In the autumn of 2013 my husband and I moved to the wilds of East Kent from the suburbs of south London. We left because we wanted all the cliches every jaded Londoner wants: clear skies at night, a soundtrack of birdsong instead of sirens and a house that could accommodate a proper dining table as opposed to one of those origami ones that looks half table half, half Southern Rail drinks trolley. We also left because age had made us deeply unsociable creatures. A place where we didn’t have to see another living soul then seemed like paradise on earth.
Back then East Kent was famously untamed, with the vast North Downs at one end and the eerie wetlands of Romney Marsh at the other. It’s why Turner came here to paint, Dickens to write, and TS Eliot to see out a massive nervous breakdown which resulted in him writing part of The Waste Land in a Margate seaside shelter.
