I have been to the States many times over the past twenty years or so. I have a pretty fair idea how things work here. The people live in over-heated houses (air conditioned in summer to the point where you have to have a sweater handy); they go to the shops in a car; if they walk anywhere it’s round the block or round the neighbourhood park, and, much as the English used to dress for dinner, so they dress for their walks - in neat shorts, clean trainers, white socks, a sun visor, a walkman, as often as not clutching a thirty-two ounce insulated drinking vessel. They call it going for a walk, but it isn’t. It’s an event, part of an exercise programme, a kind of outdoor version of the gymnasium treadmill. They march to a pre-determined beat, ticking off the calories at every street corner.

Actually going for a walk, which is what I stubbornly insist on doing over here, just as I would at home, involves variety, uncertainty, an element of chance or discovery. In a new place such as Orlando I do what I would do if I were in some provincial French town, or staying with friends somewhere I didn’t know too well: go exploring. But because I have this huge street map of the greater Orlando area I am able to plot out a convenient route towards the downtown area, which I am keen to investigate. The course I’ve decided on is roughly parallel to the main road which leads directly downtown, but one block west of it. Should be easy enough to follow.

For several hundred yards it’s pleasant enough with trees, gardens and mature houses; birdsong; a squirrel tight-rope walking along a power cable above my head; lizards darting in and out of the shrubbery; sunlight filtering through the skeins of Spanish moss; the occasional couple out for an afternoon stroll, Round The Block. God damn it, they don’t even look as if they’re “taking the air”; you just know they’re bent on some health-restoring activity that their doctor’s told them to engage in. And in between glancing nervously at their wrists to check their m.p.h. - or cholesterol level - they glance nervously at someone such as me, in my jeans and sandals, sauntering by with no apparent urgency or destination and looking up at the trees and sky and roof-shingles. Nervously? I want to say suspiciously. But, hell, may as well say hi - and they say hi back, and we both force a grin.

Then I hit a main road. It’s not really a main road, not a divided highway, just a wide and rather busy road that clearly goes somewhere of note on its east-west axis. And the minute I’ve got the other side everything’s different. There’s a tension in the air. Gone are the florid shrubs, the dark mulch of shredded pine bark, the elegant lamps embellishing brick driveways, the sleek SUVs purring in readiness. Instead there are wire fences, swirls of trash, threadbare grass verges, cars that pop and bark as they rattle past, and rather more people on the streets. Poor people; well, certainly poorish; and every one of them black. Ahead of me are two young women on the sidewalk. They don’t seem to be very sure where they’re going. They’ve emerged from a side-street and are standing at the junction. They feint one way, check, and set off the other way, but hesitantly; then stand and watch me approach, before walking very slowly in the same direction as me so that I have to brush past them.

Mwah mwah mwah, they blow pussy-cat kisses at me, and laugh. They’re not bad looking, as it happens, which makes it kind of sexy and menacing at the same time. Then it’s little knots of kids, playing innocently, but pausing to look up as I approach, moving aside with very slightly exaggerated courtesy to let me pass and muttering I don’t know what. On a porch a young girl, maybe eighteen, is talking to an older woman, while a skinny old man dozes in a beat-up sofa in the sun. “Hi,” she says, and like a fool I reply, and she’s in. “How you doing today man?” and before I know it I’ve tossed off some kind of answer and she’s walking along beside me, breathing alcohol and telling me how the damned bitch took all of her seventy-nine dollars she’d been paid and what the hell’s she gonna do now; and you’re from England, right so what’s it like over there huh? Once more, I’ve said too much; now I keep to monosyllables and concentrate on walking south. Not half a mile away I can see the tall apartment blocks and offices of downtown. I try to lengthen my stride rather than quicken my pace; she keeps right on trotting along beside me and now there are a couple of youths up ahead, one leaning against a car, the other about to climb inside. They look up and gawp at this white man - extremely white, his legs not having been exposed to the sun since the summer before last - this old white guy walking down the street, their street, with this young woman at his side. What if these are her brothers, her boyfriends? “Listen,” I tell her, “I haven’t got any money to give away you know.” And she sort of melts away.

A couple of hundred yards more and it’s dusty lots where savage dogs charge into chain-link fences to protect whatever’s stashed in the warehouses and abandoned cafes, snapping and yowling until they’ve seen me on my way.

Of course, now that I’ve arrived at the great glassy eminence of the bank headquarters and heaved a sigh of relief it’s time to wonder how the hell I’m going to get back home again without a repeat performance. Even here, in the business district, I’m being stared at - this time by people in cars, the sidewalks being completely deserted. I find myself wondering how often, if ever, any of these smartly dressed young women or men, with their lips pursed around their straws, their shades pushed up onto their perfectly groomed heads, their manicured hands steering a gracious curve around me and onto the slip road to the freeway, how often they’ve felt the actual raw fabric - the shattered glass and splintered timber, the warped aluminum trim, the roadside grit of their own native land, have stood as I stand now, at a railroad crossing waiting for a green light, perched on buckled paving slabs, a sere weed chafing against my leg, a truck bulldozing a wall of heat past my face, and at my feet one of those dark drainage holes fat enough to swallow you down without a thought. It ain’t exactly fun. But if you really want to understand this damned country I’d say you need to do it from time to time.

I found a way home, eventually, one which took me along a beautiful lakeside fringed with some sort of tree that seemed to like growing in a foot of water; a cypress perhaps. Sunlight was sparkling off the waves, a father was taking his kids and their dog back across the grass to a shiny new car, and as I turned left up Shady Lane Drive and headed back towards my safe little historic house I passed another couple doing the outdoor treadmill routine, safe within their own neighbourhood, and this time I have to admit it made a little more sense to me.