Christmas

It thought this Christmas I should write something about human relationships over Christmas more people commit suicide than at any other time of year perhaps you’re gay perhaps lesbian I don’t really think it matters well her it is.
If you take a large hungry dog and tie it up and feed it very little and tease it with large lumps of meat it will soon become bad tempered indeed. You can make it good tempered by giving it the meat or you can make it good tempered by taking away the temptation altogether, when the dog will adjust itself to the meager diet. While you keep on teasing it with the unattainable it will remain bad tempered. Scientists prove this all the time, and they say science is wonderful.

Christmas greetings

The picture shows the frozen sea in Ramsgate harbour in 1963 and if you click on it you should get a fairly high definition one.

I have just closed the bookshop for the Christmas break and would like to wish you all a happy Christmas and the hope that most of you get the books you want for Christmas.

It has been a pleasant day of helping people chose the right books for other people with so many charming customers who appeared to be genuinely enjoying the books and the bookshop.

My especial thanks to those of you who have helped with the local history book publishing by either writing local books or helping me to obtain material for them.

Some old pictures of Broadstairs

Christmas shopping in the bookshop is fairly patchy today, jumping between quiet and busy, meaning that it is difficult to get on with much work, so I am publishing a few pictures that are on the pc that I don’t think I have published before.

Click here to see the rest of these pictures of Broadstairs

Ellington Park Ramsgate in 1971

Many thanks to Dave for his pictures of a snowy Ellington Park in 1971, which he is happy for any of you to print out as an emergency Christmas card with a local theme, click here for the high definition versions. Happy Christmas to you all.

Not Christmas shopping

This year I have been becoming progressively more environmentally conscious and as Christmas approaches I have been trying to buy presents that are either secondhand or involve some aspect of recycling. But most of all I have been trying to avoid lots of car journeys to get the Christmas shopping.

Well today we had to get some of the things we need for Christmas from Tesco at Westwood Cross so we braved the inevitable traffic jam and started battling through the crowds.

I became increasingly aware just how very unpleasant it was I am afraid to say that after about half an hour with only 20% of the Christmas food shopping done we paid for what we had done and ran away back top Ramsgate where we did the rest.

The madness of crowds? I just don’t know.

I should add that all of the Tesco staff were both charming and helpful and I suspect no more wanted to be part of the great machine that is modern shopping than anyone else.

More Confused Ramblings From the Book Trade

The Christmas shopping rush is here again which is always pleasant in the bookshop as you feel most of the shoppers are buying people something that they actually want, or the person who will receive it as a present will want, this is especially so with the local history books. This is not particularly a money thing as from the customers point of view none of the books I produce are over £10 and from my point of view the profit margin is fairly small. However in terms of giving local people a bit of extra enjoyment over Christmas it is very satisfying.

I have just published some more old pictures of the harbour to the web with some interesting ones of the area west of the west pier where Moses’s shipyard was, I am hoping to get time soon to produce a book of pictures of the harbour, at the moment most of my time being spent either manufacturing enough copies of the books to keep up with the seasonal demand or helping people to work out which will be the best books for their friends and family.
Something that is also interesting this year is that I am finding many people are coming to the conclusion that a secondhand book makes an environmentally friendly Christmas present.

Historic pictures of Ramsgate

I have added more old Ramsgate pictures from this page on click here to see them. I should add that this is entirely down to the kindness and generosity of my shop customers who bring them in for me to scan or send them to me by email.

Where the pictures are not credited the owners of the originals prefer to remain anonymous.

Ramsgate carnival 1969

Having put up some pictures of Ramsgate carnival last week here is some video to go with it.

This is one of a series of videos taken by Harry Hickman from 1968 to 1970 his family had them converted to dvd and sent the originals of to the national archive but were kind enough to lend them to me to put on youtube to share with us all.