Monthly Archives: September 2013

Through the Aperture (on The Promenade…) British Seaside – Part 4

September 9, 2013

whitby vintage

Whitby is a beautiful coastal village on Yorkshires East Coast filled with junk shops, gothic splendour and a trade in oddities. From the ruins of Whitby Abbey which inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula to cafes named after Lewis Carroll’s wonderland poem The Walrus & Carpenter to the waterfront bar named after Somerset Maugham’s Moon & Sixpence, Whitby has a decidedly literary & nostalgic feel. It hosts an annual Gothic weekend, boasts a boutique guesthouse with literary themed rooms and contains a plethora of vintage junk shops. This is the town responsible for us arriving in Yorkshire with one overnight bag and going back on a packed Edinburgh festival train with three. Here is my final photo diary, decidedly less pastel-y, of what the mice saw on their field-trip, starting with what we bought:

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The Edit

September 5, 2013

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 preset

My favourite things at the moment: Art Deco perpetual calenders, concrete light pendants, Francoise Hardy, Thomas Mann ‘The Magic Mountain’.

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Through the Aperture (on The Promenade…) British Seaside – Part 3

September 2, 2013

Margate

In my penultimate instalment of seaside visits I give you Margate, a town which up until a few years ago may have been best summed up by the Morrissey lyric ‘The coastal town that they forgot to close down’. It has been in decline for decades, overlooked next to its experienced swisher sisters in Whitstable & Broadstairs, it has arcades, a dilapidated pleasure beach and not much else to recommend it to the passing train passenger. But with the opening of the Turner gallery in 2010 and a trickling influx of ex-Hackney-hipsters the town is beginning to show signs of a renaissance. There are shoots of gentrification in the form of retro tea rooms, boutiques and over-priced jumble sales. However there is still something very wistful and maudlin about Margate.

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