Last bank holiday Monday some friends and I went to "the original seaside", as Margate is now billing itself, to see the new Turner Contemporary. It looks a bit shed-like when you exit the station, but because it's the same height as the other buildings around it, it doesn't seem intrusive (it actually looks lower than it does in my photo, which is zoomed and cropped).

It's a rather nice space inside, not very big, but light and cool. Charles Holland has written a good review of it here, which saves me having to say much else.

The day we were there the seafront was heaving with bikers there for the Margate Meltdown, with lots of stalls, and pub rock bands, and gawkers. It was the most crowded I'd seen the place (but then again I've never been there in the height of the season before).

There were lots of bikes parked outside the gallery, framed here by Daniel Buren's already iconic stripes. (The huge windows overlooking the sea are fantastic.)

After visiting the Turner, I dragged my friends off to the Shell Grotto (no visit to Margate is complete without it), where I was temporarily adopted by the very friendly Grotto Cat.

And then a stroll around town, where we discovered that Limbo is situated between a Burton shop and a KFC.

And there was plenty of bunting. Bunting is definitely the "in" thing this year. I'd like to blame That Wedding, but it was popping up all over the place long before that. The high street was full of bright fluttering flags, which couldn't hide the fact that so many of the shops have closed down (but on the plus side, there were some new, independent ones which had opened up since I was there last year). I liked the two-tone chequered bunting outside the mod shop, and the orange-and-black bunting along the route of the bikefest, as well.

A day at the seaside requires ice cream, so we headed off to get some at Carter's Steam Fair, which was set up in the Dreamland car park. Unfortunately, it started raining as soon as we walked in through the gates, so we didn't stay long, and the rain only got harder when we left. With a bit of time before the next train back to London, we took shelter in a cafe in Buenos Ayres.

(It wasn't as nice as the cafe we had lunch in, a proper classic caff with red leatherette booths called Kalli's, where a cup of tea, scrambled egg, proper crispy bacon and mushrooms on toast came to the princely sum of three quid. Brilliant.)

Then back to the train station, with barely enough time to admire the lovely station ceiling, and on to the fast train home to London in the rain.

It wouldn't have been a proper Whitsun bank holiday without some rain, I suppose. And speaking of bank holidays, I was amused and interesting to read this piece on Margate and bank holidays a couple of days later.

More photos from the day (with more to come) here. All my Margate photos are here. You can read about previous visits to Margate here and here.

Like many seaside towns, Bognor has a rather bizarre array of architecture on display. At one end of the promenade are a selection of concrete beach huts, which could look quite ugly, but they've all been given a pretty paint job.

We spotted a wedding couple with a photographer, taking cheesy photos of the groom carrying the bride down the beach (which seemed fair, as she wasn't wearing shoes and the beach was all shingle just there). We also spotted a huge, dead seagull lying on its back, so I couldn't resist this picture of it with the wedding party in the background.

At the other end of the promenade, where the houses aren't so posh, the beach huts are wooden and painted in a bizarrely radioactive array of IKEA-like colours. I think these were available for rent by the day, unlike the concrete ones which all seemed to be privately owned.

Nearby, we spotted these eccentric mish-mash houses built from old train carriages and garden sheds. They didn't look too weatherproof: one sharp gust of wind might blow them away!

And these, which seemed oddly Mediterranean, and like little tug boats at the same time. I like the balcony/porch combo with the portholes.

Then there's this monstrosity, which could have been good, except that the proportions are all wrong and the mirrored windows are too aggressive. Judging from the few balcony ornaments we spotted (there was a really hideous elfin Peter Pan statue sitting on the penthouse patio), it's going to be full of people with too much money and no taste, which is what you'd expect from anyone who'd want to live in a place that looked like this (the photo actually makes it look better, which means it probably passes the Architecture Squint Test Owen refers to in this essay):

Bognor has a big Butlin's resort which you can see from the train when you're coming in — it's got a peaked marquee that looks like something from a fairytale at a distance. Up close it looks a lot less romantic, but the really interesting thing about the place is that it takes up a huge stretch of the Bognor seafront, but almost none of the place can actually see the sea. There are no windows, and all sorts of fences blocking access between the buildings and the promenade. There's something rather twisted about that.

There's one place at Butlin's that does have a seafront view, the new Shoreline Hotel which was built a few years ago. It's not a bad building, as it seems to follow the seaside moderne tradition of buildings that look like ocean liners (such as the De La Warr Pavilion or Marine Court which I blogged about here). I forgot to take a photo of the side view to show you what I mean, but the front view is quite nice.

But my favourite building in Bognor was "this cleverly quaint little house, a sort of building which in its optimistic quality and simplicity might be emulated in thousands all over the kingdom."

No, not the ugly yellow thing squatting on the side of the road, which I included in the frame for comparison, but that elegant and odd little tower. It's called the White Tower, and looks like it was built sometime in the 1930s when both square whitewashed buildings and suburban cottages were commonplace, so I was interested to learn that it's actually much older than that. It was designed in 1897 by John Cyril Hawes, who was just 21 at the time. It's been surmised that he built it as a tower so as to be able to have a view of the sea, rather than the other buildings in front of it. You see pictures of the interior in this pdf. [link takes you to GoogleDocs version of an estate agent's pdf]

The more I think about it, though, the more I find myself wondering when it was whitewashed and when it acquired its name, because it wasn't particularly common practice to whitewash buildings like this in the 1890s when red brick and terracotta were still at the height of popularity. I was under the impression that it wasn't until the birth of modernism that people started painting their houses white like this, but I could be wrong — feel free to comment if you know anything about it. (Incidentally, Hawes himself went on to live in a hermitage in the Bahamas which he designed in the 1940s.)

It was a pretty mixed day, with dramatic changes in the sky, but it only rained twice: once when we were in a cafe having lunch, and once when we were in the pub. To give you an idea of the dramatic weather, these two photos were taken around the same time, from the same bit of the beach (those steps were quite interesting, covered in green and purple seaweed, limpets, barnacles and whelks, not to mention a little pool with tiny fish in it).

Bognor may not be winning any style awards or high accolades any time soon, but it's a very pleasant place for a relaxing day out by the sea. So get yourself a cuppa, and sit down and enjoy the view. More photos here.

It was too hot for a full meal of fish and chips, and most of the places weren't very cheap (not as cheap as Margate or Hastings anyway), but we did get chips from Bailey's Fry Inn, which has fantastic vintage 1970s signage.

After that we went and had tea at The London Restaurant, because the pretty red-and-green awning had caught my eye from down the road. It's a very old-fashioned cafe/restaurant, which looks like it hasn't changed since the late 1960s. They were even showing Thunderbirds when we walked in (then they switched to the racing).

The funny thing about this place is that I later found out from my mum that her aunt (who I never met) worked there, probably some time in the 1950s or 1960s! Maybe it even had the same decor back then…

Gorgeous blue skies and blazing sunshine called for ice cream, and Southend just happens to have its own chain, Rossi's, who've been serving ice cream to the holiday-makers of Essex since the 1930s.

We had ours on the pier, after a loooong walk from the shore — Southend Pier is the longest pleasure pier in the world; over 2km (almost a mile and a half). That meant there was about three miles of bunting (on both sides), made from actual fabric remnants rather than the expected scraps of plastic. It's the the longest line of bunting in the world!

If you don't fancy the walk, there's a train track, with a couple of cute trains, as well.

The pier is so ridiculously long because there's a massive sandbar which means that the tide never gets very high even when it's full. In fact, even over a mile out there are spots under the pier without water when the tide is low. All the same, you wouldn't want to walk around under there, because there's no sand or pebbles; the ground is thick with crusty barnacles instead, and a few squishy starfish that got left behind.

The tide being so low so far out leaves you with the somewhat surreal sight of people standing slap in the middle of the Thames estuary with the water barely coming up to their waists, as you can see in this handily annotated picture I took from the pier:

We actually watched those three people in the middle walk up the end of the pier. It was surprisingly dramatic, as a lifeboat came racing around the end of the pier, and a security guard dashed past us to intercept them as they climbed up. You can see the lifeboat and the trio in the distance here:

We got a bit worried, as we noticed one of them needed to be carried up the slope. It turned out she'd had been stung by a jellyfish just as they'd reached the pier (we'd spotted some in the water ourselves). She was okay, though, as we found out on the train back to shore, because they sat next to us. They were three teenagers who'd made the walk on a dare, and it had taken them a couple of hours. Security felt sorry for them and let them catch the train back for free!

The little old-fashioned train reminded me of the train journey in Spirited Away, and it was quite fun. It was interesting to see the difference in the tide from when we went out and when we came back:

Our evening ended up in a quiet little beer garden of what turned out to be "Southend's premier gay bar" where we had a great time bonding with the landlord on the subjects of good gin, Batman comics and gloriously rude innuendo. Pity about the limited selection of beer (only extra cold stuff, and no ales), but it was a much more cheerful and friendly than the enormous and depressing Wetherspoons pub across the road.

I was almost sad to leave Southend so soon, but got back to London in time to watch Catherine mess around on a couple of street pianos at Fenchurch Street and the Royal Exchange before they all disappeared the following morning. There's something wonderfully, magically strange about watching someone play a piano at midnight, in the middle of the street, as red double-deckers drive past you and the Bank of England. I was almost expecting passersby to break into song and dance at any moment, but all they did was break into applause. Still a lovely end to a lovely day, though.

More pics here.

…and past the cathedral, which is surprisingly huge for a small town (suggesting it must once have been quite the seat of power, what with the castle and all)…

…then up into Arundel Park, past the funny little gatehouse…

you'll find a lovely little castellated folly called Hiorne Tower.

Built in 1787 by Francis Hiorne, it's a triangular prospect tower with a marvellous view across the south downs, and a perfect place for a picnic. Which is what we did.

Hiorne built the tower to demonstrate his architectural ability to the Duke of Norfolk, but there's not much information available about his life or any other buildings he may have worked on, and he died before he could go on to actually do any more work for the duke. The tower is reputed to be haunted, but we saw no signs of anything.

In front of the tower is an unlikely curiosity to find sitting in a field, in the shape of an antique urn, brought back as spoils from the Crimean War after the siege of Sevastapol in 1855.

The tower itself is quite unusual, with a checkerboard pattern made from flint.

One side of the tower is extremely weathered, but the other side is not (I forgot to check the third side, but suspect it was also unweathered).

After our picnic, we had a a nice slow amble down into the valley, along the Monarch's Way, where we mostly talked to sheep.

It was quite a surprise to turn a bend and suddenly come across the lake.

At the edge of it is pretty Swanbourne Lodge, which houses a tea-rooms, but we didn't stop because we'd just had lunch. You can rent rowing boats to go on the lake, which looks like fun if you can get someone to row you around whilst you lounge.

We followed the River Arun, stopping to talk to ducklings and get excited about seeing a water vole, and wandered back into the centre of town. There's a rather good second-hand bookshop there, Kim's, which has a great selection of kids' books, including at least two bookcases which are filled floor-to-ceiling with vintage Ladybird books. It's not very cheap but I picked up a couple of things anyway. After that, time for a quick pint in a pub and then the train home. Marvellous. More photos here.

Thanks to Anwen for suggesting it, and for being great company.

Last Saturday the Shabby Seaside Appreciation Society went to Canvey. This man-made island at the end of the Thames estuary in Essex was the subject of a recent documentary (which I've not seen yet, but which you can read about in a recent post on Fantastic Journal). It was quite a grim day to visit quite a grim place, but we had a great time, despite the poor weather and the air of neglect.

It's hard to believe Canvey was once a popular seaside resort full of people; not just because peoples' holiday tastes have moved further afield, but also because there's a hulking great chemical refinery in the middle of it all. Canvey is one of those places that would probably seem very boring to most people, but I found something pleasing or interesting to look at in most corners we explored, whether it was discovering graphic design in the amusement arcades, trying to work out the purpose of bizarre industrial pipework in the refinery, or spotting an elegant egret stalking across the mudflats.

Downtown Canvey is a tiny crossroads of small streets filled with amusement arcades and ice-cream kiosks, which is a haven of fantastic lettering design, so I was pretty happy there.

There's an adorably tiny cinema, which was showing Oil City Confidential, amongst more mainstream fare, and a couple of nice examples of seaside moderne architecture in the shape of The Labworth Cafe (still a popular venue) and the Monico (now a tacky pub). However, there was a definite dearth of any useful shops to buy everyday things like cigarettes (I don't smoke; one of the people I was with does though).

That's pretty much all there is to downtown Canvey, and the best pub in the area is a good 30-40 minutes walk along the coast, past a couple of caravan parks and the refinery.

I could have happily spent the day just exploring the industrial architecture if we could have found a way in that didn't include getting caught up on razor wire or mauled by guard dogs, but it's not exactly a picturesque scene for a holiday, and the sight of rows and rows of holiday caravans huddled up against rows and rows of gasometers was quite an odd one. (Sadly I didn't take a photo of that for some reason.)

When we eventually made it to the pub, it was a welcome respite, not just from the increasingly desolate view but also from the increasingly inclement weather. The Lobster Smack is a rather cosy old-fashioned pub, once a popular haunt of smugglers, and apparently the model for a pub mentioned in Dickens' David Copperfield. It was full of local families having lunch, but we bagged a table, ordered lunch and waited for the others to turn up. Lunch was very cheap (two portions of fish and chips for a fiver) and very good, with huge portions. Some of the others were tempted by the amazing-looking selection of very reasonably-priced puddings, including a gooey slice of triple-decker chocolate cake which could have served about five people, but lunch had filled us up nicely, and we headed off back to the bus stop to catch the bus back to Benfleet station.

On the walk back to the bus stop we passed an old man in tight jeans and shiny shoes, running erratically down the middle of the road. "I'm the fastest man on the island!" he shouted back at us as he ran past. Unfortunately, despite the fact that there was at least 12 of us with a camera, no one got a photo of him! We did however spot this sign from the Canvey Island Independent Party:

No idea if they're better or worse than the Tories, though. We also passed a tiny thatched cottage, which looked almost incongruous amongst the twentieth-century bungalows. It dates from 1621, and is one of two octagonal cottages on the island.

We passed the other one on the bus, a tiny pink house with a funny-shaped triangular extension. It turns out this was a local museum, which I would have liked to have paid a visit to, as it seems likely to be a while before I go back to Canvey again.

More pics here.

Pics also from: Jodi | Arty | Kathy | Dee | Paul | David | Chris |

I mentioned the beautiful vaulted ceiling of Margate Station last time, but I can't resist posting another photograph of it, because it is so lovely.

The abandoned car park is attached to Margate's landmark towerblock, Arlington House, and looks over the abandoned Dreamland theme park, where fairground ghosts wait for their £3.7m resurrection. Whilst everyone else got out their DSLRs and had complicated conversations about f-stops and tripods, I was messing around with new photo apps on my iPhone.

(Last week, by coincidence, someone favourited my old picture of the station ceiling, so I had a browse through their other favourites and came across these great shots taken in 1963 when Arlington House was going up. Apparently it's due to be struck with what can only be termed "Noughty Cladding Syndrome" which I use to refer to the trend over the last decade for covering classic mid-to-late twentieth century concrete architecture in (usually awful and unsympathetic) cladding, a subject which I am sure Owen can rant about with more wit than I would. In fact, he probably already has.)

After a stroll along the seafront, a group of us headed off to the Shell Grotto, which I wrote about after my last visit there. I still think it's a wonderful, fantastic, bizarre place, but I got the impression that most of the others were indifferent and even bored by it. Well, boo, to them, they have no heart or soul. This time I got excited because I noticed that lots of shells had names and dates on them, some of them going back to the 1950s, and some going back even further nearer to the time the grotto was first discovered.

From there we wandered back down to the seafront to find fish and chips for lunch at Peter's Fish Factory, which comes recommended by us here at Mondo Towers. I had saithe, because I had never eaten it before, except it turned out to be the same thing as coley, which I have. With a generous portion of chips, plus mushy peas and a large and extremely juicy gherkin, it came to the princely sum total of three quid. Bargain. At that price I could have had seconds, if I could have managed to eat anything else after that.

At this point our small group split again, as some people wandered off down the seafront in search of a wrestling artist, whilst the rest of us had a stroll along the harbour wall and around the cliff to Lido Sands. The Harbour Wall seemed to have lost its pretty flags, but has gained a permanent bronze statue of one of Ann Carrington's lovely Shell Ladies, and we spotted a Thames estuary pilot ship chugging out to a large ship to guide it in to the shore.

We bumped into some more Flickr friends returning from Lido Sands, who told us to look out for the wrecked car being submerged by the incoming tide, and recommended a fine venue for tea (more on this later). More bizarre than the car wreck was the fact that it was the only place where there were any real waves to be seen; the rest of the time the sea was incredibly calm, with a slick glassy sheen and barely a ripple (as you can see in the photo at the end of this post).

Lido Sands was looking abandoned and neglected, but the shockingly red roofs of its car park led me to finding red in other places in the nearby vicinity.

On the road above, I found Bleak House (the real Bleak House is of course down the road in Broadstairs), and didn't realise as I took this photograph that one of its tenants was watching me from the window.

By this point, we were getting cold and thirsty, so we hied ourselves to the cafe recommended by our friends Steve and David, the inimitably eccentric Mad Hatters Tea Rooms, where we were warmly welcomed by the proprietor's sister, and had a lovely tea. My slice of homemade Victoria sponge cake was melt-in-the-mouth light, and our tea came with extra teabags in case it wasn't strong enough (presumably we could get extra hot water if we asked), and just look at the generous portions of cream and jam that came with the scone — none of your pre-wrapped-portions-which-are-never-quite-big-enough here:

The decor is quite something, too; loads of old framed photographs, various nick-nacks and sundries, including some which fit the inevitable Alice-In-Wonderland theme, but not as many as you'd think, although there's perhaps an overkill of tinsel, "because it's always Christmas somewhere," they told us. There's a fantastic Victorian toilet, which they are rightly proud of — as a lady (who I am assuming was the lady of the house) told me, not everyone had indoor plumbing in those days! She then went on to tell me about her great-grandfather (I think), who she claimed was the first white man to cultivate coffee in Kenya, and whose nearest neighbours were 100 miles away and all they had was a bicycle! Even if you take it with a pinch of salt, still a fantastic story, and a thoroughly recommended place to visit. (The Mad Hatters Tea Rooms, that is, not Kenya. I've never been to Kenya. Although I know people who liked it so much they decided to elope there, so it must have something going for it. Besides the coffee. Either that, or they really like coffee.)

And then we found the pub where Eric Morecambe held his wedding reception. I know this, because they have a blue plaque commemorating the fact. And again I got another surprise when I looked at the picture on my laptop, because I didn't realise I'd managed to include the bull's head in the frame:

After all of that, it was a disappointment to end the day in a horrible Lloyds No.1 pub, but that was where the others had all arranged to be, so that was where we went (and it did have a great name). Catching up with them, opinion on Margate's charms seemed to be widely divided and widely derided. Quite a few people dismissed it as grotty and horrible, which struck me as odd as that seemed to be their principle reason for wanting to visit in the first place — and for particularly wanting to visit off-season. Personally, I can find beauty and charm in lots of things that other people often overlook or dismiss as ugly and boring, but I'm not a big fan of taking a holiday in other peoples' misery (to paraphrase a famous song by an infamous band that a friend recently heard being played in Harrods of all places), and I get a bit annoyed with people who choose to spend a day visiting somewhere rundown and then complain and sneer that it's grim and boring.

I like Margate, though. I think it's been regrettably neglected in favour of the slightly posher charms of Broadstairs and Ramsgate up the coast (I remain ignorant as to why that is the case, given the proximity of the three towns, although I have one or two theories), and it's seen negative attitudes and neglect beget more negative attitudes and neglect, but if you look beyond the superficial tackiness of the place, you can find plenty of faded glamour and attractive detailing. One benefit of having been largely ignored is that many original architectural details haven't been ripped out as they have been in other places, and are all there to see if you pay attention.

It's a bit of a Circus

A new Frontier

Keep an eye out for white tigers,

dragons,

and flying horses

Westward Ho!

See more Vegas pics here. All my USA 2000-01 pics are here

Tracks on the Chicago El. Even back then I was struck by the colours and shapes of urban abstracts.

Chicago skyscraper. The bottom half was a church, the tower housed offices.

Harmony House, next to a police station (one for the Invisibles readers), NYC

ghost sign on 7th Avenue, NYC

I did not go to see this. But I can imagine how, erm, good it was.

Back at the Korova Milk Bar, NYC. One of these men has just become a father.
(In fact, since taking this photo, they've all become fathers!)

I was addicted to South Park pinball that year.

My Pinball Sugar Daddy, Steven, laughs at his Dianetics test results in Toronto

Pics from Las Vegas later this week.

artist Jason Hoelscher at the original Korova Milk Bar, Lower East Side, NYC

lines and stripes on Brooklyn Bridge, NYC
taken the day we went to see Noisegate at the Brooklyn Anchorage [reviewed years later, here]

I think maybe only a handful will get the (old, dated) in-jokes here,
Winston-Salem, South Carolina

Old Salem's giant coffee pot, South Carolina

The Gaffney Peach, South Carolina

Mr Magoo as BDSM fan. Who knew? First day in Los Angeles, on Melrose.

Going to Disneyland fulfilled a childhood dream I'd had since I was about six.
The amount of vintage stuff still there was a wonderful surprise.

More pics to come in another post.