Rain, London, Ramsgate, Train, Bus, Bookshop, Tram? and St Augustine's Abbey Ramsgate, painting Pugin's Library

Up until fairly recently a day like today would have guaranteed a very quiet day. It's not so much the actual rain but the forecast of rain that did it. The massive change in shopping habits has an impact, even on wet days with a wet forecast, or is that dry days with a wet forecast?

On the surface, well up King Street in Ramsgate, an area that epitomises seaside town deprivation

The bluey grey area is Eastcliff ward, the red arrow points to the bookshop, the blue arrow points to where you get off the Loop Bus {from the station} and the green arrow to Staffordshire Street car park  {which cost £1.40 per hour and unlike the mutistory doesn't have issues} so a wet day means a bookshop train and bus or drive visit for people who read

It's not so very bad from a point the point of view of running a viable bookshop (viable has to mean, big enough to have a reasonable chance of having some of the books customers want and being able to price the books so the compete with internet prices)

The local councils seem to be keen to keep it a deprived ward, Kent County Council - well just outside the Bookshop is typical of the ward's infrastructure, this shows up on a wet day like today,

the drains don't work, even when they have just been cleaned out and there is a big puddle outside the bookshop where the pavement has sunk. You Wouldn't for instance, get this in Canterbury, I guess they think it's ok for poor people to be drenched by passing cars.

Thanet District Council get a very high score for putting a secondhand bin outside the bookshop last week, nightimes though it's the missing street lamps that show up but most of all putting social housing with bedrooms next to pavement where shops were, it doesn't help with a sense of community. particularly as very few of the remaining shops in this part of King Street are vacant.

With Ramsgate Town Council, the Christmas decorations don't come this far.

I have mixed feelings about all of this as I don't think the overheads for a more cared for and salubrious area would work with money generated from the bookshop.

One, presumably London customer, near to first thing on Monday morning asked me where our "liberal arts" books are, would you know what he meant? I certainly didn't and Wikipedia seems to be saying it covered most of our non fiction.

With the latest lot of labelling in the bookshop, which is in the experimental phase at the moment, we have gone for the shortest possible words

 so replacing military, aviation and maritime, with war, planes and boats. It may be some time before we have a sign saying "Liberal Arts"

On to St Augustine's Abbey Ramsgate and painting Pugin's Library this is not to be confused with the abbey of the same name in Canterbury

Back in 2014 I thought I would have a go at oil painting and decided to have a go at one of Pugin's Library at St Augustine's Abbey in Ramsgate, I gave up and went back to watercolour.

For any of you unfamiliar with St Augustine's Abbey's Monastic buildings this is the link to more photos of them  

Photos courtesy of Ben Kelly

Progress gettin going on oil painting after not having done any for three years is very slow and working out how to do anything behind the till in the bookshop is always trickier than you would expect, it's all about trying to keep the paint and the books separate.

Historic photos of this abbey in Ramsgate are very hard to find, perhaps the monks weren't allowed cameras. I was an Anglican Religious, Part of the Anchorhold Community which an SSJE house and we were definitely allowed cameras but I couldn't find any photos of that either.

Searching my computer for St. Augustines only brought up these Margate ones

 I also found a couple of Convent ones

Bookshop wise, I finally managed to get to the point where I can paint in oil

One of the newest tubes was all runny

so like an ancient Briton I had blue hands for a bit

Putting barrier cream on before starting means it comes off with a wet wipe.

Link to the photos of the books we put out today


I guess back in the day visiting us in Ramsgate from London would have most likely been train or ferry and tram rather than bus, trams were a bit accident prone in Ramsgate