Well that’s about it for 2017 folks, considering at the
moment that we are a very long time dead, I am pausing to consider what I have
got to show here for a whole year of life.
I think comparing recent years a question that more realistically
answers this is how did your public mark on 2015 compare to your 2016 one, I don’t
keep a diary written on paper – I never have and never will. When I was a child
I had a disability that made my hands shake, years of people trying to force me
to write on paper during my childhood means just the thought of keeping a
written diary makes me feel pretty awful.
I do have the blogs for 2015 http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2015/
and 2016 http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2016/
and I can work through these by using the older and newer posts links at the bottom
of the pages.
The main thing I can relate to is the pictures that I painted,
to expand on this
Looking at this picture I painted in December 2016 is the
closest I can get to reliving the memory of the time.
Looking at the photos I took is not so good for retrieving life
from the past and reading what I wrote on the blog variable at best.
Most of the time the posts on this blog related to the
history of Thanet and in a way I am a bit uncomfortable moving out on to the
limb of the past that remains inside us and what we get from memory.
I have a terrible memory for people, names and faces, I first
noticed this when I was about 20, in the sense that you have some important
interaction with someone and afterwards – when they have gone, you realise that
you wouldn’t recognise them if you saw them again. It is something to do with brain
circuitry or something, as I can take a machine to pieces and put it back
together again – no trouble.
But memory is very important and so are people and in a way
that machines aren’t, and considering the end of the year, memory is what it is
mostly about.
In a general sense it’s not a very good time for memory with
a steady increase in memory loss diseases that just weren’t prevalent in the
past. I think, am not certain, that this is due to increases in particulate air
pollution.
In the last year I have become increasingly concerned about
the air pollution issue here in Thanet, partly because Thanet has about the
most road and population upwind of it in the uk, and partly because of efforts towards
trying to generate transport hubs here, Port Ramsgate upwind of Ramsgate and
Manston upwind of Broadstairs.
I guess the most significant thing to happen in Ramsgate was
the new Wetherspoons opening in The Royal Victoria Pavilion, strange in one of
the few towns that McDonalds has closed as in a way it’s got aspects of the same
package. Paying upfront with a good idea of what it’s going to cost and what
you are going to get, is what I mean here. Or to put it another way, I was
painting for a while early mornings in Wetherspoons – coffee toast and marmalade,
always the same and the same price.
With Margate I suppose it was the revamped Dreamland and
Broadstairs I think the very fact that it hardly changes from year to year is one
of its attractions.
Most popular posts during the year have been:-
The Pleasurama one http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/pleasurama-update-from-tdc.html
The Wetherspoons one http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/wetherspoons-ramsgate-ah-view-review.html
And the 1987 railway accident one http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/ramsgate-trains-mostly-and-boat.html
My bookshop has done fairly well during the last year. Book wise,
on the one hand we have continued to have falling prices for most individual
book titles, but on the other the book is one of the few ways for one person on
their own to get some form of entertainment that is isolated from intrusive
advertising. Shop wise I think there is very little left in the non food and
clothes retail world, that could be said to function in a useful way, so we get busier by default.
Canterbury Cathedral today, I turned up at 9.30 and went to said
matins, which was held in the choir, this proved to be a congregation of about
ten and a priest armed with a powerful pa system designed to address hundreds
of people, in this huge space the result is indescribable.
Painting in Canterbury Cathedral today, for this I essentially
sit in the bottom of what would be a six story building if it had any floors
and try to work out some sort of perspective that represents this.
Painting afterwards in Chocolate Café. I tried a bit of pencil, which I haven't done for a while.
A few Wellington Crescent Ramsgate photos next
Some Margate pictures too
Apologies for a bit of an odd post, we have relations who have come here for the fireworks that have been cancelled.
I may well add to this post as the fireworks have been cancelled
