onionbagblog

Five pamphlets from the superb Past Tense of South London.

I do love a good old pamphlet read, especially so if it has a transpontine theme. Sure, books are half decent but there’s something accessible about the format of a pamphlet that captures my attention.

I think it goes back to the old fanzine days, where I always had half a dozen on the go. It looks like I’ve substituted football for transformative South London psycho-geographic politics.

It’s quite a niche market but thank the chuff that Past Tense are there for us.

To be honest I initially went to the Past Tense site just to pick up the latest Kennington Park pamphlet. As the title suggests, The Birthplace of People’s Democracy tells the story of Kennington through the eyes of working class history.

I start clicking and then click, click, click some more.

Oh - I seem to have five items in my basket. Whatever, that’s £20 bloody well spent.

So here we have other publications exploring in detail my particular patch of South London.

Let’s start in Brixton with Through a Riot Shield and a look at the 1985 Brixton riot. It’s a tried and tested old story, but one which always seems to find some new perspective in which to understand it.

The Killing of the Elephant and the Destruction of the Castle is also very close to home. I can’t say I miss those hellish days of navigating two bloody awful roundabouts as I cycled from Stockwell up towards Farringdon.

But in its place now is something very different. The Elephant has lost its working class soul with the social cleansing of the Heygate and what was to follow further down the road as you head towards Walworth.

One quote that always sticks in my mind was when the old bastard Wolfgang Moneypenny was interviewed by the much missed South London Hardcore. He came up with the classic line of:

“I was born of Elephant and Castle.”

South London Forever etc. Comrade

The transpontine lens then widens slightly as we come to Last Orders for the Local - Working Class Space and the Marketplace. There’s a similar theme of capital taking over working class areas and replacing it with absolute shite.

It’s a bit of a broad brush in which to paint this picture but some of my South London landmarks have been transformed by middle class tossers in recent years.

We’re talking the lovely Lido, le Velo, and even days out at The Oval. These are still amongst my fave places ever but once the Bright Young Things start to take over, then, much like marketing, they turn everything into shit.

And finally, to top up the Past Tense online basket, We Remember Wat Tyler. He’s a figure I really should know a lot more about. A Past Tense pamphlet seems like a half decent starting place.

Forward ever, backward never.

Another morning, another allotment transportation.

Transporting all the old shit from the domestic garden V 1.0 ahead of the domestic garden V 2.0 has been a regular occurrence over the past few months. We’re just about there.

This could possibly be the last half decent weekend of allotment gardening weather. I rocked up with my trolley full of peat, pieces of wood, and even some corten steel to find something of a semi-industrious building site.

Allotment folk were busy banging and nailing things down ahead of the winter storms to come.

I’ve got a handyman who can do all that for you, mate.

Elsewhere, there was a similar scene across the allotment patch over at the cricket club. It looked like the square was having a few alterations ahead of the winter lockdown. Plus, there was some fella putting up some new fencing to stop those stray balls landing in someone’s garden.

CATCH IT!!!! etc.

Our allotment patch itself is looking very green and brown. The green is encouraging. The brown is simply all the sheep’s fur that’s been dumped on as an extra comfort layer for the winter.

Yeah, me neither.

That should just about be my lot for this season. I might need to return a few times to trim the grass to keep the pesky Town Council off our back.

What the chuff do you do with an allotment over the winter months? Rent it out as a campsite?

Some more early ’90s G Force exquisite knitwear.

What an absolute bloody BEAUT.

I love the combination of the scarlet red and dark blue. This would look the absolute bollocks worn with a pair of Freddy’s of Pinewood ’50s hard denim, along with possibly some red cherry DMs.

As the boys from Clobbered keep on reminding us, always dress from the bottom up. Start with the footwear and then the rest will follow.

This particular G Force cardigan was a relative bargain. It appeared on Vinted, almost hidden away as the listing title wasn’t quite correct.

Basic error there, fella.

As ever messages were pinged back and forth. I managed to get down to the price I was willing to play.

Never forget: the price you’re willing to pay is not always the price something is worth, but G Force is G Force, innit. See them, buy them.

It’s oversized - but OF COURSE it’s oversized. That’s the G Force streetwear look.

Next weekend Robin and the team have got another stall at Lustre, the annual cottage industry craft gathering at Lakeside back in the Fair City.

I don’t think my bank balance could stretch to another trip and another purchase of the Reimagined collection.

I did wander past the old G Force Hockley shop a few days ago. It’s now a barber’s. Nothing wrong with that but there was something a little melancholy about seeing the original facade and structure that was so iconic back in the day.

I do fear that I’m subverting the G Force marketplace right now. It’s a seller’s market that responds to buyers' demand. There must be diminishing stock left out there right now.

SEE IT, BUY IT, etc.

I did have plans to go to the Sunny Colch Odeon on Monday afternoon for a cheapo cheapo grubby fiver cinema experience. On the agenda was Ali G’s Who Iz I?

Yep, I know.

But wait! What’s this?

Amazon Prime started spamming me, telling me it’s now available to watch as a freebie on the telly back home. Not quite straight to video, but straight to Amazon Prime.

Blimey, I’ll have a bit of that. A fiver here, a fiver there, it all adds up.

Cut to the chase: Ali G, Who Iz I? isn’t worth a grubby fiver. It’s a bloody awful film, but also funny as fuck in places. I think that’s the point.

The Graun liberal elite narrative leading up to the cinema release was the misuse of cultural appropriation and the dangers of taking such an approach in 2026.

This feels a little self-manufactured. The actual premise of the film takes the piss out of cultural appropriation, as well as asking a fairly serious question about what you can and can’t get away with, twenty years since Staine’s Finest first rocked up.

Surprisingly, there is a plot. It’s remarkably similar to Big in Japan, the big screen follow up for People Just Do Nothing, as the Kurupt FM crew attempt to restart their DJ careers after a downfall.

Ditto Ali G.

Having landed in the States, yer main man then takes flak from the left - is it because I iz black etc - and then also from the right, as he is used as a vehicle for free speech.

Shot by both sides, etc.

That all sounds a little heavy. Of course, it’s not heavy. It’s absolutely ridiculous, with the plot merely being something of a sideshow for some Jackass style humour.

It’s not exactly a spoiler, but I’m still laughing at the puerile and schoolboy humour of a new defence weapon that involves strapping a plastic backside onto you that then also has a dildo at the front. You tug away vigorously on the front to release a bullet mechanism coming out of the arsehole.

Pure gutter, pure lowest denominator. But then some fools over in the States generally bought into this concept and went about their masturbatory defence mechanism as though their lives depended on it.

I admit reaching for my phone around an hour or so in. It wasn’t anything Ali G related, just general Friday night Insta scrolling. You couldn’t get away with that in the cinema.

The ending is quite sweet. It does answer the question: Ali G, who iz I? The cultural appropriation of one community is then shifted to another, but that still doesn’t make it all right.

I’m not really sure who the joke is on. You could take a grand sweeping view and look at it from a societal perspective and say this type of comedy really should have been banished decades ago.

Or you could take a more postmodern perspective and say it’s basically On The Buses, 2026.

Or maybe it’s just a dumb ass film, innit.

To the University! …on Friday morning for a double header of table tennis then followed by badminton.

Small racket, big racket, big racket, small racket. It’s all the same innit.

Once again my player partner attempted to tease me psychologically and take my mind off the table tennis:

“You’ve got BO again.”

That wasn’t quite the case. I was most particular with my personal hygiene an hour or so earlier.

Cheers for that one, luv.

We were once again booked into the University squash courts. These are bloody brilliant for having a full on hour session of TWATTING the ball back and forward with no need to go chasing it.

My playing partner is rather conversational. This gets right on my tits while I’m trying to focus on how to lose a game.

The talk was of new table tennis bats. Apparently some members of the Sailing Club Monday evening social session have upgraded to something rather fancy.

Betcha I can still TWAT the ball past them.

“That’s not good”

…remarked my playing partner after a very narrow miss as I returned one of her shots.

The very next ball she attempted a serve, but it crashed right into her side of the table and back onto the squash court wall.

“That’s not very good, luv, etc.”

We pressed on. I somehow managed to come very close. The score line of 6-2 in her favour didn’t do justice to my own table tennis superiority on the squash court.

“You could beat me if you didn’t arse around so much”

…was her closing observation.

We then switched over to the sports hall for some badminton. There were some serious players out on the courts, wearing the Essex Blades badminton kit as well as having proper full on badminton bags.

I felt a bit of a fraud with our Sports Direct £10 set.

It took a little bit of adjusting from table tennis to badminton. One shot in particular from my playing partner went so high and off target that it almost landed in one of the basketball hoops nearby.

Slam dunk, luv.

Truth be told I didn’t really recover from the opening remark of:

“Do you want to get the cocks out?”

I raced to a 2-0 deficit but then managed to somehow bring this back to a 3-2 win.

Let’s call that an even draw all round after a morning of hitting various things back and forth between each other.

“The new reality is that there doesn’t appear to be any pushovers in the Premier League this season, no teams to serve as the poor kid who repeatedly gets his lunch money stolen and his socks chucked in a tree.”

David Marples on the PL 2026

Let’s start with that cover first. This doesn’t suggest post-industrial music with a Germanic touch. It screams early boy band bros' imitators. OIL me up baby.

This really confused me. Spotify was saying it was a 2018 release. I had some crazy thought at first that maybe DAF had franchised out and had passed on the name and legacy to some young imitators.

But nope, the 2018 was just a Spotify re-release. This is still the 1981 original. Phew, that was a close one.

And then we come to the music itself. It’s harsh as you would expect in places, but then also uniquely poppy and uplifting in others. DAF were very good at mixing together industrial anger with a little synth playfulness.

It helps, as ever, that I haven’t got a clue what they’re singing about. My ignorance when it comes to other languages serves me well when assessing new music. A decent find with a few random tracks added to my Spotify playlist to suit the mood.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

A couple of finds from a very pleasant 15 minutes or so digging in the CD crates at the Oxfam music branch in West Bridgford, back in the Fair City. Some Muddy Waters and some Costello, £6 all in. Job’s a good ‘un.

There’s a fantastic selection upstairs at the Oxfam along The Avenue. I always make sure I drop in whenever I’m back around town.

It’s priced competitively although fairly. No surprises to seeing the friendly guy behind the counter flicking through Discogs, double-checking stock before he put it out in the front racks.

I spent a lot of time cross-referencing my own collection and what I’ve already got. I’ve actually had to resort to having a list on my phone of some major artists that I know I will buy CDs. I’m not entirely sure exactly what I’ve already got. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of this.

I picked up the Muddy Waters, thinking, blimey, this is on my wish list. Three quid, bloody bargain, bag it. It wasn’t on my phone list of CDs already sitting back on the shelves at home, but something in the back of my mind told me that it was.

Whatever, if in doubt just buy. Three quid. POP. There you go.

And then we come to the King of America. This is something of an iconic cover that I always remember peering out at me in the shop window at Selectadisc back in the day.

Back in the day meant probably around ‘84 or ‘85. I knew Castello was cool but my musical direction was pushing me elsewhere. It’s one of those albums I’ve always wanted on the strength of the cover but now I know the music matches it.

A little later when I was back at base I managed to cross-reference my increasingly random and anarchic filing system for CDs. I’ve basically got two systems that I now need to merge together.

I can’t find Muddy Waters’ Hard Again anywhere, so that’s a win.

An album title that is only just shorter than the review. Everyone loves some album art that features a giant chicken, right? The music is most hypnotic. It’s something of a Gilles Peterson wet dream. I have no idea what it’s all about but it makes me smile.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The uprising of 1381—when the peasants fought back

via Socialist Worker

Happy birthday Ian Visits - a remarkable London resource. Ditto Diamond Geezer, natch.

“He was blocking my way, so I had to move him: Road rage driver who avoided jail after breaking cyclist’s skull claims rider was kicking off and his brain injury doesn’t matter”

via road.cc