Sandgate

All now available in paperback and on Kindle

Set in Folkestone in the heady days of the late 60s.

They say if you can remember it, you weren't there!

Two plays One an imaginary meeting between Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan in a Fitzrovia pub The other is Caitlin Thomas reminiscing after the untimely death of her husband.

This is the tale of Hana, a young girl who moves from where she was born in London, to the Kent coast. They discover a wonderful area called Prince's Parade which is full of amazing animals, has a beautiful canal and is right next to the sea too! By buying this book you will be helping to protect it. All profits from it will be donated to the Save Prince's Parade campaign which aims to halt plans to develop the area into a housing estate.

Very funny, and surreal story about a man and a woman on their first date: Bolton Brady and Veda, set in London, November 2001. Bolton is forty, not into assets, has never lived with a woman and looked into the future and seen loneliness. So he decides to do something about it. He advertises in a lonely-hearts column, and receives six replies, but after experiencing one disaster after another only Veda remains between him and his sanity As the day unfolds the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred, building to a surreal, yet poignant, conclusion.

All now available in paperback and on Kindle

This walk through the history of Sandgate to the present day was first performed at the Chichester Hall a decade ago on Wednesday, 9th June. It is now available on Kindle or in paperback

Now available on Amazon. Great evocative yarns of worldly travels.

The title of the book hints at how, as a ‘loose cannon’, Folkestone born Ted’s risk-taking got him into trouble on a number of occasions whilst being a considerable advantage in his working life.

As a young journalist, Reg Turnill met most of the prewar political personalities and later became the BBC's space correspondent being the only one in the press room when the historic Houston we have a problem message came from Apollo 11.

All now available in paperback and on Kindle

Janet Holben Paperback Folkestone Cemetery has around 15,000 graves (27,000 people) there are stories of skulduggery and innocence, murder and bravery, grandeur and squalor – but mostly there are stories of everyday people living their lives This account brings some of those stories back to life and will perhaps bring an understanding of how Folkestone was shaped by terrible wars, widespread disease, the unforgiving sea, the new railway and fashionable society – but mostly, by the people who lived, loved, made their livelihood and finally died here

When you run things happen. When you change your environment, things happen. Mostly the details are mundane, but I have been a witness in certain places and moments in time to things that I found interesting, intriguing, amusing, poignant and memorable Through my career in the global sports industry, mainly in athletics, for the best part of thirty years, I have had opportunities to run and race in some interesting places around the World, in the UK, and close to home Those thirty “working” years were a unique time of dramatic growth for global sports with many fundamental changes and I wanted to capture the flavour of living in the goldfish bowl of world sport in a unique period of time I have chosen 160 different locations in which I have run and raced over the years and let them become the framework for the tales that I tell in these pages. I wanted to allow each tale to be a door into memories and associations with a time and place; sometimes quite straight forward, others are more labyrinthine, with connections leading off at tangents I wanted to share them; I hope you enjoy the journey?

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Our thanks to the Sandgate Parish Council and the Community Gardeners for allowing us to reproduce this diary page. We hope to make this a monthly feature in the magazine but you can read all the diary entries by clicking on this box.

The snowdrops are out, as are the first of the daffodils and the primroses; all of which can be seen in their glory from the walking paths around Enbrook Park. The weather has continued to be predominately dry, and although chilly it really feels like spring is on the way at last. On walking through the park this week it was interesting to see so many people with cameras on tripods and binoculars, all looking to see if they can catch a rare sighting of a Hume’s warbler. This bird seems to be way off course as apparently it should be spending winter in India, and breeds in the mountains of inner Asia. It certainly caused a kerfuffle for several days as it flitted amongst the trees by the brook Our tool box got a good spring cleaning during one of the sessions this week and is now looking spectacularly tidy – woe betide anyone who messes it up any time soon. With the passing of St Valentine’s Day, it is time to sow the very first seeds of the season to be grown outdoors. Still too cold to sow directly outdoors, seeds are allowed to germinate indoors, then spend their first day or two on a sunny windowsill before being put into a cold frame until the plants are strong enough to be able to cope outside We have sown sweet peas, peas for pea shoots, spring onions, beetroot, spinach, radishes, early cabbages, cauliflowers, kohlrabi, calabrese, coriander, flat and curled parsley, plus about ten different varieties of lettuce, some French marigolds and thyme. The beds are waiting for them as soon as they are ready! We had to start watering things already. Not anything planted in the ground, but the various pots we have around the garden, plants in waiting, as pots dry out before you know it as soon as the sun starts to shine. We continue to monitor what grows well in the garden and what struggles. We have not had much success with our autumn raspberries, so decided to take up one of the beds and move them to other places to see how they fare there. We are disappointed with the goji berries performance so far, and decided to cut them right back to see what they make of that We have also cut back much of the rosemary and a bit of the fig tree, but will be leaving some plants to start sending out some new shoots before we cut back much else. One plant which has coped well despite the heavy frost has been the Claytonia or winter purslane. With such little leaves, it is hard to believe it grows so well in the cold, and there have been some welcome green salad leaves. Another winter salad leaf, lambs lettuce, is just starting to be big enough to pick but has also managed to survive.

What’s next?

• More seeds to be sown

• Might need to repot some things

• Sort out some of the things in the cold frames

• Keep checking the brassicas for any pigeon damage

New dates for 2023 to be announced soon

Rooms to hire in Sandgate

Need to hire a hall? There's no need to look any further. Sandgate has a room to suit your needs.

Chichester Memorial Hall

Old Fire Station Reading Room

St Paul's Church Hall

Tower Theatre

The Library

Whether for a party, business meeting, music evening, club meeting or annual general meeting, Sandgate has a room for you with space to accommodate from 10 to 300 To see if there is one to suit your needs, do email the date(s) and number of attendees to david@thesentinel.org.uk.

We'll do the rest.

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