A couple of hundred photos taken on a walk in Ramsgate in 2009, palace theatre in 1946, a bit of painting in Canterbury and a few historic Thanet pictures.

 So first Link to the 2009 Ramsgate photos I have been in Canterbury mostly buying books for Michael's Bookshop, which is where I work, today. Yesterday was mostly topping up the science fiction, fantasy, horror section in the bookshop. For the dedicated The Link to the Photos of those Books

I did some more to my latest watercolour sketch of Canterbury

 My view across a sheet of paper looking a bit like this

And the painting which could be considered as a sort of Debenhams memento mori, I bought the books in the lower part of Canterbury's main drag today, where the Oxfam Bookshop is and it is very noticeable how few shops there are there selling ordinary and tangible goods.

I can see some sort of future for the cafe culture here in Ramsgate, even without the majority of the conventional shops. Canterbury though I am not so sure, maybe there enough money in the tourist and student part of Canterbury's economy to support a sort of leisure cafe based culture and maybe not. 

I try to think of something that would work in the difficult buildings that house Debenhams at the moment and it aint easy.

At the moment I consider Ramsgate to be a satellite town with Canterbury as the main shopping centre, the other side of the coin is that I don't see a conventional shopkeeper living above an independent shop working in the way the bookshop works here in Ramsgate.

This next lot of pictures all relate to the Palace Theatre in Ramsgate for the 1946 season