Jane Wenham-Jones's Blog, page 5

Write Around The Isle and BroadstairsLit

[image error]Literary gatherings have been popping up left, right and centre – I go to quite a few of them myself – and there are now more LitFests in Britain than you can shake a stick at. But none, I feel confident in saying, are quite like our own homegrown BroadstairsLit – a collection of writing-inspired and book-themed events that will last not just for the weekend, Ladies and Gentlemen, nor even a full fortnight but – all through the year!

Conceived over a series of mineral waters, coffees and the odd gin (that was me!) the model has taken a bit of tweaking but we now have a line up of stalwart volunteers (step forward Denise Martin-Harker of Dickens Festival Fame – if you went along to this year’s extravaganza you’ll know this lady can organise with bells on! – and Lee and Jacqui Wellbrook, the powers behind all sorts of good local events and her right-hand men for the above). I am to be the resident interviewer (nothing I like better than the sound of my own voice and the weight of a mic in my hand)  and we kicked off with our first event back in June.

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‘A cup of tea with The Archers’  was a sell-out. I am passionate about the long-running radio four soap but even I was surprised at the depth of devotion filling the Broadstairs Pavilion when scriptwriter Keri Davies joined the beautiful actress Annabelle Dowler who plays Kirsty Miller, and Trevor Harrison, the actor behind Eddie Grundy, to talk about life in Ambridge. One hundred and eighty happy beverage-drinkers listened enthralled  as Annabelle spilled the beans on whether Kirsty really goes in for a proper snog or simply kisses the back of her hand during love scenes, Keri explained the reason why so many of the characters speak with their mouths full and Trevor Harrison – delighting the audience with a burst of his Eddie voice – shared his joy at the Grundys finally getting back to Grange Farm.

As fans queued afterwards for photo opportunities, the delight was palpable.  One local, making a strange bobbing motion as she held out her pen for a Grundy autograph, seemed almost unsteady on her feet. She’d just stopped herself from dropping a curtsey!

[image error]The next event on our calendar is 24th September: a cream tea with Hallie Rubenhold – the power behind the ITV series Harlots – and Lucinda Hawksley, great great great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens himself. They will be talking about Harris’s List, the 18th/19th century underworld and those who influenced the great man. Hear Denise talking about them here.

Excitements for the future include Sir Tony Robinson of Baldrick fame on 10thMarch 2018, and top authors Katie Fforde and Peter James when we’ve all coordinated our diaries. Keep an eye on www.broadstairslit.co.uk and watch this space….

And follow BroadstairsLit on Twitter.

You can read this original article at https://theisleofthanetnews.com/write-around-the-isle-and-broadstairslit-with-jane-wenham-jones.

Filed under: events, Isle of Thanet Gazette, Isle of Thanet News, The Archers, writing Tagged: Annabelle Dowler, Baldrick, Blackadder, Broadstairs, Broadstairs Lit Fest, Broadstairs Literary Events, Broadstairs Pavilion, BroadstairsLit, Charles Dickens, Denise Martin-Harker, Eddie Grundy, Grange Farm, Grundy, Hallie Rubenhold, Harlots, ITV, Jacqui Wellbrook, Jane Wenham, Jane Wenham-Jones, Katie Fforde, Keri Davies, Kirsty Miller, Lee Wellbrook, Lucinda Hawksley, scriptwriter, scriptwriter Keri Davies, The Archers, Tony Robinson, Trevor Harrison

Didn’t I have a lov-er-ly time…

Another to add to my list of fab festivals I have worked for. Had a great time at the Buckingham Literary Festival last weekend, interviewing three top bestsellers. First up on Friday night a packed audience were enthralled by the mega-successful crime king Peter James with whom I always have a laugh; and then the next morning  I “did” the wonderful  Clare Mackintosh and Louise Doughty –  who both went down a storm. I also had the pleasure of meeting Sir Anthony Seldon – what an inspirational chap he is. I loved Buckingham – never been before and it is the most gorgeous place. One for the calendar next year…

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Filed under: books, events, fiction, interview, novels, writing Tagged: books, Buckingham, Buckingham Literary Festival, Clare Mackintosh, interviews, Louise Doughty, novel, Peter James, Sir Anthony Seldon, writing

The Archers come to town…

So fab to host the Archers event last Friday at the Pavilion in Broadstairs with ace scriptwriter Keri Davies, the gorgeous Annabelle Dowler (Kirsty Miller), and the ever-entertaining Trevor Harrison (Eddie Grundy).[image error][image error][image error] Next up for Broadstairs Literary Events @BroadlySpeaking –[image error]

Hope you can come along… xx

Filed under: books, events, fiction, humour, interview, The Archers, writing Tagged: Annabelle Dowler, BBC Radio Four, Broadly Speaking, Broadstairs, Broadstairs Literary Events, characters, Dickens Festival, Eddie Grundy, Jane Wenham-Jones, Keri Davies, Kirsty Miller, literature, Pavilion Broadstairs, radio drama, Scriptwriting, The Archers, Thorley Taverns, writing

Rum de tum ti tum de dum….. Calling all Archers fans!

Looking forward to this very much. Are you an Archers fan? Do you fancy a day trip to Broadstairs? Tickets from here . Would be brilliant to see you

Jane and Mike go forth: The Italian Job

[image error] They’re back! Popular Thanet columnists Jane Wenham-Jones and Mike Pearce reunite for a lunch date which has all the ingredients for disaster. Read what happened when author Jane lured retired editor Mike into foreign lands.
A good lunch

JANE:  There’s nothing better than a good lunch out with your friends. Booking one for my mate Mike, however, is always a minefield. His list of requirements gets longer as his years advance. I quote: No fish, no kids, no groups or office parties, no blaring music, nothing Indian, nothing Chinese, nothing Malay, Thai or all stations east, no tasting menus, nothing drizzled in anything and nothing much over a tenner. “We might need to go somewhere where they serve pie,” I tell my son, who is accompanying us in order to quiz Mike on the rigours of editing a local newspaper for 20 years for a university project.

Tom is having none of it. “The Posillipo” he says firmly. It is indeed a favourite of ours. The food is unfailingly good and the staff have long lost their early reputation for Italian broodiness aka being downright surly.

I send Mike the link to the menu.

“Is this a send-up?” he writes back. “It’s all in Italian.”

I promise to guide him through the ‘carne’ section when we get there.

The day dawns bright and beautiful and we get a table outside. “I hope it won’t be too cold for him,” I say to Tom who is perusing the list of craft beers. He shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says.

I spot the word drizzled

Mike arrives smiling but clearly apprehensive. “Pork escalopes?” I enquire. “Do you like rosemary?”

“I’ve got some in the garden,” he says doubtfully, “but I don’t eat it.” I am  about to recommend a Tagliata di Manzo (strips of chargrilled rib eye steak served on a bed of rocket), when I spot the word “drizzled”.

We eventually settle on a Grigliata Mista (mixed grill to him) which he seems to like. Tom has a rather impressive pizza – Vesuvio with lots of chillis – and I do my usual and build my own with a smoked salmon and prawn dish from the starters menu  served with a salad and some fries.

Tom orders a beer he can’t now remember the name of – but it soon disappears– and then drinks the rest of my wine:  a most pleasing Bardolino rose I’ve not had before, which slips down a treat. “Isn’t it a pretty colour?” says Mike happily, even though he’s driving and on orange juice.

“How was your first foray into non-English food?” I ask when he’s on his ice-cream and my son is spending my hard-earned dosh on dessert wine and almond biscuits. Mike nods. Clearly it’s a curry next.

Social wilfulness

MIKE: She claims that going somewhere Italian for lunch is her son Tom’s choice.
But as she socialises with people who eat Appalachian goats’ meat off anvils and quaff artisan cider out of flower pots, who can doubt Jane’s hand was involved in an act of social wilfulness, knowing I would have chosen an English pie in an English pub.
Any road up, I am instructed to go to the Posillipo.
I don’t even know what a Posillipo is. Sports car? Illness? Eurovision contestant?
Turns out it’s a restaurant in Broadstairs, next to what in my day was Marchesi’s.
Our date gets off to a perfect start. One foot inside the restaurant is enough to trigger a beaming enquiry, delivered in fabulous Italian style, by an immaculately dressed staff member: “Aha! You are here for Jane?”
I am led to the appealing if wind-swept balcony, where the famous author plus son are seated at the best table in the house, overlooking the sea.

Written in Sanskrit

“What are you going to have?” asks Jane, pointing to a menu written in what I assume is Italian.
She might as well have presented a phonebook written in Sanskrit and asked who I wanted to call.
Then two remarkable things happen.
The sun emerges, to drive away the chill. And Jane graciously translates the dishes, beginning with a lengthy harangue about what I wouldn’t like – anything fishy, anything spicy and anything drizzled in anything. Hard to argue against that.
Surprisingly, this still leaves a more than decent choice, including what I would call a mixed grill. (Warning – if you’re looking for it, you’ll probably find it’s listed under an exotic title ending in ‘i’ or ‘o’.)
It turns out to be chicken, lamb, pork and steak – plus saute potatoes. Well, that’s amore, as Dean Martin used to sing.
After a couple of mouthfuls, I concede it is very amore indeed.
Choice of dessert is simple. Italian equals ice cream, in my book.
Bella! Carina! Jolly nice! Whatever language, lunch was as delightful as the weather and the company.Meat pie can wait for another day.

Mike and Jane ate at:

Posillipo, 14 Albion Street, Broadstairs.
Open every day. 12.00 till 11pm
Phone  01843 601133 or visit www.posillipo.co.uk



Mike’s verdict: Bellissimo – friendly, smart, efficient, plus great food.
Jane says: I love it here x

(and you can read the original article here)




Filed under: articles, Isle of Thanet Gazette, Plain Jane Tagged: Chinese, Grigliata Mista, Indian meal, isle of thanet, Isle of Thanet Gazette, italian restaurant, Jane Wenham, Jane Wenham-Jones, Malay, Mike Pearce, Pork escalopes, Tagliata di Manzo, Thai, Thanet Gazette, The Isle of Thanet Gazette, The Italian Job, The Posillipo, Tom Wenham-Jones, Vesuvio

Colin Dexter – it was great to meet you too

[image error]Time to say goodbye to another luminary of the book world and to fondly recall the day in 2009 when I met Colin Dexter at the Winchester Writers’ Conference. It was late morning, he had just finished speaking, and was suitably dismayed to learn that the bar was closed. “Can’t we go to the pub?” he asked Beryl Bainbridge. I have no idea what I was doing standing there – I was gobbier in those days, I’d probably pushed my way to the front to announce my addiction to Morse and enduring crush on John Thaw – but I was able to share with  both these great writers, the  intelligence I’d gathered the night before when in a similar fix.   You could buy wine direct from the kitchen staff. I led the famous author to the chap who’d done the deal the previous evening, he purchased a bottle of red (it could have been two) which he  generously invited me to share. I was speaking later myself, so God knows how that went, but I do recall a most entertaining lunch with the pair of them, feeling  privileged indeed. “It was a delight to be with you,” Mr Dexter wrote in my Inspector Morse Omnibus, causing someone to joke that if I fell on hard times I could take the inscription to the News of the World. He laughed. I have treasured the tome ever since. I was pretty delighted too.

Filed under: books, fiction, writing Tagged: blogging, books, Colin Dexter, Inspector Morse, novel, Winchester, WordPress, writing

Happy Valentine’s Day!

This first appeared in Woman’s Weekly Fiction in 2010. Can’t say much has changed….

Jane remembers 2016

[image error]At midnight on 31st December I was travelling by car through the bottom of  Broadstairs.  In Ramsgate, minutes earlier, they’d been spilling out of pubs, crowding along the waterfront, waiting for fireworks. Three miles down the road the pavements were deserted. You could almost see the tumbleweed blowing along Albion Street. I could only imagine that all the revellers were huddled behind doors – The Dolphin looked pretty crammed through its steamed up windows – in case 2016 had one final act of retribution up its sleeve. Nothing would have surprised me. In a year that saw us voting to shoot ourselves in our collective foot, our prime minister resigning, horrific acts of terrorism across Europe, losing an incredible amount of artistic talent, and gaining Trump while strangers crawled all over other strangers’ gardens looking for Pokemon, frankly anything could have happened. Now we are safely through to 2017, it’s time to breathe out and look back in wonder at the local highlights and national low-lives of the past twelve months.

A THUMBS UP FOR:

New outlets, increased business and general let’s-go wow factor in all three main towns. Margate Old Town gets ever more cutesy and the Harbour Arm continues to thrive with all units taken since the  latest addition to this snazzy food and drink destination – Mala Kaffe – in the spring.   2016 also brought the two-millionth visitor to the Turner Contemporary. Lucky teacher Linda Tucker was presented with a bottle of fizz when she walked through the gallery’s doors in June.

Over in Ramsgate, more restaurants and bars have popped up along Military Road in the old fishermen’s arches alongside such favourites as The Arch and The Greek Arch – and weren’t the lights on the boats gorgeous this year? Down in Pegwell Village, Frank Thorley – 81 this year and still working seven days a week – presided over the opening of  the Seaview Bar & Restaurant – and extension to The Stanley Grey pub. I took Mike-humbug-Pearce (dining criteria: no kids, no office parties, nothing foreign, nothing spicy, no fish) along there for our annual pre-Christmas lunch and even he liked it. In Broadstairs, despite the continuing blots on the landscape that are Costa and Iceland, the prevailing tradition of independent shops and eateries is upheld with the opening of teeny, acclaimed Stark by Michelin-starred chef Ben Crittenden, Taylors Seafood Restaurant and cocktail bar on the site of what was once the Rose pub, and the under-new-ownership, being-revamped-as-we-speak, Fish & Beer bar and restaurant, reopening on 27th January as The Reef.

Meanwhile, Micropubs continue to mushroom all over the Isle stretching from the Hair of the Dog in Minster to the Wheel Alehouse in Birchington. I am convinced most of society’s ills can be laid at the now-closed door of “The Local” (The Dane Valley Arms is the latest to be demolished)  so this is all good and worth its own small round of applause. 2016 additions include Nautic Ales at Northwood and Mind the Gap in Broadstairs, next to Houdini’s – our first “magic” bar…

My personal culinary discovery of the year goes to the London Tavern, Margate for their fab food and utterly superlativeburger. They do real ale too.

A DROPPED JAW AT:

Nigel Farage being shortlisted for Time magazine’s Person of the Year award.

(And then Donald Trump winning it.)

SHOCK OF THE YEAR

A dual award given to 23rd June and November 8th 2016. No doubt there was much rejoicing on the morning after the referendum in Kipper Towers (aka Thanet District Council) but most sane people I know were walking about in a fog of shock and bereavement. Waking up on 9th November to find a buffoon with no political experience whatsoever now had his finger on the nuclear button, it felt as if the world had ended twice.  My friend, the award-winning restaurant critic Marina O’Loughlin, tweeted simply: “There are no more jokes”.

Which as it’s turned out there won’t be, tragically, from some of our brightest stars. We bid farewell to Victoria Wood, Caroline Aherne, Ronnie Corbett, Sir Terry Wogan, TV comedy writer Carla Lane, ascerbic and brilliantly witty journalist AA Gill.

OTHER (NON) EVENTS

Manston still didn’t reopen.
Dreamland didn’t close.
Corbyn came to town and Theresa May was photographed wearing an ill-advised pair of trousers.

Meanwhile work started, and was then halted, in Ramsgate on what is rumoured to become the biggest Wetherspoons of all time and Margate house prices surged beyond all other seaside towns. Perhaps because, while commuters in other parts of the country faced unrelenting misery, our hi- speed trains mostly ran on time.

Tracy Emin “married” a lump of rock, Emeli Sande’s music video for her single “Hurts” filmed on Botany Bay collected over ten million hits on YouTube, Margate Caves got lottery funding, and new dog waste bag dispensers were introduced. Well done TDC. (And you didn’t think you’d hear ME say that in this decade, did you?)

Which leaves me to conclude it’s not been all bad. May I wish you health, wealth and happiness in 2017. It can only get better now. (Can’t it?)

Happy New Year! xx

Filed under: articles, events, Isle of Thanet Gazette, non-fiction, Plain Jane, writing Tagged: AA Gill, Birchington, Botany Bay, Broadstairs, Carla Lane, Caroline Aherne, Corbyn, Donald Trump, Dreamland, Emeli Sande, Frank Thorley, Hair of the Dog, Houdini’s, Jeremy Corbyn, Kipper Towers, Linda Tucker, London Tavern, Mala Kaffe, Manston, Manston Airport, Margate, Margate Caves, Margate Old Town, Marina O’Loughlin, Michelin-starred chef Ben Crittenden, Military Road, Mind the Gap, Nautic Ales, Nigel Farage, Northwood, Pegwell Village, Ramsgate, Ronnie Corbett, Seaview Bar & Restaurant, Sir Terry Wogan, Taylors Seafood Restaurant and cocktail bar, Teresa May, thanet district council, The Dane Valley Arms, The Dolphin, The Greek Arch, The Reef, Time magazine’s Person of the Year award, Turner Contemporary, Victoria Wood, Wheel Alehouse, YouTube

Just Jane: tribute to Carole Blake

In the absence of a Gazette column to post this week, I thought I’d share a Woman’s Weekly piece I wrote back in 2013. In memory of, and with love to, Carole Blake, who died so suddenly on 25th October and is missed by so many of us.

It made me sad to re-read it but it is also a happy memory of a great evening with Carole – to go with many more of some fab times. Here’s raising a glass!

The article reads…

Would someone please tell me where this year has gone? One moment we were all moaning about how winter was dragging and the daffodils were late, we sneezed and it was summer for a day or two, then I got distracted and found it was October and now suddenly everyone’s using the C word and preparing to take the tinsel out of the loft.

Time flies as you get older, they say. And it’s not only ten months that can pass in the blink of an eye. Three weeks ago I had the privilege of rolling up to top literary agent Carole Blake’s party held to celebrate her astonishing fifty years in publishing.

Astonishing because Carole looks far too youthful to have been at it that long – they clearly started ‘em young in those days – and surprising for me too, to realise that I first met her, screwing up all my courage to speak, when I was a wannabe novelist back in 1998. Which means I’ve been knocking around the book world fifteen years myself and I don’t know where that has gone either.

I arrived at the bash with Katie Fforde and a wild look in my eye.

We had flown back from France for the event – I’d been teaching at the fab Chez Castillon (Google it now!) and Katie had been working away at her 21st novel (she, too, has been going a while) – on a journey which was punctuated by minor crises, mostly of my doing. These began when I left my mobile on the floor at Bordeaux airport while trying to stuff my handbag into Katie’s suitcase (that one item of baggage rule has a lot to answer for) and went downhill from there.

“J’ai perdu mon telephone,” I stuttered frantically to the couple sitting where I’d last seen it. “Avez-vous seen it? S’iI vous plait.”

“Never mind all that, love,” said the husband. “Try the information desk.” Mercifully it had been handed in by some wonderfully honest being, and after a small panic over where Katie’s passport was and me leading us purposefully to the wrong gate, we arrived in Gatwick intact but with not much time to spare.

Katie’s face was a picture, therefore, when at passport control, she whizzed through and I got the cheery chap who fancied a chat. While I explained why I’d gone to France, why I was coming back, whose party it was and why I didn’t look at all like my passport photograph (it was taken nine years ago, mate!), I could see her expression ten metres away, frozen in horror, convinced I was about to be led away and we’d miss the revelry after all.

I’ll spare you the sagas of the taxis, my blisters and the curious incident of the laddered tights, but eventually we got there to find Carole, her usual cool, glamorous self, in a room brimming with warmth and affection.

The fizz flowed, the speeches were heartfelt. Fellow agent, the beautiful Isobel Dixon, recalled her interview at Blake Friedmann 18 years ago when she was offered a glass of wine and wondered if it was a test. I would say it probably was and she passed it by having the second glass – she’s been working with Carole ever since.

Colleague Conrad Williams told how he had learned from Carole’s example, the “centrality of lunch” and the bestselling crime writer Peter James, hailed by Conrad as the “Uber Client”, stated quite simply that he adored her.

Carole said she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry – by that time I was fumbling for a tissue myself. And looking round the packed room I went on my own little trip down memory lane.

There was the agent who wrote that she hated my first novel so much she couldn’t even encourage me, and the other poor chap I practically stalked while trying to flog it anyway. The smiling one-time boss of the publishers who eventually gave me a deal; the authors I was once so shyly in awe of – now my friends. The big book-seller who was so kind to me when I was newly in print and the editors I’ve only ever known by email – now here in the flesh. Looking at the guest list later there were more names from the past I sadly didn’t spot among the 300-strong crowd, all there to raise a glass or three to a long-serving pro. I need her to have another gathering when she’s been doing books for the full sixty.

The next morning Katie and I were back on the plane to Chez Castillon a little jaded but very glad we’d made the trip, and four days after that I flew home. The napkin that came with my complimentary salty things bore the maxim: “Time flies but you are the pilot.” I think we can safely say Carole Blake has earned her wings.

***

Filed under: articles, Plain Jane, writing Tagged: Blake Friedmann, Bordeaux airport, Carole Blake, Chez Castillon, Conrad Williams, Isobel Dixon, Katie Fforde, literary agent, Morgen Bailey, Peter James, tribute to Carole Blake, Woman's Weekly, Woman's Weekly Fiction, WordPress, writing retreats, writing retreats in France

Plain Jane 281016: A fond farewell from Jane and Mike

Proud to see that in the final copy of the Isle of Thanet Gazette I appear in, I have made it onto the letters’ page as both “idiotic” AND “inane”…  :)

I’m sad to be saying goodbye to a column I’ve written for fourteen years but could not in all conscience and in respect for all other freelancers, write it for nothing (which was the only choice on offer).

So here are our final thoughts before we’re over and out.

Over to Mike Pearce first…

THE GRUMPY old man has left the building.

This is my final column and already I hear the cheers from the hipsters, the fraudsters, the spongers, the arty-tarty fakes, the posers, the far-left rabble-rousers and – well, probably anyone born after 1976.

But in a moment of untypical selflessness, let me give you, the readers, the final say.

Over the years you have said plenty, by email, post, phone and even by turning up on my doorstep.

Some, as is the way of such things, has been critical, abusive, obscene and very occasionally slightly menacing. But, as Socrates said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

As an ardent admirer of alliteration, I tip my hat to the man who wrote to the Gazette to dismiss my arguments as “geriatric garbage”.

For irony, it’s hard to beat the chap who accused me of wanting to stifle free speech – and in the next sentence, demanded that my column should be axed.

Nil points for the pompous Facebook fellow, who, after denying having heard of me or my column, offered his critical analysis: “Pearce is a poor writer”!

Later he accused me of “trying to be provocative, but failing”. What provoked him to write that, I wonder? He seems the type who likes to hold centre stage, so let’s not bother with his name

In the “Is that good, or is that bad?” category, a nomination for the man who described me to my celebrity co-columnist and dear friend Jane as “The bloke who writes the weeks that you don’t.”

And the other one, who suggested to her: “He’s very right wing, isn’t he?”

Not so much hurtful as surprising was the cheery assessment by one writer that I “look like a chap who enjoys a drink”. 

After being nearly teetotal for 15 years, if only!

No criticism can be attached to the critic who pointed out: “He likes a moan, that one.”

I blame the world for giving me ever-more things to moan about.

The privilege of being afforded a column cannot be over-stated – the chance to champion causes that might otherwise go unheard; to expose lies that might go unchallenged; to prick the vanities of the great and the good.

While researching topics, I have been lucky enough to tour Ramsgate Tunnels (fabulous), Dreamland (loved the dodg’ems), the Turner Centre (oh dear!), Ramsgate’s Petticoat Lane Emporium (unpretentious and fun), Margate Old Town (pretentious and not much fun) and to examine in very great detail what’s going right and what’s going wrong at this crucial stage in Thanet’s development.

I do hope there will still be a voice for those who can see through Emperors’ clothes; who object to money being thrown at self-indulgent whimsies when there are so many real-world problems; who see the folly of trying to revive the rotting corpse of Manston airport; who still believe politicians should be there to serve the community, not stoke their egos.

I shall remain grateful for the opportunity the column has given to make new friendships, sometimes with people whose ages, beliefs, passions and ideologies are a million miles from my own.

And finally, let me tip my hat to Janet from Margate, who was kind enough to write and say: “I don’t think you’re deeply unpleasant”.

Praise indeed.

***

After nearly six hundred columns for this good newspaper, it is time for me to hang up my hat too.

There are those who will shout good riddance. The anti-Manston protestor who told me I was “worse than Goebbels” for wanting to save the airport, the councillor who attempted to argue the use of the apostrophe with me (I bow to no one in my command of the possessive), the elderly lady who warned me I drank too much and claimed my hair would fall out if I insisted on dying it pink and blue, and the regular and anonymous correspondent who never failed to tell me what rubbish I spouted.

But I also have a drawerful of letters  – yes, real ones with a stamp and envelope – and many, many emails that have touched me beyond measure. I thank you for the comments, the tip-offs, the invitations, the cards and the occasional dodgy present.

I will always appreciate the time readers have taken to stop to speak to me when they have enjoyed – or thoroughly disagreed with – something I have written and I will treasure for ever the beautifully hand-inscribed and indignant missive sent to Gazette Towers from the chap who’d heard me on the radio and wanted to share his mother’s unwavering good judgement that I sounded “a right cow.”  

As Mike-don’t-get-me-started Pearce – to whom I owe the opportunity in the first place (he upset people even more before he retired as editor),  has intimated:  having a space here has been an honour and a joy. But all good things come to an end – often when the money runs out – and our media has changed beyond measure since I first appeared on these pages in 2002.

I shall still be sounding off  on Facebook where I’m happy to be friends (unless you claim to be a General in the US army or have serial killer’s eyes) and blogging on janewenhamjones.wordpress.com if you find you’re missing me.

I shall certainly miss all of you. xx

Filed under: articles, Isle of Thanet Gazette, writing Tagged: Goebbels, Jane Wenham, Jane Wenham-Jones, Manston, Margate, Margate Old Town, Mike Pearce, Plain Jane, Ramsgate, Ramsgate's Petticoat Lane Emporium, The Isle of Thanet, The Isle of Thanet Gazette