DAYTONA BEACH

We hurried from the car, bending against the spitting August rain, on slabs shiny from the wet, through a throng of dampened spirits on miscellaneous errands, and gaining the department store, we waited for the lift.
"Doors closing" said the mellifluous automated female voice when we'd pressed the button, and "Doors opening" when we had arrived.
Sunlight flooded in, and the third floor, where we'd expected Household Goods and sundry items, had turned into Daytona Beach, Fla.
Well yes, we were surprised, though the Boy, two and a half who we'd brought into town while his mother, our daughter, was having a snooze at home, took it as part of every day when every day brings sights and sounds never before encountered.
The heat was astonishing, and as we stared we wondered how we'd managed to enter the US without passing Home Land security and having our photos and finger prints taken and been asked ferociously why we'd the cheek to come and commit indescribable crimes against the people and institutions of the greatest freedom-loving country on the planet, and been made to feel in imminent danger of having all our
bodily orifices minutely examined by a very large and unfriendly individual. Then we took off our coats, and walked back along the pier, which we'd found ourselves standing on, to the shore and then the beach, the Boy holding our hands in both of his and insisting on being swung as though on a fairground ride. Despite the unforgiving sun and metal-melting temperature, the sand was speckled with here and there semi-naked bodies. Most looked as though they lived on the Mark Phelps diet of 300,000 calories every 60 minutes, though some had made it into muscle and others into fat.
We gaped in wonderment, then made our way back up the pier to where we had arrived, and stepping into the elevator, heard the mellifluous automated female voice say that the doors were closing.
When they opened on the ground floor, we were in the department store once more, but now the clouds had blown away, and in the sky the sun shone down, and it was laughing - but not as loudly here in Leeds as on Daytona Beach.