In a Guardian article calculated to infuriate, novelist Laura Barton recently told how she moved down to Margate in 2014, decided she hated it and hotfooted it back to London, describing my beloved Thanet as “cliquish, gossipy and parochial”.

But before you set fire to her books, it wasn’t the Margatonians to whom she objected, but her fellow johnny-come-latelys.

Having failed to integrate, they existed in a smug, fair-trade cruffin-fuelled fug of insular self-congratulation, with only one topic of conversation: how much more marvellous this life was than the one they’d left. Hadn’t they been clever to make the 70-mile trek east! Yeah, that does sound annoying, in fairness.

Obviously I jest. Why, some of my best friends are DFLs (Down from Londons)! I quite like a cocktail/art gallery combo on a weekend myself. But then I am sort of a DFL too, or rather a DFE - Down From Essex.

Twenty years ago, but I realise it still counts. I’m grateful I don’t feel I belong anywhere. I’m equally uncomfortable in the company of every class and community. No need to seek out my own tribe to feel alienated.

It’s a shame for Ms Barton that she felt so isolated among her own people, and yet still didn’t choose to integrate elsewhere, because Thanet is packed with awesome sorts and oodles of homegrown talent. It’s truly staggering how much phenomenal creativity happens in this one tiny corner of the globe.

I’ve run poetry events here, been to some amazing gigs, worked with the most incredible photographers and artists. I could have introduced her to some mind-bendingly brilliant novelists, who’d have zero interest in discussing house prices or crowing at their good fortune.

I’d hate to think Kent was becoming over-stuffed with wearisome wastes of sea air, and I’m confident it isn’t. She only needed to expand her seaside horizons.

Twenty-four thousand Londoners moved to Kent in the year ending June 2020, attracted by our beautiful scenery and sunsets, not to mention our enormous, bargain Victorian piles.

Now Covid has rendered the office obsolete, why not live somewhere cheap and pretty?

This sudden influx of newcomers is changing our towns, for they bring in their wake restaurants and shops catering to a different class.

My mate Jenny, who used to live in Margate, came down to visit me after five years in Sheffield. Jenny wanted egg and chips for her tea and had £5 to spend. To her dismay she found all the egg and chip emporiums she so fondly remembered, the greasy spoons which used to litter Margate’s seafront and town centre, had been replaced with chichi little bistros, all serving organic essence of iguana coulis, drizzled on a cow’s bottom with a hint of mint, on painter’s palettes and plant pots, interior furnishings and ambience carefully chosen from impeccable good taste catalogues. There were plenty of tiny little messes to be bought for huge wads of cash, but for someone who wanted egg and chips for £5, not a hope.

Another pertinent anecdote. Not long after I moved to Margate in 2003, my aunt came to visit. She brought a flask of ‘proper’ coffee on the assumption the stuff would be unobtainable in Margate.

Well, first, of course you can get proper coffee in Margate, you awful snob; second, who asked you to visit, pretty sure I’m out that day, whichever day you pick; third, why not try drinking what the locals drink? It won’t kill you, more’s the pity.

We mock those who visit Spain with their suitcases stuffed full of PG Tips and Heinz beans: how is this different? Oh, because poor people are inherently hilarious and deserve to have their culture ridiculed, that’s right. They’re an anomaly who need their attitudes and behaviour checked and corrected if at all possible, or if not, hidden away in a ghetto where they needn’t offend bourgeois eyeballs.

This is unhelpful for all of us, because Laura Barton’s tale, given a benevolent reading, teaches us we need to make room for instant coffee and egg and chips alongside the new. We must learn to hunker down and rub along, together celebrate the differences that make us interesting and valuable. It’s people that make a place. Even the finest seascape will ultimately pall.

And Thanet is blessed with some beauties.