I went to Margate today. This was something of an achievement, since when I tried the Telegraph's quiz: can you locate Britain's seaside resorts on a map? one of the three that I got wrong was Margate. I put it round the corner, where the North Sea starts to turn into the English Channel, but I was confusing it with Broadstairs. Margate is on the north Kent coast, quite a way beyond Whitstable. But it didn't matter, since we were going by train.
The expedition might turn out to be the inaugural meeting of a Grayson Perry fan club, since I went with a couple of friends who are both Grayson Perry enthusiasts, though they hadn't met before today, and the reason for going to Margate was that Turner Contemporary has an exhibition of his work, Provincial Punk, on until 13th September. The idea for the trip started with one friend as a joke, then we began to think that there was no reason why we shouldn't go to Margate, and once the visit was definitely on I thought it would be nice to see if the other Grayson Perry supporter I knew would like to come too.
The co-founder of the expedition researched the train times, and all I had to do was turn up on the day. Did you know that trains to Margate run directly from Stratford International railway station? I didn't. I wasn't even aware of the existence of Stratford International, other than a vague memory of my mother talking about having to carry their suitcases through a shopping centre to change trains when they went on holiday. Until today I had never been to Margate, or indeed been inside Westfield shopping centre, though I've seen it from the train window on trips to London. It is big, and very shiny, and full of shops that none of us wanted to buy anything in (though I suppose Boots might be useful), and signs for Stratford International are almost non existent, but all you have to do is walk up the main concourse and bear right at the end. It's an understated station with platforms devoid of seats or anywhere you could buy refreshments or a paper, in the bottom of a concrete canyon, but the Javelin trains to Margate are very swish. Fast ones go via Canterbury and Ashford, and slow ones track the mouth of the Thames through Whitstable.
Turner Contemporary was a palpable hit. It is a plain, business like building facing the sea, with splendid views from the upstairs foyer, and exhibition spaces with vertical walls you can hang art works from, unlike the wretched Firstsite. The cafe serves the usual trendy museum menu and does it well, and they were doing a roaring trade.
Grayson Perry was excellent. There are pots, maps and tapestries. If you like Grayson Perry you will enjoy it very much. If you don't then you probably won't make a special trip to Margate just so that you can remind yourself how much you don't like Grayson Perry.
Margate old town just behind the seafront is visibly gentrifying, just as the papers said it was. So there are still tacky arcades along the promenade, while in the streets behind there are a lot of vintage shops, a cupcake emporium, a kitchen ware shop, and one selling tweed dog chews and collars with tartan bibs and matching leads. I have been right off the idea of vintage clothing since going to the pest controller's talk at the beekeepers monthly meeting, and I don't have a dog, but I should think it would be fun to potter around if independent shops were your thing.
It does take quite a long time to get to Margate by train, especially when you don't want to leave Colchester before 10.03 when the Network card kicks in, and so we did not have time to go and seek out the shell grotto, the winter garden, or any of the other tourist sights, or to visit Dreamland. Dreamland sounds astonishing, a vintage funfair saved through local protest from demolition and redevelopment as housing, and now being restored in original vintage style. I gather that funds are tight, and it is still a work in progress, but it has reopened. Tickets are fifteen quid, though, and none of us wanted to go on the rides, so we contented ourselves with admiring the ferris wheel from a distance. But if I were in the area for longer than one afternoon I'd probably splash out to go and see it. And seek out the spot on the promenade where TS Eliot is said to have worked on The Wasteland. Margate was his holiday resort.
As we trooped back to the railway station (which is a fine one, opened in 1926 and designed by Edwin Maxwell Fry who later expunged it from his CV after he became a Modernist), we found ourselves chatting to some other day trippers who had been to visit the gallery. One of the stated aims of Turner Contemporary, as well as to provide cultural access and art education to the locals, was to assist in economic regeneration. To judge from today's trip, it is succeeding on both counts. Whether the inhabitants want to see their town colonised by cupcake and tweed dog costume emporia and members of the chattering classes down for the day is another question. Whitstable is also known nowadays as Islington-on-Sea, and some of the folks who were born there aren't very happy about it.
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