Two of Our Number go to pick up One of Our Number’s missing wallet and are successful, though only after going into another state along the way. We have a celebratory splash around in the pool, save for The Eagle who is hanging like a hound and who would surely have sunk.

We then have to switch hotels and head to southern Louisville to drop our stuff in the city’s Days Inn. $30 less a night truly does manifest itself, but what it lacks in charm it makes up for in regular police visits.

Now for the excellent Muhammad Ali Museum to be taught a little more about The Greatest, Louisville’s most celebrated son. Then across to the Louisville Slugger Factory to attempt some baseball in the batting cages and to learn a bit extra (that is to say, ‘some’) about bats.

Following this we drive south to Bardstown through lovely Kentucky countryside, and we scope out a couple of potential bourbon distilleries for tomorrow. We then have a (large) dinner at the Talbot Tavern – a 1779 join where Lincoln once stayed and Jesse James shot a bunch of holes in the wall (‘wonderful house-guest’). The Big Man, true to form, ordered poorly. I had some Kentucky fried chicken (when in Rome, etc. etc.) and we all try some ‘beer-cheese’, which turns out is cheese made with beer, not (as One of Our Number believed) a cheesy beverage.

I try to drive the car. I don’t like it. It feels like driving a three-ton bumper car.

*

We head out late to a dive bar, for Silver has arranged dates for himself and The Big Man with a couple of lasses he met at the college death-metal place. As one does. I am passing weary so forgo bourbon and drink 4-5 Red Bulls. We jog on later to some den of iniquity and copious underage twerking, where the Red Bulls hit and I almost have a heart attack.

Andthesea, upon (sort of) realising that drinks are but $1 (after he had brought five rounds) buys seventeen more drinks. He asks the long-suffering barmaid what the total is. ‘$17…I’ve told you five times already..drinks are a dollar..’ ‘Unreal!’ cries Andthesea, who has already forgotten what he owes her. He then flies to the dance-floor, which he dominates with great prejudice.

It is time for me to go. My chest is tight and shooting pains run up and down my right arm. I am not long for the world. I bundle into a cab driven by, God bless him, the single stupidest man in Kentucky. In the end I have to direct him back myself, despite my massive coronary. You might have thought some knowledge of the city would be a requirement of a Louisville cabbie. However, you would have thought wrong.