the real Deal?

am currently in the church office using their broadband connection to research dtats and stuff for my placement project and pondering how you truly get under the skin of a place ... especially when I am here for such a short time... and Deal hardly fits into any of my previous experiences - it is much smaller than any other place I've lived, so local news travels fast, but conversely feels quite a way from anywhere 'large' and although very near to France, steadfastly English... When you join a church you almost inevitably get an insight into the middle-classes first... though even the middle-classes here aren't as well off as they are in Oxford for example, and there isn't much in the way of take up of private school education...
Deal certainly knows how to 'put its best foot forward' with sites advertising its genteel delights... but I've also discovered, rather to my surprise that it's also ex-mining country ... something it does have in common with lovely Sheffield/Yorkshire!

It's a very odd experience to join a church as part of the leadership team - people immediately know who you are when you are still working out the way home! It's also hard to get a sense of what it's like to be an ordinary member of the church at first, and how much they've got the vision that the leadership team have been heading towards for several years...

perhaps my eager readership have some good questions that enable the questioner to cut to the heart of a place?...