On the road. Day four. Part One. In the blessed name of Elvis I just let blast.

So many things need to happen by accident (there are no accidents) for me and J to meet Paul and Jules.

If the men's toilets in the Peabody (the South's most prestigious hotel) had been usable that morning, then I wouldn't have needed to dive back up to our room on the tenth floor. I wouldn't have been in the lift when the guy with the two coffee cups commented that his hands were burning, just as Paul and Jules were getting out of the lift on the Mezzanine floor; wouldn't have been there as the guy who had those brown cardboard rings round his drink advised that the first guy should have done the same as him. 

And if I weren't now somebody who's okay with talking to other human beings, I wouldn't have looked up from my phone and commented, "Yeah but it'd be a shame to cover the ducks up." (Ducks being on everything Peabody related)

At which point Paul's left the lift, Jules is leaving but turns round and says, "A fellow Liverpudlian" as she gestures in Paul's direction. I stick my head out of the door, let on to Paul and then head up to the tenth floor. The end of that.

Except. 

We get to Graceland ready for our pre-booked tour. And I decide I should probably go to the toilet again before we start. This is what I do. Anybody who's ever been anywhere with me knows that this is what I do. 

And me doing that means we join the queue for our tour immediately behind Paul and Jules. They turn around and there we are. So we talk while we wait. Talk about what we do, where we're from, who we are.  And find out that Paul's born in Bootle, raised in Crosby, a few months older than me. We're doing Nashville/Memphis/New Orleans, they're doing Memphis/New Orleans/Nashville. They've chosen to be in New Orleans for Halloween, we're going to be there completely by accident, but we'll obviously be there at the same time. The amount of things we're doing, things we've done, things we're into are ridiculous. 

So we do the house portion of the tour together (they're supposed to be on a tour half an hour later but manage to get that shuffled round)

Graceland wasn't what we expected. We thought it'd be the house. Just the house. It's that and about a million times more.

The living room's great. A long couch, a TV, a grand piano (obviously), but it only becomes real later when I see the photo of Elvis sat on *that* couch, playing bass. Then that living room belongs to him. 

The dining room, Gladys's bedroom. The stairs he sits on in the film, that Priscilla glows down in the home movie we see later.

It's the TV room that does it: yellow and deep navy, a yellow bar that we probably weren't supposed to sit at, three TVs for him to watch simultaneously, his Mario Lanza LP. And I'm right into it then. 

The fabric wrapped pool room with the tear in the pool table, the kitchen, the Jungle Room - Jesus *The Jungle Room*. We're not allowed upstairs. Which is right. That's his, that remains his. Outside into a family exhibit and eventually to the graves - which is a profound, heartbreaking experience. As we're standing before the graves for Elvis, his mother, his father, a stone paying tribute to his brother, born sleeping, a gentle rain falls for the first time. It's a moment.

Which brings back a thought - you know that Jesse Garon Presley was born first, know that he didn't make it, that Elvis was a surviving twin. But I realised for the first time, his parents had no idea they were expecting twins. All they knew was that they had lost the child they were expecting. Elvis was unexpected. It's no wonder the bond between Elvis and his mother was so pronounced. 

We're on the VIP tour. So, when we finish our (iPad and headphone guided) tour of the house, me and J do it all again.

Then it's over the road to the museum. Which isn't a museum. It's:

• The cars
• The bikes
• The army bit - his actual uniforms
• 'Gladys's Diner' - a peanut butter and banana sandwich fried in bacon grease for me
• The planes - the 'Lisa Marie' being long haul with beds and a meeting table, the other (unnamed) being a smaller private jet
• The shops. There's one for every section, they know how to make money

And:

'The Career'

Which is the best thing you're ever going to see

• The Sun Studio piano - the piano that 'The Million Dollar Quartet' (Elvis, Jerry Lee, Cash, Carl Perkins) jammed on one late Memphis night
• The greatest knitted polo shirt you've ever seen (Lansky Bros, who 'dressed the king', had a shop in The Peabody. They had that polo. In large and XL. Cheers lads. It's not on the website ever. This, in a medium, is the current holy grail)

Incredible objects from every moment of his career. Then:

The 68 Special. 'The Comeback Special'. Weirdly, as I've written a play of that title, as I've got the first line of 'If I Can Dream' engraved into the flesh of my right forearm, I have something of an affinity for this slice of his career.

We get the jail doors from the Jailhouse Rock sequence to ourselves. We get the black leather suit (check out Simon Godard's excellent book on The Comeback for a revelation on that item of clothing that you won't see coming) and the ACTUAL chairs that Scotty and Bill and the lads sat on for the in the round acoustic section. And then:

The 'If I Can Dream' suit. In a glass case at the top of a flight of stairs. Perfect. Just me, J, the suit and the illuminated ELVIS sign. Nobody else. *That* is a moment. You expect the Mona Lisa size crowd. It's not there. It's just us. 

Six hours. Expected it to be two. Six hours. And not a wasted second.

We lost Paul and Jules. Found them in the Presley Motors gift shop. Then they went to the planes and we went to the career and the day became a wallow in his life.

(They've got one of the TV's that he put a bullet through. I was very excited about that.)

J's bit happened as a mind map on the Amtrak. She'd suggested that we both mind map the whole thing on a double blank page. Which she's great at. Unfortunately my mind doesn't work in anything other than straight lines. (And everything I write is in block capitals so I can read it, it's like shouting at myself.) So, the mind map is purely J's. Though this page won't do justice to the shape and form of it, here's the words:

J.

Standing in the Q, waiting for the ticket and Paul and Jules were directly in front!

VIP Entourage tour. We could walk round like 'we own the place' :) And we did. Went round the house twice.

The Q for food was a bit of a nightmare. I had chicken wrap but they threw a mountain of cheese on it. Delicious tho.

I remember walking out into the back yard area. The swimming pool felt quite small. But the iPad tour guide said to walk over to the meditation garden. I wasn't prepared for what I experienced. Seeing where Elvis, his parents and brother, and daughter, and nephew were buried. It was profoundly moving. And just that minute, a light rain started to fall. So, so moving.

The jump suits!

I.

God, I didn't even mention the jump suits did I? All the jumpsuits. All of them. Every single one he wore in the 70s. In glass cases. Two to three full height cases on top of each other. Four walls of a massive room. And a central set of cases. It's stunning.

J. 

The Comeback Special leathers 💙

Elvis's planes - the Lisa Marie was unbelievable

Walking round the corner and being in the 'If I Can Dream' room - all alone, we had the place to ourselves.

I. 

That's three o'clock (ish) on a Memphis afternoon. That's the first part of the day. And that's it for today. 

We're about to get an Uber (a fortnight ago) through a Monsoon, to the birthplace of rock'n'roll. We'll see you in a bit.