Old Thanet photos, Posting Painting from the Royal Victoria Pavilion Ramsgate aka Wetherspoons.

Salmestone Grange, in roughly the words of the song, it's younger than that now.

This and that in today's post I have just got back from painting at the Pav here in Ramsgate, more of that further down the post. The computer that I usually work on/at in the bookshop has just been changed for a faster one and I am checking it out while the grownup who changed it for me is still here.

Hence and f'rinstance a link to the bigger pictures possibly too big, on the other hand - not the expected four fingers thumb etc. but this works better for the Nikon P610. Vide ligo 

As you may have seen, having built a wooden building in Charlotte Court the are lining the outside with bricks. I recently watched the same technique in Canterbury.

What with BREXIT, and the local elections I sort of feel I should say something or another, with the locals where it should be for and about who you would like to get elected, it does seem to be about trying to keep out who you really don't want to get in.

I wonder what the local situation will be with climate change. In one way, is there much local government can do about it? In the other, how much will the climate change changes impact on what local government can do?

HMS Revenge

I think this is the "new" Margate lighthouse after rebuilding after the 1953 storm.

I am writing this post in The Pav aka Spoons, Saturdays are becoming a day off for me, in the sense that I do something different. Dealing in books and working on versions aspects of Thanet's local history can easily take over. On the painting front the idea is to try to improve on my sketch drawn inside the Pav by drawing/painting it again, especially looking at the faults in the previous sketch.

Another aspect of this is adding bits to the previous sketch is the floor, especially the parquet bit. This is both brown and very dark coloured almost black, but also reflective so parts of it are almost white. A lot of light comes from the windows behind it. A sort of What's black and white and brown all over?

Thanet pictures, thoughts on shops.

 The news that Debenhams is to close 22 of its 50 shops including Ashford, Folkestone and Canterbury but not Westwood Cross during next year is in the headlines today.

I suppose Primark expanding and opening up new shops shows that this isn't just to do with the clothes based retail world.

Locally in the short term I think the impact on Canterbury will be particularly significant, I have been talking about the shop closures there on and off for over a year, it's a worrying trend.

Here in Ramsgate the bookshop still seems to be doing fairly OK difficult to judge in terms of how things are with respect to other shops as I don't think it would be possible to get a good living out of running a viable bookshop. It is more a case of I didn't expect to and am doing what I enjoy, thank you very much.

I think that the relationship between towns and trade is important, something along the lines that there is a relationship between trade, civilisation and towns that extends back about 5,000 years and is based around having to go to concentrations of population to buy things which is now coming apart.

How important this is in terms of the fabric of our society is difficult to understand until well after it has happened I would expect.

We did a certain amount of work today and here is the link to the books that went out  I guess viable is partly a mixture of quality and price

None of the photos below are recent

Ramsgate, Margate and Broadstairs photos historic and 2013

 I was off around the area buying books for Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate which is where I work today. A round trip up the north Kent coast and coming back via Canterbury. Most of what I buy is what I would loosely call bookshop fiction. A lot of it falls into either being literary or genre fiction and on the whole it is easier to understand what I mean by looking at a few pictures. We put a lot out yesterday and here is the link to the pictures of it    should you need to turn some of your paperbacks into cash, then this type of stuff.

The other type which I would roughly classify as fairly recent bestsellers, the type of book that mostly has a life in supermarkets followed by charity shops, for the most part doesn't get as far as our main fiction alphabet but goes out at 50p mostly on the shelving in one of our shop windows.

On the way back we followed the number 9 Canterbury to Ramsgate bus and the fumes from it were so bad we had to drop back and adjust the ventilation in the car so it wasn't taking in air from outside. 

Not good when one considers using public transport to reduce pollution and to be honest I don't really know what to do about it.

With the following eclectic batch of archive photos I think the most striking thing is what a benefit the heritage pontoons were in Ramsgate and what a pity the council removed them.