by Alan Watkins

It can't be 59 years since the coronation – I remember it as though it was yesterday, for goodness’ sake.

It was a sunny day. The road was full of bunting and flags, and our council house was covered in St George’s flags. The local paper came along and took a photo of our house.

Dad had the day off and we had a new addition to the lounge – the first TV in the street. It had a 9in screen enclosed in a massive wooden cabinet, and all the furniture was re-arranged so that we sat with our backs to the window.

Well, we sat there for a short time, until the neighbours began to arrive. They all pushed their way into the house and sat on the seats until there were no spares. Then they sat on the arms of chairs, the floor, or simply stood as the TV flickered into life.

The curtains quickly had to be closed: you couldn’t see the blue and grey picture of the carriage as it made its way towards the Abbey. The sun burned the picture, which was full of snow from the poor reception from an aerial about 100 miles away in Wenvoe, near Cardiff.

The sandwiches and cakes, biscuits and drinks were soon being picked over, and just as quickly my friends and I became bored with the pretty young queen and the droning of the Archbishop, Dr Geoffrey Fisher.

Lots of shushes greeted protests about comfort (or lack of it), boredom and wasted opportunities. In fact we were turned off. We went into the back garden for a kickaround to the echoes of “Vivat! Vivat!”

It was much better to climb the wall, ride a bike, fight over the game rules, throw stones, and do what kids do when they are five and six years old.

Yet if we thought that was it, we were sadly mistaken.

Some time later – it may have been days or weeks, but it was certainly another sunny summer day – we all flocked to the city park. That was because our Queen and her handsome Duke were visiting us.

Most of my chums were in the park, but mum and dad opted to wait outside so we could see them when they arrived and left. We might have done – I don’t remember anything but flags. There were swings on the far side of the park.

I wasn’t allowed to go there, and instead was stuck in a crowd of sweaty people.

At last the coronation was over… or so I thought. Back at school in September we were suddenly ushered into the hall with our parents as guests, the curtains once more closed on a perfect Indian summer’s day, and we sat on unyielding benches to watch the coronation repeated.

It was enough to turn toddlers to republicanism! At least the film was in colour, but it went on, and on, and on.

Was it almost 60 years ago? Where have the boys in their thick woollen shorts and buttoned-up shirts gone? Those that scrapped in the sun – Ronnie and the two Peters, Alistair, Clive and the brainy brat across the road? Several are dead, the rest scattered to the winds.

I shall celebrate the Diamond Jubilee in the garden. I’ve seen too much pomp and majesty to thrill over it.

But, God Bless Her, she’s not been a bad monarch.

Brit pop had a kickstart back in February when Blur were given an Outstanding Contribution to Music award at the Brits. That spurred further album sales for them and talk of them not splitting up after the Olympics concert.

Well that still has not really been answered but Blur have announced they will be performing at Margate Winter Gardens on Wednesday, August 1.

This is going to be the biggest band to perform there for some years. Expect a sweaty atmosphere and a self-made mosh pit. That is what happens at rock gigs. Totally different to pop.

Pop concerts are more about screaming, dancing, cheering and waving. Rock is about cheering, shouting and jumping! Those are your main ingredients. You can imagine the heights Blur fans will reach when the anthem Song 2 is played.

Next week on kmfm you could win afternoon tea at Chilston Park Hotel, Lenham, plus, by the end of the week, an overnight stay there.

Coming soon kmfm has your chance to win your way to Florida. We will also be at the forthcoming Dover Tattoo on Friday, June 1 and Saturday, June 2.

The Jubilee weekend is fast approaching and the kmfm Street Team plan to be out across Kent. If you are having your own street party let me know and the team could be coming to see you. Email andy@kmfm.co.uk

As summer approaches, the tunes are all big anthems and feel-good. Coldplay have duetted with Rihanna for Princess of China. Taken from the band’s album that no one still knows how to pronounce – Mylo Xyloto. The guys have produced a mix of rock, electro-pop and R&B. Listen to kmfm to hear it.

The very talented Emeli Sande has released her next single – My Kind of Love. Sande is very soulful and this song really expresses that side of her voice. She is going to be a massive pull at Canterbury’s Lounge on the Farm this summer. Oh, and if you want to be there stay, listening to Kent’s kmfm.

You may not like Tracey Emin but you have to hand it to her – she's a great flagwaver for her home town of Margate.

She guest edited the Today programme earlier this week and featured a piece on the town's economic revival and the importance of Turner Contemporary in that process.

Emin has not always been a good role model for young people. Her Turner prize-winning unmade bed with associated detritus was not to everyone's taste and did not endear her to traditionalists.

Her ripe language in some of her work also upset the purists, even though it's pretty commonplace to anyone listening to yoof chatter.

But things are changing. As she gets older, she is becoming less of a wild child, more an inspiration to a new generation, and more an ambassador for Thanet.

Despite a minor outcry – the lot of most artists while they are alive - she has just been appointed professor of drawing at the Royal Academy and pledged to donate her fees to students.

Young people can identify more easily with Emin than a stuffed shirt like bumptious art critic Brian Sewell who became a target for East Kent abuse after dismissing Turner Contemporary as a white elephant and Margate as Slough-on-Sea.

Emin also went back to King Ethelbert School in Birchington which fostered her love of art and still has a strong art department. She spoke to young people about their feelings about art and its importance to their lives. It was all good stuff and a positive perspective on a reviving East Kent. It might well encourage a few more visitors to the area in 2012.

And while on that subject, I wish you a profitable and healthy New Year.

The most exciting news (allegedly) in Thanet, since the opening of Dreamland in the 1950’s, is the opening of Turner Contemporary in Margate. I was lucky enough to go the press opening on Wednesday 13^th April ahead of the official opening.

Whilst what is on exhibited is quite beautiful, although sparse, the most dramatic scene is the view of the sea from the various galleries which is rather special especially when the sun sets.  

I cannot but feel that this is the wrong location for the right project. This should have been in Whitstable, where it would have been more at home with the population, rather than the still down-at-heel Margate.

Building Turner Contemporary in Margate, is akin to deciding to re-build the iconic Indian Taj Mahal mausoleum in Leytonstone, East London.

I do love Thanet, and in particular Margate, as I have fond childhood memories from the 1970s. But the memories of what Margate was then and is now and what it could be is so contrasting that it could be fiction.

I make an exception though for the following: the outstanding boutique B&B The Reading Rooms, (www.thereadingroomsmargate.co.uk) the Harbour Café Bar, restaurant, The Ambrette (www.theambrette.co.uk), The Lifeboat Ale & Cider House (www.thelifeboat-margate.com), the boutiques and galleries in the Old Town and of course the mildly eccentric  Walpole Bay Hotel, (www.walpolebayhotel.co.uk). I worry that apart from these places, Margate has little to offer the 400 people a day expected to visit Turner Contemporary.

If the not-great attitude I encountered on the telephone with the receptionist, at Turner, is mixed with the ineptitude of the Visit Kent staff (who I feel have ignored Thanet for years) then Margate’s school report should be downgraded from ‘could do better’ to ‘there is little or no improvement here, just yet’.

Margate needs as huge facelift: for starters why not knock that hideous high rise on the seafront down or at least paint it. In fact, why not give grants to paint the entire seafront.  Remove the tacky arcades, and replace them with Victorian-style shopping fronts and make Margate, Margate again.

Then inform certain London local authorities that Thanet will no longer tolerate housing their addicts or delinquents and push hard for a high-speed link to Canterbury - and only then might Margate rise from the ashes and I hope it does, as I love the place.

But as I write this blog, it appears that the Margate’s Big Event, the one with the Red Arrows, might not happen as the money has gone on the Turner, but then again it might have gone on a dozen street football coordinators…

Protests about the proposed route of High Speed 2 from London to the Midlands and the North will provoke hollow laughter in Kent. I remember reporting on marches from South Darenth and Sutton-at-Hone that demonstrated fierce opposition to the initial route.

There was the admission that a map had been drawn up on an official’s dining room table using out of date information and putting the route through a new housing estate near Blue Bell Hill, Chatham. When a Mid Kent Parkway station was proposed between Medway and Maidstone, there was an outcry that the “green lung” would be removed and prompt the creation of a “Medstone” or “Maidway” conurbation.

There was dismay with the proposal to put the link down the pretty Nashenden Valley. When construction started, there was outrage over the “scar on the landscape.”

I can hardly remember a good thing being said about the proposed railway, wherever it went. Maidstone council bowed to this anti-sentiment and voted not to have anything to do with what eventually became HS1 And yet, and yet...

Taking a lesson from the French city of Lille, which battled for the TGV line to go through its heart, Ashford council fought tooth and nail to have the service re-routed through the centre of the town. Look what that decision has done to the prosperity and potential of the town.

Commuter journeys have been transformed. Look at the potential for regeneration in Dover, Margate and Folkestone from the presence of what is a brilliant service on state-of-the-art Hitachi trains. Look at the great advertisement for the county. Kent, a railway back-marker since the 1800s, is no longer on the wrong side of the tracks.

While third-rail trains were stuck in the snow, HS1 kept on rolling. More than seven million passengers took HS1 in its first year and I bet that figure will be a lot higher next year. It is a powerful economic driver for the county, raises our game and is proving a powerful incentive for firms to move to the county.

Just as 19th century steam trains and track came to blend into the countryside, with pressure groups lobbying to preserve threatened lines, so the railway that sparked so much protest in Mid and North West Kent is now part of our landscape. Nothing much to protest about now. The engineers did a great job.

Maidstone is left on the sidelines, now pleading for a high-speed station that was once there for the taking. Prosperity is slowly shifting to Ashford and will in time flow to Dover, Margate and Folkestone. House prices will rise disproportionately in towns with good access to the trains. A Manston Parkway station is on the cards.

HS2 protesters should look to the Kent experience and see that while they should ensure the route is tweaked here and there, and tunnelled under beautiful places, there is so much to gain from high-speed rail in terms of greener travel and greater convenience in a modern world. Things we fear in advance often come to be loved. In a 100 years’ time, HS2 and HS1 will be celebrated as much as the steam railways of another era.

Two iconic Margate buildings highlight a misguided gulf in priorities.

Turner Contemporary, designed by top architect David Chipperfield, may look a bit odd outside but inside it’s bright, light and spacious.

Expansive views over the seascapes so beloved by Turner when he lived in Margate will amaze visitors. Yesterday’s handover ceremony - from Kent County Council to Turner Contemporary Trust - was held in front of huge windows giving the audience a remarkable ring-side view of waves lashing the sea wall.

It will be great to see the first Turner paintings – on loan from the Tate - hanging in the place they belong. KCC deserves plaudits for sticking to its plan to build an art gallery in Margate, and for having the courage to ditch the earlier near unworkable and costly gallery-in-the-sea model.

Backed by the nation’s art experts, the county’s Guggenheim will put Kent on the international cultural map and slowly transform East Kent’s economic fortunes. So it should, given the £17 million invested in a leap of faith.

Local cynics may say that sum should have been allocated to other worthy projects, but they said the same in Bilbao, and look what’s happened to that once - but no longer - rundown Spanish city But a few hundred yards away, languishes a building that should be a jewel in Kent’s entertainment crown. In contrast to the “eggheads” palace down the road, The Winter Gardens is the forgotten “people’s palace.”

Hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers and locals flocked through its doors for nearly a century. The place echoes with the sounds of legendary artists down the ages. You can almost hear the applause and singing at those colourful summer shows that rounded off a bucket-and-spade day.

Party political conferences were once held there rather than Blackpool, Brighton or Bournemouth. It is a superb venue, architecturally stylish, a large stage and an auditorium that lends itself to large award and corporate ceremonies as well as popular entertainment.

But it has been terribly neglected. It looks unloved. Its sea-facing wall is crumbling. The final straw was seeing staff rattling a few buckets after a performance of The Sleeping Beauty by Margate Operatic Society to help fund essential renovation.

A few 10p coins from Brownies, Cubs and pensioners will hardly dent the sums needed to give this venerable lady a new lease of life. Now public sector funds are squeezed, it will be hard to find the money.

But if £17m can be found for an art gallery, it should not be beyond the wit of KCC, Thanet council and investment companies to come up with a revival plan for a place held in great affection by both by locals and others well beyond Kent. The Winter Gardens is a special place and should not be left in the shade by that shiny new structure down the road.

If it is not listed, it should be. It may not be as highbrow as Turner but is no less respectable. It’s surely time to properly invest in this wonderful theatre of dreams – 100 years old next year - before it’s too late.

Gordon Clarkson from the half-term production of Simple Simon plays in the new kids soft play centre at Hartsdown Leisure Centre, off Hartsdown Road, Margate, by MARTIN APPS.