THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

 

It used to strike me as odd that when I asked local people if they were from Deal, they would invariably reply, 'No, I'm from Walmer.' The three places along this cul-de-sac coastline, Deal, Walmer & Kingsdown are now I realise quite different fish.

Of course, it is Deal that is the public persona of the area. It's Deal which gets a regatta every summer and a carnival. It's Deal who lost the Marines and the miners. Deal that doesn't have a cinema, an Italian restaurant or dare I say it, a McDonalds.

Earlier this summer, I was invited to attend a meeting at the Town Hall to discuss funding for projects between South Street and King Street. I quickly learnt that there was no guarantee that any money would actually materialise and, as I sat listening to Councillor Beer map out her own agenda, which included embracing Deal's up and coming coffee culture and parading a giant puppet of scholar and classicist Elizabeth Carter along the seafront, I gazed around the room at a crowd of nodding octagenarians and wondered, what was the point?

A perverse reverse of John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate, Deal has brainwashed me into thinking I'm somewhere far more interesting than I actually am. In Frankenheimer's 1962 film, US soldiers captured by North Koreans believe they are attending a women's tea-party about flower arranging. In reality, they are being questioned and groomed by the top-brass of Russian and Chinese intelligence.

Glowing reviews from weekend broadsheets and bloggers, 'liked' and shared endlessly on social media, appear to make Deal a unique seaside haven of independent shops, Bohemian cafes, bars and restaurants. Closed in the week or empty, the reality I see is pensioners keeping optician appointments, queues buying ready-meals at Marks & Spencer and an utter indifference and apathy in local people for anything that strays over the common denominator.

Much hyped for it's burgeoning property-market and second-homes, Deal won the dubious honour of Daily Telegraph High Street of the Year. Not many moons on, several of these once prized shop-fronts have become private homes, while period Georgian properties in the conservation-area have remained in estate-agents windows for years. Huge works have been carried out on grand buildings on Middle Street and Beach Steet, the latter has an underground cinema and is rented-out as high-end Air 'B&B. Look on their site and you will currently find over 250 houses and cottages for rent in Deal. Look in the pubs and restaurants and you'll see it's an economy that is rarely shared.

DFL's don't always help themselves. A woman in Middle Street once told me proudly that she 'wouldn't dream of socialising with locals.'  Recently, I overheard a couple demanding service above those already there because their friends had come from London, and regularly witness the sport of people with far too much money beating down traders in the Saturday market for stuff they're selling for a few pounds.

At The Hey Hey restaurant, the closest you can get to Manchuria, my wife got talking to a retired woman and her partner as I went out for a smoke. On my return, I was taken slightly aback by how much she hated Londoners. 'Why don't they just go home and leave us alone?' She wailed. 'Why do they have to change things?'

Friends who grew up in Deal in the 1970s and '80s, frequently tell me it was a 'shit-hole', but there's also a sub-culture of locals who never left beyond the Port of Dover and who clearly see it as a golden-age.

The other day, someone asked me if I was from Deal.

'No,' I said. 'I'm from Kingsdown.'