The Ragged Optimist 94
How are you all? Settled into 2026 alright, enjoying the little-bit-more-sunshine and some blue skies? Jolly good. The Ragged Optimist’s had a busy start to the year - don’t forget you can visit the Pines Garden Cafe & Visitor Centre at St Margaret’s Bay, near Dover or the Make It Yourself zine exhibition at the University of Kent’s Templeman Library to see what he’s been up to.
Shall we have a party, in a few weeks, when The Ragged Optimist hits 100? Share this week’s edition with your friends, and they can come too. 100 not out seems like it’s worth celebrating.
They’ve installed a nest box on the very top of Arlington House in Margate, for the resident Peregrine Falcons to make a home. They’ve been there a long time - The Ragged Optimist moved into a flat on the eighth floor there in 2015, and used to watch them. But they haven’t nested successfully so far, what with all the high winds and water up there. Good luck, chaps.
This optimist has been interested in colour charts and paint swatches for a long time. I have a box in my studio, full of them - the ones from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are wonderful period pieces, and the naming of modern paints is a wonderful thing. One day, The Ragged Optimist would like to name a paint colour. Here’s the antidote to Farrow & Ball. Northern paint, with proper Northern names. We like Nana’s China, and Buzzin’.
“Wildlife Trusts hope to be able to release around 100 beavers into seven rivers this year.”
Penguin is investing £150,000 to help independent bookshops bring creative ideas to life, to inspire children and young people to engage with books and discover the joy of reading. Bookshops can apply now.
Years ago, The Ragged Optimist gave a local bookshop £100 to pay for books for local children - copying the pay-it-forward coffee movement. That inspired The Margate Bookshop’s Free Books for School programme, which has put over 1000 books into children’s hands.
It’s also World Book Day month, when schools issue tokens for children to collect a free book from their local bookshop. Except most schools bypass that bit and give the books out. The bookshops pay for the books, by the way. This edition is being written in a room full of them.
For the first time in fifty-and-some years, three Sussex cows have been released into Tolworth Court Farm Fields in south-west London.
A set of Grade II-listed warehouses in Grimsby have been transformed into something that’s rather more than the ‘youth club’ most articles have described it as. Arts studios, performance space, martial arts gym, and a sports hall with climbing wall, as well as social spaces and a café. Just … as an ex-youth worker … wow.
Locally, charity Pie Factory Music have became the owner of Ramsgate Youth Centre, where they’ve been based for 13 years. Excellent news.
More about the Sussex Bay project, in the form of a Tedx talk, suggested by lovely reader Edel.