Mike Samson at York Street Gallery in Ramsgate

The current exhibition is Home by the Sea IX by Mike Samson
Exhibition - 22 Nov - 14 Jan. Ed. as this is a long one with the painting changing as they sell I am posting it again with updated photos.

Some old pictures of Ramsgate and Margate, possible ramble

 I think all of the pictures should expand if you click on them from the blog.

 So wet today here in Ramsgate, I have been working on my minor adjustments to the bookshop to try and make it work better in the ever changing retail environment. Basically this is fiddling around with the very cheap end of the business - books priced between 5p and 50p.

 We seem to be in that strange impasse between Christmas and the new year, so what to say?

On the whole the local internet seems to be a bit tricky, the local newspaper sites seem to have taken the “How does anyone get paid for writing anything?” problem down the advertising road so far that the news isn’t there in an easy balance with the ads. I went on the Gazette site and got “if you want to read the rest of the article then fill in an online survey aka go to spam website.

Reading the article on the KM website is an arcade game of adverts for women's undies that can only be bought in the USA.

Of course our very own Kathy Bailes has a manageable website for local news but there is a point about paper papers managing in the web environment.

I think the web is basically becoming fiercer and more focused on taking money off you, legitimately or otherwise.

 With credit card and website security outside of giants Like Amazon I am now taking the approach that if the website I don't know doesn’t accept Paypal then it doesn’t get my card details. Now I am wondering about the card acquirers used by physical businesses and whether we need some sort of universal proof so we know our details are safe.

I have just bought some concert tickets online, the top sites to come up were reseller ticket sites and the concert website clearly states that you won’t get in with tickets bought from reseller sites.   

 The previous picture, this one and the next one Show Moses's Shipyard here in Ramsgate, a significant local business 100 years ago.

 Next these strange pictures of Margate Ambulance Corps, these make me wonder how ambulances worked in the days before the motorised ambulance.

I think assumed the doctor came to the patient by horse, the sort of wheeled barrow ambulance makes me wonder how and where they were used, if you collapsed on the seafront did they push you to Margate Hospital in one? Was there a doctor riding along in front on a horse? I suppose a further question would be is a moustache mandatory? 

Where is the snow? Happy Christmas!

Having just looked at the BBC weather app for Ramsgate, which says; “Today Sunny with heavy rain” This is no bovver for me as we have done our boxing for Boxing Day and are back home in the gap period when stuff cooks and we await more people turning up. No chance of snow as it’s about 10 °C, no chance of sun as it’s nearly dusk, and it certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to rain. Of course, it’s supposed to snow at Christmas, isn’t it? I have an arrangement over the god bothering, I don’t ask for any miracles or thunderbolts, so I haven’t prayed up and complained – about no snow that is. When I was a lad it was that cold that there was ice on the inside of my bedroom window, I remember cold feet and hands, but don’t remember it bothering me. Warnings about chilblains and not running it under the hot tap. Actually, and thinking about it, here in Ramsgate – i.e. after we dfl’d, so in the late 1960s, so late ladhood, it was pretty much the same as now. The big freeze of my childhood 62/3 was before Ramsgate and I was in some unknown convalescent home with masses of radiators, so while I was alive and saw the footprints in the six-foot snow, I wasn’t init.

So happy Christmas from all of us here in the bookshop, we will be open again tomorrow and closed again on Thursday, because it’s Thursday and not because it’s a bank holiday and closed on Monday because it is. Same information – different way of saying it on Saturday’s bookshop blog, at http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/merry-christmas-from-michaels-bookshop.html

We have had the laziest Christmas I ever remember, our oldest children being quite old and even our youngest children being fairly old I have to admit that it is only now, late afternoon on Boxing Day that the turkey has finally made it to the oven.

Here are some wintery local pictures, not this year and not now obviously.   

  

Still battling with changing phones, New Motorola XT1604 Moto G4 Play, not favourite over Christmas, I honestly can't say that it's either good or bad yet.

Here is the screenshot of the weather app from auntie Beeb

 Eg. the Christmas selfie stick that failed on some expensive phones, worked on it, straight away.

the camera onit is either good or bad, some good pictures and some bad but i haven't mastered it, going to try it with A Better Camera app.

The photos on my bridge camera card for the last couple of days are a bit odd, so maybe me, see the next few as representative, as I said lazy Christmas.

Of course you can't take this sort of picture with a phone 

few old pictures, bit of painting in Margate, ramble

I went to Margate for a bit today, I had been building shelves in the bookshop for most of this week and felt like a bit of a break.

The main incentive being sketching from the cafe of Turner Contemporary, I have an A3 picture on the go from there, this looks fairly OK at first glance but is mostly odd attempts during the last few months to draw cars and boats.

I was mostly doing this bit today.

 I did a bit of more general sketching - I can either get what I have painted or what I am paining in focus - so two photos.

After a bit I got cold and came home, I didn't expect it to be cold in the end of the cafe, perhaps there is an issue with the glazing or insulation, the only visible radiator in the gallery is the one under what I think of as the round window, this was belting out heat.

I assumed the rest is heated underfloor like a Roman Villa or something

A few gallery pictures by the youf of today and Davies, the other stuff I have already done, Arp and the bed, in other posts. Here is the link to one http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/photographs-of-tracey-emins-bed-and-arp.html

Arp, Davies and the bed, i.e. this exhibition I think started well but seems a bit on the quiet side now, here is the link to the gallery’s website https://www.turnercontemporary.org/  

I guess that underlying this is that most readers here and I think most people in Thanet – well in general are not that interested in contemporary art. I think in a general sense if you say Dadaism to most people they are just as likely to say erp as Arp.

Me – myself well I am most interested in more conventional art, particularly with respect to the way it depicts the history of the period – wot it wos done in.

on to the local pictures.

Here in Ramsgate I am keeping an eye on how Wetherspoons is impacting on the rest of the café culture. Hence the Pav picts. 

My own take is that while Wetherspoons is very busy, I would think much busier than if you were to take all of the people who would have been in the café culture and put them inside. But the café culture seems much quieter since Wetherspoons opened.

So I am assuming that overall a lot more people are eating and drinking in the Harbour Parade area but mostly in the new Wetherspoons, which seems to be better than the average Wetherspoons.

That said this café culture area of Ramsgate is probably dependent on all of the café culture doing fairly well. 

I guess the solutions are a bit more difficult to fathom and related to there being a concentration of businesses in a relatively small area offering a fairly similar product/service when a huge competitor arrives.

Back in the 1980s book trade when various chain bookshops were fighting for business in our town centres and killing off the independents, the battle was mainly fought on price.    

On the food and drink front Tripadvisor uses, value, food and service while the other main check is the Food Standards Agency hygiene ratings. In a sense now Google Maps is probably overtaking Tripadvisor. The bottom line though is the British customer votes with their feet.