No Toast at Turner Contemporary, watercolour paining in Margate, lunch in Morgan's and the gallery with the amazing art in glass and the silver castings of insects.

I decided to go off to Margate and paint today, this decision mainly based on the weather being a bit uncertain, the Pilgrim's Hospice Bookshop having run out of the leaflet I produce about Margate history and the bookshops in Thanet.

The weather thing is difficult if you want to paint, because so few cafés have a paintable view. Turner Contemporary Café has had a change of menu which makes it much less attractive to me for painting.

I have got the cuppa sorted there, I just ask them to take the mechanism out of a tea pot put a couple of bags of PG in it and add hot water. This works in almost every place I go to as the staff drink an ordinary named make of tea.

I should stress here that this is 10am and the alternatives are English Breakfast, Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Assam, Green Tea, Lapsang Souchong, Lemon, honey and crushed ginger tea Fresh mint tea Hibiscus and red berry tea.

Coffee makes me too excited and for me anything perfumed goes where the sun don’t shine. Turner Contemporary’s café website https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://www.turnercontemporary.org/media/documents/TC%20cafe%20Winter%202016%20menu%20A5%20for%20table%20talkers.docx promises a bacon sarni, unfortunately they don’t do a bacon sarni.

The next option was Turner Hash this is, flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and boiled and fried roots or, as it is known in Margate patois, sos, egg, bacon and chips, the don’t do Turner Hash anymore.

Getting a bit desperate I said what about toast and marmalade, the answer, “we don’t do toast” defeated me.

I went without breakfast and painted for about an hour and a half on a pot of tea, they did have some food on display and while a few people came in and had a drink I didn’t see anyone else eat anything. The pictures are of their breakfast offering.

 I went off and delivered my leaflets, nattered to Garry who runs Hooked on Books bookshop in The High Street, decided I couldn’t face lunch menu changes at Turner Contemporary, what ever they may be and looked around for alternatives with a view. 

The weather being just about good enough to paint outside I tried Morgan’s which proved to be very good both in terms of value and quality, pot of tea, ham and mustard wrap £6.20.

I did do a sketch from the balcony of Morgan's 

A quick watercolour sketch of The Sands Hotel Margate form Morgan's balcony.

On to the gallery with the amazing glass and the tiny silver castings of insects, I forgot what this is called when I came to write the blog just now, didn’t know what to put into google and resorted to finding my previous blog post

http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/out-and-about-with-me-in-margate-and.html elecTic Art is well worth the journey to Margate for alone, and I strongly recommend you do go and visit it.

Blown glass and cast insects aren’t easy to photograph and my mobile phone is a cheap one, I did my best but the pictures really don’t do these artworks justice.

The watercolour painting of Margate Lighthouse from Turner Contemporary Gallery Café gets a bit more paint, and my day off from my bookshop, a joke of English bookselling and the horror of English Breakfast Tea.

Here is the watercolour painting of Margate Lighthouse from Turner Contemporary Gallery Cafe

I worked on this bit adding detail, more coats of paint, layers if you like.

The Café at Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, not only has a decent view

But today they excelled themselves my ploughman’s lunch was one of the best I have ever had anywhere stilton and brie with quince jelly and mango chutney.

As the aging process progresses I no longer work a five day week most weeks and now take Saturday off, I don’t think holidays happen to independent English booksellers I last had one in about 1990.

Anyway I started off in the Fredricks Tea Room in part of The Carlton Cinema building in Westgate-on-Sea, toast marmalade coffee and a sketch.

After which I bought some books.

The grand finale of the day was when Turner Contemporary Gallery Café managed to produce as part of their coffee and cake deal, chocolate cake and 2 PG Tips teabags in a teapot, poetry in motion. 

P.S. here is last night's painting in the Belgian Cafe.

P.P.S. people are always asking me what type of books I buy, the answer is – of course – the type I sell, here are the photos of the books that went on the shelves in my bookshop today http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/books.html and I would say working your way through the bookshop blog is a fair indicator of the type of books I buy. 

Congratulations to TDC planning department

Many thanks to the planning department for turning down the plans for the hideous extension to the restoration of the Granville Marina Restaurant in Ramsgate, the application number is L/TH/08/1197 click here to go to the government planning website.

Restoration work on this grade 2 listed building got off to a bad start, as you can see from the picture click here for more pictures of the restoration work in progress.

Goody goes bananas

This is just an update on yesterdays post with some photos of how it looks now, apparently cracks appeared mysteriously overnight in two of the turrets, this was after the high winds had subsided.

I gather from my enquiries that TDC officers were on site to supervise before the demolition started, so what went wrong one can only guess, I think Goody demolition may have got a bit over excited, I will have to have a word with them.
One of my children who took some interest in this demolition, having been told the building was listed and therefore protected and that the men from the council were there to protect it, rather poignantly said “am I protected daddy” but the big question that I couldn’t answer was. “Why is it eating the castle daddy”?