We sat drinking imported English beer served to us by a waitress in the air-conditioned chill of a fake "English" pub, the like of which would make any good Geordie weep into his pint. Fake beams above our head, fake ornaments, fake air...

Outside, poor, slightly truncated, old London Bridge, some of its stones still bearing numbers from its undignified demolition and re-erection, stood in the baking sun of northern Arizona, on the fringe of the wholly-new and characterless town of Lake Havasu City. Around it is a fake English Village, presumably built by someone who has never actually been there but has seen a few tourist information leaflets.

Girls with fake smiles attempt to seduce you into riding in large golf carts, assuming that most tourists are incapable of walking the couple of hundred yards from one end of the "village" to the other. Of course, they are right, and they snare overweight visitors who would have benefitted from the exercise.

We browse rude bumper stickers and offensive T-shirts in gift shops where plastic frogs croak at us as we pass.

It's actually a great vulgar place for people-watching, for being a real tourist, for indulging in ice cream and junk food and posed photographs of people squinting into the sun. It is also jolly hot.

We met and enjoyed Erica's grandfather Sherm and step grandmother Belle, lively ex-computer programmers who live in the cool of the hills near Lake Havasu City.

They not only entertained and put us up, but took us to see a "real" wild west town nearby, on the streets of which gunfights took place on the hour, every hour from 9:00am. Ralph became all priggish and wouldn't join in the fun, glowering and tut-tutting instead amongst the tacky souvenir and gemstone shops.