Postcard from Ramsgate

Friday night, we take the fast train from St Pancras and an hour and a half later we’re on the promenade amongst the faded seaside glamour of Ramsgate. Georgian houses facing the sea, a grand Victorian lift that may or may not take you to the beach, a chip shop that urges you to use the bins provided. Not bins provided by the chip shop but the ones on the opposite side of the road, supplied by the council.

We’re here to see Jeffrey Lewis at Ramsgate Music Hall, a fabulous little venue that at full capacity holds 120 people. Upstairs is a cosy bar with a glass display of old tape recorders, and big sofas from which you can also view the gig on a screen if you so wish. We watch downstairs; Jeffrey Lewis is stunning this evening, the sound amazing and the cider upstairs a treat.

Despite the rundown feel of the place - the fight that happens in broad daylight up a side street in town, and the problem that we don’t have any of the tattoos required to fit in with the general ambience, everyone we speak to is friendly to us. We must be radiating that holiday vibe. The guy who runs the venue is surprised at how far we’ve come and chats to us about the venue and the bands. I persuade him to try and book the Vaselines. The next day, at the Ice Cream parlour, the guy serving us decides we should get flakes for free because “we deserve it”, having deservedly ordered ice cream and tried for free the fabulous blood orange sorbet.

Later we’re wandering past a junk shop under the arches by the harbour when we spy a blue folding bike outside, with a £45 price tag. We offer to buy it immediately but the guy doesn’t take cards. He tells me where the cashpoint is and tells me to travel there on the bicycle I’m yet to buy. We’re not in London anymore.

On the train we take up four seats, two for us and two for the new bike. The ticket inspector turns up and has no issue with our use of seats. Infact, I think he positively likes it. Later we see him at St Pancras station getting some tea before he heads back, and he waves and says hello. Then he invites us to the Broadstairs Charles Dickens festival in August.

See you soon Ramsgate.  

Water flowing underground

I’ve found a perfect spot in the house to relax; a duvet has been thrown in one corner of the spare room, below the window, and it’s here I sat the other afternoon, with the sun coming through the window warming my head. I dug out a batch of old letters, the bulk of which were sent between 1992 and 1995; the golden age of letter writing. O letter writing. a forgotten but perfect art. These days letters come in the form of officially typed addresses, with reference numbers, in plastic windowed envelopes. The thud on the mat is never met with anticipation, just a resigned feeling of which wolf has come through the door this time?

I’ve hardly looked at these old letters for at least ten years and I’d forgotten I’d been sent some of them. There they were, individual handwriting, different personalities who immediately became familiar after a couple of sentences. All these brilliant people I used to know. I was taken back to a world of cheap musty rooms I could almost smell again. The world of exchanging mix tapes, charity shop clothes, nights sitting around three bar fires drinking Bulgarian red wine,  drinking into the next day because it didn’t really matter if you got up or not, days wandering, talk of festivals, dreams and schemes shouted enthusiastically into the night. This forgotten world. Where did everybody go? Where did the boy they wrote to go?

An anecdote from 1992. One bored evening Barney reveals he has bought a bag of dresses from a jumble sale for 50 pence, protesting he only bought them because they were so cheap. Next someone has the bright idea of us wearing the dresses and knocking on people’s doors in the house with a camera to capture their reactions. The reactions fall into two camps.  One side say, with a resigned tone: “Oh it’s you lot.” The other side say: “Have you got any more dresses, Barney?” Before long there are eight of us taking to the streets, strumming guitars and chanting our way around. Not the best move on the streets of Toxteth. We get to the end of Lodge Lane before changing our mind and retreating home. We sit around the landing, before Marcus comes back home from his shift at the pub. He takes one look at us and says, “ you lot must be really bored,” before disappearing quickly into his room.

I’ll leave you with a few words, written to me in January 1995 from my friend Miss Nutt (I’m sure she won’t mind): “I know I said I’d write over a week ago but my brain has been in a pickle jar since then and that Brucey boy went an’ lost the lid”. 

Yes folks this was the 90s.