The substantial woman in a T-shirt and shorts, blonded hair tied back in a pony tail, was greeting old friends at a vast flea market near Tampa and along with a few other expressions I had heard during a stay in Florida, it reminded me I was in the sunshiny state where friendliness, politeness and guns are the ingredients of every-day life. Oh yes – and cars.

For the first time in my life I have been called "Sir" by complete strangers, and my wife "Ma'am", taking us both by surprise.

I walked into a store and heard someone ask "How are you?"

Looking round, surprised that I had been recognised by someone in a place I had never been to before, I saw that the question had come from a member of the staff. If I had said "physically and mentally very ill, but thank you for asking," would he have smiled and said "Have a nice day?"

The previous day I had witnessed a bad-tempered exchange on a supermarket car park and was reminded that Florida State Governor Crist had just signed a Bill in the Legislature allowing people with the necessary permit to bring concealed guns to work, and on the freeway we had passed stores selling "guns and ammo".

So people are friendly and polite, yet quite a lot are ready to shoot each other, which is why the row on the car park saw me hurry away before I got caught in some crossfire.

They are friendly and polite, but a couple of days after the Supreme Court ruled that execution by lethal injection is not unlawful, nine members of a Florida jury voted that father-of-two Wilson Saintil should die – by lethal injection – for the first-degree murder of Stephen Holmes.

Yes, the death penalty has its supporters in the UK, but how big that support would be following the possibly botched execution of a low-IQ killer is very debatable.

We might also expect relentless media focus on the "collateral" punishment inflicted on a condemned man's innocent family – doubling or perhaps tripling the number of ruined lives resulting from the original crime – and be reminded of the less savoury governments of this world which go in for judicial slayings.

Life imprisonment without parole, on the other hand, would be welcomed by a great many people – possibly a majority if applied in exceptional cases.

The freeing of killers after serving meagre sentences causes outrage, and seems to confirm that our criminal justice system is far too lenient. Even so, I do wonder what the reaction would be to a report that a woman charged with fighting on a theme park tea cup ride could face a 15-year sentence if convicted.

Just after the start of my holiday, an incident at Disney World was being reported for which such a sentence was mentioned quite casually, and I sat there dumbfounded.

Such is the innocence of an Englishman abroad.

And such my innocence, I thought it would be possible to walk to the shops.

Where we were staying in a town near Tampa, we walked and walked and walked, the four-lane boulevard stretching away to the horizon before us and behind us, and strung out along it businesses of every description, including a psychic reader, offering tarot readings, crystals and other arcane arts. We were looking for a hardware store, but gave up before reaching the one we'd identified on the internet, and returned hot, thirsty and tired.

No wonder the American love affair with cars.

We saw that in Old Town Orlando on a Friday and Saturday when hundreds of beautifully manicured autos with shiny wheels growled as they trailed slowly between banks of spectators, each cavalcade lasting a couple of hours, and each vehicle admiringly scrutinised as its gleaming engine turned dollars galore into eye-watering exhaust fumes.

The ones I most wanted to see were the wildly extravagant fantasies in chrome and tail fins which distinguished American cars when the dollar was king and in the American Dream anything – absolutely anything – was possible. That was before Vietnam, before Watergate, before Carter, before 9/11 and before Iraq.

These days, many American cars look European; in those days, many European cars wanted to look American, if in a toned-down way.

Apart from the familiar appearance of so many cars, so much is so different.

However, on a railway track which has been converted into a superb walking and cycling trail, a bunch of teenagers left a trail of empty soda bottles, discarded cardboard cups, and a half-eaten packet of chips.

Well – not so different. Suddenly I felt at home.