Kick ASS 4!

Not the soggy-bottomed exploits at tomorrow's Water Gala, over in the Dickensians' Playground. Nor the feeble sequel that's just arrived at your local Ritzy.

No, I'm talking about something much bigger and better! For, fellow millionaires, it's that time of year again! Time to go and gawp at sculptures made out of a mango and 400,000 used coat hangers. Time to watch a fat lady in a smock warble La Traviata on the beach. Time to see grown men and women dressed as ferrets perform the hula dance whilst chanting verses from T S Eliot's The Waste Land.

Yes, over the three days of this coming bank holiday weekend, the Millionaire's Playground will be playing host to the fourth annual Ramsgate arts festival, more commonly known as A Summer Squall (or ASS for short)!!!!

It promises to be a packed programme, and I suppose now that Thanet Duffer Central has completely abandoned everywhere other than the Arsonists' Playground as a place to hold events, we should support it with all our Ramsgatonian might. Being, as I am, one of the island's leading intellectuals, my particular perennial faves are the Treasure Hunt on Sunday, which takes you on a ramble around Ramsgate's hidden gems, and Ramsgate's Got Writing Talent at the Shirley Temple Yacht Club on Monday, which gives wannabe writers the chance of an introduction to a top literary agent.

But there's loads more, with open studios all over the magnificent Ile de Thanet, a boat parade, traditional family games, a tiny art gallery in a caravan, retro re-creations of old seaside photos, street theatre, a market, comedy musical mayhem, and bands down on our lovely front, headlined by rockin' Si Cranstoun! (Who he? - Ed.) Plus, of course, the aforementioned operatic warbling on the beach.

You can download the full festival programme by clicking here.

Right, it only remains to wish you lots of ASS fun over the old BH weekend! Pip pip!

Squall In The Mind

Reader Richard (good name!) writes to remind me that today sees the start of Ramsgate's first ever Summer Squall festival, packed with more than firty Fannitty fun-filled frolics over the course of the bank holiday weekend and designed to put the Cannes of Kent back on the creative map where it belongs.

Dicky's photo shows artist Ben Parry's, er, sonic junk machine outside the Custom House at last night's launch. Apparently this Heath Robinson device will be floating around the town over the next three days, banging and clanging and whirring away to its electric heart's content.

Other highlights include the world's smallest solar powered cinema (seats eight) showing Thanet seaside promotional films from the 50s, 60s and 70s, the world's biggest percussion band made out of recycled old junk, a heritage treasure hunt on Monday morning, thrilling theatre at the King's Church Hall in the centre of town, and a chance to get your book published with an X Factor style writing competition at the Shirley Temple Yacht Club, also on Monday morning.

What with the weather turning up trumps, and all this stuff going on, it looks like the Millionaires' Playground is the place to be this weekend!

Click here for more details on the yourfannitinnit website
Click here to download full Summer Squall programme

Ramsgate Rocks!

Er, well, no it doesn't actually as I gather that Ramsgate Rocks (the powerboat festival but without the powerboats) ain't happening this year. Instead we're to be treated to two new, slightly more arty events in the space of a couple of weeks.

Whilst the Dickensian east side is currently indulging itself with mass bladder-on-a-stick waving, and the seedy north side gears up to get its baps out with its annual Titty Show, here on the trendy south side we're ramping up for Monster Bass (14-15 Aug) and A Summer Squall (28-30 Aug).

Monster Bass (nothing to do with drum 'n' bass or turning it up to 11, as most locals seem to think) will feature a huge papier mâché fish in a torchlight procession to the sea, along with street entertainers and a market. This is TDC's offering.

A Summer Squall is backed by our very own teeny-tiny council and promises 'events around the town with something for every age - music, theatre, film, writing and even archaeology!' Highlights will include the world's smallest solar powered cinema, a milk float that's been transformed into a 'sonic wind machine', and a percussion group that uses old tut to make a banging sound.

Quite how Ramsgate has transformed in the space of a year from a place where lardy, tattooed pit bull tuggers in nothing but thongs can get down the front with a bag of Stellas and jiggle their lobster coloured moobs to a Gloria Gaynor impersonator belting out 'I Will Survive', to a place where sophisticated DFLs swan around spouting off about 'The Legend of Lomea', art and architecture is quite beyond me.

Perhaps the fast train has something to do with it. Perhaps I've had something to do with it, with all my talk about the 'Millionaires' Playground'. If so, I'm sorry, as I actually quite enjoyed the atmosphere at Ramsgate Rocks. And I'm sure Frank Thorley and the other establishments on the strip enjoyed the tens of thousands it stuffed in their coffers! Maybe next year we could have a bit of both?