Terry Bunton Circus Painter, exhibition at The York Street Gallery in Ramsgate.

Another one well worth a visit, click on the pictures below to expand them.

Granville House Ramsgate another lot of plans and a bit of history

One of the most distinctive buildings on Ramsgate’s cliff tops is Granville House this was designed by Edward Welby Pugin the son of Augustus Pugin and was a hotel from 1869 to 1946 after which it was converted into 48 apartments.

Various additions and modifications were made to the building during this period and all of these were done in the same gothic revival style used by Edward Welby Pugin.

During the second world war part of the building was destroyed by a bomb.

Then in 1982 another large chunk was demolished.

I suppose there is a balance here between what is most dangerous and destructive to our historic architecture the world war in the 1940s or the local council in the 1980s where a significant proportion of councillors were estate agents or involved in property development.

So looking at the map and wondering where the responsibility lies for demolishing parts of a significant listed building the green bit was down to Adolf Hitler and while the red bit down to TDC granting consent to demolish part of a listed building.

Anyway between the demolition and 2004 various planning applications to build the usual plastic windowed tacky high density flats on the site, some were passed at planning but as often happens the money couldn’t be found and now all of the planning consents have expired.

Then in 2004 the part demolished by Hitler was rebuilt in the same gothic revival style used by Edward Welby Pugin.

Nothing much happened after this apart from the remaining land changing hands and developers going bust until the site was sold by the Receivers in 2012.

The building site was bought by Jason Hough for £160,000 who submitted an application (L/TH/12/1019) in January 2013, to build 10 one-bedroomed flats and 28 two-bedroomed flats. Although recommended by the TDC case officer, Councillors voted against I guess there aren’t so many councillors who are estate agents these days.

The developers case for getting planning permission granted seems to have been if you can get it for an ugly 80s structure in the 80s why can’t you get it for an ugly 80s structure now.

I think the real point he has missed is that having demolished half a gothic revival building and then rebuilt a quarter of it in gothic revival style, the only thing that makes sense is to rebuild the remaining quarter in gothic revival style.    

Anyway the new planning application ref is F/TH/14/0083 you have to go to the council’s planning website http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet and put it in the application ref search box to view the plans. 

Here are a few pictures taken from these plans, as you see they don't seem to have understood the gothic revival style yet, so I will be objecting to this application on the grounds that gothic revival plus new build gothic revival  is fine but gothic revival plus new build gothic revival plus new build 1990s style isn’t it's just a mess.

 While we are on the subject you may be wondering about the blue bit on the map, this is the derelict bar a dinning room which is back on the market and likely to go back into use, links to photos of this and the inside of the tower view from the top and so on.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gt

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gt/id2.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gt/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/granville

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/granville/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/granville/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/granville/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gt/id5.htm

Photographing light in Margate an impossible object.

Another pilgrimage to The Turner Contemporary to see the Turners that form part of the current exhibition

Image credit 'Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner' Photo: Stephen White

and coming out of the gallery at the end of a rainstorm the light was incredible.

Trying to capture something of this with my mobile phone camera.   

Not easy, here are the rest.

Fat is a Fanit Issue and a ramble about blogs the law and so on.

 Apologies for not posting since Saturday, I have been busy with my bookshop, mainly I think because of the problem that ordinary people have with disposing of the books they don’t want.

I think the real issue here is that I am now running the last of the large general secondhand bookshops in East Kent, there are a few small ones left and there are a few which only deal in the much more expensive collectable end of the market. There is however really nothing large doing the whole lot apart from me.

 Obviously if there is nowhere else you can find a large range of reasonable quality books there isn’t really anywhere else you can sell them, so at the moment we are very busy on the bookbuying front.

Anyway I have finally got around to reading some of last Thursday’s Isle of Thanet Gazette and discovering that nearly a third of people in Thanet are classed as obese. I am pretty much certain that this doesn’t apply to my bookshop customers or to me, I am a bit over weight as I usually am towards the end of the winter, I think this mostly relates to the clocks going on and it being light enough to go for a walk after work. 

 It seems unlikely that reading would make one thinner and frankly I have my doubts that even half the people in Ramsgate are obese, so is there something wrong with the statistics?

I see Simon Moores long awaited revelation has appeared on his blog, here is the link http://birchington.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/under-caution.html and interesting one from the point of view of a blogger, for once again it highlights the grey area of what constitutes either internet bullying or internet harassment.

Much has been made on the blogs about libel, but frankly I think the problem with that is the it would be very expensive to mount a libel action. However when it comes to cyber bullying or internet harassment, then this is an area where reporting what has happened to the police is an option. 

Now this is a sort of grey area when it comes to how the police deal with the issue mainly because it is a relatively new thing and as in the UK the law is mostly that of president i.e. the courts make it up the law as they go along, I would say at the moment the police are far more likely to take on cases related to comment on the internet that don’t appear to be very likely to result in a prosecution than they would in other areas of the law. After all unless the courts get on with making up the law about this we will all be in the dark for ages.

I guess there are two sides to this issue, one side being that we need to have open and public debate about local issues on the internet, and to some degree there has to be some protection for everyone including local councillors, so that they can say what they think about local issues. On the other hand there has to be protection for individuals who are named or whose identity is heavily inferred on the internet.

To clarify this inference business, I would say that if someone refers to a bookseller on the local websites then everyone assumes that this me me.

Just as if anyone refers to a pilot then everyone assumes this means Simon Moores.

I guess the main implication for all bloggers is mainly not really having any idea, not only what one can say about any individual, either named or inferred but also having no idea what one can allow anyone else to say in a comment on your blog.

I guess up to a point it also makes a difference whether a comment is made by a known real person, my assumption so far has been that if say William Epps or Peter Checksfield comment here then the responsibility for those comments is theirs and not mine. I guess there is a sense that by allowing a comment or not deleting it then one is condoning it.

There is also the situation where no one knows the real identity of a blogger and a fair likelihood that the various foreign based companies that hold the chain of information that would identify the individual wouldn’t release it to the UK police or courts.

I guess also that it would be possible to conceal ones identity from the isp with creative use of mobile internet and wifi.            

Perhaps that is enough about this issue for now, I am not a very quick thinker and have only seen Simon Moores account of this issue.

Back to the obesity problem, as I said I don’t actually believe the statistics although I concede there are more obese people in Thanet the figure of nearly a third doesn’t equate to what I actually see when engaging in normal life in Thanet.  

Is there a cure I wonder? Something like the picture above perhaps. I think I will leave this one for a while too.

The children have just sent me a link to a website that turns your computer into a piano, it takes a little while to load if you connection is slow, but is fun to play with, here’s the link http://muzy.com/app/music_maker

Here in Ramsgate some sort of activity has started again on the Pleasurama site, my understanding is that one mechanical digger and one dumper truck have been delivered to the site and that Cardy staff have been on site.

Perhaps the developer is due to make a press statement that work is in progress, or even that it will be completed on schedule.

The Royal Sands website http://www.royalsandsramsgate.co.uk/faq.asp says “We are expecting the first apartments to be ready in autumn 2013.” So no real surprises there.

Personally I am slightly worried that playing yet another peculiar game there may be unwise after all this rain, last time there was activity on site the foundations at either end of the cliff façade were undermined and I don’t think that anything was done to prevent them from weathering.

I will ramble on here as and when I get a bit of time.

A bookseller’s story about the very modern first editions

When it comes to fiction and hardback books changes in retailing have produced a glut of unwanted titles.

Strangely these are mostly the best of modern popular fiction even stranger is that the majority of these books are first editions, books which in another age would have passed the original retail price as desirable collectables after a few years.

One of most prominent of the popular fiction writers from the mid 50s to the mid 80s was Alistair MacLean here are what the values of first editions of his books were in 1985. 

The cover prices on hardback fiction books increased over the years, roughly as below.

2010 around £15

2000 around £12

1990 around £10

1980 around £8

1970 around £2

1960 around £1

1950 around 50p

1940 around 25p

This meant that the value of a nice condition first edition passed what you had paid for it new after about ten years, due to a mixture of the rise in the value of the first editions and inflation.

Frankly now this does not not happen with most fiction books, most of the fiction first edition books by prominent authors published around ten years ago are available on the internet including P&P for less than they would cost to post.

Most of my customers prefer the to buy the these books in paperback, having tried various price reduction strategies in my bookshop, I have now put them all in one place in my bookshop and priced them all at 50p you can see some of them in the photos. Not really sure if this will work either on the supply or demand front.