Same Place - Different Vibe

Have you ever returned to a place you loved to find that the magic has packed its suitcase and gone without you?

In 1990, we went back to Torquay. It was the same place, same people and it was supposed to be the same family holiday. But it was a completely different trip. The year before, in 1989, Torquay had felt magical. Everything was sunshine and novelty. There were golden sandy beaches, palm tree, coloured lights along the sea front and frozen yogurt in cute little tubs. I loved everything about Torquay. And I especially loved how it made me feel refreshed after a school year of being excluded every day.

So, when we went back to Torquay in 1990, we were all hoping to recreate that magic. Same place, same people, same brilliant holiday? Well, it was great for what it was. But it wasn't 1989. It was a completely different trip.

I had complained that I was tired of being on holiday for my birthday, so we went earlier, at the end of June, which turned out to be a bad idea.

It rained. It wasn't even polite drizzle. It was biblical style rain. I remember sitting in the car on the seafront, watching the illuminations reflecting in the wet pavement, looking blurry and wrong through the rain-streaked windows. I remember thinking "this is not what we ordered."

I could see it on my parents’ faces too. They knew it. We might have made a mistake in trying to recreate the previous year.

The first thing we noticed was the colour. In 1989, after the glorious summer, everything had been dry and sunburnt and brown. It made the whole of southern England feel exotic and foreign. But in 1990, everything was green, lush, wet, and much the same as Scotland to be honest. It sounds silly, but it felt like the landscape had betrayed us.

The whole week had that feeling. Everything was a bit less exciting and a bit less magical. It was less like discovery, and more like trying to recreate something that didn’t want to be recreated. That was the real lesson of Torquay in 1990. You can go back to the same place, but you can never go back to the same holiday.

Paignton Zoo and the Great Lion Disappointment

One of our big day trips that year was Paignton Zoo. Founded in 1923 as Primley Zoological Gardens by Herbert Whitley, it began as one rich man’s private animal collection before becoming a commercial zoo that was open to the public. Today it covers around 80 acres and houses roughly 2,000 animals, but in 1990, to me, it felt like exactly what it had originally been - somebody’s very ambitious private obsession.

It was a lovely day out and as a 45 year old I would have a brilliant time but I was deeply disappointed because there were no lions. As a Leo, this felt like a personal attack. I had arrived fully expecting majestic lion energy and instead got botanical gardens and baboons.

The baboons, to be fair, were unforgettable. Baboon Rock is still one of my strongest memories. They sat there with their backsides fully on display, staring at visitors like small, hairy, furious judges. 

Apparently there were also two elephants there at the time, Duchess and Gay, but I have absolutely no memory of them whatsoever. None. My brain somehow decided the baboons were the headline act.

I also remember having a Feast ice cream. I don’t even know if Feasts still exist, but they were glorious. If you've never had a Feast, it was a chunk of chocolate, surrounded by chocolate ice-cream and coated in something that passed for chocolate that there had probably never been a cocoa bean close to it and nuts or some kind. There’s a bittersweet note there now because I can’t eat nuts anymore, so even if they still exist, that little piece of childhood never will again.

The Plymouth Expedition

Later that week, we drove to Plymouth. This day remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of my childhood. Torquay to Plymouth is only around 35 to 40 miles. It should take about an hour, maybe an hour and twenty minutes. We left at around ten in the morning and got there at about two.

To this day, I do not understand what happened. Did we get lost? Did my dad take the scenic route against his own will? Was there a road in 1990 that no longer exists, or a road now that didn’t exist then? Was traffic simply horrific?

I have no idea. It’s one of those Swiss cheese memory gaps from childhood where the facts have vanished. But the result was that by the time we got there, we were all absolutely fed up. 

Plymouth itself had loads to do. The Hoe, the Barbican, harbour walks, proper family holiday material. We did… apparently none of it. I don’t remember attractions. I remember walking around while everyone was slightly annoyed. Just cloudy skies, the threat of rain (again), collective disappointment and one photograph.

There’s a picture somewhere of me, my mum and my sister sitting on a wall. I was going through a chubby phase and I hated having my picture taken. I remember feeling extremely self-conscious.

So, those are my Plymouth memories. No landmarks or history or anything. Just confusion and annoyance. 

But chips fix everything. We eventually got back to Torquay at around seven that evening and did what all British holidays eventually require. We got a chippy. Torquay was full of them. My order at home was always the same - half roast chicken, fritters, and one giant pickled onion. But they don't seem to do fritters in English chippies, or roast chicken. They have chicken shops for that I suppose, which we don't have so many of in Scotland. So, it was fish and chips. Not even haddock. It was cod. I got so homesick. I couldn't even get haddock. That was enough for me to spiral.

People often tell me they’ve been somewhere and loved it, and I always take that with a pinch of salt because I went to Torquay two years in a row, in almost the same circumstances, with the same people, and had two completely different experiences. I'm still not entirely sure what changed. It might have been the weather or the novelty wearing off. Or maybe it was just about timing and who I was when I arrived. Life was ever so slightly better by the time I arrived in Torquay in 1990. I had stopped being excluded and made a few friends - or at least I was spending time with people who tolerated me. 

If you get the right combination of things, you can have the best holiday of your life, but even one ingredient changing can give you a completely different experience.

Maybe that’s why I keep wanting to go back to Paris. I’ve got a complicated relationship with Paris, and I’ll write about that another time, but part of it is probably the search for the right experience where everything lines up. 

Torquay in 1990 wasn’t that trip and maybe that’s why I remember it so clearly. But we went back every year until 2000, which tells me this: we spent the next ten years trying to recreate that 1989 magic.