Believe what you read in the papers?

Cantata

Cantata

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They say that everything in the papers is always right, except when you happen to know about the particular subject, and then you find it's all rubbish.
In todays Telegraph there's a big spread about eating out in the Faversham / Whitstable / Canterbury area. Even mentions our local Oare / Harty Ferry fisherman as 'legendary' - I wouldn't have called him that, although he's certainly a, errr, 'character', he 'manages' the moorings at Harty, nuff said.
The way the article describes the culinary possibilities in the area makes it sound utterly wonderful. What it neglects to mention is much information about prices. Two of the specific places it goes on about are hopelessly expensive and ordinary folk would never dream of going there.
Don't get me wrong, though, there are loads of very decent places to eat out, at reasonable prices, even if we seldom visit them.
So who on earth is this Saturday Supplement stuff aimed at? Not us, obviously. I suppose we shall now be inundated with more grockels......in Whitstable, where many have bought second homes and elevated prices beyond the reach of locals (fuelled originally by one pretentious restaurant which kept getting rave reviews in weekend supplements until it was rubbished a few months ago in, ironically, the same newspaper), they are known fondly as 'DFLs' (Darn From Lunnun), it's fun spotting them at weekends as they walk the foreshore dressed for House & Garden or Vogue or something.
The other sure-fire way of identifying them is that they never speak to you, unlike locals who almost always will. DFLs always look the other way. Wife & I were out for a walk on the cliff-top the other day, not another soul to be seen until Ms. Street-Por'er hove into view. As our paths crossed - she looked the other way.
We are content with our lot here, just faintly amusing to see beings from another planet who drift in and drift out again, probably looking for places mentioned in the Telegraph .... /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif
 
Must admit I stopped buying a so called news paper years ago, when I realised that what I could see before me, in writing, beared no resemblance to the actual facts, which I was a witness to. If I want to know where to go for food or drink, or anything else, I ask people that have similar tastes and listen to them. I have yet to be let down.
TV and radio news rarely has any resemblance to the truth, and seems to get more satisfaction by telling everyone how bad things are. Thinking back to the last time the fuel protesters managed to close down so many garages, I seem to remember it was panic buying caused by press exageration that was the main cause, and they had no interest in changing it when things started improving. At the time I was a 'reserved occupation fuel client' and had been issued with a card which allowed special rights at petrol stations so I could go straight to the front of any queue of traffic, but when it all started to improve I contacted the local radio station to tell them that virtually all petrol stations were open to the public, with no fuel shortage at all. It was two days later that they finally stopped broadcasting that the end was nigh.
Never trust a politician or reporter, you can tell they are lying because their lips are moving, and the same goes for the papers.
I'll take information and advice from people I know, even virtually, before I waste money on a news paper again
 
A couple of years ago we went into a pub in Cornwall for lunch. A month previously it had been thoroughly rubbished, as a hotel, by Paddy Burt in the Telegraph. It's a pub, for goodness sake, with a few rooms. I chatted about it with the staff who would have regarded it as a joke if it hadn't been potentially serious, as there were so many factual errors: the owner had been described as sulking in the corner with a cigarette, but is apparently a non-smoker. It's a nice little pub and I've no doubt as comfortable as it should be. What were they expecting? Bathrobes, mini-bar, satellite telly, room-service? Our meal was fine and the beer excellent.
 
I must admit that in the 2 years since my son was born, I haven't had time to read a paper: as a result, I have a far more positive outlook these days. Also the BBC 6 o'clock news has been replaced by "In the Night Garden", so I sleep much better!
 
Oh I do so agree with you!

I gave up the newspapers after I noticed they got thrown out, unread, most of the time due to lack of time to read them. I haven't 'taken a newspaper' in years. Then when I do get a chance to look at one, I am not impressed.

The broadcast media has got worse and worse. They 'dumb down' the news to half-wit levels and sensationalise anything they can to make the news as depressing as possible.

A few days ago someone was reporting the current recession would last for 20 years. How can anyone possibly predict such a thing and isn't it blatently irresponsible to broadcast such nonsense? Who knows what might happen in the next twenty years? What is needed to get the economy going again is confidence, and there isn't going to be much of that around at this rate.

I seem to remember about 15 years ago we were all going to be wiped out by CJD because we we'd all eaten spaghetti bolognese and beefburgers. That doesn't seem to have happened.

Worst snow in 20 years? No salt? No grit? Billions of pounds wiped off the national economy? Gloom, doom.

Last weekend I heard that the lady who lived with my Auntie had died suddenly. She was 90 but very sprightly and was a great friend and carer to my Auntie. My Auntie is 95, blind, and since her stroke, unable to walk. She is lifted from her bed to a chair in the morning and remains there until lifted back into her bed at 7.30 in the evening.

I phone her every day so she has someone to talk to for a little while and she says 'I miss Maud, she used to do everything for me, but, I'll just have to get on with it. After all, things could be a lot worse.'

Now, I'm not sure how they could be a lot worse, but I am blown away by her positive attitude. Talk about Blitz Spirit. Maybe being blind and not able to read newspapers or see the TV news has given her the guts the rest of the country seem to have lost.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Even mentions our local Oare / Harty Ferry fisherman as 'legendary' - I wouldn't have called him that, although he's certainly a, errr, 'character', he 'manages' the moorings at Harty, nuff said.

[/ QUOTE ] Would that be Bluey? Sorted us a mooring at HF 3 years ago - a nice spot and cost £200 all in for the season but I never trusted the area, we expected to see the boat broken into by some of the crowd of local lads that were always hanging round. One Sunday we were approached by two of them asking us for advice on how best to nick a boat.
 
That is indeed Bluey.
I don't hear of break-in trouble at Harty, not aware that it's any worse that anywhere else. The really bad place for that round here is Queenborough. Two locals there were drowned a couple of months ago, having pinched a dinghy late at night and rowed out to the moorings.
 
Help me with this please - your quote: Don't get me wrong, though, there are loads of very decent places to eat out, at reasonable prices, even if we seldom visit them.

Followed by the slurge on DFL's - is it just possible the cash these despised visitors "chuck abart" is supporting the variety of nosh house??

Up here, we call it squaring the circle....how does it play with the folks whose incomes, happiness (and other menial considerations) are dependent on such trade?

PWG
 
They aren't in any way despised, Peter, sorry if you got that impression. They are just different.
You may well be right to some extent, although I can't offhand think that any of the eateries we've been to lately have had obvious DFL customers at the time.
Certainly other businesses have been created and have thrived on this weekend residence trade (e.g. Whitstable's glut of galleries and establishments selling arty-farty stuff) and I fear that if/when fashions change (perhaps after the next severe East Coast flood!) then all this will prove to be another bubble. As I said in my first ramble, it was all started by one restaurant getting some good national reviews!
 
I can only disagree Dick, Sorry.
We came DFL in 1959 and bought a caravan on Fitts Caravan Park in Swlaeclifee and stayed there until 1965. I dont remember engaging with the locals much. I played with the other kids on the site. I do remember going to Whitstable for shopping with Mum though.
Then we came DFL in 1968 to Seasalter and parked on the beach in our camper, and I cant recall speaking to many locals then either. We continued that until 1974, when Dad and Mum decided to move to Ashford on a swap with our flat in Brixton.

Within 3 years, Mum & Dad moved to Swalecliffe, and then the locals would not talk to them, for some time,as they had a bungalow, and were obviously DFL.

Dad died there, and Mum stayed until 4 weeks ago, but I am sure that Mums disguise as a local was completed some years ago.

I am fairly sure that although we were tourists for a long time (and know dozens more who moved from London for their retirement) we didnt distance ourselves from the locals at any time, and I do believe that we contributed significantly to the local economy.
I think that if you live in a recognised tourist area, you will attract tourists and those who come for retirement or a second home. Maybe even a beach hut, as they are expensive too.
I do think it is a bit disingenuous to expect them to be anything other than private citizens, who may want to enjoy their walk (however dressed) without hindrance.

The restaurants are a fair spread wherever you go. There are eateries round there which are out of my price bracket, but I dont go to them. They must make a living or they go under. So they have a different brand clientele. Same as we cant all afford Oyster yachts, horses for courses.

Also affordability in Whitstable once you get off the Sea Front is pretty much similar to Herne Bay and much cheaper than Chestfield for instance.
 
I think what started as a whimsical ramble about fancy restaurants in weekend supplements is getting a bit near the borders of acceptability on the E.C. forum, Jim! Your pointing out of yourself and family as 'dfls' in the past has brought me up short and I feel quite uncomfortable about that, probably rightly so.
Of course there's us and them in any tourist area, I don't believe anyone round here feels resentment of any sort, it's just the way it is and for those with the time to people-watch it can be interesting.
I think I shall exit now with what little grace and dignity I might have left..... /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif
I wish I had some sailing to talk about!
 
I understand your point.

Let me share a sepia thought with you: we went for our annual holidays to Whitstable, when I was a lad, sometime in the late 40's (yes!) We walked Island Wall took F & C at the shop along the way, rode the boats at the lake on West Beach (my first experience afloat), had a hut there too, and stayed in a B & B off the main road.

First thing in the morning there was nothing better than wandering across the golf links to the beech hut, seeing the steam trains making off for London, and letting the eye run up the beach to Seasalter in the distance.

There was wreckage from the war all over the place - I paddled an aircraft fuel tank along the beach - an early piece of navigation!

We collected cockles and winkles which my mother cooked in the hut - delicious. And I walked seemingly miles out over the beech to the wooden boat wrecks at the tide line, teeming with crabs of all sizes.

In the harbour, horses pulled train cars around the perimeter tracks using turntables on the corners, to load the barges, sitting (as now) in the deepest mud.

The days were hot - I got sunburnt, yet it was magic. In the evening the sun set behind Sheppy and the Thames barges slowly eked their way towards the Medway and Thames.

No one talked then of spoiling the local serentity/facilites/ambience. It was magic for me and the beginning of my ambitions to have my own boat and go where the barges went.

It would be nice to think others after me enjoyed such a seminal time, but...

How has it all gone so wrong?

PWG
 
Its been a long time since i bought a newspaper on a regular basis,i gave up beliving what they printed a long time ago,they are so full of misinformation and sensationalisim,dont forget that one of the biggest newspapers was owned by a robbing barsteward call Maxwell

Peter with his "sepia" memory had me too going down that route of our annuall holiday on the Isle Of Arran,my aunt had am old farmers cottage,it had a turf roof,dry toilet etc it was a typical old crofters house where the cows used to live in the back room(byre)

The endless feasts of mussles and winkles and when the fishermen came in,if you helped in your best way the reward was sometimes a haddock or a cod but usually a few mackerell.

There was a golf course close by and if you waded around in the river you could fill a bag with golf balls and then sell then to the golfers and then head off to Mrs Andersons sweet shop.

I used to sit by the window and marvel at the RN destroyers doing quick turns and fancy manoevers,it was years later whilst watching a TV prog about nuke sub skippers that i realised they were on training excercises with the subs.

When Sir Matt Busby walked in the then Alex Fergussons office at Man Utd,he saw that Alex was looking down,he enquired as to what was the problem? alex replyed "its what the papers and tv are saying? Sir Matt said "switch off the TV and stop reading the news papers.what do they know ?Alex went on to become one of the greatest football managers ever
 
The trouble with nostalgia is that it is just a distant memory of different times. In the late 1940s we had several holidays in Walton with a beach hut and that all seemed very happy and fine. When my son cycled into Walton from Titchmarsh to get some provisions a couple of years ago he thought it was awful and that you wouldn't have to live there for long before you started taking drugs!

I don't think Cantata was talking about DFLs that moved out of London decades ago (we came from Goodmayes to Leigh in 1952) but about the trendy wendys who 'adopt' a place out of town and don't change it for the better for the locals and buy the best properties for weekend use. I think that's fair comment.

I'm glad I'm not well known and have to disguise myself as Janet Street-Porter when I go out:p
 
No! Never believe the papers. Every newsworthy incident I've been involved in, and one went so far as to include being the target of a cartoon in a daily, were all significantly error strewn. The 'delights' of the coast is just a fad for columnists and I have a lot of sympathy for local (whitstable) people for whom housing and other necessities have been affected by a mini tourism boom. We ended up here by accident ten years ago and a town-sized community is an excellent alternative to suburban dormitories or commuter villages. We didn't move from London for the usual reasons of crime or schools. Just got a job near here. The DFL phenomenon was starkest when we bought a house - the agents clerk ranting about DFLs pushing up prices as she arranged our sale, seemingly unaware she was involved in that very process, and the re-wiring electrician close to aggressive on the topic whilst digging a channel through the plaster. But the research, such as it is on 'incomers' is probably about right and applies to identifiable 'incomers, ie blacks, as much as it does to DFLs: if you play your part - in the school and community life and put in as much as you take, then that old british thing of fair-play seems to work. This is my real home in every respect now. I know and get on with more people than I ever did in my 'native' community where I grew up securely with school-mates and shared history. The point I wanted to get to, and I apologise for taking a long time to get to it, is this: what chance have we of making that voyaging dream come true -of loafing in communities around the world, if we are so transfixed about fluff and distractions in the press about people from one town visiting another? Whitstable was practically a druggy, low-rent, benefits town for a decade or so before it's recent revival. A contrasting memory was a night out at a trade union do on Grenada at the bottom of the Grenadines. Dark suits for a special nite-out, a half-cut band and I never felt more at home in another place. Yer takes yer pleasures where you can find em.
 
Harty Ferry. That brings back a few memories. Kept my yacht their for one year only. Went out there on Sunday morning only to find 2 lads sleeping in my cockpit. It appears that they were going from boat to boat and growing a bag of electronic booty when on getting on board my boat they let the dinghy go, and so they were awqiting recue. I didnt pick them up but waited the police arrival.
Latewr that year the mooring broke and the boat fouled another mooring rubbing the port side gelcoat all night. Not nice and quite a bit of insurance work to be done.
Never went back again and ended up staying in Conyer creek.
 
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