Northdown Road Cliftonville Margate. 2009 photos 1961 Kelly's Harbour Street Ramsgate 1961 Kelly's and painting down the Pav

 So starting with the Northdown Road Cliftonville Margate. 2009 photos, these will probably expand if you click on them. I am often taken to task over publishing too many photos but for the very dedicated here is the link to the series of linked pages of photos I took on that day back in 2009.

 Next Kelly's these should expand to make them easier to read however full size pictures can be found using the link near the end of this post. A Thanet Kelly's directory for the late 1960s will set you back about £30 for a fairly scruffy one without a map and about £50 for a reasonable condition one with its map still in it. It's a sliding scale with an 1880s one setting you back over £200, easy to confirm looking at the sold listings on Ebay. If you can't afford the originals then here is the link to the cheap reprints of useful part we publish once you have gone there use the links down the side of the page to navigate between different directories. We always do our best to help people obtain the original ones but the are hard to get.

here is the link to the photos I took today

As I said this included the larger photos of the Kelly's pages

 A big scrub off and repaint on my watercolour sketch of The Royal Victoria Pavilion Ramsgate aka Wetherspoons today. If you paint in watercolour then the only paper I have found that allows you to sponge off like this is Bockingford Not. By this I mean use a wet sponge an a tissue to get your mistakes of of it.

Apart from coming to Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate, where I work, to buy old or new Thanet directories, for the very dedicated

here is the link to the books that went out yesterday

Visiting the bookshop by car, we are right next to a large car park.

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.

A few early aircraft in Thanet pictures and a bit of a painting blogging ramble at Wetherspoons Ramsgate

 Ramsgate Harbour 1914 I think

 I think this is Westgate based only really on it being with the next one

This is the RNAS camp at Westgate so WW1

Writing this post in The Royal Victoria Pavilion aka Wetherspoons Ramsgate in between bouts of painting while listening to versions BBC podcasts of what I can only describe as a self improving nature.

A tip here for using a Bluetooth keyboard to type into your phone is to have the phone's virtual keyboard open at the same time, this helps with auto correcting as you go.


I guess two aspects of painting here are the way people use the staircase and how to express this in terms of sketching a moving person or moving people and the technology producing a wired blue light that reflects off of people's faces in different ways,

Another spot the difference I'm afraid, about as much sponged off as painted on

I have been listening to stuff on philosophy, psychology, science and so on. at the moment apart from brushing up my physics which gets rusty every few years, I am particularly interested in the recent information on the human brain, and I suppose an extension of this is how the brain is managing to come to terms with the new technology.

interesting also how many major academic figures had some sort of nervous breakdown in their late teens or early twenties. I think this may be related to the expansion of white matter in the brain at this point in life.

Work wise another busy day at Michael's Bookshop where I work here in Ramsgate. I have been checking the soft craft books, reducing and saleing off old stock, needlepoint and cross-stitch have sold very badly over the last couple of years and most of what we had has been consigned to the 50ps, embroidery didn't fare much better, I guess mobile devices have taken over.

Here is the link to the books we put out today more flying boats

Ramsgate Carnival 2007 and Canterbury today

Book buying in Canterbury today so not any local photos in the can, most of the photos are Ramsgate 2007

For the dedicated followers of the bookshop

this is the link to the photos of the books that went out yesterday

If you want to look at the rest of the 2007 Ramsgate Carnival photos I published the as a series of linked pages.

This is the link to the carnival photos 

As I said Canterbury today

This is the link to today's photos

Finally I am posting up my thoughts about the political situation as we are in the middle of the BREXIT crisis and in years to come I will want some sort of record.

There is a sort of theory that we live in a democracy and that the idea of this is to choose the best and brightest people to run the country. I think probably mainly because of the way the media presents or politics, we are repeatedly told that all politicians are bad people. I guess to some extent we have developed a situation where politics attracts more bad people than it should. I would think this is mostly based on a lot of people not wishing to stand, to be surrounded by bad people, to be presented as a bad person and so on.

Of course to get to the top of either of the main political parties you need to have the interests of the country as a fairly high priority.

As far as I can see our MPs have basically voted to give the decision about whether we stay in the EU or come out of the EU over to the EU.

One big factor here is that because it was predominantly old people who voted leave and the vote was very close, we now have a situation where the number of older remain voters who died since the referendum, means that if you count the people who voted that are still alive then we actually voted to remain.

The next election is for district and parish councillors. This is mainly the person who you phone up over rubbish housing street cleaning etc.

I think the idea is we decide which councillor would be best to resolve issues over the rubbish that hasn't been collected or Street to the hasn't been swept, on the basis of whether or not we don't like Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May.

Link to the council election candidates and some pictures

Apparently there was a lot of police activity here in King Street Ramsgate link to news item we were at work in the bookshop and it seemed to be moderately busy all day, no one here noticed anything.

A couple of before and after photos taken here in Ramsgate, the same streetlamp appears in both of them

This was taken in 2009

This one today

another one from ten years ago, progress here is strange.

2009

Today

Here is the link to the rest of the photos I took today

All snapshots handheld so some of the long zoom shots will be blurry, the gallery shots are the new exhibition in Nice Things awaiting my knowing about the exhibition so I can post about it.

 A couple of archive photos of Ramsgate harbour next

 I think this is the mayor of Margate  William Booth Reeve

 This the Ramsgate 1905 tram accident

hopefully this link should take you to the candidates for the forthcoming council elections 

It may be worth looking at the list for the ward you live in to see if you can find anyone you know, has an online presence, would take up an issue for you.

With some of the candidates you can even tell if they live in your ward.