If the weather report for Los Angeles says 60% chance of rain, you’re more likely to see an albino chimpanzee waltz by wearing the Crown Jewels. If, however, in England, there’s a 15% chance, take your damn raincoat, it’s gonna pour.
We’re spending the week in Torquay (Tor-KEY, but please, not turkey…) at the Agatha Christie festival. Our living room bookcase at home sports a full leather bound set of her novels, so of course we’re here. Beloved’s always been a fan.
We’re staying at the Imperial Hotel, where the writer got her inspiration for a number of her novels, and Torquay is the thinly-disguised town used as well.
Oddly, Torquay is also where my dad was shipped as a little boy when he was evacuated from London during the Blitz. I’d love to know where he stayed, but unfortunately I never bothered to ask – or the name of the woman who took him in (and made him visit her husband in the churchyard every Sunday).
Dammit, the things we think of long after they’re gone. It’s been ten years this past April. The ladies at the Torquay library said they could do some digging for me at the modest rate of 36/hour.
I think I’ll try Ancestry.com first. If you go to the library (in the US at least), you can use it for free rather than paying the exorbitant rates. However, it’s on-site only so you have to actually BE in the library.
Driving here is next level. They’re not kidding here when they call it a tor. (A tor is a rocky peak, and a quay is a dock onto which you unload goods.) It’s like playing 3 dimensional chess when you’re still a rudimentary player at the original game.
The streets wind back and forth – there’s no logic or intuitiveness about it at all – and due to the fact it’s a freaking hilly place, roads splinter into multiple directions, each with their own elevation. The GPS says “turn left” and you’re like, which left? The upper one or the lower one??
Add a random one-way system for only some of the roads (who can tell which ones?), streets that are too narrow to have cars in opposite directions pass (but are not part of the one-way system), people parking where ever they feel like it (double yellow lines? Who cares?)… holy cow.
Then there’s the bicyclists. Helmet-less young kids flying everywhere courtesy of gravity and (even more terrifying) elderly people wobbling along adds to the excitement.
Beloved and I sing “To the Left” every time we start off in the car (that’s the sum total of the lyrics, sung to the William Tell Overture).
One blessing, however… we’re now renting all-electric vehicles so I no longer have to remember to shift gears with the other hand. It does, however, mean that with the 3.5 hour trip predicted by Google down to the West Country it was more like five and we coasted in with a fair amount of range anxiety.
Oooo… and while I’m at it, I will never, ever again rent a Peugeot. Good shocks, but WTF?
It’s 2025. Who the hell convinced them that a backup camera should be an aftermarket installation? Seriously. It’s got the iPad-like screen on the dash, it runs CarPlay, whatever, but when you back up, the screen goes grey and the motion sensor cameras start screaming bloody murder when you get within 100 feet of an object.
It sounded like an air-raid siren when I parallel parked it.
Sure, I learned to drive on a 1972 GM Matador wagon, burnt orange, approximately the size of Rhode Island, so yes, I can back up a car without a camera. However, there’s a reason we embrace technological advancements. Especially when the parking spaces are barely larger than the cars themselves.
So Torquay is known as the “English Riviera”. It’s certainly beautiful, although a bit rainy.
The garden party got cancelled due to driving rain, but they knew it was coming so they rescheduled to the Imperial Hotel (great luck – we got to just waddle downstairs to get to the party… unlike the gay couple we’ve been kind of hanging out with, who are staying at another hotel).
We sat at a table with Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat MP (Member of Parliament… roughly think of a senator) for Torbay (which includes Torquay), and his wife. They’re both blind and both had their guide dogs with them… Jennie the 3/4 golden sat next to me and insisted on pets. Then she passed out.
Mr. Darling proudly informed us Jennie just won the Westminster Guide Dog of the Year competition.
I love Jennie’s leash. He’s got a sense of humor.
Examining Misadventures 
Loved it! XXSent from my iPad
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