The sun may have finally set on a summer of ‘looking round corners’ in Turner Contemporary and looking round corners in Margate to be greeted with tourists, performers, dancers, & fashionable sorts all merry, sun soaked & in agreement of their admiration of our affable little town. It’s actually getting a bit sickening all this positivity isn’t it? However don’t fear the positivity must come to an end because to quote a particularly murderous TV show and many a ‘unfunny’ meme ‘WINTER IS COMING’!
‘Oh fab Yahh, so how recently did you move down darling?’ Is a question which is compulsory at any art influenced night that has taken place in the last year. Hearing answers of ‘oh gosh i got here twenty minutes ago, airbnbed it and now i’m here. Partying, Arty-ing, Margate-ing’. I understand it is many of this readership’s first winter on the isle of Thanet. I was a mere pre-pubesquent thirteen year-old boy when I was first exposed to winter on the, then, sombre out-of-season shores of Margate. Proudly i’ve managed to negotiate and survive everyone since then making me equipped to shed light on some of the winter joys.
Firstly resist the temptation to get that one way ticket back to London. Sure that might bring a smile from a few pessimists, and sure in London you’ll have life, hustle and bustle, opportunities galore, and you’ll even have shops that are open past five o clock. However what the Capital can’t offer is battering winds so brutal that there’s no need for botox.
Thats just one of many free thrills to wrap yourself up in this winter. Of course its dark, early. It’s cold, always. To describe the coming months as ‘utterly unbearable and morbidly miserable’ wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Thankfully though ’wet’ is a word you cannot associate with winter here, the former Roman island of Tanatos (meaning Bright Island) has a micro climate which can boast very little rainfall compared to rival seaside towns. Hence the old Thanet Farmer saying ‘when England Wrings, the island sings’. That in mind there’s a downpour of singing to be enjoyed and help warm up those cold nights. Jazz nights at the Sands Hotel, if you can afford such luxury are said to be blissful. The Lifeboat offers fine folk music from local and up and coming bands within cosy cider confines. If you fancy a sing-a-long yourself though it has to be Karaoke at Sheldons on Thursday night. It’s usually filled with a melange of locals, who belt out ballads with assured experience & overseas language students, who stretch their limited vocabulary and fluency to stutter through the sing-a-longs. The atmosphere & audience are positive and welcoming, turning the whole thing into a surreal kind of pissed up, slightly illiterate, Eurovision song contest. Plus if you want to converse with a European one last time before article fifty is triggered this is a fantastic way to do so.
eggydave 