Pen and watercolour painting of Canterbury today and of course some books for my bookshop.

The first pen and watercolour painting is from outside McDonalds in Canterbury, I managed to get a seat under a large umbrella and was able to continue painting during a heavy rain shower.

The second pen and watercolour painting was from the café of the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, a couple of very mild optical illusions in this one, bringing part of the cathedral into the street and the business with the bridge

I have decided that I need a red or an orange, that is easy to make the colour of bricks with in a hurry, in my pocket paint box so Davy’s Grey, is going to make space for it. There are often distractions related to painting on the spot in busy places that means it is preferable to be able to mix paint in a hurry.

Build a new building with a café that has a stunning view of Canterbury cathedral from the café and then etch opaque lines on the windows that obscure part of the cathedral from eye height when seated at the tables. Yes I know, it’s just me no one else minds this type of thing and I probably shouldn’t mention it, but as I said the other day I am on virtual holiday at the moment.

There is an artistic dilemma here, obviously today with the intermittent showers, if you are going to paint you have to find somewhere dry with reasonable view, so do you do what I did and use the rather irritating perforations at the top of the pad to represent the bottom of the opaque lines of the glass and paint what you can see – obviously demolishing a few houses to fit the gable end of the cathedral into the street – or do you centre the painting on the cathedral, part of which is obscured by the glass.

So then do you take a photo of the cathedral and then paint the image from the photo, photograph the painting and publish it here? Or perhaps you try ducking your head up and down to see the missing bits, so you can see them to paint them?  

On to the books bought in Canterbury today, obviously the star buy here is The Poo Story Book with "new illustrations in full color by E H Shepard", I think this may be an American first edition, but as I have never seen one before and can’t find a picture of it on the internet, it will have to wait until work tomorrow when I look the book up in a book.  

The good news is that I have found a tube of the watercolour paint that seems to do the whole range of orange colours in the bricks I find much more in Canterbury than I do in Ramsgate.

The bad news is time has elapsed since its purchase evidenced by the 2/6 pencilled on the tube, half a crown in about 1969, this equates to around a 24^th of a days pay for a shop assistant around £2.10 now although in reality artist’s quality watercolour paint is around £6 now for a 6ml tube. Oh yes the bad news, they don’t make it now for health and safety reasons. 

If you apply this to books, this is how it works out now, we were paying bookshop staff about £3 per day in 1969 the minimum wage now is £6.31 per hour, which equates to £50.48 for an 8 hour day.

So take a paperback book: The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis  published in penguin in 1968 and sold in 1969 for 5/- or 25p.

So a shop assistant in 1969 could buy 12 of them with a days pay.

It is in print now for £8.99 12 being £107.88

The Amazon price is £7.19 12 being £86.28

The Kindle download is £5.49 12 being £65.88

We would have sold it for 2/6 secondhand in 1969 12 being £1.50 well 30/- then, so a shop assistant could have bought 24 with a days pay.

We have one on the self secondhand for £1.50 at the moment 12 being £18 although this isn't entirely fair as if it had only come out last year we would probably be selling it for £2.50 so someone  on the minimum wage could buy 20, I think if there was a minimum wage in 1969 we would have been paying a bit over it, so it comes out about the same. 

The cheapest you could expect to get it online including postage is £1.51 in adaptable condition which means not good from an Amazon seller with 96% positive feedback.