Dan Morris: Bourbon with ice was my Miami vice

When I was young, I was there for a while, living the dream as a Central Park busker by day and a coffee addict writing comics by night.

Aside from a good stint in New York, my travels with my battle ax guitar have taken me to Miami, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles (I’ve always enjoyed the quiet life), where sunshine and sin abound.

I made a little schoolboy mistake on my first day in Florida, jumping at the exciting opportunity to black out the door of a certain world-famous tattoo parlor.

Having appeared for a couple of years at this time on her own Discovery Channel TV show, said studio sported a tail that was at least half a mile long. Wanting to bite the bullet there and then I joined said line, and five hours later my left forearm had been marked as a treat.

The problem was that, now, for several days I couldn’t swim or risk saturating my new ink in any way. Back home in not-so-sunny Staffordshire, being told to avoid the pleasures of the pool isn’t a nightmare. Being told that when you stay in Miami Beach is a bit of a kicker in the unmentionables.

‘Still, it won’t be so bad,’ I told myself. “I’ll do like the locals: put on my inline skates, roll a cigar, work out in front of the bars, and let the ladies show up properly.” The American Dream: It was mine for the taking.

Naturally, my optimistic vision quickly crumbled against Earth, but despite this, and my inability to enjoy the sea or…