The Margate Bookie

I've just got back from a whistlestop trip to the seaside to speak at the Margate Bookie literary festival. And when I say 'whistlestop' I mean just that. 

I took a three hour trip on a succession of trains, had a look around the Turner Contemporary art gallery, did a talk at Droit House on the pier along with fellow authors P J (Philip) Whiteley, Ivy Ngeow, Samuel Dodson and A B (Amelia) Kyazze. Then we all had a nice Thai dinner before getting a night's sleep at the Magical Margate Townhouse in nearby Cliftonville (see lower in this post) and then a three hour trip home again in the morning.

   

I, and my fellow authors, are all part of a new publishing venture called the Breakthrough Book Collective. Our idea was to bodyswerve the somewhat risk-averse and celeb-obsessed mainstream publishing world and to pool our skills to create our own small press imprint. We're taking a 'commons' approach where shared efforts yields shared results. And, here in our first year, we've published a novel and two collections of short stories - all written, edited, proofread, typeset, designed and published (and marketed) by members of the collective. Exciting times!

    

I also visited the Turner Contemporary art gallery to look at their latest exhibition, 'In the Offing', which features paintings by Alessandro Raho, sculpture by Tracey Williams, video and sound installations by Ashley Holmes, Hannah Rose Stewart, Blackhaine, Mark Leckey, Angusraze and many more. A splendid short trip.

And I must mention the extraordinary Magical Margate Townhouse. This is a four story building (five if you count the basement 'area') with loads of spacious high-ceilinged bedrooms - all with en suite showers, a cinema, a lounge, a huge dining room, a luxurious bathroom, a garden room ...

But my favourite feature was definitely the wardrobe that stands incongruously on the third floor landing. In keeping with the 'magical' name, you open the doors and you're in a secret children's play room - a Margate Narnia.

The house smacks of a seaside glory now, sadly, long gone. Elsewhere in the town the Lido has shut down and the old Winter Gardens pavilion is crumbling and the gardens themselves overgrown. And the whole place did smell somewhat like a toilet - I assume the heavy rains that accompanied the recent Storm Babet led to our inadequate and underfunded sewage system discharging effluent into the sea.

It's poor treatment for such a pretty and historic town.