was prepared to believe that if it wasn't in Kansas City then there was every chance that it wouldn't just be a place where you could buy barbecued chicken. I was wrong. Neither of us are hungry and so we sit at an outside table and just order drinks. The server looks at us as if we have just ordered two plates of boiled dog, but wanders off to get the drinks anyway. I wait at the table while Emma goes inside for the goods.

Before she even sits back down I can tell the mission has not been altogether successful. It's one of the things about being with someone for so long, I suppose. You can just tell. Well before she has opened her mouth I know that this place has failed to meet expectations. There are no fridge magnets. Imagine. There are t-shirts, caps and all manner of other junk, but no fridge magnets. Emma's dad used to collect fridge magnets as I recall but I think he must have stopped because she doesn't dwell on it as much as I had expected. Perhaps she can still surprise me now and again.

She hasn't taken any photos either. The juke box is not one of the old fashioned ones like you see in the film, but a much more modern, digitised piece of kit. As such it is just like any other juke box in Western civilisation and unworthy of photographic posterity. The words 'damp' and 'squib' are springing to mind, although since I have never liked Top Gun anyway my fall is somewhat softer. All that need for speed puke is just puerlile macho posturing to my mind. In terms of quality, you could squeeze what Will Self would call an anorexic cigarette paper between Top Gun and something like........Days Of Thunder. Cruise has much to answer for. I attempt to use the toilet and am met with doorways the width of Maria Sharapova's tricep. The bemused server from earlier seems to notice this and is suddenly taken by guilt. She refuses to take any money for the drinks, and we leave with only a short, token argument on the matter.

It's time to get on board the SEAL. It's big, painted blue and designed vaguely in the shape of a seal. Yet that's not why it is called the SEAL. It's called the SEAL because it travels over SEA and Land. Or should that be SEa And Land? Either way, you get the idea. It's another miracle in the field of wheelchair access as the 'captain' and his 'first mate' lug this enormous, allegedly portable lift over to the port-side of the vehicle. See, it's called the port-side. It must be a boat. The enormous lift uses a pulley system, and is operated by the captain winding a handle like an ancient grammaphone. Some days later we get to the seating area and I bail out of my wheelchair. There's something not quite right about sitting in my wheelchair while travelling at sea. I don't know what, but I don't like it. As you know, I'm not normal.

The first mate is called Tyler. And Tyler can talk for America. He's like Robin Williams on amphetamines. From the moment the other passengers board (some time after me as it happens, reminding me of a Virgin Atlantic flight) to the moment we disembark some two hours later his mouth is moving at a rate of......well.....knots frankly. He's often amusing and entertaining, but Emma doesn't like him because he picks on her at one point. He makes a gag and she laughs, and he proceeds to announce that from that point onward every time he makes a bad joke it is Emma's fault for laughing at the first one. I should have predicted this. She laughs at all of my bad jokes. It is probably the principle reason why we are both here today. I can't think of another reason that she would choose this madness. There really is no accounting for tastes.

Anyway, Tyler is offering everyone a blanket now. San Diego is a fairly breezy place and it's only going to get worse when we get out to sea. He even reminds us to keep all valued possessions inside the window-less vehicle, lest we risk seeing them blow down the coast to Los Angeles. I resolve that no part of my being, be it attached to me physically or sentimentally, is going anywhere near Los Angeles ever again. I keep my valued posessions inside the window-less vehicle.

The on-land part of the tour is mostly accompanied by a deluge of information about San Diego's association with the U.S. Navy. Some of it interesting, some of it not. Tyler tells a story about dolphins being used to detect and violently embarrass rogue swimmers in restricted areas which Emma's brother, a member of our own Royal Navy, later tells her is a myth. True or not, it's entertaining. At sea we cruise around an area occupied exclusively by sea lions. Some of these are sleeping, but others are flapping around and yelping a little, and the very adventurous among them are swimming alongside the SEAL. Tyler informs us that we might see dolphins in the area too, presuming they are not busy capturing rogue swimmers. Emma sees a dorsal fin but I'm distracted and miss it. Never mind, I saw lots of dolphins in Salou two years ago and my main memory of that is of 75% of the passengers throwing up over their complimentary sandwiches.

The blankets are coming in handy now as we take a left and Tyler points out the coast of Mexico. I'm rubbish at geography for which I make no excuses, but I always thought it was further south than San Diego. It is not. From where we are it's just a lump of land, even less iconic than staring at the white cliffs of Dover if you have ever been on a ferry back to England from France, but the thought of being so close to it is somehow exotic. It's more interesting than say..........Old Swan.......which I could very easily be travelling through were I not out here. Instead I am in the middle of the Pacific Ocean looking at Sea Lions and Mexico, and being told that no building in San Diego can be taller than 500 feet because of the close proximity to the airport. For the geeks, the Manchester Hyatt hotel is the tallest building in the city at 495 feet. A passenger airliner swoops in just above it moments later, one of a continuous stream jetting into San Diego International.

Later, we catch the tram to the Gaslamp area, San Diego's main hive of social activity. We partake in a few beverages in bars which, as is the norm in the States, persist in the ritual of displaying large screens showing baseball games. Frighteningly I'm developing an interest so we move on to another large-screened, baseball-showing bar. We think about having food in one such place, but are disturbed by a man interrupting our conversation to inform us that the bar over the road used to be a brothel. Correction, a gambling hall (winks). What's more it was a 'gambling hall' owned by Wyatt Earp. Yee-frigging-hah!

Eventually we get hungry enough so that Emma orders a pretzel. It's a sparsely populated bar and it seems like the catering staff are intent on off-loading all of their stock to us. This is the biggest bloody pretzel I have ever seen in my life. Far bigger than anything which might have choked Dubya. I feel compelled to make an effort at sharing but I don't get very far. Pretzels really aren't my thing any more than they are Dubya's, so I just nibble on a few chips and Emma has the offending product bagged up for later.

We move on to an Irish bar where a couple of lads are playing live music in the corner. Again there are not many people in this Sunday night, but the duo are pressing on gamely, offering us their best shot at reprising something by Green Day.

"Hi guys...." the singer shouts over, hopefully;

"What would you guys like us to play for you tonight?"

"Do you know any Take That?" I ask, in the manner of Brian Potter asking one of the Phoenix's prospective live acts if they can dance. He doesn't. He's not booked. We go through a whole range of distinctly British and Irish bands, the only one of which he can bring to mind is The Script (Emma's choice). He's heard of them, but he doesn't play anything by them. He continues on his Green Day theme, and it is enjoyable for a while but one obscure Avril Lavigne tune later the pair are at the bar taking a break. We leave.

We are informed that we have missed the last tram back to Little Italy, although on the walk back I am almost certain that I see one still in service. We stroll back, bladdered but somehow satisfied with what we have seen from San Diego. The morning brings another three-hour trip, this time to Palm Desert for an overnight stay before we head back to Las Vegas for the finale.