20 July 2018

I Luv Thanet!

Traces of Eminence.....





Staying at the Walpole Bay Hotel and Museum, Margate (or rather Cliftonville) I are reminded of His Little Princeness, Oscar Wilde: This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do......

However, to be fair, I should perhaps be reminded of Tracey Emin (Who he?  Ed.) whose astonishing rise to pre-eminence amongst Royle Academicals (sic) is one of the wonders of Thanet.....




I mean,  Are Trace (sic again), was brought up here, and has since graced the Walpole Bay Hotel with a number of her increasingly numerous birthdays in their sprung floored ballsroom (next to the poolroom and the wunnerfool gents Uri Null....)




And, it goes without saying, T Race has shared her cake with mum and dad, et alios, in the discreet and salubrious dinning room (sic again).....




So much so, indeed, that this extraordinarily preserved (delicately scaffolded) hotel is constantly in demand from fitful daughters and hen partlets to this very day.....




But, let me think...  How did I get here?




There was a train.  There was Hernia Bay....




There was some beer, and then the long walk, all blood blisters, concrete and marshes, cheery youngsters pedalling against the tide, the Dickensian flatulence beyond their ken....




At Reculver we found Roman remains converted into Christian ruins.....  Art and architecture transmuted into navigational aids.....




Then the long concrete run towards Margate, past no end of jolly beach huts.....





Their locks gradually oxidising in the ozone....  

Continuously entertained by the graffiti, facilitated by the chalk from the crumbling cliffs and the lack of anything else for youngsters to do come dusk....

This one a triumph of understatement:




Chloe and the rest arnt  important


Who needs education?  As the writing on the crumbling wall of the Margate Lido says.....









We encounter a MerMan, one whose trajectory from King's Canterbury to destroying his hotel at Westgate and encouraging governmental investment in a block of flats has led to his immunity to Phytoplankton and Dinoflagellata....  His charm and clipped tones indicative of a limited integration with his estuarine neighbours....




Margate itself, visited earlier this year in respect of its strong and meaningful alliance with a Waste Land, is alive and well, in a sense.  Governmental short-term penny pinching meant that needy people were accommodated here to save on London rents, which, if you give that one moment of thought, begs the question of what next?  No jobs.....?

There are only so many crosswords you can do on a gallon of cider...






Margate is on the up, I am assured by one local resident.  But there is evidence to the contrary:







As if to prove something, Anthony Gormley has planted one of his cast iron forms on the rocks in front of the Turner Contemporary.  For an instant I muse on how well it might have survived the bombings in WWII, or the storms that shattered the pier and inundated the Lido....?








Margate, at least according to Timothy Spall, used to be a good place.  The light over Thanet was the best.....  And you could get here by boat in about eight hours from London.  

Quite what Mr Gormley has to do with this I don't know.  He has another one of these unapproachable individuals at Limehouse, and I am none the wiser....

Though I can connect with Mr Eliot, who, as I referred to in an earlier piece, found that he could connect nothing with nothing here on the sands....







I wonder if a metal detector might have helped?

As it is.  Life goes on.  Margate and arsenic survive....








And, at great expense, Dreamland has been resurrected....








Though, over at the Turner Contemporary, the exhibited Giraffe is not well.  And people seem not to care, preoccupied with some communal erudition.....








The primates are pensive......







Puzzled by the chaos of the world about them:








Though some find time, despite the ignorant humans behind them, to discuss the meaning of life, or, should I say, the emin of liff?








Much as might be considered over a pint at Fez, an eclectically stylish micro pub in the High Street.....








I dunno.  A dip in the tidal pool is needed:








I mean, what is Art?  What is this life, if full of care?  I sail up towards the sun above genteel, Dickensian Broadstairs, Icarus-like, and wonder, Ms Eminem, can you enlighten me at all?








As I wander the streets of Ramsgate, trying to find a signal, I somehow doubt it......








I kinda think, Ms Enema, that, what with your Tory politics, and belief in Brexit, your unmade bed, your embroidered tent (pity the Saatchis burned it, Ed.) and your house in France, that perhaps your view of life is not as simple as mine.....

But, hey. We can be friends. I know you snubbed me when our eyes met at The Golden Heart, Spitalfields. But you were too busy drinking black velvet with Gilbert and George, and our brief encounter never flourished....

Think again?  We could start a new tent, velcro on a new name or two, and sit watching the sun go down, as the Life Boat symbolically returns to Margate.....






As the empty Life Boat returns to Margate, as anxious watchers wait and pray, as the sun goes down.....




5 July 2018

Sweden 2018

England: some;  Sweden: too..... 




I know it's a bit of a thingism, but the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize comes from the inventor of dynamite seems to me to be one of those life ironies that ranks alongside Donald Trump being in any way involved in the presidency of the United States or that Sven-Göran Eriksson was once the England football manager.... What if he held that position today?


CuriousYellowPoster.jpg


I first met Sweden on my twenty-first birthday, when, in Morecambe, Lancs, I took my girlfriend to see I am curious (yellow).  This was way before Travis Bickle, but, if you have ever seen Taxi Driver, you will recognise that perhaps he and I have something in common..... 







Sweden is the third largest (after France and Spain) European country, but has a population of less than nine million.  Which means that it has 46 million fewer people to choose from for its football team.  Which is to say that if I were Swedish I would have a much better chance of representing my country for the game this Saturday.....

Which has no bearing on which side will win.

Or lose.....




I was in Malmö when Sweden went ahead in their game with Germany.  The drunken Swedish sailors I happened to be with were delighted at half time, and the Mello Yello Bar & Restaurang, at Lilla Torg 1211 34 Malmö, was dancing....  It didn't end that way, the Blagult going down two to one.  But it wasn't the end, and Janne Anderssen got things back together for the team to better the Mexicans by three to nothing  and to best the Swiss by one....  I mean....


My (limited) experience of the Swedes is positive.  They are a little bit like turnips, perhaps....  But much sweeter.  This is Marina, who runs the bar on the beautiful, antique ferry boat to and from Vaxholm from Stockholm, and who loves it when it is frozen, cold and icy.....  You can see it in her eyes.





Though, if their literature is anything to go by, not everyone has a sunny disposition.....  Enter August Strindberg and Miss Julie, stage left....






But the Swedes clearly know where to place their trust.  I didn't notice any bars named after Boris 'Stig' Johansen, or Michael Gøve....

but it can only be a matter of time.....




In the meantime, having followed Saga over the Bridge to Malmö and burnt her memorabilia in sight of the Twisted Torso,





I crane up at the torso,




And gaze at the mighty Ã˜resund Bridge, which I flipped over almost unnoticed....





And then, after a brief visit to Lund and its Romanesque Cathedral,






And a quick Wallander wander round Ystad, where the burghers are just a tad old-fashioned,







I proceed to the capital, Stockholm where everything is much more cosmopolitan and bipolar (sorry, bicyclical)...





Here there's no pretentious vaping.  No clouds of Rainbow Sherbert polluting the streets.... People are quite happy to smoke properly.  I guess the climate is so bad most of the time, life expectancy must be reliant on Max von Sydow and his scythe....





On the other hand, they love their dogs sooooo much......







They probably text them when the lead runs out....






So what can I tell you about Sweden?

Well some Swedes (the peasants) live in old houses with limited wi-fi and not enough seating:







While others (the Royals) live in vast palaces with special corridors for skate-boarding or perhaps curling practice (this one was shown to me on a private viewing):






These large homes are equipped with staircases.  Peasant houses may have ladders.







According to museums, the greatest Swedish achievement was building a huge ship which sank almost immediately after being launched on August 10th, 1628.  The Vasa.... is so called because they didn't even finish naming it before it sank  (apparently it was to be called the Vas Deferens as an homage to Gustav Vasa, Gustav the First, founder of the House of Vasa....)







It has been rumoured that it may never sail again, though IKEA are currently trying to find the keel.....


Other Swedish achievements include building unfinished bridges across lakes:






And looking hauntingly into the distance, as if Video Assistant Referees had not been introduced.....







Or looking very seriously at someone else as if they were really listening (while waiting for their phone to vibrate):






Or wondering where to plug it in.....




Add caption


But they have some great half empty glasses....








Some lovely windows, which are useful for at least half the year.....







And some wonderful galleries, where you could dream of giraffes, and such, for hours,







Or take your children to appreciate Picasso and Modigliani, 








Or, in Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, a place I really liked, you can spend a little time wondering at clouds, and just how difficult it must be to get them to stay still long enough for you to paint them properly.....








What I think I liked about Sweden (and I still need to think about this) was how people seemed so positive - so confident.  Apart from the unimaginably delightful Marina, everyone I met was very serious, as if they were building up for some great confrontation and they had to muster every nerve and marshal every hair.....  The young,




And the old, deep in rehearsals of things that Janne Andersson has said recently: We know we are a good team. . . . What other teams and countries think about this, that’s not terribly interesting, really. . . . Here’s my thinking. I’m a little bit crazy this way. I don’t think I’ve dug deep down to find out how I feel. . . . I don’t think I’m taking it in. I’m not taking in any of this right now......








Me?  I am easy....  Thinking about what Sweden has given to the world:  ABBA, Anita Ekberg, Jenny Lind, Henning Mankell.....  Do I really care?  They wanted me to pay to go into the ABBA museum!  Excuse me!

I am just happy to have found Tennstopet, at 50 Dalagatan, where I can sip beer and akvavit, eat matjes herring or meatballs.....  




I am a simple soul.  I just hope everyone enjoys the football, and, whoever, wins or loses, there's no hard feelings.....

How about a Nobel Prize for Football?  Awarded to the team that is nicest to everyone else?

Excuse me while I take my clothes off, and squeeze this fish.....






And then retire to my dream house under the clouds.....