Aqualand

Several weeks ago, Clive the Poodle Faker and I had spent over two hours on the phone. We’d been talking about the Marine Spa Ballroom, a magnificent Victorian building that included a swimming pool, spa treatments and restaurants, built when Torquay was the Queen of the English Riviera. Clive told me he could have been a real contender for hosting afternoon tea dances in the fabulous sprung-floor ballroom. He conjured up swooning clientele savouring the spangling piano and a tense, thin, painted lipped singer crooning into a starburst microphone suspended on coils. It was enough to encourage the vapours and a desire for laudanum and French brandy on the terrace overlooking the Bay.

During the first decade of the 1900s, the Schnee Four Cell Bath was an exclusive feature at the Marine Spa, used for treating rheumatism and painful joints. A miniature bath for each limb delivered varying electrical charges and the patient could remain fully clothed throughout the procedure. The Marine Spa was to be closed and demolished at the beginning of the 1970s after an eleven-year-old boy (an orphan) was sucked into a barnacle-encrusted filtration pipe in the indoor pool and drowned. I remembered as a youth going to the Marine Spa Tuesday night Leander Swimming Club. I would catch the bus to the harbour, walk along Victoria Parade and up Beacon Hill.

Arches and high ceilings: Clive and I agreed most institutions we frequented as youths had something of the ecclesiastical about them and engendered a sense of guilt around the opposite sex. When I was eleven years old, I was caught kissing a girl in a churchyard by the vicar, who told my headmaster. The headmaster was called Wightman, a man with a bent finger, partial to masticating his own nasal effluvia. He was an ex-cricketer with a two-tone Ford Consul. Wightman put me off cricket for life, even though the lead singer of the Rolling Stones is a fan. There was a strong connection between our school and the church, an outdoor swimming pool providing a respite and reoccurring baptism. Years later, it was revealed the kiss and tell vicar had been having relations with a young boy at the church youth club. And also with the boy’s mother.

Aqualand was situated a short walk, down toward the harbour, from the Marine Spa ballroom. In a prominent position outside of Aqualand was a huge diving bell with brass-lidded portholes together with a big lifeboat collection box. Despite not quite delivering the Stingray Supermarionation Gerry Anderson television experience, the dim lighting, treated ozone fragrance, wet floors, humming electrics and purring pumps made it quite exciting in the 1970s. The undulating fake rock fascia with embedded fish tanks and vivariums displayed the exotic and not so exotic local crabs and fish. The predominant colour scheme was purple and green.

Clive had mentioned his Auntie Pamela’s connection to Aqualand during September 1970. Auntie Pamela had been onboard a BOAC Vickers VC 10, one of the multiple aircraft hijacked and flown by Palestine Liberation Organization members to Dawson’s Field, Jordan. In Auntie’s luggage was a Vayangani beach baby turtle she had bought in what was then called Bombay and hidden in a receptacle with a sodden deep-sea sponge. The flight was to London; however, it was hijacked at a stopover in Bahrain. This was a response to a previously failed hijacking attempt in which a member of the PLO, Leila Khaled, had been captured. Clive had actually written a poem about this woman. The deal was to release Khaled, who was in British custody, and in return the hijackers would set free the passengers who included Auntie Pamela and the turtle. This situation was resolved through various diplomatic machinations. Leila Khaled was released just after making friends with two female Ealing police officers with whom she was to correspond for many years. Auntie continued her flight to London on another aircraft and at her final destination in Devon she donated the turtle to Aqualand where it lived happily for many years.

In her will, Auntie Pamela left her bungalow to Clive. He later discovered, in the bathroom on a tiled window shelf amongst the shells and pumice stone from the Canary Islands, the turtle sustaining deep-sea sponge.