It's 1969 and 1926 here at the bookshop in King Street Ramsgate and about 1180 in Canterbury Cathedral

 So here is the King Street bit for 1969

and for 1926.

Sketching in Canterbury for me today, hence a couple more Kelly's Directories for Thanet.

I have started paining another watercolour sketch in the cathedral, this is from sitting in the chancel looking up the north west transept.

I started painting the round window and the bits around it today.

I decided to use a whole sheet of watercolour paper which is a little bit smaller than A1 size, I have to cart this around rolled up in a tube that straps on my back. A bit like a quiver although I am too old and wearing too much to be mistaken for Cupid.

I painted my first large A2 (half as big) watercolour sketch from seat about 2 years ago 

 Some people like it and some don't, for anyone interested in the painting I was doing in Canterbury about 2 years ago here is a link to a page of progress photos

The quiver wosisname worked fairly well, at one point the end fell off, but repaired with a bit of string. I was a bit worried about what to rest the paper on, my A3 sketchbook opened out to A2 and resting on my legs and the back of the chair in front of me worked OK.

If you want closeups and/or more photos of Canterbury and my activity there today this is the link to the photos on my camera card

I was amazed at the number of empty retail units in The Butter Market, photos in the photos.

Arabella Dorman artist, Canterbury Cathedral, Mrs Organ Morgan’s Dreams, old Thanet photos, cold weather, some sort of Sunday Ramble

 I am starting with pictures of the frozen sea at Ramsgate and Margate in 1963.

If you were a child in 1963 then the very cold winter with the very deep snow is something that you probably remember. Useful in a way as it serves as a definite time marker in childhood memories. I would guess the cold snap over the next few days will be the end of winter and I doubt the sea will freeze.

Canterbury today, my plan – which started reasonably well was to go to the cathedral and carry on painting my watercolour in the North Chancel Transept aka the martyrdom.

This really is a spot the difference as after not very long the organ started and the music being played was what I loosely describe as modern classical, the organ sound comes out of the pipes and the loudspeaker system – a wall of sound. When it’s loud people give up on trying to speak in the cathedral and resort to signals in the way they do in an iron foundry. Music isn’t something I understand and without a recognisable tune, I do a runner; which I did.

The visual artwork in the cathedral at the moment is hanging clothes.

I am a painter and my views on installation art are generally left like Mrs Organ Morgan’s dreams; silent. I publish plenty of pictures but talking about it is not my bag.

But this one is different as the clothing once belonged to refugees, mostly left on the Isle of Lesbos and so I concede that the exhibition works and is very much worth seeing, feeling if you can.

Here is the link to the blurb on the Cathedral’s website https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/whats-on/news/2018/02/15/suspended-cathedral-to-host-unusual-artwork/

The artist can paint and draw too, here is the link to her website http://www.arabelladorman.com/work/

Some photos of this today on my camera card, here is the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/218l/id8.htm  

Cathedral entrance is £12.50 which if you gift aid it lasts for a year, alternately if you attend a service you can get in for nothing. The sung services 11am mass and evensong which is around 3 on Sundays have a very good quire. 

Next the rest of the old Thanet pictures 

The only one that said anything on the back was this one from 1909

 This is Grange Road in Ramsgate and I would guess from the hats Edwardian, late 1890s to 1915

These two after and before the shopfronts of York Gate in Broadstairs may interest some

I went out into Canterbury in search of noise cancelling headphones, but failed to get any - is powerful enough the right word?

Phone photos next

Canterbury once a week, for me and many other people who live in Thanet is basically because of Westwood Cross, which is the out of town shopping centre that devastated Margate and Ramsgate town centres.

So as I am essentially forced to go there so that my family can engage in shopping combined with an environment that is visually pleasing, the alternative would be painting pictures of Westwood Cross. I did try this for a bit - but you know how it is.

This really comes down to shops and particularly the chain shops being part of normal human leisure activity for a great many people.

Obviously working in a shop, as I do with the bookshop I am very aware of changes in retail, something that I think is very worrying is that during the last couple of years Canterbury has lost a huge amount of retail space, the two that most impact on me are the St Margaret's Street Waterstones which I think was the largest bookshop in Kent and Chromos which I think was the largest artists material shop in Kent.

For any dedicated followers of the bookshop here in ramsgate here is the link to the pictures of the books we put out Saturday.

On the tower pumper windmill front here is the conclusive proof that this is Margate the Google Earth link to the picture of the house in the photo, which is till there. 

Canterbury Cathedral watercolour painting

I have been back doing the Canterbury Cathedral martyrdom watercolour painting today. Photos are mobile phone with sketchpad leaning on the laptop so the detail is probably not good.

Today one of the bits I was trying to paint is the, top right of the paining looking through an arch and up inside Bell Harry tower.

I have several other cathedral pictures in my A3 Canterbury sketchpad, I can’t really say if any of them are finished as I tend to sit in the spot I have been painting from and see a bit I’ve missed.  

 Canterbury Cathedral Chancel watercolour painting

 Canterbury Cathedral  Chapel watercolour painting

 Canterbury Cathedral Screen watercolour painting

Canterbury Cathedral watercolour painting 

Watercolour, Canterbury Cathedral Crypt, following the footsteps of JWM Turner.

Once again today I found myself drawn to painting the inside of Canterbury Cathedral, I am not really a superstitious person but to me it feels like the cathedral somehow wants to be painted and I find myself drawn from sitting in a comfortable café sketching the view or the people inside and today sitting on a very hard pew trying to sketch from a crazy angle.

Several watercolour sketches down in the crypt but this one today I am fairly happy with.

When I got home I googled watercolour of Canterbury Cathedral Crypt the only one that I liked more was the pencil and wash by JWM Turner.

Here is the Turner and the link to it and the article about it on the Tate website http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-canterbury-cathedral-the-crypt-with-the-tomb-of-cardinal-r1140953 

This is nothing to do with the quality of the paintings, which were all much better than my attempt the problem was that the others didn’t look or feel like the crypt at Canterbury Cathedral.

The main thing I have been trying to paint down there are the wall paintings that are about a thousand years old in Gabriel Chapel, you aren’t allowed to photograph these although plenty of photos come up if you google them. The entrance to this chapel was bricked up about 900 years ago and wasn’t discovered until around 1880 so wasn’t there in Turner’s time.

As you can see my attempt at paining this bit isn’t going too badly but then it isn’t going that well either.

Canterbury Cathedral Watercolour Painting, spot the difference and paining people’s faces small enough to fit into watercolour paintings.

I didn’t get as much time in Canterbury today as I would have liked, we didn’t get there until about 1 o’clock and by 3.30 the light inside the café wasn’t really strong enough to see what I was putting on the paper properly.

I rather like the concept behind this picture, which was to draw a very loose sketch and then put the detail on it afterwards.

Anyway here are the before and after pictures of the watercolour of Canterbury Cathedral from The Chocolate Café in Canterbury today.

The business of painting people is much more difficult than the business of painting buildings, unless of course you are happy painting from a photograph, which I am not and painting people’s faces in a fairly small size, using watercolour is tricky.

Anyway I wound up doing this pretty much in the dark, so the likenesses could be better, I could see the people I was painting properly, but not the paper well enough to distinguish colours. Hence the porcelain doll problem, I just couldn't distinguish a pale flesh wash from plain water.

It got progressively darker from left to right with the one on the furthest to the right I could't see much in the way of shades at all 

Stonehenge Decoded and other aspects of a Friday blog ramble

In the 1960s when I first visited Stonehenge as a teenager the basic plan was to insert tab A into slot B and try to comprehend some of the deep and meaningless aspects of the stones, whilst also trying to stop the top of ones head from unscrewing.

Anyway provoked by the enquiring minds of the youf of today I revisited the fundamental questions about Stonehenge. What does it do? and how does it do it?

Pretty obviously what happens is that the druid enters the stone circle between two stones and exits between another two into a different reality, I seem to remember at some time in the 60s there was a sign there saying “Do Not Adjust Your Mind, Reality Is At Fault” or something.  

How it does this is a bit difficult to put into words that will bridge the age gap, and drawing a diagram seemed to be a bit condescending, so I painted them a picture.

I thought I would start with a smaller henge with less stones, I have been putting off painting one with more stones as I get the feeling that something strange may happen.

One of the youf of today asked if it is an optical illusion, to which I answered, just a stone circle with all of the stones around the same size. Some measuring then followed and I was informed that that the upright one on the far right is much shorter, so it is an illusion. 

Always useful to the budding artist to encounter the aspiring art critic.

The life of the modern independent retailer is a tricky one, although to be honest that of the secondhand bookseller has always been somewhat tenuous. Despite wearing the uniform (socks and sandals) at 59 I haven’t yet managed to aspire to the dizzy heights of carpet slippers, but gather there will eventually be some sort of secret initiation ceremony involving the retriever of no returns. Despite maintaining a shop with a permanent look of “out to lunch”. I find I am still encountering customers and sometimes difficult customers.

In this case it was a lady who brought back a book of spells complaining that her broom wouldn’t fly; a refund, well obviously made that strange sucking noise between the teeth, always an indicator that something expensive is about to happen.

Anyway in this instance I withheld the ultimate retailer’s weapon (calling her madam) and explained that I had been selling spell books, man and boy for the last fifty years and no one had ever brought one back complaining that the spells didn’t work.

Unfortunately this approach failed, I have been threatened with no less that the trades descriptions act of 1968 and had to issue a refund of £2.50. In some ways this is quite a relief as the book in question is now safely back where it belongs.

 I have added a picture so you can share my relief that the book is now safely back on the shelf in my bookshop after its difficult and unsuccessful adventure.

While on the subject of not flying, since Ann Gloag (who in no way looks like a witch) pulled the magic carpet from under Manston, rumour has been flying round the world. One is that KLM were not actually having a public display of sour grapes but that when Boet Kreiken said. “Now it is game over; we will redeploy the aircraft. We are gone.” This was actually a euphemism for it just wasn’t profitable to run a passenger service from Manson.

Apparently Charles Buchanan has been seen standing on the not inconsiderable coastline of the Thanet transport hub brandishing a model aeroplane and extolling fish to buy airline tickets.  

Another rumour is that the big guns of the local Conservative party have found that the solution to not enough passengers is no passengers and are trying to broker a deal for a huge freight only hub at Manston.  

In the circumstances it may be as well that Ramsgate Sandys is going apparently there has been something of a Gale there over potential freight night flights as apparently magic mushrooms can only be moved at night.

No ramble would be complete without some reference to our own dear councils so I will drop the broomstick and concentrate on the legal highs for a while. At the moment socialist run TDC is working on the disposal of the last remaining high profile council owned Ramsgate building. As good socialists their master plan is to hand it to the largest capitalist they can find. I am told there will be no payment to TDC for the very long peppercorn rent apart from half the rental return on putting a farmers market – as far from the main car parks as possible – in the third of the building that isn’t to become the largest pub in Europe.

What we need here is the TDC Margate Tories to apply the magic solution of grant funding to turn it into the largest public venue in Ramsgate and if that fails the Kent Tories to use a good old fashioned socialist inspired subsidy, like the have with Turner Contemporary.

As things are looking once copious quantities of legal high have been imbibed and the customers have become naughtily inebriate, they will make their way past the bouncers and the regular policing on Harbour Parade to the takeaways in King Street where there is no apparent policing.

The council have licensed these until four in the morning so the worst of the political offenders – who are made to live there in social housing on the ground floor next to the street – will get no sleep whatsoever and are likely to step in an amusing pool of beer and kebab if they do venture out.  

Of course the council have just compulsorily purchased the huge old carpet shop there, but I guess this would be deemed as being far to close to the car park to be suitable for an indoor and farmers market.

Summer being just around the corner and yesterday being my day off, I decided to unfold our folding caravan, which has become a bit retro, by accident rather than design. I thought I had better check everything was ok before unfolding it at a campsite.

The instruction book says that one person can put it up in about 5 mins, it takes two of us about 10 but still amuses people at a campsite so here are the unfolding pictures.  

            
Now for some photos from the last few days I will endeavour to add some text to them if I get the time. 

Market day in Ramsgate today, something that has a place for all budgets

I tend to go for the Rooks meat or cheese and salad with salad roll, which is very good value at £1.99

As you may know with these rambles, I will add to it if I get time, it’s market day today and my bookshop is fairly busy, at this very moment I am dealing with a trades description issue relating to a lady who bought a book out of the occult section which has failed to make her broom fly.