Dreamland in Margate

So starting with some particularly star dreamland pictures in the local paper

Here is the link to the photos

I worked at Dreamland back in the good old days, I was a sort of mechanic working on the main Dreamland site, known then as 'the park' the majority of the amusement arcades on Marine Drive known then as 'the golden mile' and the Lido complex.

Most of the work I did was repairing and installing arcade games and arcade gambling machines

This was in the very early days of electronic arcade games, ping pong on a TV screen with each player turning a knob to move the bats up and down the side of the screen. There were very few of these and a lot of electromechanical pinball machines, much more interesting to repair and to play on. The Space Invader machine was still only on other planets at this time.





If you want some idea of what Dreamland was like back in the good old days Lindsay Anderson's film above will help you to form a realistic picture.

 I have some reservations about bringing back the good old days.

Working in Michael's Bookshop here in Ramsgate is a different experience

here is the link to pictures of the books we put out today

The philosophical question, what is good? comes to mind here, the philosophy that underpins our civilisation is pretty roughly Socratic, I think it would be called Platonic but that word has connotations relating to around a thousand years of Christianities attitude to homosexual love. In a nutshell Plato wrote a book about homosexual relationships and because of the attitude of the church, when the his books were rediscovered this was commuted to er Platonic relationships.

Anyway it isn't the Presocratics but the Neoplatonics who had logic subservient to good.

Sorry I digress here, back in the good old days seaside amusements were often seen as bad and bookshops good. Every level of government made it difficult to run seaside amusements I was seen as a bit of a black sheep among my family and friends for my association with fairs and circuses. Now of course the council still has to buy the farm and seaside amusements (without strippers, freak shows and wosisname) are seen as a great Panacea, for the youf of today, who we all know don't know, the goddess of universal remedy.

So funfair good - bookshop good??

Strewth the spellchecker in blogger's editor didn't like that and it may be the grammar police are going to have a field day.   

By way of compensation I have illustrated this post with some photos I have of Dreamland, some even relate to my day, which sometimes started early walking lion cubs on Margate sands, leaving a trail of confused dogs.