Monday 29 June 2015

Bookseller sales arts and crafts in the heat and some sort of ramble about Pleasurama

I bunged the air con on today and did one of those chores, which is to deal with the type of book that has been replaced by the internet. This time it was the turn of the art section, since the mushrooming of the internet the books that scrape the surface of any subject have pretty much stopped selling, while sales of the books that go into a subject in much more depth than the internet have increased.


So here are photos of the Art and Craft sale all of the books in it are less than £1


Pretty much everyone coming into the bookshop looking for an art books says. What have you got on – and then names a particular artist, we have a range of these arranged in alphabetical order of the artists surnames, you either have it or you don’t.


Our craft section is very large, and I guess that will be the next task, however I guess if you have tried to make or repair something using the information on the internet you may understand why there are fewer redundant books in this section.

I still haven’t had any luck getting an update on the Pleasurama development here in Ramsgate and still haven’t heard anything from the new cabinet members, so here is an old newspaper article:

“Report from The East Kent Times January 11th 1936.

Two more rides wrecked at "Merrie England."

With a crack like the report of a cannon, another huge fall of cliff occured in the neighbourhood of "Merrie England," Ramsgate yesterday (Friday 10th) afternoon. The huge thrill ride the "Coaster" has been wrecked, and part of the "Brooklands" miniature motor racing track is buried under several feet of chalk. This is the second big cliff fall at the same place within ten days, and over a thousand tons have fallen on the fun city, wrecking first the "Ghost Train."

Miraculously enough no one was hurt. The top part of the Promenade, which has a concrete retaining wall remained intact, but underneath the fall has cut into the cliff face to a depth of several feet. The fall occurred only twenty yards from the spot where a gang of men were working, clearing away the debris from the fall on December 31st.

Mr F. Price the Manager of "Merrie England" who was walking past the "Coaster" at the time, said he heard a sharp report like that of a cannon, followed by an ear-splitting rumble as ton upon ton of chalk fell upon the ride. The "Coaster" was flung sideways and the whole structure trembled violently and you can see where the retaining blocks have been forced out. These rides are balanced perfectly; now that the ride has been knocked sideways like this, a strong wind may well bring it down into the roadway. We had been advised that this piece of cliff would be the next to go and intended to dismantle the "Coaster" but the weather has been too bad. It takes some considerable time to take down a structure like this and if we had gone ahead with the work about a dozen men would have been working right where you see that chalk.  

The management of "Merrie England" were advised last Tuesday that it might be well to dismantle the "Coaster" ride to avoid possible future falls, but the inclement weather made this impossible at the time. To dismantle the "Coaster" takes some ten - twelve days, and if the men had been working on the ride on Friday afternoon they must surely have been buried beneath this latest fall of cliff.”

I suppose this means another chore of writing to the council again, and perhaps the councillors, I noticed the leader of TDC writing in Friday’s Gazette seemed to be writing about KCC which I don’t think he is a member of, nothing on TDC though. I am wondering if UKIP were relying on being in opposition and only really have the mechanism in place to criticise.


This picture is of one of the 1967 collapses, part of the 1860 brick façade the rest is still there and will be next to the entrance of the new development, fireman are digging through it, because they didn’t know if there was anyone underneath it.      

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.