Recently I fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting Nashville, Tennessee, or Music City as the locals like to call it.

I did all the things you’d expect: I bought cowboy boots from Broadway’s Boot Barn. I stood on "the magic spot’" the cross of black electrical tape in the legendary RCA Studio B on which Elvis recorded Are You Lonesome Tonight. I cried tears of laughter (and, frankly, tequila) at a Predators’ ice hockey game as the whole crowd chanted that the referee was a "Zebra".

Of course I ate. Huge cartoon-like T bone steaks and biscuits with red eye gravy – a holy combination of pork fat and coffee. I danced in honky tonks, drank whiskey and admired cowboys and cowgirls alike. It was all good, neon-lit, sugar and alcohol fuelled fun. Except… except it was also impossible to ignore the fact that we were in the American South and the historical legacy that comes with that so soon after Trump’s inauguration.

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In fact, Trump had been inaugurated as President only two weeks earlier and when I searched online for a vintage shop, fretful local forum posts popped up asking if the rumours were true that ICE, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were sweeping hotels and bars in the downtown area. Eleven days before I arrived there was a Nashville school shooting at Antioch High School by a 17-year-old student. As I walked past bars named Redneck Rivera and Kid Rock's Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N' Roll Steakhouse – for those of you having been keeping up with his career, he performed at Trump's victory rally........

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