Thanet's early documents, pictures of The Pav, ravings of a resting bookseller, Ramsgate photos from 10 years ago,

 The pictures pf Ramsgate's Royal Victoria Pavilion aka The Pav aka Wetherspoons aka Spoons are all ones that I published on the internet ten years ago in October 2010 here is the link 

This photo shows the arcade on the site that the Pav would be on, the arcade was destroyed in the storm of 1897.

Ten years ago I published a book called The Manor of Minster, this is a collection of early documents related to The Isle of Thanet Link to the whole book if you want to study our local history at the sharp end then it is one for you. It's a difficult and demanding read but in terms of major documents relating to Thanet from before the early 1700s, what you see is what you get.

This is a typical Edwardian photo of the Pav, note the railway turntable for the Sands Station bottom left and the Edwardian motor cars.

Ten years ago I had just bought a batch of Ramsgate deeds and documents and Gerald Tripp had transcribed them. This one relates to Pier Castle aka Pete's Fish Factory aka Belgian Café etc

link to the document 

link to the transcription

This is the same as the picture above it but a coloured postcard, viable colour photography didn't really exist at this time so various processes were used to produce coloured printing plates, I think this one is supposed to be a chromolithograph; a sort of economy version perhaps.

Another Edwardian view, this one showing the lift that has recently had the lead stolen from the roof, hopefully the lead will be replaced with one of the modern lead substituted like the stuff on the shelters in Ramsgate. This looks like lead but doesn't have any scrap value.   

I think this must be an early one around the time the Pav was built so 1904ish.

If it wasn't for coronavirus I would be doing a fair amount of paining in the Pav this winter

I like paining on the spot and from life, this is a watercolour sketch I was doing in the Pav before the world coronaed out, I don't trust the new Blogger editor with pictures yet and as it's fairly large link to the photo of the painting 

This photo is much later, either just before or just after WW2 I think.

I have it in mind to improve my ability to paint likenesses so that the people in my watercolours are more recognisable so I have been paining portraits and figures from photos.

This is a time lapse of a first attempt at painting Kim Kardashian, someone in a way recognisable. I am interested in ambiguity of ethnicity and the way features and skin colour can be modified with spray tan and makeup.  As a painter perhaps trying to find the person underneath, well perhaps having to find the features underneath. I don't see myself as an artist although I develop in that direction. I don't think with painting this is something one has that much control over. Witht he Pav - forinstance  a sort of Edward Hopper with me me paining in the foreground while a barsteward observes me, type of kidney. 

  

this one 19830s or 20s perhaps, what do you think?

Michaels Bookshop where I work in Ramsgate is still closed, I get the odd request along the lines of - granny has just died of coronavirus, do you want to go round ot her house and look at the books to see if you want to buy them? But you know how it is..

This is looking 20s or 30s too

Of course in the book business reading the books is the main occupation and that goes on, here is the pile I have just consumed 

Quality literary fiction a lot of it rereading, people sometimes ask me what to read, and I try to work out what they would want to read by getting them to talk about what they have read. So in this pile I may extract from the reader something. Augmenting the relationship between writer and reader is the key to what booksellers do, and with the shop closed I have been wallowing in favorite writers. From the bottom of the pile is maybe on in to further great dystopias Zamyatin perhaps, or perhaps stay with Gee. Fortunately there are enough great writers. 

Late 40s or early 50s 

Next some ramsgate photos from 10 years ago here is the link 

30s I think

I am sorry about not posting much recently, I have been doing some much needed work to the bookshop building and this week I am setting things up so the people who work for me can continue to do so if we go into some sort of second lockdown. This will probably be working on local history publications remotely.

Most of the rest of this long post is for me to record what's going on for the future.

The colossal number of new cases in the UK

#	Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths	New Deaths	Total Recovered	Active Cases	Serious, Critical	Tot Cases/ 1M pop	Deaths/ 1M pop	Total Tests	Tests/ 1M pop	Population
	World	41,375,375	+350,645	1,133,830	+4,982	30,804,325	9,437,220	74,018	5,308	145.5
1	India	7,705,158	+56,000	116,653	+703	6,871,898	716,607	8,944	5,567	84	97,200,379	70,225	1,384,123,019
2	USA	8,563,325	+42,375	226,944	+760	5,564,905	2,771,476	15,734	25,825	684	128,479,893	387,460	331,595,130
3	UK	789,229	+26,688	44,158	+191	N/A	N/A	629	11,607	649	30,187,915	443,973	67,994,955
4	France	957,421	+26,676	34,048	+163	107,652	815,721	2,248	14,658	521	13,931,849	213,293	65,317,818
5	Spain	1,046,641	+16,973	34,366	+156	N/A	N/A	1,930	22,383	735	15,503,165	331,545	46,760,347
6	Russia	1,447,335	+15,700	24,952	+317	1,096,560	325,823	2,300	9,916	171	55,171,784	378,009	145,953,703
7	Italy	449,648	+15,199	36,832	+127	257,374	155,442	926	7,440	609	13,962,029	231,028	60,434,421
8	Germany	391,290	+10,392	9,999	+44	302,100	79,191	943	4,666	119	19,276,507	229,849	83,866,015
9	Poland	202,579	+10,040	3,851	+130	98,884	99,844	757	5,354	102	4,109,390	108,617	37,833,840
10	Belgium	240,159	+9,679	10,489	+46	21,476	208,194	486	20,694	904	4,215,269	363,227	11,605,

The largest amount recorded and the worst in the world in terms of population percentage is not good. For me though the main indicator is the view from my desk the centre of which is Co-operative Funeral Care, once again they are much busier than usual. The Manchester Young Conservatives video here is the link  although you have to wait for the adverts, interested me. I have 5  family members at university at the moment 4 of them are self isolating. I have to say I don't trust the government media or opposition to do the best for this country. 

More Pav which fortunately sits on it's own sea defence.

You can see it here, back in the day, before WW1 and the build up of sand on the beach war defences. The new development on the Pleasurama site doesn't have a sea defence and sits on a layer of sand as does the promenade in front of it, lets hope we don't find out the hard way.

The new blogger editor along with recent changes to Facebook are one of the main things that have put me off of posting recently, Blogger aka Google have made some improvements i.e. made it a bit more like the old one which was much better  

These next three photos are of Princess Louise opening the Pav in 1904 

I am becoming increasingly concerned about the future of Ramsgate town centre, government support for shops started well but seems to have petered out now. I am not concerned about the bookshop, because it doesn't make a profit and only partly contributes to our living costs it doesn't have to be open for us to survive. It also doesn't rely on passing trade generated by being surrounded by other other shops.

I would think all of the other shops in the town are reliant on trading at the level they were before the pandemic, and a lot of them must have been in difficulties before.

A few more Edwardian ones

Phones and computing

This is about the relatively cheap phones and computers I have bought in the last year and how they have worked out. With a wife and two children in full time education this essentially means four windows laptops and four android smartphones.

As smartphones have improved I have found that an Android tablet isn't much use, we all have them and don't use them much.

A Windows Tablet with keyboard though is another matter altogether and will do most of what a laptop or pc will do so all four of us have Linx 12X64 tablets bought secondhand on Ebay for around £150 running Windows 10 and using the free online (not the trial version) of MS Office. You can always add a subscription version of Office if you can afford it. 

If you have a fairly tight budget I recommend considering this option if you have a tight budget and need a viable small cheap Windows Laptop.

Phone wise the best two cheap phones we bought new recently have been a Samsung Galaxy A21s which has a fantastic camera, reasonable battery life and costs about £150 and a Moto G8 plus which is a reasonable all rounder and costs about £200.

This is a very early photo, before 1860 when the Sands Station was built  

I think this one shows the construction of the railway terminal so would be 1860ish, the station didn't actually open until 1863 as several of the new bridges between Herne Bay and Ramsgate were condemned by the railway inspector and had to be rebuilt before the line could open.

Another very early one before the station was built around 1960