Click to expand, pictures of Broadstairs, Margate, Ramsgate and an optical illusion from the bookshop in Ramsgate

 

Aerial photo of Broadstairs probably early to mid 50s

Tug Aid in Ramsgate Harbour

Tug Vulcan in Ramsgate Harbour

Dent De Lion Gatehouse

 Pier Hotel Margate Advert

Unknown location probably north Thanet

The next bit of this blog post is about me drawing an optical illusion and how the inspiration came. This is mostly me talking to a future me for my reference, but also people ask about these things.

I was looking drawings by Salvador Dali, on my phone, in bed, Sunday morning (yesterday) and felt there was something about the shapes in this one that was worth further investigation.

Nostalgic Echo Dali

The Nostalgic Echo (1935) by Salvador Dali  illustration for the frontispiece of the book Nuits Partagees (Shared Nights), poems by Paul Éluard.

So I sketched this 

Which developed into this impossible object, instead of three dimensions it has four or five, I think. What do you think?

As you probably know I work at Michaels Bookshop in Ramsgate so the next stage was to represent my impossible object as a book.

Optical Illusion Drawing of a Book

Here is the result, I think this will be the draft for a painting. I think that as optical illusions go this one is to some extent original to me. This is fairly unusual with pen and paper optical illusions, so I am pleased about it.  

Here where I work at Michaels Bookshop we have more newly acquired secondhand books here is the link to the pictures of them 

Some Pictures of Ramsgate Marina Swimming Pool and Margate Lido

Starting with some photos of Ramsgate Marina Swimming Pool

This is a very early photo and you can see the railway track for the crane used to build the pool

Closed in 1976 and people ask why? 

Personally I think this is mostly a temperature related thing, and base this on having been in it, the main problem was the water was very cold.

Perhaps not an issue back in the 1930s when the pool first opened as I think heated public swimming pools started to appear in the UK just before WW2, but didn’t really become common until the 1960s.

You can heat outdoor swimming pools, I think those like the Ramsgate one that used constantly changing filtered seawater to keep the contents clean enough to swim in would be prohibitively expensive to heat.  

Of course there are plenty of people who would pay to swim in an unheated seawater swimming pool next to the sea, we used to when we were children, but I think the main reason for the closure was that there just weren’t enough of them by 1976 when the repair bill was fairly large and it closed for good.

I think another aspect was the closure of the high diving board, which was one of the pool’s main attractions, so there is a safety elf element.

Then there are the rumours.

Some say it was a council blunder that damaged Ramsgate marina swimming pool so badly it could never be used again. The story goes that some bright council officer decided to take the running of it from the borough engineers and give it to the councils leisure department. The sceptical engineers handed it to the leisure department with a set of instructions about running and maintaining it, one of which was never to empty it without supporting the seaward facing side. This was because it was designed so the weight of the water inside counteracted the forces of the sea battering against it. The first thing the leisure department did when they took it over was to empty it unsupported. In the resulting cover up councillors were told that the damage was caused bomb during WW2 that had weakened the structure.

Some say the problem was the old design of the building and that the pool was actually on 'stilts' and you could walk underneath it at low tide. As the tide came in the void was filled with seawater. The dated building measures made this a fatal design fault. Gradually the chalk below began to erode, and as a result the foundations moved, causing the pool to crack. This was patched for years until repairs were impossible. It was also too expensive to replace.

Some say that the chalk at sea edge was excavated deliberately and that the council failed to stop this.

 

A good article on the Lost Lidos site at http://www.lostlidos.co.uk/2015/05/16/ramsgate-marina-pool/

Next Margate Lido

     

We went to Margate yesterday, mostly Old Bank Bookshop and Ghost Papa, mostly buying books for Michaels Bookshop here in Ramsgate.

Here is link to the new secondhand books we put out today  

Click on them to expand the 1960s pictures of, Ramsgate, Margate and Broadstairs

 

I think all of these pictures show Thanet in the 1960s I'm not 100% certain, although I was here in the 1960s.

Here at Michaels Bookshop where I work in Ramsgate we are fairly busy and it was that way on Monday and Wednesday so I didn't get time to do blog posts then. 

A couple of batches of books went out in the shop, Monday and Wednesday one with some local history in it here is the link and one with part of a large collection of Ladybird boos that we bought recently here is the link