My plan for the Turner Contemporary

I learnt a horrible new word during the holidays: Twixmas. It refers to the 27-30 December period and has its roots in the word ‘betwixt’, although why anyone would refer to those dates as ‘betwixt’ Christmas and New Year rather than ‘between’ is beyond me. Caroline, who now works in travel, introduced me to it and the reason it came up is that she booked an Airbnb in Margate for precisely those dates. This was to be our Twixmas holiday. Not ideal because there were QPR games on the 27th and the 30th, one of them in Bristol, but by criss-crossing the country in our VW seven-seater I made it work.

First the good news. Margate is actually quite nice. I’ve been to quite a few seaside towns in the course of following QPR this season — Scarborough, Blackpool, Whitby — and Margate is up there with the best. Admittedly, that’s a low bar, but you definitely get the impression that this is a resort on the up.