A Spectator's Notebook

The BNTB has just opened for the season, and those who have had occasion to use it are agreed that of its class it is unique. The BNTB, es you need scarcely be reminded, stands for the Beverley Nichols Travel Bureau, and it is unique because it offers services which no Other bureau has ever even thought of.

It tells you where not to go, and how not to get there. And when you have not got there, it tells you what not to do and how not to do it.

Let us begin with the first requirement of all tvellers at this time of the year — sunshine. Hot, golden sunshine that can be turned on like a tap. If this is what you require, BNTB is Obliged to inform you that you can rule out, at a stroke, the entire continent of Europe. It will also suggest that you rule out the entire north Coast of Africa, together with such treacherous outposts as Malta, Cyprus, and the Canary Islands. Surprisingly enough, it will also require you to rule out Torquay, in spite of those six stunted and wind-swept old palm trees on the Rock Walk, which for so many years have been starred in the advertisements for 'the English Riviera.' True, in all these pleasaunces, if you are lucky, you may have momentary gleams of sunshine and even the odd warm day. Only a few years ago there was a woman from Norv.vich who paddled at Hammamet on Christ

0S Eve (since then, one gathers, she has

Written her memoirs and come to a bad end). But these freakish smiles of nature are not What the traveller is seeking. He wants a broad, warming, golden grin, and BNTB is the Only organisation that has the honesty to Inform him that he is by no means sure of getting it. This information is based on the personal experience of its managing director who, during the months of January and February, has caught bronchitis in Biarritz, shivered almost to death on the Costa Brava, been drenched to the skin in Tangier, suffered near frost-bite in Monte Carlo and only just been rescued from blowing over the cliffs by the hurricane winds of Malta.

Righ price in Jamaica

rliaving eliminated Europe, let us widen our norizons and scan the West Indies. Here, we can be sure of sunshine. But before making 411Y travel arrangements, the Bureau requires applicants to answer a brief questionnaire, of Which the first three questions are the most Urgent. They are:

I. Are you a millionaire? Alternatively ?. Are you proposing to stay with a Question 3 follows automatically: 3. Have you any objection to sharing one attall room with two large hippies?

Money, you will observe, is rearing its ugly head. Some years have passed since I visited 4harnaica where — (in the interests of the 15(Yeall) ••••• I took the precaution of staying With a millionaire at Montego Bay. On waking IIP in the morning and drawing the curtains I %Iced over the gardens and saw the roof of a Pretty building covered in bougainvillea. I asked the servant if it was part of the estate.

sah. Hotel."

„"It looks charming." Smile, "I might stay 'ne, re when you chuck me out of here." 'Very expensive, sah. Bed and breakfast £30 a night."

Since' then, the £30 a night has swollen to £60 a night, and the breakfast has shrunk proportionately.

And yet, the travel people are still advertising all-in two-week holidays "from" £198! Complete with pictures of palm trees, much larger than the Torquay veterans, and dusky maidens in flimsy bras, larger still.

The catch, of course, is in the word "from." A very tricky word, which takes up a whole column in the Oxford Dictionary. Here the definition begins . . . "A preposition of which the primary sense is 'forward.' "And certainly, in the economic sense, the Dictionary is right. It is forward, forward all the time.

Which brings us to the hippies. If you fall for that fatal word "from," you must be prepared to stay in very dubious caravanserais, and to share your bedroom with very dubious companions. A single room in a first-class hotel will cost you double, if not treble.

Native discontent

But there is one last question which only the BNTB asks, maybe because it is too controversial. All the same it should be asked, and answered. It is ... "Are you prepared to spend your holiday against a background of sullen native discontent, which in some places is so near boiling point -7 Kingston, Jamaica is one of them — that you will be ill advised to venture out into the street at night?"

Let me tell you a story. On the aforesaid visit to the millionaire at Montego Bay I received an urgent request from a London newspaper to interview Mr Norman Manley on the occasion of his accession to the premiership of the first Jamaican Parliament. I took the train which leaves the Bay at dawn and runs across the island through some of the most romantic scenery in the world. At every station the train was boarded by newly elected delegates who, without exception, gave the sign of the clenched fist. Very impressive, they looked — the black figures silhouetted against the blood-red morning sky —but hardly reassuring, particularly when one listened to their conversation; which was not flattering, if one's skin happened to be white. And since then, the fists have been more tightly clenched and there is more blood in the sky, and on the streets.

When I got home I mentioned this incident to the millionaire, who was highly indignant. "You are being ridiculously alarmist," he protested. "You know nothing about the island. They love us. They adore us. Relations could not be better —" etc etc. And this was the invariable reaction of all his friends.

And no doubt there are still many areas where things are happier, and many readers who will write to rebuke me, narrating the charming relations they have had with the amiable inhabitants of this tropical paradise. So be it, and long may it last. But BNTB, unlike other travel bureaux, informs its clients of all the facts, not only the pleasant ones. And its managing director has seen the blood in the morning skies.

Just like home

If it were not for a natural reluctance to come into headlong collision with the Race Rela tions Board, I might suggest that we should go to Rhodesia. I have just received a letter from an old friend who has established herself there in a state of considerable magnificence.

"You really should come out," she writes. "The flowers areincredible; the air is like

champagne, and everybody is so happy. We

still manage to cling to six servants, who could not be sweeter. In fact, life is exactly

like what it used to be in England before the war!" (The reader will no doubt recognise the similarity.) But BNTB, with its tiresome habit of sticking to the facts, is obliged to record that even in Rhodesia tinges of red have been recently observed in the African skies. Particularly by the servants, whose sweetness I should be the last to call in question.

Then what, and where? Should we throw all caution to the winds, and fly away as far as possible — say to Singapore — and there find a little boat, and sail to some little island, and hope for the best? What has BNTB to say about that? A great deal. So much, indeed, that the managing director, tireless in the interests of his clients, recently wrote a book warning them against such a lunatic endeavour.

You see, the Somerset Maugham era no longer exists. The little boats are no longer there; the seas are almost empty of them. Most of the little islands are either in the sphere of Communist influence or about to fall under it. Those few that have so far escaped have been annexed by the Hilton Group or some such imperial enterprise, and have come out in a rash of ,skyscraper hotels, looking out on to beaches littered with dis• carded tins of Coca-Cola. So perhaps we had better stick to Torquay after all. In the present distressing times we :shall probably only be able to get there by bicycle, but it will be worth it. For when we arrive we shall be able to go out to the Rock Walk, and pay tribute to those six veteran palm trees, braving the winter gales, symbols of the indomitable spirit of our island race, and personally guaranteed by the managing director.

Beverley Nichols