So that's what heppened to Sheena Easton.The strip is as garish and ridiculous as promised. Nothing is permanent. Faux Venice (no smells), faux Paris (no intellectuals) and faux New York (no Hilary) will have been concreted over in a decade. I wander about the slots and tables. It feels a library, the relaxed quiet concentration. There are some shows, but day-to-day Vegas is dull, unrelenting in its own way.

Sheena Easton is playing the MGM Grand soon. Hairbrush singing girl next door makes good. I remember her winning a BBC talent contest in the 1970s with My Baby Takes the Morning Train. That would make her fortysomething. It is an unhappy place. A guy shouts at me in traffic for lane splitting, another dives at the bike. Even the hooker gave me a hard time when I decline her offer of being tucked up, (almost what I had in mind) “come out of the closet man”: a mouthful of abuse for gratis.

I see an overlanding bike and chase it. Mike had shipped from Berlin. He give a new profundity to the word humourless. Jesus. Totally impervious to that jokey tone we use to show we want to have fun together. I tried repeatedly, he responded “yes” usually, and sometimes “no”, in a descending cadence that sounded like disapproval. I think he took my feeble witticisms as serious commentaries from what was clearly an extremely shallow individual. I gave up eventually, and directed him to a table of Harley riding Vietnam vets with a new phrase of English to practice “please fondle my bottom”. That was the last I saw of my new friend Michael.