“The Lambeth Conservatives may not be a very influential force, having lost their last councillor in 2022, but it was their arguments that ensured the ward name has an apostrophe in the correct place: Myatt’s Fields rather than Myatts Field. As a pedant, this author salutes their efforts on behalf of a ward they will never win.”
Arf.
via OnLondon
GAWD bless Stonewall Records in Sunny Colch. It’s become one of my regular routine stop off points whenever I’m in the half-town, half-city.
There’s a well stocked vinyl section, plus, tucked away in a corner, some incredibly cheapo cheapo CDs. Each time I go there I remind the fine chap behind the counter that these are shamelessly underpriced.
Today I walked out with some Small Faces, Snuff, Courtney Pine, and George Benson. You’re not going to find those four artists segued together on any UK radio station.
Surprisingly I’ve not got any Small Faces. Their debut 1966 album should be as good a starting point as any.
Whereas The Who were musicians that wanted to be mods, I love the idea of The Small Faces being mods who wanted to be musicians.
I knew little about Snuff until around 1990, when one of the slightly older faces I used to run around with back in the Fair City regularly sent me mixtapes.
Snuff featured happily and I’ve bloody love them ever since. I’m surprised they don’t get more of a look in, given the recent revival with bands such as Half Man Half Biscuit.
I can listen to anything by Courtney Pine and feel instantly relaxed. This man has vibes.
Likewise for George Benson. I was unaware of this album. I prefer his jazzier early guitar work to the smooching George.
Here we have an album of covers and some half decent ones at that. It’s quite a leap of faith from The Small Faces down to George B.
I’m probably going to get slated for this, strap yourself in: I didn’t think that the Banksy exhibition at The Minories in Colchester was all that. Yes it was good, but it wasn’t outstanding, or even great.
Whatever.
My main point of contention was that somehow a Colchester angle was sledgehammered in. There is no Banksy Colchester connection. Yer man has yet to leave any art around the odd half-town, half-city.
Other street artists were also scattered around the various rooms at The Minories. This meant that you were left looking for the main draw of Banksy, and then skirting around the sides with the other street artists.
Sure the other artists are all worthy in their own right. They would have made for a half decent curation without the Banksy stardust status that is the draw for the exhibition.
You’re left scouring around trying to find the BIG HITTERS that you paid to see amongst other artwork with no breaks in-between.
Oh dear. That’s going to liven the stiffs up.
There is a narrative throughout the exhibition of Colchester peering through and then disappearing once again. It’s an attempt to link Banksy’s broad theme of descent amongst a town that supposedly has the same reputation.
Yeah yeah, I hear about your Siege of Colchester and your poll tax riots, etc., but believe me, this is a very progressive and very Liberal - with a capital L - type of town. Radical and dissenting, it most certainly isn’t.
Maybe I was just a bit pissed off that after flashing my digital ticket at the front desk, I then overheard a staff member on the phone calling around other people and offering them 100% promo discount codes if they were to book. Maybe I got this completely wrong but it didn’t start me off in the best of moods.
Let’s look for some positives. The Minories was buzzing both inside and out. That’s great to see. It’s only the first week of the exhibition but hopefully this enthusiasm can carry forward throughout the run and be something of a boost to the local economy.
The majority of the Banksy artworks on offer come from the private collection of John Brandler. No surprises to find that rats feature heavily.
The wording around the various pieces of art is decent. You’re not given an overload of information and your attention is drawn to the artwork rather than the rambling words of some curator.
It was also a very noisy exhibition, although not by default. The constant soundtrack of the East Hill roadworks, with a pneumatic drill bang, bang, banging away, seemed quite appropriate for the urban messages of Banksy.
Maybe I was approaching the exhibition all wrong, expecting to worship at the altar of Banksy and all that he has to say. I don’t actually agree with all of his messages and a very small amount of his artwork does little for me.
I’ll try and win friends and influence people with a sign off by saying that it is bloody good that an exhibition of such grand ambition has found its way into the weird half-town, half-city. This is the first big hitter Sunny Colchester has had for years.
It makes a change from some of the usual hit and miss stuff that you find at the Minories but then that is the appeal of the rather wonky gallery space. I can’t but help think that a dedicated Banksy exhibition over the road at Firstsite might have made a little more sense.
The medium is often the message, etc.
To Firstsite! …on Wednesday afternoon to have something of a shifty at a couple of new exhibitions that have recently opened.
First off we have Polly Braden and Against the Tide.
This is a small but very compact photographic exhibition, along with some multimedia, which explores themes of what does it mean to grow up by the seaside?
Polly’s background is in Jaywick. She describes having a love hate relationship with the local area. If you watched nothing but those crappy Channel 5 docs about Jaywick, then one half of this equation might push through stronger.
But wait! What’s this?
Those shitty programmes never really get behind what’s really happening in coastal towns. They’re just chasing the next Daily Mail headline.
The exhibition shares the stories of young people living in coastal towns across England. The photography borrows a lot from Martin Parr, but it’s never intrusive or even taking the piss.
We spent most of the time watching a really informative film, which put together a short story from the House of Wingz dance studio in Blackpool. This was all about young kids in the area learning street dance and seeing where it can take them.
There were some pretty powerful social messages as well. Many of those speaking in front of the camera focused heavily on housing. The connection was made between poor housing and the lack of life opportunities, especially in coastal areas.
The adjacent gallery space at Firstsite was handed over to Simon Carter and his exhibition From the Landscape. The blurb explains how Simon has walked and sketched out the North Essex landscape around his home near Frinton for over forty years.
What’s on show here at Firstsite is a physical landscape being created within a sterile art environment. You need to really walk around and experience it to get the full effect.
I would hesitate to call it immersive, but you do feel that you’re actually walking around a location, rather, within a gallery.
Each gallery space changes colours to reflect the changing light. A nice touch was a soundscape of coastal sounds, such as birds.
The space within Firstsite is used superbly. There are a few false walls in there, giving the effect that you are exploring a kid’s den.
It was also great to see a half decent use of the infamous Firstsite sloping wall. There was a large landscape minimalist painting stretching all the way around the gallery, showing a coastal scene.
The dead swan buried in the floor at Firstsite was a bit of a downer.
A decent afternoon at Firstsite. It’ll be interesting to see how the gallery benefits with the more rock ‘n’ roll Banksy exhibition next door at The Minories. I suspect they’ll both supplement each other and go hand in hand.
Erm… I’m listening to this tone deaf. I have no concept of how to assess or appreciate classical music. Apologies to all the purists, it’s just noise, right? There we go, destroying centuries of culture in one throwaway hit and miss shit sentence.
But honestly it is just noise to me: pleasant noise but noise all the same. I can’t distinguish between this and other classical music. That says more about me than the medium. I think I’ll line up some Sleaford fucking Mods next.
⭐ ⭐
There was just enough light left late in the day for a bicycle ride on Tuesday. My window of opportunity for escaping is narrowing. I need to make the most of the conditions whilst there is still sufficient light.
The rain from earlier had thankfully dried out. I had OCD pleasing bone dry roads. There would be no manic Mr. Sheen polishing taking place back at base once the bicycle ride was complete.
I timed the ride just perfect in order to beat the school run. The rush hour was still an hour or so away.
This was the first time this season that I was rolling out wearing full on gloves. They felt like a comfort blanket, having had something of a wash and spruce up ahead of the winter beastliness that is to come.
Less than two minutes in and my cycling spiritual, zen like state was destroyed by some close passing dickhead. It wasn’t the wisest thing to do fella, close passing me a your work van when I’m clearly showing a sign that I’ve got a video cam on board.
A bicycle ride is a bicycle ride, though. I’m always at my happiest when I’m out on my bike.
I reached the lanes. I accelerated into turbo mode a few times in order to overcome a growing headwind.
In Endless Road Closure News: there are still endless road closures around the bloody Estuary Wilds.
I deliberately picked the Lawford route, knowing that the usual Bobby George BONER circuit was subject to some big red signs saying road closed. I can now add Lawford to that list as well.
Whatever. I pressed on.
I decided to ignore the nasty Patriot flag flying from one particular cottage. I don’t think we’re talking American football Patriots here either.
Much more pleasing was seeing one of the local fields being worked by half a dozen or so detectorists. I wasn’t the only one making the most of the early autumnal sunlight.
Dig for victory, live to ride, etc.
Talk Talk’s debut, The Party’s Over. It’s only taken me 44 years to own a copy of this. Blimey.
And that completes my Talk Talk collection: five albums over a nine year period for the band. Blimey, I never really considered they were as prolific as that.
I can’t say I’ve actually played The Party’s Over. All I’m familiar with are the singles.
At the time I think I pigeonholed them as second division new romantics. It must have been the name: Duran Duran, Talk Talk, etc.
Oh how they flourished, oh how the other half diminished.
There are a few early signs in the singles as to where Mark Hollis would take the direction of the band. But it’s still one hell of a leap from the lead single Talk Talk to where we ended up with Laughing Stock in 1991.
Music is pretty cool like that: you never stand still, always move forward.
A morning trip to the allotment in order to dispose of a week’s worth of discarded veg and tea bags. To be fair it was more discarded tea bags than veg. My current mug count is approaching twenty a day.
Whoops.
It’s all looking a little threadbare up at the allotment, to be honest. We’ve done well to survive into mid-October and still be producing a harvest.
A rucksack full of tomatoes was harvested at the weekend. If we left them in the ground any longer, then the dreaded autumn blight would get them.
Chutney and tomato soup, here we come.
It’s good to see that a lot of the green has now returned to the allotment after the endless heat waves of the summer months. I might just need to mow the pathways in a couple of weeks in order to keep the Town Council from sending out nagging emails.
The major development in recent weeks has been placing some stinking sheep’s wool around the various beds. It absolutely bloody reeks. The local monk jack deer seems to like it and have already rearranged it for me, which is nice.
Sadly their particular style when it comes to product placement doesn’t tally up with where I have lovingly arranged the sheep’s wool. It’s all over the bloody place.
Looking around the plot, the only disappointment this year has been the raspberries. They failed to produce any produce but then they did go in rather late.
The canes are still growing so they might deliver next year. We should have left them in the garden.
Plenty of work is still needed on the allotment over the winter months. It’s become something of a dumping ground during a home garden renovation, but once again please don’t tell the Town Council.
What has worked out really well is that the wisteria we chopped down has found a new home. The stump has been positioned on the allotment as a possible bug hotel.
Not a bad first season. There’s still plenty of tasks to be getting on with over the winter months. Disclaimer: I won’t be getting on with plenty of tasks over the winter months.
A challenging evening of table tennis down at the Sailing Club on Monday evening. That’s challenging for me, not so for my opponents. tl;dr: I was absolutely shit.
I think I may have won the first match, but then that was as good as it got.
I managed to convince the other players that we should play to the international standard rules of first to 11. This makes it all the more important to be on your game right from the start.
In my defence, I did experiment with wearing my specs. I really struggled to see the ball last week. I rocked up, looking cool as fuck with my specialist sports glasses. Sadly, the look wasn’t replicated with the style of play.
I pretty much shot my load, getting very excited with some smash shots. A couple of them went in the corners, but the rest of them missed the table by a long distance - a bit like my fancy sport specs.
Oh dear.
I wasn’t quite as unfortunate as one of the other players who went to take a dive shot and allowed his table tennis bat to take his weight as he fell to the floor. Sadly, his weight was heavier than his table tennis bat, which came off with a snapped handle.
Whoops.
I didn’t fare any better when we switched to doubles towards the end. We played on to 21, which gives you a bit more time to experiment. By experiment, I mean twat around and try shots that you know you can’t pull off. I lost all three games of doubles that I played.
That kinda evening.
Another album, another artist completely new to me. This is clearly ambitious, although running at over one hour long did lead to a bit of an eye roll moment for me. It almost sounds like The Big Brother for the Daisy Age: a lot harsher, a lot more critical, but still something of a swagger to break up the beats. It did get a little nauseating half an hour in, mind.
⭐ ⭐
