United States: Deep South, full strength

My new friends and I are sitting outside what’s fast becoming my favourite bar in the world: the Under the Hill Saloon in Natchez, Mississippi. Already one man has held forth on the presidential campaign to anyone who’d listen — which, given how entertainingly he did it (‘Donald Trump? Pure white trash’) was most of us. Another has asked me if I’ve ever fired a gun and, if not, whether I’d like to see how much fun it is.

But by this stage it’s getting late, and I really should be going — except that the conversation has just turned to alligator hunting, a subject I’m unlikely to get the chance of ever discussing again. (The key, I now know, is to use rotten chicken as bait.) And all the time, we’ve been able to gaze at the Mississippi river only a few yards away.

These days, the American South doesn’t seem sure whether to market itself as bracingly different from the rest of the country or reassuringly similar.