Old local photos, some thoughts about acoustics, Wetherspoons in Ramsgate, St Paul's Cathedral, a bit of watercolour sketching today and a ramble.

 I am still a bit obsessed with Harbour Parade in Ramsgate

 but have put this Northdown Road photo which looks Edwardian to me

 but back to Harbour Parade

I am trying to snap out of it This is Sanger's Theatre in Ramsgate High Street knocked down to build Fine Fare which is now Argos.

Progress is a funny old thing and while I wouldn't wish the good old days on anyone, I do however wish they hadn't done it.

I arrived at Wetherspoon’s in Ramsgate today at opening time, 8 am for toast marmalade and endless coffee, this costs £3 and because the seats are comfortable, the view is interesting enough to sketch and I wanted to go to Canterbury it seemed like the best thing to do in view of the weather forecast.

The Canterbury bus goes from the harbour unless it it the one that goes via Deal which goes from Leopold St. 

I have to admit to not being very keen on busses, but on wet day the cheap car park in Canterbury is far enough away from the middle of the town to mean I would get wet going by car.

I got a fair bit of criticism for not reviewing the food, the last time we went there, it was like this last night.

Evening meals and drinks for the six of us, I think it was about £55.  I have very fussy teenagers, they didn't leave anything, no one said there was anything wrong with anything, just what you expect really, as Weatherspoon's go it's a good one, well over 100 other people were doing the same thing. 

I don’t think you can really review a Weatherspoon’s in the conventional way, the staff in this one are particularly courteous, attentive and charming and if anything had been wrong with anything, obviously we would have said and obviously they would have sorted it out.

As always Weatherspoon’s tend to come out fairly well on the reasonable generous portion + drinks for around a tenner front.  

However sketching more of Ramsgate Clockhouse this morning I discovered something unusual about the Ramsgate Wetherspoons that I thought was interesting. I had been listening to the Radio 4 adaptation of Silvia Plath’s letters then it finished and so unplugged myself from my media.

I found that I could overhear a conversation behind me and when I looked round there was no one there, after a bit I decided to make a call of supernature which involved circumnavigating the whole of the upper gallery – nearly.    

To my wosisname, I found the conversation was happening on the other side of the building and traveling to me, probably across the curved ceiling, like the whispers in The Whispering Gallery in the dome of St Pauls Cathedral.

So our Spoons has built in ventriloquism.

On to Canterbury by bus reading Angela Carter’s Magic Toyshop, which is sort of magic realism with a touch of feminism.

On to Chocolate Café for a sketch, Yorkshire tea and a sarni, are there rules about sketching people in public places?

My drawing hand inish on the Canterbury Cathedral 

I think the St Anslem's Chapel Watercolour is pretty much finished now

looking at it now there seems to be a spelling mistake, so I will endeavour to go back tomorrow, I hope this is me and not the mason.

Looking at the local social media it seems the leader of the council has been speaking to a local developer and opinion is divided about whether the leader of the council is. What? Allowed to speak to anyone representing local landowners. Go to the pub. Can only do this in the company of. Who? A council office. A grownup.

Oh well if the rules are in this ballpark I can see issues on the enforcement front, so when one sees a local councillor in the pub talking to the wrong person, what should you do? I noticed someone said they reported this to the police, perhaps they dialled 999.

I left the cathedral because they were practising wosisname, not sure what you call it, modern classical music? I sounded like this...

But I was disinclined to all the RSPCA

As a bookseller I have mixed feelings about people writing on books, Henry VIII wrote , Thys Boke is Myne Prince Henry, on this one.