Toni Townsend

Is This Arcadia ?

Arcadia, of course, is the place where all is joy and bliss, where everyone is beautiful, and the music is acceptable in the ears of all. They don’t have a Jimmy Young programme, mind you, but after you've been there a couple of hours you find you don't miss it a bit.

We thought we’d landed in Arcadia when our balloon came down in an uncharted area west of Poole in Dorset. Ensconced in a woodland glade and bedecked in filmy drapery was (we thought) the Queen of Arcadia herself. However, after she’d put her flute down, we found she was a Bournemouth housewife. Her name was TONI TOWNSEND but as far as we were concerned, she was better in our viewfinder than any Queen of Arcadia and her vitalistics of 37 - 23 - 37 proved it.