Margate and Ramsgate photos and some Folkestone thoughts

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 Fort steps 1906

 Margate 1921

 1926

 1911

 Queens Ave

 This group of 3 are 1965 Mill Lane

 Cranbourne Pl

 Mill Lane

 this 1995

I guess it was the T-shirt or is it Tee shirt issue that most surprised me today, I think this may be a bit sexist, but not really sure which way the sexism is round - as it were.

So shopping today, I am conquering an allergy to clothes shopping by being give very intense sharp doses between watercolours, most men seemed to be wearing Tee shirts or T-shirts, while most women were wearing tops or perhaps blouses, or is that too old fashioned?

Now in Folkestone Old High Street, a sort of pre Brexit Carnaby St, or at least something very retro where you are likely to be served by a woman with a scarf on her head, they only seemed sell T-shirts for women and had hardly any that seemed to be aimed at men.

I wonder where or when women wear them?

I am typing this in the corner of an alcove outside the changing room of a shop called TK Max where I have been left because they don't have a creche for men, to be honest they don't even have many places to sit down in most shops

On occasions I default to Chocolate Cafe in Folkestone, here I have an ongoing watercolour painting so I also did a bit of this today.

I am fascinated by Debenhams in Folkestone, which is a bit like Grace Brothers with architectural merits but not as much fun. The art deco staircase is fantastic but difficult to photograph.

The whole retail and shopping business fascinates me, I wonder whether in many cases the shops have been designed and the stock in them bought by men who don't actually go shopping.

   Strange really, you can see the issues with this type of shop and it obviously needs experiencing before history passes on. So much like the T-shirts really, but on such a large scale.

The bookshop is still busy and I guess we have seats, because we are people and sit on seats, I think the strongest areas in terms of growth this year is in children's books and books priced between 5p and 50p. This is much more difficult to work out than you would expect because of the falling levels of price per book over the last 15 years.

Outside of selling from shops I am noticing that the proportion of new non food items that I am buying myself online seems to have levelled out and is now reducing.

I would say the area that has pretty much fizzled out altogether is the non tangible stuff, media files, music, books and films as downloads mostly.

The secondhand world has taken over a bit on that front and this could be why the bookshop is fairly busy at the moment, this is the link to the books we put out yesterday 

Although not the ones priced between 5p and 50p which go straight into the left hand side window of the bookshop, you can just walk into the window and browse those.

This next picture is a promotional one for the Pleasurama development ans shows what it should look like when it should have been completed about 10 years ago.

Looked at objectively it's a strange looking development really possibly designed with the graffiti artist in mind. I suppose theoretically there is nothing legally to stop work starting on the development even now.