Brixham

Just to round off the posts about our weekend in Torquay (before the next weekend actually hits!) here are a few of views of Brixham.

We had been before and the roads are somewhat exciting around the harbour - very narrow streets with at least one hairpin bend that requires you to try your best, then reverse and try again! Single-track streets that are two-way etc. etc. Anyway we chickened out and went on the bus. This made it more relaxing and used less fuel which was a bit hard to come by that weekend anyway!

The harbour is lovely. A typical fishing harbour, with pastel painted cottages lining the hills behind and to the sides of the cove.

This is the unlikely landing point for William, Prince of Orange who led The Glorious Revolution to become King William III and deposed King James II who it was feared would lead Great Britain back to Catholicism. It is called the Glorious Revolution because it was mainly bloodless (though I'd be willing to bet someone got a bloody nose over it somewhere...) However the fact that he turned up from foreign parts with a dirty great army and was suddenly given the crown of England could justify the thought that there had been an invasion. It may have happened to have been a convenient time to be invaded but when he jumped onto the quay at Brixham and gave his speech the locals were probably a bit bemused. He couldn't speak a word of English...

"Woss he say?"
"Dunno - it's all in foreign innit? Oy! You! I'll buy your fish, how much a pound? Talk in English can't you? Ow! Me nose! I thought this was supposed to be a bloodless revolution?!?"

His imposing statue is either less than flattering...or the nose has fallen off at some point. William III of England was the son of Dutch ruler William II of Orange and Princess Mary of Orange, who was the daughter of King Charles I of England. In an effort to totally confuse readers William III (not William II) went on to marry Mary (not Mary his Mum) but Mary, his fifteen year old cousin, daughter of his Uncle James, the Duke of York. They ruled England jointly as King William III and Queen Mary II (the first Mary being Henry VIII's daughter, Bloody Mary).

Fran decided to go for a look around the shops whilst I walked around the harbour taking the odd (sometimes very odd) photo and reflecting a little on royal inbreeding which just a decade or so later would lead to the most severe case of Habsburg Chin in the person of King Charles II of Spain whose ancestors had spent eight generations in happy incestual relationships. Keep it in the family then... There was a notably unmodern ship in the harbour, so I went to have a nosy.

It was a replica of Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, in which he sailed around the world. (I mean in the first one...not the replica.) In fact there's another replica in London and they look nothing like each other. This is possibly because it's hard to build a replica when we haven't a clue what the boat looked like. What we do know are the measurements of it and the fact that it is highly likely that there was a pointy bit at the front, a window or two at the back and a deer's head stuck on it somewhere as otherwise it would have been called something else.

"'Ere - wossat on 'is boat?"
"Aw no... it's Bambi's mam, ain't it?"

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Devon Cream Tea

Saturday 14 June 2008. We are in Torquay, land of little petrol, due to a strike by tanker drivers, and today at least, land of precious little sunshine...

We sat for a while by the gardens, but the splendour was slightly spoiled by the parents who were proudly watching their two boys riding their bikes all over the grass and flower beds...

We moved before my annyance levels were raised far enough to snatch the kids off the bikes and wrap the frames round the parents' necks. Instead we wandered up the shopping streets and then returned to the seafront and sat looking out over the harbour.

Lunchtime arrived and I'm really, really sorry but it just had to be done... [scoff!] Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! I knew there was another reason for going to Devon! The rebellious streak in me came out and I spread the jam first making it a Cornish cream tea not a Devon one where they do it the opposite way round, little realising that jam is much more sturdy than clotted cream.

I should point out that these photos were posed and that we knew the foodstuffs were fattening and so merely posed for the camera and then disposed of the scones and clotted cream and jam tidily. Well... I did... Fran spilt a bit down her front...

The cream tea put us on very nicely and after another short walk along the harbour we walked back to the hotel and the car and headed for Babbacombe where we were going to a show at the theatre that night.

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Babbacombe

Saturday 1 June 2008. Today we are in Babbacombe, just a short distance along the Devon coast from Torquay. Tonight we are going to see a couple of mates who are part of a Sixties Reveal show at the local theatre.

Babbacombe lies just north of Torquay on the opposite side of a small peninsula and has sandstone cliffs overlooking a small beach that you can get to on a furnicular railway.

There's an excellent and large green. There was however the added enjoyment of the local ...er... character. In her sixties, she was dressed in a bikini top and long skirt and was carrying a deck chair all over the place, putting it down and then picking it up again talking angrily to herself all the while... She never actually sat on the deck chair, but then there was no need really because with her antics she had soon emptied all the nearby benches...

The theatre itself sits at one end of the green and there are several large hotels strung along the road between the theatre and the furnicular railway.

We had a walk along the cliff tops to the theatre and, having got our bearings and having noted that despite the lack of crowds along the seafront, there was also quite a lack of car parking spaces along the seafront road. We decided to go back to the hotel, get changed and ready for the evening then head back early to Babbacombe, to secure a parking spot and have a meal before the show.

Once we were back in Babbacombe, we had a meal in the Babbacombe Inn and the food was excellent. Halfway through our meal most of the cast of the show turned up and we were spotted and had a chat with Tony Harte, then the lead singer with The Honeycombes. In the next article we'll have a look at the show itself.

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Juke Box Heroes

Saturday 14 June 2008. This was the reason for our trip down to Torquay for the weekend. The sixties revival show Jukebox Heroes at the theatre in Babbacombe.

Tony Harte, then lead singer with the 1960s band The Honeycombs had brought this show to our attention and we had booked the show in Torquay after finding there were no dates (as yet) booked up in Lancashire. If we were going to travel it may as well be to somewhere nice we figured! Also on the bill were John Leyton (Johnny Remember Me, Wild Wind, and a few not inconsequential films such as The Great Escape and Von Ryan's Express) and Craig Douglas (Only Sixteen, Teenager In Love), both these singers being backed by a band called The Flames.

We went over to Babbacombe early and were nicely ensconced in a local inn, waiting for a meal to be placed in front of us when Tony and the rest of The Honeycombs members came in. We've swapped messages and emails via the excellent Billy Fury website, but this was our first meeting. It would be fun to suggest he lives up to the image of vodka-swilling reprobate that he likes to put about, but truth is he comes across as a great guy! And once the show started he and The Honeycombs work hard as they filled the entire first half of the show. Have I The Right is, of course, their biggest hit and it still sounds great today! Tony and the boys (yes a male drummer these days, though they joked that it was Honey Lantree after a sex change!) do some of the original Honeycombs songs and a running tribute to a number of late 50s and early 60s singers with Billy Fury's Halfway To Paradise getting the audience singing!

Singer Kelly brought a bit of feminine glamour to the proceedings and she sang a few excellent numbers including Connie Francis's Stupid Cupid and a brilliant duet with Tony providing the harmonies. I spoke to her afterwards and she said it was only her 5th outing with The Honeycombs. She's made an impressive start then! Aaaah - and those matching Burns guitars look and sound the biz! I play Fender Stratocasters and the only time I've played a Burns is for a brief try-out in a guitar shop. I like my Strats though!

Part Two and The Flames do a couple of Shadows numbers before introducing Craig Douglas, who delivered a good set with some gentle self-deprecating quips; "I've been singing these songs day in day out, decade in, decade out..."

Then on came John Leyton in leather jacket and trousers, looking and sounding the business and setting off to a good start with Shout Shout Knock Yourself Out. Wild Wind and my favourite JL song Son This Is She both got an airing before the finale of his great hit Johnny Remember Me.

He then did an encore of Sea Cruise which brought the show to a rousing finish. All in all a fabukous night for anyone who lived through the 1960s and was brought up listening to the best decade of music that ever was.

We met up with Tony and the rest of the Honeycombs afterwards and he lost no time in separating me from Fran for a photo! Smooth operator that he is! However he has to admit that he has too much hair and is too slim to be seriously sexy like me... I chatted for a while with Martin Murray, the last of the original Honeycombs and the one who actually formed the group in the first place.

John had a queue in front of him - mostly being held up by a determined lady who had brought 964 photographs to be signed... We've met a few times before - maybe just as well, seeing as Tony yelled, "John, have a word with my mate - he fancies you like mad...!" A great night! And if you bring the show up north Tony - we'll see you again!

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Torquay Weekend

Mmm! Just back from a long weekend down in Torquay.

We went down on Friday, which turned out to be the best day as far as the weather was concerned. It was after lunch by the time we got down there so we didn't have a lot of time to do very much.

We had a walk round the harbour and booked into our hotel (The Marstan Hotel, Meadfoot Sea Road, recommended). We had gone down specifically to visit the theatre at Babbacombe on Saturday night to meet up with and clap and stomp along to The Honeycombs and John Leyton in the "Juke Box Heroes" show.

More of that later! But seeing as that would be tomorrow, we went to the local theatre at Torquay to see if there was anything on that night that we could see. There wasn't...

It was now late afternoon and we went in search of some petrol to get us home. Shell tanker drivers were on strike and petrol down there was extremely scarce! There were more closed garages than open ones and in the end we had to go down as far as Paignton before we found enough fuel to get us home. We found somewhere for a meal and then headed back to the hotel for the evening.

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