Last of the big spenders visit Los Vegas

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The car is an automatic so you just squeeze the accelerator and point it in the right direction which is generally straight ahead as there are not many corners to take driving though the Mojave desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The shifting sky changes inperceptively over the desert and mountains below painting a thousand masterpieces a second. Once again I am in a great wide open space, once again I am dumb struck by it's beauty. My Ipod is plugged into the cars aux input and is shuffling through the tracks, my girl by my side and we're off to Vegas.

Circus Circus is a low budget, entry level casino and Hotel and the end of the strip. It's 'family friendly' with kids areas and kids no go areas but the little ankle biters still seem to wander into the no go zones which tarnishes the pretence that one is one of the Rat pack carrying out their latest heist.

I invest in the casinos offer to bump my $10s up to $15 in chips that have no cash value but can be played and won with in Circus Circus. I sit at the Roulette table and nonchalantly place a dollar chip on an outside row pretending to know what I am doing. The croupier informs me that it's a $4 minimum bet. 'Ah' I add three more chips. I play Roulette for about five minutes betting four times on the same row outside reasoning that as the row covers a third of the numbers then it should win once in three times. It doesn't, maths was never my strong point. I lose $12 of my $15 in less time than it took to order a beer and with only $3 remaining at a $4 minimum bet table I am forced to retire. Lou is clinging onto her chips and does want to spend them for fear of losing.We buy a cheap bottle of rum in a bag paper bag and head out to take a look at the rest of the strip. We are not disappointed and thoroughly enjoin wandering through various magnificent temples of tat. Their vulgar and unashamed bad taste is amazing to behold. Venetian was our first surrounded by water on which gondalers floated. There were marble pillars and the ceilings painted in Sistine Chapel style, all pastels and romantic floaty poses. People were more dressed up here, some of the women even went as far as to drape themselves in ball dresses and were accompanied my dapper, drunken men in suits. Other women went for a more minimal approach, their little black dresses leaving little to the imagination. The tables were more expensive to play at $15 and upwards for a minimum bet. I declined to play. We opted to buy a couple of Pepsi's into which we decanted some rum and people watched for a while before moving onto Casino Royal which was as much of a dive as Circus Circus and not the kind of place where you would expect to find Mr Bond sipping on a martini. Next we wandered into Caesars Palace shopping mall thinking it was the casino where we encountered a drunk man walking across the marble shelf of a water feature yelling 'Look, I'm walking on water!'. When we find Caesars Palace the Casino we are once more impressed by its grandiose and vulgar display of a decorating budget spent badly. We go on to visit a few more casinos of various themes and degrees of appalling choice in decoration. Notably Paris in which an old world Parisian street is recreated complete with a scaled down foot of the Eiffel Tower and bright summers day sky blue ceiling that almost fools you into thinking that it is midday. We turn back about halfway down the strip and head back towards our hotel stopping into Treasure Island Casino on the way. Impressed by the Pirate galleons on the outside we entered the building only to be disappointed that the theme was not continued inside. We stopped to watch some craps a very enthusiastic man had attracted our attention shouting 'I'm so hot at the moment I'm going to turn the green cloth of this table red' He rolled his dice shouting 'ten, ten' then turned to a woman in a tight short little dress and said 'I'm high side and out there, that's how I play' or something similarly nonsensical to me. It was quite entertaining but even having read up a little on craps I still would not have the confidence to approach a table and attempt to play. I did however win $7 from a $1 bet on a Joker Poker machine. I took the $7 coupon and stuffed it in my pocket to play with another day. We staggered back to the hotel at around 4am and passed out feeling like we had seen quite a bit of Vegas.

When we eventually ventured out the following afternoon, tired and hung over, it was raining and last nights flyers promising blonds with fake breasts who were just dying to meet us littered the soaking streets. I am glad that I am not one of the many parents dragging their kids along her. We had eaten some cheese, eggs and mushrooms wrapped in totrilla for just under $10 served to us grudgingly, by a young woman who obviously felt that good service was below her and was destined for greater things. I poured some water into my dry throat and drank a 'kill or cure' bottle of beer. We returned to Treasure Island with my $7 winning slip and I gambled again on the Joker Poker machine. A top prize of $500 was available and I wanted to make it mine. I won $10, bottled it and cashed in my coupon and a machine for a crisp $10 note. We bought tickets for a Cirque de Soleil show after a farcical back and forth quest from the venue, to 'Half Price tickets are us' and back eventually buying tickets from our hotel lobby. We taxied a few miles from the strip to eat some delicious, budget Lebanese food as recommended in the Lonely Planet guide book before taxing back to the exclusive Wynn casino to see the show. It was amazing and worth the $74 ticket price. Water based, it mixed daring aerial leaps from twisted, gnarly tree like structures with synchronised swimming, acrobatics, and dance. There were fountains, explosions and some very creative use of fans and silk drapes. Performers swung on trapiese from the ceiling at one point there must have been twenty bodies in the air swooping and swinging down and around at different levels. There was one part that I could barely watch where three women hung from a steel frame of a ball high above us. They twisted in and out of it holding each other below by a single arm and at one point all three hung from it by their ankles alone. It was all every impressive.

We then decide it was time to gamble. We returned to Circus Circus, one of the only places that we found on the strip that offers a lowly $4 minimum bet. Lou handed me her $15 chips from her $10 gamblers starter pack and I sat down ready to win at a Roulette table. I place my bet $4 on red and $4 single bets inside on different groups of four numbers. There are bells ringing and machines pinging all around. A kind of ambient music plays that rises steadily in tone, hopefully it's like the sucking in of an breath, anticipating, optimistically waiting. The ball circles around and around, gradually slowing and time slows with it. This little white sphere is my universe. It bounces and pings off raised brass pegs. It bumps across dividers it's direction changing with every bobble. It's resting place uncertain, unpredictable and at the moment unknown. The balls movement tracked by seven gamblers: Beady eye, Sweaty, Drunk, Smoker, Old Wrinkled Tart, Ex-Con, Business man and Hen Do. I tingle with anticipation and will the ball to keep moving as while it moves their is still hope. It lands and bounces once more, will it stay in black or bounce into red? The wheel revolves and the ball is out of view for a long second before it revels it's position in red 23. Was that one of my numbers? Eyes flick back to the green canvas of the table. Counters of many colours cover different permeations and combinations of numbers, casting different bets. 'Lucky 35', Lovers birthday, the next number in the system, a whim, a number that just took my fancy or a random toss. Hope is still present. The micro seconds slide by as slow as my thought process, as slow as the croupier's hand placing the brass marker that seals my fate. I've not won on my numbers but bet $4 on red so have maintained my chips winning 4 and losing 4. I live to fight another day. The croupier collects the losing chips into his corner then hands out the winnings. Then it all starts again. What to bet on Red or Black? Red is the colour of the Harriers, my football team, but they often let me down so perhaps Black. What was it last time? 50 - 50 chance or is it? Then there is the question of which numbers on the inside. 17 catches my eye and I like 35 for some reason. I'm cold, hot, buzzing and may have lost track of both time and the fact that I am only betting $8 at a time, hardly a life changing amount. I nearly double my winnings up to $32 before starting a slow and steady decline, winning a little every now and then but losing more until I am down to $6. I go for broke and place them all on red. Common you Harriers. I win and am back up to $12 but it is not long before I have lost it all. The croupier changed when I was at the dizzy heights of $32 perhaps this new one has brought me bad luck. I leave the table.

We buy a bottle of $4.99 vodka that tastes like nail polish remover, two bottles of fruit juice and two paper cups for 25 cents each from the coffee bar. I mix the vodka and fruit juices then remix them with a higher percentage of fruit juice twice more before they are drinkable.

Lou wishes to play Blackjack and there is a space at a $5 minimum bet table so we wonder over. She wins her first few hands and goes on to win more than she loses for a while confounding other players by twisting on 16. The dealer is a charming Japanese woman who jokes with and pokes fun at the players. There is a moustached, Mexican man with his sweet heart, An old native American woman with grey hair tied back in a pony tail and more wrinkles than a tortoise, she is playing two hands, A middle aged Hawaiian woman who knows when to be 'hit' and when to 'hold' information that she trys to share with us but is frustrated by our failure to take her advice and a quiet young Japanese girl. It is not long before Lou's luck takes a turn for the worst and she is out of chips. I take over splashing out with a $20 buy in and spilling Lou's drink over the table. I apologise and am handed a towel with which to clean up my spillage. I sure that this is not the first time that this has happened. I win some and lose some my chips fluctuating up and down but never really getting up to anything worth cashing in before I lose the lot. I am keen on splashing out another $20 on Roulette but Lou drags me off to bed which is probably for my own good.

I must confess I have never really seen the attraction of casinos before but I was buzzing with excitement, wired and seduced by the thrill of it all. I'd had a great evenings entertainment for about the same amount of money as I would spend going to a gig and came away feeling pretty good. I was happy with the night but will not be making a habit of doing it regularly. I have to protect myself from myself.

We have requested a late check out which we struggle to make. I get lost a few times for good measure before eventually finding the freeway and leaving Las Vegas and a few dollars behind. We are driving through the beautiful Mojave desert again the shifting light and stunning views keeping me company as Lou dozes beside me.

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