'You bet,' I said, in reply to the taxi driver who asked if I'd been to Margate before. I had, to one of Tracey Emin's early birthday dos at the legendary Walpole Bay Hotel.
In truth though, my memory of it wasn't as sharp as I'd made it sound, more a memory of a memory with a Mungo Jerry soundtrack. The intervening years — ten or so — had blurred it into a shifting, almost generic vista of sea, sand and strangers, like some scratched and flickering Super 8 with speeded up promenaders and the occasional face gurning into the camera: holidaymakers, carousers, those like us, out looking for fun. Some seemed to attach themselves briefly to our party, we learnt their names then forgot them, lost people then found them again wearing gaudy shades or buried up to their necks in sand, and so on and on in a similar vein till an extravagant dusk began bruising the sky, like some Napoleonic war had just begun up the coast in Ramsgate.
We settled outside a pub to watch it.
As sunsets go I remember thinking it was more like Spain's Ronda of which Ernest Hemingway famously said: 'See Ronda and die!' As it turned out lavish sundowns are quite normal in Kent, so perhaps we could add: 'See Margate and live!' A bright order of drinks dissolved the last streaks of red into the neon glow of amusement parks, penny arcades and nightclubs with names borrowed from abroad and the odd seafood stand, still open, still selling whelks. In the time-honoured fashion of the next morning, I remember nothing at all.
Almost a decade to the day then, having caught the fast train down from London, I was pleased — ten years and one hour later — to rediscover a town with much more to offer than just hangovers. Hangover cures for one, if my taxi driver was to be believed.
'Oh yeah!' he said, and as though to illustrate his point, wound the window down forcing him to shout. 'When I first moved here, my GP said to me, "You know, you've put ten years on your life don't you?"'
'On?' I said.
'Yeah — on! It's the air! Comes direct from the Arctic.' Eyeing me in his rear view mirror, he added, 'Doesn't pick up any s**t along the way.'
This is borne out. Margate is on a peninsula and, I also learnt, the surrounding area of Thanet had in effect been an island. To this day its inhabitants refer to going anywhere else, as going 'off island'. The cab dropped me on the front opposite the stone harbour.
'See that stone harbour? Beautiful isn't it?'
'Yes,' I said. (It was.)
'And the stone lighthouse.'
'Yes.'
'It's made of stone! And it's called the stone lighthouse. STONE! Lighthouse!'
'Right.'
'Well, the council want to paint it.'
