14 October 2011

I want to cross you off my list - There's nothing worse than a leaky groyne. This one is at Herne Bay in Kent.

13 October 2011

Long distance information, give me Memphis Tennessee - Lin and I have a couple of friends, Ted and Debi who live in East Tennessee. Every August they go to Memphis for Elvis Week and shortly afterwards we get a big box of Elvis goodies sent to us. This years box has just arrived!

12 October 2011

Back in the box again - With all of our current DIY project drawing to an end it will soon be time to put the tools back in the box and hopefully leave them there for a while.

11 October 2011

The city streets are empty now - This afternoon I did something that I haven't done for several years, I walked around Ramsgate Cemetery. Even though it's not far from where we live I'd forgotten just how big it is.

10 October 2011

Prettier than anything in the world - The dusk sky over Ramsgate.

9 October 2011

Spiders in my eyelids and ghosts in the cheese - This is the 1939 set of Garden Flowers cigarette cards published by WD & HO Wills. They used to belong to my Mum, she passed them onto Lin several years ago. The dried flowers on the right are gypsophila that came from Mum's wedding bouquet.


No matter how many times I look at this page I always see the black and white pansy as a skull and the yellow one above has turned into James Finlayson!

8 October 2011

I will be your knight in shining armour - Margate's surfboat The Friend to all Nations became famous in the great storm of 1897, which damaged much of Margate and destroyed the Switchback railway. On the morning of 2 December 1897, thirteen men set out in the surfboat towards the struggling Persian Empire. However the Friend was hit by two waves in quick succession and capsized just off the Nayland Rock. Just four men made it to shore, of whom the medic Charles Troughton died on reaching land. The remaining nine were all beaten to a pulp on the rocks, except for Joseph Epps who was found, barely alive, underneath the capsized boat. This is the memorial to those men, it stands on Margate's seafront, near The Nayland Rock Hotel.