Road to Memphis Graceland Clarksdale Distillation Nashville

Wednesday, 4 April

Graceland was the elephant in the room. None of us are great fans, but this was the one attraction everyone and anyone was likely to ask "You went all the way to Memphis and did not go to Graceland? What's wrong with you?" So we went. And because for exactly the same reasons we were afraid of it being a mob scene, we ponied up for the fancy-schmancy $100 VIP passes. The only thing more expensive was $170 (gasp) for the same tour with your own docent. We drew the line at that. Instead our tour came with your own iPad providing a running commentary. So before we get into our experience, here's a rathole: a mini iPad-like backgrounder, liberally borrowed from WIkipedia.

♪♫ I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, In Memphis Tennessee ♩♬

Rathole: Graceland The Facts

Graceland sits on a 13.8-acre (5.6 ha) estate at what is now 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, about 9 miles (14.5 km) from Downtown Memphis. It was opened to the public on June 7, 1982. The site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 7, 1991, and declared a National Historic Landmark on March 27, 2006. Graceland was the first site related to rock and roll to be entered in the National Register of Historic Places and it is the second most-visited house in America with over 650,000 visitors a year; The White House of course is #1.

In early 1957, Presley gave his parents, Vernon and Gladys Presley, a $100,000 budget, and asked them to find a "farmhouse" type property to purchase. Elvis purchased Graceland on March 19, 1957 for $102,500. He was fond of claiming that the US government had mooted a visit to Graceland by Nikita Khrushchev, 'to see how in America a fellow can start out with nothing and, you know, make good'.

Priscilla Beaulieu lived at Graceland for five years before she and Elvis wed in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 1, 1967. Their daughter Lisa Marie Presley was born on February 1, 1968, and spent the first years of her life on the estate until her parents divorced in 1972, and she moved to California with her mother, but she often goes back to Graceland for visits. When Elvis toured, staying in hotels, "the rooms would be remodeled in advance of his arrival, so as to make the same configurations of space as he had at home – the Graceland mansion. His furniture would arrive, and he could unwind after his performances in surroundings which were completely familiar and comforting," the room in question, 'The Jungle Room' being "an example of particularly lurid kitsch."

Elvis died in the bathroom at Graceland allegedly of a heart attack. A private funeral with 200 mourners was held on August 18, 1977 in the house, with the casket placed in front of the stained glass doorway of the music room. Graceland continued to be occupied by members of the family until the death of Elvis' aunt Delta in 1993, who had moved in at Elvis' invitation after her husband's death. Lisa Marie inherited the estate in 1993 when she turned 25. Elvis, his parents Gladys & Vernon Presley, and his grandmother Minnie Mae Presley are buried on the property in the Meditation Garden. A memorial gravestone for Elvis's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon, is also at the site.

So when you pull up in the parking lot, you are looking at a typical (whatever that means) amusement park entrance (see photo in Rathole above). You walk under the grand something-or-other, and then passed a series of large buildings on all sides of a broad pedestrian causeway. I don't know if it is a relief or a concern that there is no sign of anything that looked like what I imagined for Graceland. "I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'll recognize it when I see it." In the main ticketing hall the process worked like clockwork, they knew who we were and what we'd paid for and in two minutes flat we'd been issued with our fancy VIP lanyards and told that we had about ten minutes before we needed to report to the next station over there from where our tour would start. It did. I think there was us and one other couple, a father and son. We followed our guide out of the back door where we joined another short line to have our picture taken against a painted backdrop on the mansion. Aha! Yes, that looks like what I'm talking about. In a tacky sort of way. We then piled into our tour bus, leaving the crowd behind. Across the lawn were Elvis's planes, also part of our ticket price, but the bus drove straight by and headed back to the road. Inspired.

The mansion and its grounds were on the other side of the main road, completely divorced from the amusement park. So as we crossed the road and entered the grounds through the same gates Elvis has been photographed passing through, there was a palpable sense of being taken back in time. I loved it. We were driven to the back of the mansion where there was a small movie theatre and we watched a ten minute video about Elvis and the mansion that the unwashed masses received back in the amusement park. I'm not exactly sure what we gained by that. Perhaps the fact that it started the moment we were ready, perhaps we didn't have to stand in some long line. Anyway it was nice to have the place to ourselves. Armed with our iPads and headphones, we were then led to the front of the mansion, where people were being let in a few at a time. As VIPs we came in from one side, everyone else from the other. When we appeared we were automatically at the front of the line, just like the business class line at airport security landing you at the same security check point as everyone else, just sooner.

Right inside the front door, you looked straight up the stairs. On the right was the living room (above left) and on the left the dining room (right).

Under the stairs (you can just see Grimmy looking in through the door) was his parent's room (left)

There was some controversy about the blocked off second floor, which I for one did not understand. Firstly, even in life, and even with a home constantly overflowing with visitors, no one was ever invited upstairs. This was the Presley family private space, from which they could make grand entrances, when they were ready. Second, it was in that private space that he died. Why would the family allow the general public to trample over it? The very idea makes me uncomfortable. Walking through the public space was visceral enough. It seemed highly inapproprate to invade the man's sanctuary.

Once inside, headphones on, everyone was basically in their own little cocoon, listening and watching, jostling for a good view and moving on. So although no one was really keeping tabs on everyone else, we mostly were never more than a minute or two apart from each other. Just a small flotilla of Pooh sticks drifting along the river together. The description in the Rathole is on the money. It was very kitschy, and some of it was particularly lurid. But the 60's and early 70's were pretty lurid no matter how much or little money one had, so I don't know that this was necessarily that much worse. I've seen examples of Trump's decorative preferences, and the emphasis on gold, marble, and shine seems to be not dissimilar, and way less excusible today that it would have been back then.

We shuffled our way through the dining room, the play room, the pool table room, the jungle play room, and the out back to the raquetball court and his father's office, then across the paddocks to an exhibition hall that I think was originally some sort of trophy room, but now was a collection of memorabilia and photos of Elvis and his family tree. Immediately I felt my interest waning, and I noticed some of the others picked up speed through this section. I can't help it. I love museums where the space itself is the museum. They seem to spark my imagination in ways that looking at objects out of context never can. Who cares about an invoice his father signed, or a letter someone once wrote? We are here to absorb Elvis, and I could do that so easily in the mansion, and I don't think I ever would feel the same no matter how long I stared at a picture of his mother in some corridor full of picture frames.

The last stage led us past the pool, which did finally breathe some life into the poolside photos we'd wandered by, because it still looked exactly like the images, right down to the little spring board. Finally came the Meditation Garden, constructed in 1964-1965. It was planned and built by Elvis as a place for contemplation. After Elvis' death on August 16, 1977, security issues at Forest Hill Cemetery, his original burial site, led to his reburial on October 2, 1977 on the south side of the circular pool. An eternal flame encased in a hexagonal glass container sits at the head of Elvis' grave. Elvis' mother Gladys was also reburied in the Meditation Garden, and the large marble monument from the Presley family plot at Forest Hill was relocated as well. Elvis' father Vernon was buried here in 1979, and his grandmother Minnie May Presley followed in 1980. The Meditation Garden also features a marker in memory of Elvis' still-born twin brother, Jesse Garon. Not much else to say about that either. It was nice. We had plenty of time to absorb it because NT was calling home, but no hardship, we just milled about, watching the crowd. Exiting the memorial brought us neatly to the front of the mansion again, but on the riff-raff side, so we walked passed the line and made our way to front and center. Someone volunteered to take a picture for a pair of girls trying to get a selfie, in exchange for their capturing us, then we got back on our bus. Universal approval, and the fact that about half the photos we took on the whole trip were taken in those 90 minutes or so speaks volumes.

Left is the marble monument relocated from the Presley family plot at Forest Hill and above are the grave stones with the eternal flame visible at the head of Elvis's plot. Below is the front of the house.

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Back on the amusement park side of the road, we were funneled back through the photo booth but there was no sign of our picture. If we waited ten minutes they could make another. We laughed. We left. Next stop: the aircraft.

Elvis purchased a 1958 Convair 880 in April 1975 and named it Lisa Marie after his daughter. It features a red-white-and-blue exterior, gold-plated seat belts, suede chairs, leather covered tables, 24-karat gold-flecked sinks, a stereo system, a conference room and bed. Presley bought the jet from Delta Air Lines for $250,000 in April 1975; refurbishing brought the total to over $600,000, and he first boarded the craft in November of that year. The tail features an American flag and Elvis’ famous TCB – “taking care of business in a flash” – logo. He also had the registration number changed to N880EP, and sometimes called it “The Pride of Elvis Presley Airways.”

Elvis dreamed of having his own fleet; he purchased five planes over the years. He purchased The Hound Dog II, a Lockheed JetStar, in 1975 for around $900,000 as he awaited renovations for the Lisa Marie. (The Lisa Marie is Hound Dog I.)

After the stairs photo op we took the quick tour through the Convair and it was exactly as described. The doublebed in the final room actually had one of the aforementioned gold-plated seat beats stretched right across it. We speculated if it was there as a joke, because of some regulation requiring everyone to be stapped in no matter how impractically, or whether it could actually have been of some use. The best we could come up with was that perhaps it might help keep you in bed if things got turbulent, but it was a stretch. Out the back door, then a quick peer into the Jetstar which of course is about all you could expect in a plane that small and with only one entry exit. It looked like an executive jet, go figure.

There's always a souvenir shop / museum and this was no exception. There was a great section describing in detail the answer to a question that had been bugging us: how do you get something this big on site? The answer, pretty simple really, is that you take the wings off and then tow it like a barge in a parade, and of course you make a parade out of it.

Finally we were back in the main theme park, laid out like an open air mall. In the middle was Glady's Diner and the ticket office and around the outside were a series of museums: his cars, his motor bikes, his clothes, his movie sets (well a couple of them), and between each was a gift shop biased towards what you just walked through. We had just completed the cars section and were making our way through its gift shop heading for the next section when I head someone ask for the bathrooms. Her instructions: "Go through the doors keep going until you get to the white Rolls Royce. Then make a right." Nice.

My favorite souvenir, which I would definitely have signed up for if only I was more of a fan, was a green screen photo op where the photographer posed you just right and then placed you into your chosen famous picture, only now Elvis had his arm drapped over your shoulder or whatever. They looked great. I also liked the movie sets, where they did a great job of explaining what they were, how they fit into their movie and so on. The one I remember clearly is the scene in a movie about Sam Phillips discovering Elvis. We saw the clip in the movie and then walked through the set of the recording studio. But otherwise this section was decidely ho-hum for me. The house had been great and I was happy, but this was just out-of-context museum. Again.

But before we go, somehow I had learned that a) Elvis loved peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and that b) Glady's (after his mother) Diner sold them. Now that's my idea of a sourvenir. They'd actually done a very reasonable job of making it feel like a 50s/60s diner, working with the fact that it had to self-serve a much bigger crowd than a diner could ever handle. I got to the front of the line with my tray and ordered the sandwich. "D'you want it grilled in butter or bacon grease?" Before I had time to reattach my jaw and get my lips moving, she had all the information she needed. "Bacon" she said with a little nod. She painted the sandwich with the hot grease then slapped it into the grill as turned to the next customer. That and a cup of coffee made a delicious and perfect end to Graceland.

Sun Studios

I don't know if anyone else had made the connection when we agreed to follow up Graceland with Sun Studios, (though I'd be surprised if Robin did not) but it turns out the juxtaposition is positively poetic: the Elvis story started right here in this little room. So once again, let's start with what the guide told us as I reconstituted it from the interweb.

Rathole: Sun Studios and Elvis Presley

In January 1950, WREC radio engineer Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue with his assistant and long-time friend, Marion Keisker. Phillips had dreamed of opening his own recording studio since he was a young man, but getting the company off the ground was not an easy task. To create revenue at the beginning, Phillips would record conventions, weddings, choirs, and even funerals. He also held an open door policy, allowing anybody to walk in and, for a small fee, record their own record. Phillips' slogan for his studio was "We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime." In June, Phillips and a friend, local DJ Dewey Phillips (no relation), set up their own record label called Phillips Records.The purpose of the label was to record "negro artists of the South" who wanted to make a recording but had no place to do so. The label failed to make an impact and folded after just one release; "Boogie in the Park" by Joe Hill Louis, which sold less than 400 copies. After the failure of Phillips Records, Phillips began working closely with other record labels such as Chess Records and Modern Records, providing demo recordings for them and recording master tapes for their artists. It was during this time that Phillips recorded what many consider to be the first rock and roll song, Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88". Legend has it that the song's unique sound was due to the band's amplifier being broken, and stuffed with wads of newspaper leading to a "fuzzy" sound.

In early 1952, Phillips once again launched his own record label, this time calling it Sun Records. During his first year he recorded several artists who would go on to have successful careers, among them were B.B. King, Joe Hill Louis, Rufus Thomas, and Howlin' Wolf. Rufus Thomas' "Bearcat", a recording that was (extremely) similar to "Hound Dog", was the first real hit for Sun in 1953. A copyright-infringement suit ensued and nearly bankrupted Phillips' record label. Despite this, Phillips was able to keep his business afloat by recording several other acts, including the Prisonaires; a black quartet who were given permission to leave prison in June 1953 to record their single, "Just Walkin' in the Rain", later a hit for Johnnie Ray in 1956. The song was a big enough hit that the local newspaper took an interest in the story of its recording. A few biographers have said that this article, printed in the Memphis Press-Scimitar on July 15, influenced Elvis Presley to seek out Sun to record a demo record.

In August 1953, fresh out of his high school graduation the previous June, the 18½ year old Presley walked into the offices of Sun. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc which he later claimed he intended as a gift for his mother, or was merely interested in what he "sounded like", though there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Others argue that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, "I sing all kinds." When she pressed him on whom he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, "I don't sound like nobody." After he recorded, Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man's name, which she did along with her own commentary: "Good ballad singer. Hold." Presley cut a second acetate in January 1954—"I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You"—but again nothing came of it.

REL strides purposefully towards the door, looking for all the world as if he knows where he is going.

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused to a broader audience. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'" In June, he acquired a demo recording of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit the teenaged singer. Presley came by the studio, but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session. The session, held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1949 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.

Within months Phillips saw his label expand significantly owing to the number of Presley records sold. Radio stations and record stores all over the South were eager to play them, and as Presley's profile grew over the next year, Phillips realized Sun was not large enough to break him throughout the United States. In February 1955, Phillips met with Colonel Tom Parker, a man known for his hustling skills as well as his managerial ones. Parker persuaded Phillips that Presley needed a national record label to help him further his career, and after several more months Phillips agreed to sell Presley's contract. He told Parker that he would require a $5,000 down-payment by November 15, as an advance on a $35,000 buy out fee.

"Million Dollar Quartet" is a recording of an impromptu jam session involving (l to r) Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Carl Perkins, made on December 4, 1956, here at the Sun Record Studios. An article about the session was published in the Memphis Press-Scimitar under the title "Million Dollar Quartet". The recording was first released in Europe in 1981 as The Million Dollar Quartet with 17 tracks. A few years later more tracks were discovered and released as The Complete Million Dollar Session. In 1990, the recordings were released in the United States as Elvis Presley - The Million Dollar Quartet. This session is considered a seminal moment in rock and roll..

At the time, $35,000 was an unheard of amount of money for a recording artist's contract, especially one who had yet to prove himself on the national stage. Although Presley didn't want to leave Sun, Phillips sold his contract because he needed the money to settle debts and pay off costs still associated with Rufus Thomas's "Bearcat" copyright-infringement suit. Phillips, however, insisted that he only offered Presley's contract for $35,000 because he believed it would put off any other record label from purchasing it. Regardless, Presley signed a record contract with RCA Victor in November 1955, and left Sun. Phillips used some of the money to further advance the careers of his other artists, by now featuring Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison. And everyone ended up happily ever after.

We found parking in the small lot behind Sun Studios just like they thought we might. The lack of traffic that this implied was disproved moments later when the cashier just inside the door assured us that the tour that was about to leave was already full, and if we wanted to take it (and there was no other way to see anything except the cafe / museum / souvenir shop we were already in), the next one left in 45 minutes. A blessing in disguise, because it gave us plenty of time to hang out in the cafe and investigate what it had to offer. The shop itself was jammed with 45s and I don't remember how long its been since I saw one of those. You could also buy just the label from the center of the record, which I also couldn't think of a good use for but otherwise seemed pretty cool. But along the back wall of the cafe Nick found a splendid denim jacket with a huge round Sun logo on its back, and Rob found a couple of books in the little rack tucked into one corner. They were both great finds, and he regaled us with quotes and anecdotes from them for days afterwards, to say nothing of their use in informing us on people and places we stumbled across. But mostly we just sat and people-watched. I think it is fair to say we were in the sweet-spot age-wise, but there was plenty of diversity, with a higher than usual general knowledge—folks explaining to other folks the significance of some item or other on the walls and tables. We drank coffee, and somehow appropriately, Coke straight from the bottle. Soon enough the next tour was called, and the room emptied through the back door, then slowly up the tight, steep, stairway to the upper floor, which was a large room with the same footprint as the one we'd been gathering in downstairs, but less cluttered.

After a brief preamble, our chatty guide did her best to pump up the crowd: "I suppose you'd like to hear something?" Hell yes. The music started. "This remind you of anything?" Hell yes! That's "(You Ain't Nothing But a) Hound Dog!" Even I knew that. It sounded old and weak as a recording, but there was no mistaking it. "Nope" she says, "That was the problem. That was Bearcat by Rufus Thomas." She went on to explain the whole debacle (detailed in the Sun Studio Rathole) and then played a number of other examples while she laid out the Sam Philips / Sun Records / Elvis story. We peered into Sam's original recording booth, which like Curchhill's bunker seemed to have been left untouched since its encumbent had last walked away from it. Ha! Surprise! This was the recording booth we had just seen its replica at Graceland: the one Sam Philips stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?'. The replica was accurate enough that I recognised the real thing immediately.

The wall opposite the booth was lined with memorabilia which we all dutifully glanced at as we shuffled by, but I don't remember there being anything particularly memorable about it. I think the highlight of the show for most people was down the front stairs. Turning left would have taken us back into the cafe, but instead we turned right into the actual recording studio, which also looked like a museum preserving it's 1960's appearance, but in fact is still very much in use. In addition to the name value of course, the accoustics are good. A masking tape X on the floor marked the actual spot Elvis stood to make his recordings, (one pondered how often it was replaced (or less charitably, moved)) but many guests had a great time hamming it up with the microphone for their friends to snap or video. No takers in our party. There was little else to see or do, but it was fabulous to just stand in the sacred space and just absorb it for a few minutes.

We spilled back out of the studio, landing us back in the cafe. After our long wait before the show there was nothing left to do there either , so time to head back to the van, and to the hotel. As we left the building I noticed a family on their way in all wearing a team shirt of sorts, an obviously new MLK shirt. They were a stark reminder that this was the actual, to the day, 50th Anniversary of his assasination here in Memphis. We'd been extremely worried about this coincidence in terms of both the crowds at venues, and in terms of room availability and cost. But here we were, and the only evidence we saw of a celebration was this t-shirt family, and a lone guy at breakfast who had confirmed that he was a reporter here on a one-day assignment when I enquired after his lanyard with a big press-pass-y-looking thing dangling from it and a daypack full of electronic toys. No crowds, no jams, if we hadn't known, we'd never have known. So, back to the hotel, and back out again, to our big night out: B B King's Blues Club.

B B King's Blues Club, Beale Street

As last night, but much more of a surprise, we had another absolutely first-class table, this time on the balcony but again right in front of the band. The band was just getting started, and mercifully it soon became clear that they were the warm up, and they did not plan to stay long. Not my favorite act of the week. We focussed on the menu. Another first for some: fried pickles. As a "never-met-a-pickle-I-didn't-like" kinda guy, I order them whereever I see them, so I've become something of an expert, and these were good. To this we added skillet-fried shrimp (Adam: "Read my lips--NOT for public consumption" Right!), catfish, bar-b-q platter, pork sliders and fried chicken. Oh, and 27 pints, 5 shots, 3 cocktails, and apparently 1 Budweiser which I think must have been for the server, because I can't imagine anyone else drinking it. The food was excellent, considering, and no complaints, but the bar-b-q was no match for the Bar-b-q Shop. Something of a relief really.

So by the time the main act came on we were well refreshed and ready. They introduced themselves and also their manager "Mr Phillup Da Bucket" pointing to the little pail that we learned sits at the front of all stages. Folks came by on a regular basis to drop a bill or two off with Mr Phil. My other favorite line from their intro: "People are here from everywhere tonight! We got people from Poland to, err, to everywhere man." Right on, brother. Jonathan Ellison and his band apparently play Wednesdays and Sundays and I don't know how many Wednesdays and Sundays I'd have to go back before I got tired of them, a perfect blend of blues and funk, and the bassist even got into a rappy sort of thing that got all the women in the audience on their feet clapping and swaying in time, and eventually line dancing in front of the stage. He seemed to almost be in a trance, strutting the stage, rhyming, issuing line instructions, and the ladies followed every word, turning and bouncing in unison. Eventually it was Mr Ellison's turn, and having got a good groove going, he hopped off the stage and started wandering around the bar. His solo must have lastest ten minutes, during which time he stopped at each and every table to play a few bars before moving on. And I mean every table, even ours on the balcony.

I would quite happily have stayed here until the band went home for the night, but the boys wanted to try some other fare. In hindsight I should have told them to go without me, and I know that would have been fine, but I dutifully drained my nth beer and we poured ourselves back onto Beale Street.

Right next door was a shop selling lavatory seats as works of art. There was a brief debate about luggage, and about probabilities of being allowed to install the art (where else would it go?). Very brief. Sadly we moved on. Beale Street was hopping. Nick and Grimmy chatted with a couple of cops sitting in their cruiser, and in addition to learning what they wanted to know about the cruiser, discovered that the police presence was funded by the local proprietors, who had discovered that far from discouraging revelry, making the area feel safe actually encouraged folks to come out and drink.

Eventually we found a little dive with an interesting guitarist, so we ordered another round. Our man was seriously under the influence of one or more intoxicants, but it did not seem to affect his technical and musical prowess. Sadly he was not as good as what I was missing back in B B's club, and even more sadly we'd no sooner taken our first mouthful of our beers when he and his two colleagues packed up. Oh well, perhaps that was a sign. "Time for bed" said Zebedee.

(Side note: when I looked up Zebedee on the interweb to check my spelling, all of the references were to the biblical character, husband of Salome, and father of James and John the apostles. All of the images, however, were of The Magic Roundabout character.)