“Mr. Taylor,” she enquires, “Do you have any idea of the cost of this medication?”

“None whatsoever!” I reply innocently.

She looks somewhat embarrassed. “It’s 324 dollars and 99 cents!”

“Well, I have to have it, so let’s hope the insurance company is sympathetic”

“How much would it cost you at home?” she asks.

“It’s a prescription drug,” I explain, “About 10 dollars!”

If they raise prescription charges again, think of me before you start whinging!

Brian arrives at 2.00 with his partner Lisa, to take me to lunch, and at this point I get my first real exposure to Disney. I am taken to Downtown Disney or, as Brian puts it, “Disney for grown-ups!” It’s a large open air mall full of restaurants, and shops selling the kind of thing they imagine you want to take home from here.

We find a restaurant to our taste, and catch up on lost years while ordering lunch. I go for cochon au lait po’ boy, there being a New Orleans theme to our restaurant. It’s a pork roll, but a very tasty one, and comes with a garlic potato salad.

After finishing, we do a bit of a tour, and end up in the Grand Californian, one of the Disney pieces de resistance. It’s a tall, dark wood hotel built around a pine garden. The lobby is magnificent, and contains the biggest fireplace ever, in which a fire is burning, and in front of which a pianist, in full dinner jacket, entertains us. Bear in mind it is probably eighty degrees outside, and the air conditioning is on.

And so to my real reason for being in Anaheim, a baseball game. I have booked a hotel which I had thought was within walking distance of the ground, but I am advised to the contrary. As it is quite a warm afternoon I don’t feel like proving anyone wrong. Anaheim, being really just a suburb of Disneyland, has something called the resort transit, which goes around the city, and which costs only $4. So at 5.00 I buy my ticket, and am told to take a number 6, which goes past my hotel, and change at the park. The number 6 takes me round several hotels before coming to the park, which I now realise is the local term for Disneyland. I could have walked there from my hotel in slightly less time than the bus.

I then have to wait 25 minutes for a number 15, which goes to the stadium. The stadium comes into view, and the driver tells me not to get off yet. He circles the park, waiting outside the odd hotel or two, until he eventually deposits me in the car park at around 6.30. I could have driven in about 10 minutes. Entry to the car park would have cost $30!!

The club has kindly given me a complementary ticket, which I gratefully collect. The signs to my section keep sending me up and, although I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I start to think they have placed me in one of the cheaper sections. How wrong I am. My seat is next to the press box, one level up, overlooks home plate and has waiter service!! It’ll have to do, I suppose.

The arena is an attractive one, and the first thing I notice is the retired shirt numbers. Number 26 is retired in honour of Gene Autry, screen cowboy and first owner of the major league Angels. It’s unusual to honour an owner in such fashion, but there he is, with a statue at the entrance to ice the cake.

The game is a close one. The lead off hitter of the visiting Detroit Tigers, Curtis Granderson, starts proceedings with a home run, and the Tigers double their lead in the second. Anaheim pulls one back before Granderson repeats his trick. Again the Angels pull a run back and equalise in the fifth.

One of the traits of the Anaheim faithful is that they wave cuddly toys, known as the rally monkey. The scoreboard shows a video of a real monkey performing tricks, and the crowd responds vociferously.

A load of nonsense maybe, but immediately the Angels score the winning run, and the monkey goes home feeling, no doubt, fulfilled.