Fiendish Games

Assuming she can put up with me for another 10 months or so, Mrs. Fiendish and I will have been married for twenty years at the end of November. As we did on our tenth anniversary, we are treating ourselves to a holiday away together sans kids.

Last time round we went to Lanzarote, largely because that's the only accessible place that is warm at the end of November. This year Mrs. Fiendish said we don't actually need to be away on our anniversary, just so long as we go away some time this year outside of the school holidays. So, the world is our lobster, as George Cole used to say.

As for destinations, we are typically targeting places that our kids would hate. Me, personally, I like a beach holiday but leavened with a bit of culture: a Greek or Roman ruin, some Moorish architecture, a chance to see some unknown blues genius playing in a Chicago club, that sort of thing.

We've been looking at places in Europe, even, God help us, going on a cruise. A Baltic cruise looked appealing, taking in St. Petersburg, but there is something about the perceived age profile of people who go on cruises and the fact that you appear to be tied down to an itinerary that put me off the idea.

I've always had a hankering to go to Corsica, largely because it is a chance to go to Italy (almost) without having to speak Italian, though I doubt whether my barely remembered "O" level (failed) French is any better at communicating with the locals than waving my hands and shouting very loudly.

However, lovely place though it is, it looks a bit expensive, even before sterling plunged against the euro.

Bizarrely, places a lot further away, such as Cuba, Trinidad & Tobego and the Dominican Republic, appear to be far more cost effective, even for a 7-day break. I get the sense that, beautiful though these places are, they are not geared up to cater for the cultural side of the equation, though Cuba sounds like the sort of place I would like to explore.

Mrs. Fiendish has out-sourced the research to one of her colleagues who, being single and childless, goes on about 5 holidays a year so knows where to go to get a bargain. However, any feedback from readers on where to go will be gratefully accepted, unless they involve Spain (Mrs. Fiendish is not a fan) or France (too close).

Is it too late to wish you a Happy New Year? As you get older, the weeks whizz by a lot more quickly and I am surprised to find we are not in March already. Although we may be by the time you read this, given how slow I am to upload updates to my blog these days.

Mrs. Fiendish and I both lost our fathers in 2008, so it is not a year we will look back on with too much fondness. For my part, admittedly, the death of my Dad prompted mixed emotions, given that his dementia was in an advanced state.

The death of my father-in-law, an apparently vigorous and healthy man who contracted pneumonia after a heart by-pass operation, probably hit me harder. (Thanks for all the commiserations and kind words, by the way. Much appreciated).

Still, 2008 does not rank as the worst year of the millennium for the Fiendish family. There was one horrible year when number two son, the poster boy for the Asperger’s Syndrome community, was getting in trouble with the school and the rozzers on a regular basis, which prompted our move from Enfield to Hertford. I guess you could call the move a partial success in that he’s kept out of trouble with the Peelers since then but school remains a challenge. He’s a very talented artist and our main hope is that he will make it into art school; if he can’t hack it in an institution chock full of individualistic free thinkers then there is no hope for him.

On the bright side, we did have a pretty good holiday in the US of A, just before the US dollar exchange rate moved fiercely against sterling.

I’ve not bored you with my holiday reminiscences and you probably thought you had got away with it, but you are out of luck, as I intend to give a few belated thoughts on our trip to the west coast, Stateside.

Go west!
We went in August, with the party consisting of me, Mrs. Fiendish, sons numbers one, two and three (the full set) plus number one son’s girlfriend, Philippa.

The flight over with American Airlines went very smoothly. We caught a connecting flight at Chicago airport, which gave the boys their opportunity to order their first genuine all-American McDonald’s meals (they are teenagers, after all).

The boys were startled to find that the person serving them could not understand their order. Given that their purchase request was likely to prominently feature words from a vocabulary limited to about three hundred words (Big Mac, fries, shake, etc.) it was astounding to them that their accent should prove so undecipherable to the person serving them.

After a certain amount of pointing and slowing down of speech, they got their food order. All agreed that the hot food was saltier and the shakes sweeter than back home. They were not impressed. This was the beginning of our quest to try every possible burger chain (we never did get round to Wendy’s, probably the best) to find an artery-clogging meal we liked.

Lost Wages
The first three days were spent in Las Vegas in what is probably the tackiest hotel on the strip, the Excalibur. The outside looked like a kid’s toy castle, with grey walls and pointed turrets in bright red. Inside it was dingy and decorated with a sickly green and yellow colour scheme, possibly inspired by the existence of the Sherwood Forest dining room.

Not to worry, the rooms were excellent, the weather warm (just 108 degrees Fahrenheit), the pool welcoming and the beer … the beer was American, but you can’t have everything.

I, personally, found the temperature too hot, but you know what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen.

For various reasons, I never got to play any poker, which probably saved me a few bob. We were far too busy shopping, presumably on the basis that the rest of America would not have any shops and that, while in Las Vegas, it would be silly to waste your time gambling.

The kids discovered a clothes shop on the Strip that did spray paint designs on T-shirts. Number 2 son, being a keen “graffer” (his work is coming to a wall near you, soon), was very taken with this idea and spent a lot of time working on a design he wanted sprayed on his T-shirt. The fact that, at home, he has an airbrush and all the paint he needs to do his own T-shirt design was not considered sufficient reason to bypass the opportunity to stand around in the baking sun for about 90 minutes while the man in the shop spray painted four T-shirts – one each for the boys and one for number three son’s girlfriend, with whom he has now broken up.

Still, they were pretty cool. Shame the boys have already outgrown them.

We didn’t go to see any of the shows. They all seemed overpriced and not much different to what’s on offer in the west end of London. I was half tempted to go and see Craig Ferguson do a stand-up, but not at £35. Apparently Ferguson is now a successful talk show host in the USA; wonder if the network knows his first stage name was Bing Hitler?

Food was a recurring theme of the holiday, and our inability to order properly or understand what we were ordering.

I read a lot of US private eye novels so I was reasonably au fait with some of the conventions, but Mrs. Fiendish looked bewildered after ordering fried eggs when the waitress asked her: “How would you like your eggs?”

To which the ancient comedy answer is, "unfertilised, preferably."

A quick explanation from me about the difference between sunny side-up and over easy sorted that one out, and I was also able to warn the kids to order Sprite or 7-Up if they wanted lemonade, unless they wanted to end up drinking lemon juice. However, I don’t think we ever did get to grips with the whole Canadian bacon thing, or the various types of bread. Ordering a cheese sandwich at a US sandwich bar is a five minute ordeal, and they look at you as if you are a madman if you say you don’t want a side.

“But it’s free! It comes with the sandwich,” they cry.

“But it’s tasteless shite and a waste,” we reply, being none too fond of rabbit food.

Still, the food was pretty good and sufficiently different to what we get at home to make experimenting worthwhile. Biscuits and gravy, grits? Weird.

I think the kids enjoyed this part of the holiday the most, as the hotel had a pool. Why we didn’t just take them to the Costa Brava, I don’t know.

I would have preferred to have visited Vegas later on in the holiday once we had got the shopping bug out of our system.

More of this twaddle next time.

According to some poll run for the single purpose of getting some press coverage for an organisation no one has heard of or care about, 5% of 1,000 London residents who were asked admitted to being unable to recite any "times tables".

What? Not even the one times table. After me Londoners:

One times one is one
Two times one is two
Three times one is three

You should be getting the idea now.

London's appalling score is apparently six times worse than the national average. Which is like, er, at least twice as bad as the rest of the country, innit?

Furthermore, twice as many men as women admitted to being crap at multiplication, which surprises me, but then I habitually hang out with lots of male board gamers who can probably multiply double digit numbers in their head in the wink of an eye.

On the other hand, I did interview a male CEO of a publicly quoted firm yesterday who said "We're hoping to get the number of successful trial patients up to 12 so we can claim 'double digit numbers' in our publicity materials." To be fair to him, it was probably a slip of the tongue, or maybe he's wedded to always working in base 12.

Nevertheless, I had assumed that guys were more likely to be number people than women, but perhaps they are only good at remembering random numbers like miles per gallon, product codes on MP3 players, number of caps won by English players called Bobby and so on, and are not so good at actually multiplying real numbers for the purposes of, say, working out how many people are coming to a dinner party if everyone brings a partner.

Of course, this does not necessarily reflect badly on London, because the place is full of non-Londoners. Take Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, for instance. They don't appear to be very good at maths, despite being Scottish, and they live in London.

OK, cheap shot. Gordon Brown can probably recite all the prime numbers up to ... er ... you know, it's not actually easy to pluck a very high prime number out of the air ... try 7,643.

Top of the class are people in the East of England, with 71 per cent claiming to be able to recite their times tables quickly and accurately.

“This is great news for people in places like Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire,” says Marett. “But it seems people in London have got a lot of catching up to do in the numbers game.”

I live in Hertfordshire, so well done me! Hertfordshire's accolade all achieved without the presence of any university of note in the county.

TOP OF THE CLASS – how the regions fared

1. East England
2. Scotland
3. South-west England
4. North-east England
5. Wales
6. West Midlands
7. East Midlands
8. South-east England
9. North-west England
10. Yorkshire and the Humber
11. London


The company angling for free publicity, and getting it (for what it is worth), is www.whizz.com, online maths tuition for 5 to 13 year olds.

OK. You are a FTSE 100 company. Everyone calls you a glorified data search company but you prefer the term "meaning based computing".

Would you allow the chief executive officer of your US subsidiary to put out the following quote on an official stock exchange announcement?

"More than 350 companies across all sectors OEM Autonomy's technologies."

OK, he is American but still, sod "meaning based computing", what about "meaning based communicating"?

"These companies embrace Meaning-based Computing as the only technology capable of understanding the meaning of content in all file types and languages,' said Stouffer Egan, CEO of Autonomy, Inc."

I am aware of what "OEM" means (original equipment manufacturer) but that still does not make his first statement any more comprehensible.

Jeez, I'll be reading the Daily Telegraph next if I get any grumpier or more reactionary. Actually, I did buy the Torygraph the other day, because I needed to get up to speed on the pre-Budget report (one of the drawbacks of having a job I actually enjoy for the first time in decades is that I now read around the subject).

Anyway, I am pleased to say I found the paper not to be to my tastes at all and, unlike the Daily Mail, neither did it make my blood boil with its right wing views. All a bit anodyne, really, which is comforting, except that the paper has recently made an effort to appeal to a younger readership (i.e. people under the age of 90); what if grumpy old me has passed the Torygraph on the way up the age scale as the paper heads in the opposite direction?

Bah!

Got a call from my sister on Tuesday. Our Dad is dying. According to my sister he is very weak but comfortable.

So, the wife and I plus our three sons piled into the car to drive down to Southend to see him at the care home where he is living out his final days.

We arrived shortly after 9:00pm and went to his room where, not surprisingly, he was on the verge of sleep.

So, he drifted off to sleep, and in sleep he went back to being my Dad, instead of some demented old codger who doesn't even know who I am, never mind who his grandchildren are.

While he was asleep I could pretend he was going to wake up, recognise me and maybe give me a song or tell one of his cheesy jokes.

The big sleep beckons and I don't even know if he is aware of it.

Alf (still known as "Boy" in his 83rd year) when he joined the Royal Navy, aged 17