Ramsgate Harbour suddenly seems much smaller to the aspiring watercolourist, I dream of seven thin books in the bookshop, even a Manston update as no blog ramble here would be complete without one.

With the painting lark, you sit down in a nice comfortable café with a drink and a bite to eat, in this case Enotecia overlooking Ramsgate Harbour, you get out your sketch pad which is a bit smaller than A4 and paint the nice big window frame on it.

The idea was to then paint the view of Ramsgate Harbour as seen through the window, suddenly the window panes on your pad seem very small and the harbour seems very big.

I suppose the silver lining is that all this makes you feel very small, so it went a bit better than I expected over my lunch today.

Here are the reference/progress pictures

My bookshop is closed tomorrow and I feel the day off is fairly well earned this week, lots of books got priced and put away in the last few days, theoretically we are just coming to the busy part of the year in terms of in shop book sales, although how brexit will affect this is an unknown. My take is that there will probably be some sort of economic recession, but as we have the cheaper end of the market fairly well covered, if this happens we should score on being the cheapest source for quality books. Here are the books that went out today http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/more-smuggling-in-bookshop.html

One interesting thing about retail is you get to talk to the public and so I have been asking customers about how they voted and how they feel about the result. My key question being. “Who gains from brexit?” no answers to that one so far.

A couple of very quiet days on Monday and Tuesday and then a fairly busy day today, but still very early days, only time will tell.

On the Manston front having emailed RiverOak about three weeks ago and got this reply:-

 Sent: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 14:43
Subject: RE: Your email has been received.

Dear Mr Child

George Yerrall has asked me to respond to your e-mail. I can confirm that preliminary consultations will indeed be held in the population centres most directly affected by activity at the re-opened airport.  Full details will be announced in the next couple of weeks.

Kind regards

Tony Freudmann

I sent off a reminder yesterday

Hi Tony et al

I don’t seem to have heard anything and as the "couple of weeks" have elapsed and we are pretty much up to three could you kindly send me an update, even if it is just a delayed announcement date? 

I have been busy recently so if there has been a media announcement I may have missed it, so I would appreciate it if you could also add me to your mailing list for updates relating to the Manston consultation.    

Best regards Michael

And got this reply by return

Dear Mr Child

A series of events have been organised commencing on 12^th July.  We are currently awaiting confirmation of the date of sixth and final event whereupon all the events will be advertised both in the press and on social media.

Kind regards

Tony Freudmann