All at sea

To Turner Contemporary this week, a seaside jaunt deliberately fixed for after the Easter weekend to miss the crowds. And what crowds - apparently the venue had a third of its expected full year visitor volume in the first 10 days - how's that for an opening ! I admit that I wasn't expecting to be thrilled. Brian Sewell had been so damning in his Evening Standard piece and other critics gave mixed reviews. Approaching along the prom from the railway station, the building does indeed look like a DIY shed though its prominent position on the front is startling. But once inside, thank heavens, the expanse of air and light blew me away. I'm so pleased to say that I loved the Shawcross sculptures and Ellen Harvey's seaside shack with its etched photographs of Margate. Though I was less impressed by Turner's St Vincent painting. Perhaps because I've seen many, more glorious Turners at the Tate and the National. This image of a volcanic eruption in the Caribbean seemed so distant and disjointed from the other seascape images and installations at the gallery. Beyond the gallery and a delicious, though windswept, fish and chips lunch on the front, unfortunately for Margate, the attractions of the town didn't hold us much longer. We soon zipped off to Chatham, to re-visit the acres of exhibitions at Chatham's Historic Dockyards. Now there you really do feel the power of the sea, or rather, the power of the industry of the sea and indeed, the tragedy of it's demise - when it closed in 1984, 7000 people lost their jobs. The spring sunshiney day demanded an open-air afternoon so we crawled through the submarine Ocelot and then climbed all over HMS Gannet and Cavalier. We boarded the train back to London buzzing with seaside memories and plans for more visits - our appetite for the Kent coast is far from quenched.