Ramsgate and Margate Photos from around 10 Years ago, Some american Penguin Books from the 1940s

 Memory lane is a bit of a strange place, with all the local history books in the bookshop I hear a lot of bring it all backs.

 Never having been very well organised but having randomly taken a lot of local photos things tend to come back mostly when I look at the photos.

 This batch of Ramsgate say 19.5.8 walk on the file, so I am pretty certain they date from May 2008 the file dates as recorded by the camera say 2007 on them but they were taken with my Pentax ist D which behaved badly on the recording the right date as it didn't seem to like batteries very much.

 At this time the first lot of Pleasurama cliff repairs were going on.

 One of the best free Ramsgate attractions were the heritage boat pontoons

 King Street in Ramsgate had a few more shops although business wise the bookshop wasn't as busy as it is now. More shopper on the street but buying less books?

 I find the business of the vanishing town centre shops fascinating and partly put the increase in the number of books we are selling at the moment down to there being fewer and fewer viable shops to go to.

 I think viable is pretty much summed up as. those shops that have a reasonable range of stock where the prices of the things you want to buy are in the same ballpark as the prices on the internet.

I am particularly surprised that there aren't a lot more independent clothes shops, mainly because buying clothes online is difficult. 

It always seems strange to me that town centre shop overheads have gone up so much over the last 30 years while so many town centre shops have closed.

One of the empty buildings in Ramsgate 10 years ago was The Custom House, now the home of the town council and I think soon to be a bone of contention

I don't think and have never thought that the town council should have tied themselves to a long and expensive lease. Until the council have considerable civic achievements to show grandiose buildings seem inappropriate and one of the cheaper town centre shops with an easily accessible enquiry desk would seem to be more the mark.

 
The bookshop back then is a bit of a spot the difference to now

We have had some unusual 1940s American Penguin books come in to the bookshop, not expensive, I think between £3 and £10 but you hardly ever see them this side of the pond.

This is the link to the photos of the books we put out yesterday

The impact of the paperback on the cultures of both the UK and the USA is important and I don't think the American Penguin book is very well documented so any information on this front would be appreciated.   

By the summer of 2009 the cliff repairs were already showing signs of needing further repairs

Port Ramsgate was almost excursively a goods port.

 and the home of another very large crane

 I think that Margate may have been at its worst around this time

 more than anything the photos from then show how much things have improved there.

this is the link to more of these Margate 2009 photos

The photos I took in Ramsgate today didn't look particularly interesting, but in around ten years time, who knows?

This is the link to them