It seemed like a good idea at the time. We'd fly to Orlando and, instead of doing the Disney thing, we'd try to find an alternative to the theme parks. We were naive. Very naive. There is no alternative to the theme parks. That's why Uncle Walt built his wonderful world in the middle of an alligator-infested swamp. Orlando is a tourist Alcatraz. And, as we were later to discover, a place called Kissimmee is the punishment block.
I knew I had messed up big time as soon as I stepped off the plane. Florida was melting. This was July, after all, when as far as I could tell, only mad people and mosquitoes go there.
We got our car, a great big green Dodge, and after finding a guy to tell us where the ignition was, we were off, roaring out of the parking lot in the wrong gear, arguing about which side of the road we should be on and wondering what all those buttons on the dashboard were for. An hour and a half of white-knuckle driving later we did a U-turn across Highway 192, the most frightening six lanes of tarmac in America, to pick up the keys to our villa.
A few more near-disasters later, we were there, and my guilt about not being able to drive was compounded. The Rough Guide describes Kissimmee as a horror of strip development; a soul-depressing, sprawling ribbon of endless concrete, motels, shopping malls, fast-food joints, theme restaurants, murderous traffic, blazing neon and tourist traps. Well, I've been there, and I can tell you it's not that good.
After an hour of pointless driving up and down the main drags looking for a supermarket, we pulled into the Florida Mall, a complex so big it has its own ring road. We found a space in the car park, checked that that speck in the distance was indeed the mall, and started walking. On cue, the heavens opened. This wasn't just thunder, it was the opening sequence of Cape Fear. It can't get any worse, I thought. Okay, so we were exhausted, disorientated and now soaking wet, but hey, this was America, where you can buy anything you want - so at least we'd get our tea.
The mall was awesome. It sold everything - except tea. If we wanted food we'd have to drive to another hangar. We grabbed a burger.
At least we had the villa.
It was big, well equipped and pink, at the edge of a treeless, eerily quiet suburb. Ranks of identical, pastel dream homes stretched to the horizon like something out of Edward Scissorhands. Water sprinklers hissed over the weird, alien blue-green grass. It even had a pool surrounded by a cage to keep out insects and whatever other creatures might crawl out of the swamp in the night. I loved it.
For a moment, I thought of forgetting alternative Florida altogether and holing up there for the week. It was the little boy leaping over the Great Wall of China for a pee that changed my mind. We had come across a deserted theme park called Splendid China - the wonders of the Orient in miniature, a sort of Maoist Legoland. The Chinese family ahead of us in the queue was having an animated argument with the lady in the ticket booth. Despite the row, they seemed to be having a whale of a time. The grandfather kept nodding and smiling at me as if to say, "Isn't this great? They've even got rude officials, just like home." Groups of extended Chinese families wandered among groves as butterflies fluttered around the pagodas. And if you'd paused, as I did, for a moment of silent contemplation in the little glade by the Temple of Confucius, you would have heard the Song Of One Hundred Wheezing Ancients Coughing Up Their Phlegm echo across the park.
Things got really surreal after we came out of the Tomb of the Terracotta Warriors. To the delight of his family, a little boy bounded up on to the Great Wall like King Kong, and piddled down on to the miniature soldiers below.
Meanwhile, the weather was getting worse. Even the locals, who seemed to retreat to their freezer units during the day, were dropping like flies. The main item on the evening news was the crazy Britons who had spent the day in the sun. Two lads in singlets were spotted playing soccer after a beery lunch.
The forecast said it was two degrees cooler on the coast and there was a breeze! Go west old man, I said, and my father said he would, as soon as he'd finished his tea. We headed for Tampa because of some vague, half-remembered association with footballer George Best. There were obviously bars there. And bars contained ice-cold beer. We had breakfast the next morning on Clearwater Beach, looking out over the Gulf of Mexico.
The next two days were a blur. This may be because, after Orlando, Clearwater felt like heaven. Then again, it may have been the shock of seeing Daddy in shorts for the first time.
We found a wonderful little 1950s motel backing on to the beach. It had plastic flamingos out front, "Love Is. . ." posters on the walls, and the owners had stuck cuddly toys to the grille of their camper van. At last, we had found real Floridians. Well, real Swiss Floridians anyway.
But I was happy to stay in Clearwater. We got up early each morning and I'd go for a run along the blindingly white beach while Daddy soaked his corns in the shallows and fended off the attentions of geriatric Scientologists. (I later discovered that Clearwater is "the town Scientology took over", and that Tom Cruise and Lisa Marie Presley have homes there).
Every idyll must come to an end, and ours did when I got wind of a place that sounded even more "bee-zare", as the locals say. Its very name, Weeki Wachee, was pregnant with the promise of the truly naff. To cap it all, it was Elvis's favourite theme park. I could feel destiny drawing us there. But not before we saw the Salvador Dali museum in nearby St Petersburg.
Dali would have made a good swamp salesman. He persuaded a couple of very wealthy Americans, the Reynolds, to spend their entire fortune on his daubings. Their collection is the largest of his work in the world. Dali, I think you'll find, got closest to the truth when he described himself as the Great Masturbator.
Not even such a talent, however, could keep us from Weeki Wachee. For the mermaids were calling us. Yes mermaids! And no mortal man can resist their cry. According to a plaque outside the springs, a wise flamingo told Jack Clem about this miraculous spot 50 years ago. Instead of harpooning the mermaids and selling them to the Japanese for sushi, Jack taught them how to dance so they could put on underwater shows for the folks hereabouts. Jack's theme park is a perfect 1950s timewarp, a relic of an era when people were more easily impressed.
Daddy was keen to see St Augustine. It is indeed a special place. There's the beautiful Spanish colonial architecture, the fort built from sea shells and the little red choo-choo trains driven by fat guys who tell corny jokes for the tourists. But St Augustine has also some of the cheesiest attractions in Florida. And that's why we were there.
This is the town that gave the world Ripley's Believe It Or Not shrunken heads, two-headed cows, three-eyed men and, scariest of all, Jack Palance. Ripley docked his Chinese junk in the harbour one day and liked the place so much he decided to set up his first freak show there.
Just around the corner, not far from the Fountain Of Eternal Youth (yes, the actual fountain, I was assured), there's something that leaves even Ripley standing in the bad-taste stakes. The Museum Of American Tragedy is in Buddy Hough's backyard. But what a backyard! Bonnie and Clyde's bullet-riddled getaway vehicle, the ambulance Lee Harvey Oswald was rushed to hospital in after he was shot by Jack Ruby, and - wait for it - the wreck of the convertible in which Jayne Mansfield was decapitated.
The blood stain on the seat was a nice touch. The local council has been trying to close the museum down for years. It would be a great pity if it were to succeed. For $3.50, you get never-to-be-forgotten insight into the authentic Southern redneck, conspiracy theory mindset, with a few mosquito bites thrown in.
And if that doesn't sate your thirst for gore, you could always visit the gallows at the Old Jail across the street, where the guide will gladly share his own hair-raising views on the death penalty. Unfortunately, we couldn't dally all day discussing the relative merits of garrotting or electrocution. We had a flight to catch.