While this week was laborious for New Labour in the UK, it was Labor Day in the US, a three-day weekend of shopping deals, sunshine and the last-chance for those Americans dictated-to by fashionistas to wear white. The whole ‘don’t wear white after Labor Day’ rule is a mystery to me; what do Ku Klux Klan members do, for example? Asa we enter the autumnal months, as the nights get longer and the heat starts to migrate further and further south, surely it woule make sense to wear more white, as firstly you’d be easier to see by motorists after dark, and secondly when it snows you would be perfectly disguised from the threat of polar bears (not that you get many of them in California).

Having gone across the Yolo Causeway bought my new guitar amplifier, I decided to spend Labor Day in Old Sacramento, where they were having some sort of event celebrating the Gold Rush days, the historic period that pretty much created the State of California as we know it. The old riverside downtown in California’s capital is pretty much the city’s main tourist pull, a collection of old cowboy-era buildings preserved in time, with dusty boulevards and wooden sidewalks. It grew up near the old Sutter’s fort, and these days is officially preserved as a state park. The builidngs mostly house souvenir shops and candy stores, as well as a few decent eateries. The bars are full of paraphernalia – Fanny Ann’s for example is dressed head to toe in old americana such as license plates and old carts hanging from the rafters, as well as a surprising collection of antique British Rail station signs. From the outside they look like old saloons; you half expect some unshaven whiskey-soaked wreck to come flying through the doors and into the horse-trough, followed by raucous jeering and a visit from the sheriff.

For the Gold Rush celebrations, the cobbled roads were covered in dirt, hay and horse-muck and lined with people in Wild-West costume. I felt almost naked not wearing a Cowboy Hat. There were horses and stagecoaches parading all over, mostly carrying packs of young serious-faced children. Tourists crowded outside the saltwater taffy stores to watch wrinkly old gunslingers with names like ‘Doc’ and ‘Earl’ shoot slugs of imaginary justice into weasly villains, much to their whooping delight. I suppose it makes a change from the real-life gun-fights on the streets of parts of south Sacramento. The Wild West never went away down there.

There was definitely a bit of Back to the Future III in the air. The sun was beating down hard, but there was a nice breeze down by the Sacramento river. There’s an old steam-engine that chugs down the waterfront to its terminal in Old Sacramento, a relic of the days when the great iron railroads first united the States of America to its mythical, golden West. On the river itself there is an old sternwheel riverboat, the Delta King, which makes you think more of the slow broad waters of the Mississippi than the rattlesnake west, but then Sacramento is known as the River City. Nearby stood old-time stalls and tents treated tourists to ‘authentic’ blacksmiths, gun-makers and an old Injun practising the ancient native art of making balloon-dogs. I’m glad I wasn’t around in the Old West. Sure there was money to be made panning for gold in tham thar hills, but I just couldn’t live in a historic period where everybody made me think of George W Bush. Hang on a minute, no, I’m confusing the Westworld of the past with the Planet of the Apes of the future.