A rubbish recycling facility! ! ! !

I love listening to people telling me about their childhood, but they have to be nippy, or I will be telling them with a little more relish than perhaps I should about mine, there is a necessity in most people to share their own enthusiasm, a need, which is often in their opinion a more exciting past than anyone else.

I was born at the beginning of the Second World War in a large Kentish town by the side of a curving sheltered shore, a beautiful bay to the left of the town and a splendid sandy beach that stretched for miles for my little legs to run along. Bracing sea air mixed with the smell of coffee, fish and chips, hot-dogs with burnt onions, and candy humbugs up Harbour Street all mixed in with the smell from the sands and harbour activities.

Ramsgate:

In some places a lovely town with sprawling smug suburbs, Prestedge, all new and posh. Newington with lots and lots of prefabs now all replaced. Whitehall with its ever-pumping water works down Whitehall road.

The civic pride of the beautiful Palace theatre in the high street and the many shiny shops full to bursting with jostling holidaymakers.

Its many pubs waiting for Saturday night when the music started, bursting with revelry, everyone was singing, dancing and laughing, everyone was happy.

Getting to the town centre as fast as us boys legs would carry us. There were the impressive gas cylinders that could be seen from any point in the town at the end of St. Luke's avenue and the smelly coke works at the bottom of Boundary Road with the acrid stench rising high over the town tickling the nostrils.

This was my world where for a tup'penny ticket we could spend all day in the station waiting anxiously for the thunder of the next 'schools class' to appear over the viaduct pulling ten or twelve coaches full of carnival spirited children with their parents spilling out onto the platforms accompanied by the roaring clouds of expelling unwanted steam from the trains cylinders into the station.

Those smells; Freshly baked bread up King Street, hot pies, piece pudding and fagots drifting out of Woods after a night in the Odeon.    

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On the subject title:

On the beautiful coast overlooking the channel; I'm the first to agree with recycling, but for goodness sake how daft can this council get. Surely they are joking!

A few years ago Bournemouth was, like a lot of seaside towns in this country, suffering from a depression with the lack of tourists visiting the town. So the council, (all three parties at the time) put their combined heads together and came up with the idea of a centre that could accommodate functions for the benefit of many of the town needs. The BIC came out of the many numerous meetings (The Bournemouth International Centre) it was built ahead of schedule seventeen months later, right on the sea front, concert hall, ballroom, function rooms and restaurants, also a conference centre, of which two of the main party political persuasions have used since, filling the many hotels to capacity. One of these main parties has tried to book for next year, but unfortunately for them this centre is fully booked for the foreseeable future. Each weekend the main dual carriage way is full of coaches and cars flooding into the town bringing in the much-needed finances, filling the hotels. There are no empty shops, no derelict spaces, no dirty streets, no unwanted litter. The place is thriving beyond even the dreams of the councillors who first thought of the idea.  

The rocks on the western under cliff where many of us children of my age  collected winkles for Sunday tea, has been turned into a concreted area that I'm sure, with a little bit of forethought, could accommodate a facility such as the BIC.

Whatever is decided let the people in the town build it, give the employment to the people of Thanet that are having difficulty finding work, not give the project to an off shore company who are in it to drain the ratepayers pockets of their hard earned cash. 

Dare I say it, like they did with Pleasurama?

 

Just a thought        

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