Postscript . .
By CYRIL RAY
AT half-past ten that morning I was inoculated against small- pox, typhoid, paratyphoid, cholera and. yellow fever, and at half-past twelve I was on the Torbay Express. Let me own up to it: the inoculations were not, in fact, necessary for Torquay—I was committed to set off for a brief jaunt to Karachi a week later, the day that these words appear, but there was a moment last week- end when it really seemed that 1 had already gone foreign, for we sat en plein air, in the lee of the Imperial Hotel, wearing dark glasses against the hot, hard sunshine and its glittering reflection from the waters of Torbay that lay, framed between umbrella pines, before us, and cooled our gullets with iced lager beer.
Torquay isn't always like this (there had even been a faint flurry of snow the day before), but often enough in fact, and constantly enough in popular imagination, to keep itself busy with Londoners, Lancastrians and the sun-starved like, pretty well all through the winter, and especially at each end of it. That the Imperial is a notably well-run hotel certainly has a good deal to do with its being hardly ever anything but full, and at high prices, but I heard of no hardships, whether among the dearest hotels or the cheapest boarding-houses, and that's a rare thing in Britain's holiday resorts, as I have learned in recent years in Blackpool, Brighton and even in Bournemouth. Bookings for the spring and summer in Torquay are already about 25 per cent. up on last year, and figures had already gone up steadily every year since the war, with the exception of a rather stagnant patch in 1959 and 1960. The town built itself not only a new promenade last year, but a new theatre, its second (on which Bernard Delfont has taken a five-year lease), and is proposing to spend another million pounds or so on more promenades, car parks and a sort of seaside spa : I haven't for years come across such municipal confidence in a holiday resort's future.
Partly, they told me, it's because the middle- aged and elderly well-to-do who have always been the mainstay of the nobbier Torquay hotels, and who have been flirting of recent years with foreign parts, which means, for most of them, the South of France and no farther, have taken against the risks and ructions of that riven coun- try: they would rather play safe than be plastiqud. Partly, they say, it's because many of the more prosperous proles, a bunch that Tor- quay once turned up its snobbish nose at, have had— in more senses than one—their once-in-a- lifetime trip abroad, found too many extras tacked on to the cost of their packaged tour, the language too difficult and the food too rich, and settled for the nearest English thing there is in the way of climate, and the next best thing to show off about to the next-door neighbours in Bolton. Whatever the reasons, Torquay enjoys, and looks like continuing to enjoy, what a know- ledgeable local journalist referred to as, 'if not a boom, at any rate a sort of muffled roar.'
It isn't only holiday-makers, either. From the heights above the town tall blocks of newly built flats look out over Torbay, the first sight of which caused outbreaks of fury from newly found defenders of Torquay's architectural heri- tage—which is largely, in fact, grey and grace- less: a Regency terrace of half a dozen houses just above the harbour is pretty well all that's worth looking at seriously, and nobody seems to have done that for some time, judging by its shabbiness.
Now that the town knows the sort of people moving into the new flats, though, and the sort of money they're bringing with them, the tune may change, and is perhaps already changing. In a block that will be ready to move into within the next few weeks virtually all the three-bed- room flats at £11,000 apiece have been snapped up, and only a few of the £8,650 ones are hanging fire. The Birmingham firm that is putting them up has learned its lesson : the next block to be put up will be of flats at £16,000 and £22,000. They tell the story in these parts of the man who put into Torquay one afternoon in his sizeable sea-going boat, saw one of the blocks from the harbour, got into a taxi, found the agent's name and was back again on board within the hour, having spent £11,000, and made up his mind to weekend in future in Torquay from his business in Birmingham. An Exeter- London air service starts this summer, which some people take to mean that many a City gent will do the same: there are even those who look cockily forward to a Torquay-London motor- way and a frequency of well-heeled daily- breaders.
Meanwhile, you can hear, as I did the other day, two beautifully turned-out old buffers dis- cussing, as they strolled past the tittle Regency houses, the relative merits of Aertex and Jaeger underclothes for old gentlemen in the winter, and opine that in Torquay, as in precious few other English places, the future is to them rather than to those for whom the nearby notice announces, 'Teen Beat Nite Every Tuesday: Rock, Jive 'n' Twist Spectaculars.' Or those to whom a pleasing contiguity of sunblind slogans on the main shopping street offers 'Durex Family Planning Souvenirs.' Emblazoned, no doubt, with the municipality's coat-of-arms, to say nothing of its mono: SALUS ET ITLICITAS.
Jura wines, of course, accompanied most of the dishes cooked by the visiting chef of the Grand Hotel Ripotot, at Champagnole, in the Jura, for the last of the winter season's 'gastronomic week- ends' at the Imperial Hotel, Torquay. But the one that most took my fancy wasn't from the Jura at all, but from the valley of the Drome, which runs into the Rhone—a sparkling white wine called Clairette de Die, after the town it comes from and one of the types of grape that go jointly to make it, the other being muscat. It is made by the champagne method, and 'liqueured' to about 5 per cent., compared with the 2 per cent, or rather less of most cham- pagnes, and sweet enough, therefore (as well as having the muscat flavour), to go with pud- dings, which I think most champagnes aren't, but not so sickly sweet as some 'rich' cham- pagnes. We drank it with a very rich bisquit au chocolat, which would have made the usual sort of brut champagne taste very acid—though they, I think, are better than the Clairette as aperitifs. The shippers, Asher Storey, tell me that Kettner's, in Soho, and the Lovibond shops, stock Clairette de Die, or can get it, at about 18s. 6d.
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