Some old Ramsgate and Margate views and paining from Turner Contemporary café

First the views

I have grouped this card in a way which I hope makes it easier to read, although the past in this instance seem more of foreign country than in most cases.

 1907 view of Margate the church is Holy Trinity consecrated in 1829 after a 5 year build, badly damaged by a bomb in 1943 demolished in 1958

 I had two watercolour sketches on the go from Turner Contemporary Cafe today

 a couple of reference photos here for any aspiring art critics

The main reason I went to Turner Contemporary was to get a final look at the exhibition – JWM Turner Adventures in Colour. This runs for another week the final day being Sunday 8^th January, but I seem to have other commitments during the rest of the time it’s on for.

If you haven’t seen it yet I strongly recommend making the effort during the next week as it’s a very good one.

The next Turner exhibition there is called Liber Studorium on the gallery’s website, vide https://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/liber-studorium and starts on the 28^th January, this translates from the latin as – the stud book with the edge.

To begin with I thought this would be an exhibition of Turner’s erotica, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/erotic-art-exhibition-at-turner.html I had hoped that some of the Turners Ruskin allegedly burnt had appeared and there would be a first and possibly only showing in Margate.

However it seems this is to be an exhibition of prints of his work, and as his erotica – bonfire or no bonfire, never made it into being engravings, I am beginning to wonder if the gallery really meant to write Liber Studiorum which translates as – studies book.

Anyway it’s either a book of sharp studs or a book of studies and as I am in the book business I will have to look into this one.

As you can see we are running wild in the bookshop http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/running-wild-in-bookshop.html

Some local pictures and a ramble.

Once again some old pictures of the Thanet towns.

I think there should be New Year fireworks in Ramsgate this year, or is it next year, well Saturday night anyway. 

This year started with that sort of bang for me see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/new-year-fireworks-at-ramsgate.html

I have just about finished work for this year as although my bookshop will be open tomorrow I hope to have the day off and go painting. Ironically this will probably be in Margate, not because of the sun the amazing skies or anything like that but because the forecast is for thick cloud, this means that I can sit in Turner Contemporary Café and paint the view without the sun being in my eyes.

Blogging through the last year has changed significantly as my posts are now much more connected with Facebook. It isn’t possible for me to move my posting activity to Facebook because much of what I post is pictures and blogger handles pictures better than Facebook.

Such comment as there is now mostly happens on the local Facebook groups that I link the blog posts to, and although the viewing of my main thaneonline blog is still fairly high, with over a thousand pageviews on most days, there is hardly any publishable comment. I do of course get plenty of spam comment and by spam I mean comment trying to be related to the post but actually trying to get another message across, usually trying to get readers to buy something they don’t want.

On Facebook I usually at least try to link to We Love Ramsgate https://www.facebook.com/groups/516220578418850/ Friends of Ramsgate Seafront https://www.facebook.com/groups/1591056714503080/ and Thanet Chat https://www.facebook.com/groups/thanetchat/ oh and the Rubbish one https://www.facebook.com/groups/257762494415612/ although I honestly don’t know if doing this is the best way to put the type of stuff I put online in front of the people who want to see it.

I am not really sure if putting it up on links where for the most part it is others who do the administration is either ethical or the right thin to do. I am also not sure if I should be posting to other groups and would be interested in both what administrators and readers have to say.

Of course there is also the aspect of promoting my bookshop and especially the local history that I publish, just where independent bookshops fall in the world of advertising is a bit of a grey area, it take it that it is rather like promoting an art gallery, library, museum or theatre and sort of doesn’t count.

Some old Thanet pictures, the January sale in the bookshop and two new old Margate directories.

first the local pictures

 This view of Fort Crescent was the only one that said anything on the back and altough prtetty much illegible is postmarked 1905 pic of back at end of picts

 note the barge top left the peculiar look of the sails is due to the sprit supporting the topsail, the best I can do for a date with this one is pre WW1

 Bathing machines so probably pre WW1 Perkins so probably Margate

 I think this Ramsgate one is 1970s

Two new old Margate directories for 1905

 http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/margate_private_resident_directory_1905.htm

and

http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/margate_street_directory_1905.htm

if you are lucky enough to have a house in Margate that was there in 1905 then you can now work out who lived in it then. Going for walk with these old directories can take a very long time.

And yes we do have some sort of sale in the bookshop with book prices starting at 5p, although this is the norm rather than the exception. 

Some more pictures, Ramsgate, Margate, Broadstairs, Garlinge, well all Thanet and a minor ramble about sketching

 The Royal Albion Hotel Ramsgate, this was the building – now demolished – that stood on the site of the building where Pizza Express is now and was purpose built to house The National Westminster Bank.

next a few pages from my sketchbook, this is the very tricky business of going out and sketching people.

 like sketching buildings from life as opposed to photographs it slowly gets better

 I was fairly happy with this one

If only people were as easy as buildings

 Have been trying the Microsoft cloud version of MS Word which is at onedrive.live.com, I already use the Google Docs cloud word processing and thought I would try the Microsoft one. 

This is difficult to explain to anyone not already using the cloud in some way, but I will have a go, I would guess it really only concerns people who take a fair amount of photographs or write a fair amount of text with their computer or phone. Obviously with the blog I do both and as I have a business and three children in full time education I am usually a bit pushed for time in conventional locations. 

The cloud helps with this – what it means is that instead of storing pictures and documents on my computer or on the memory card in my phone I store them on the internet and can access them with either my computer, tablet or phone.  

In the most basic terms it means I don’t have to find the wire to plug one thing into another, in terms of time saving it means I can write something like this partly using my phone – say in the supermarket queue or in a café, or I can take photos with my phone and access them or edit them with my computer. 

Frankly without this facility I just wouldn’t have time to write blog posts at all. 

So the "Word Online" how does it compare with Google Docs? The answer is it's better, mainly because it works better on the PC and laptop, it capitalises I puts the thingamajig in didn’t and doesn’t  

Just checking that i am right about this and Drive doesnt put the thingamajig in to stuff and capitalise i well as you see it still doesnt

Two Ramsgate pictures, two Margate and two Broadstairs and a minor ramble.

I suppose that having just finished the Boxing Day meal I do in fact have time to write some sort of blog post, although frankly I have little idea of what to post about.

Ramsgate and Margate’s two main leisure sites Dreamland and Pleasurama are still giving problems. In both cases the council managed to get control of the sites and then relinquish it, which may have been the wrong thing to do.

Perhaps we would be better off with the council running and to a greater or lesser degree subsidising some sort of conventional tourist attraction in both towns. Although to honest I am not really sure how much fairground and amusement arcade attractions contribute to the tourist economy these days.

The Manston Airport site issue is still ongoing, with the mixed-use industrial and residential complex proposed by the current owners still seeming the most likely outcome. The American real estate company’s plans to turn into an airfreight hub didn’t really go anywhere much over the last year, nor have there been any viable contenders for reopening it as a conventional passenger airport. 

Port Ramsgate had a short incarnation as a car import centre, well mostly a storage car park, which seems to be over now from the absence of cars, perhaps we will see it being used for events again, particularly the motorcycle sprint revival.

I recently spoke to the Ramsgate Harbour Slipways leaseholder and gather that Hornby Hobbies are still hoping to have their visitor centre there and the working slipway gained a new operator during the year http://www.burgessmarine.co.uk/slip-way-ramsgate

The main area of local growth still seems to be people relocating to Thanet, I think this is due to a mixture of better roads, the fast train and people working more days with their computer from home. The net result seems to be a slow and steady increase in the number of local residents with higher incomes.

You only have to look at the picture taken on Ramsgate Sands today to see why people would prefer living here.

We have had another reasonable trading year in the bookshop, which I find encouraging.

Of course it’s all very much a case of what can I say about the local area that is in any sense significant news to anyone. 

Anyway here are the old local pictures.