onionbagblog

And so at the reconvened Colchester City Council AGM on Wednesday evening, to absolutely no one’s surprise, a Tory/Lib Dem coalition was voted in. Fancy that.

The sums were always going to suggest this would happen, even if some of the political ideology and personal grievances would have wanted otherwise.

My attention was firmly focused on my own three local Lib Dem councillors. Would they be prepared to prop up a Tory administration?

The answer came with a named vote. I’m not sure who called for a named vote, but it usually signifies someone is keen to put the voting intentions on the record for future political gain.

Two Lib Dems locally voted for the Tory coalition, one against. The one that voted against is the one that has the most to lose. He’s the golden boy around here. He also made a point of saying in his speech he could not only not support the Tory administration, but he would also step back from his cabinet position as a matter of principle. Well done you, etc.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out locally. Vote Lib Dem, get Tory?

Elsewhere, some of the speeches were full of the usual bullshit about “let’s keep politics out of this”. This is usually a thinly veiled code for “I don’t agree with you and I’m going to try and shut you down”.

It pretty much means fuck all anyway. Colchester Council is now nothing but a ghost council as it limps towards devolution.

The council has one task, and one task only: and that is to dismantle itself ahead of the larger unitary authority.

Democracy is bloody brilliant, innit.

Higher Power CD by Big Audio. By this time in the B.A.D. timeline, the band had morphed into something completely different and had dropped the Dynamite part of their name. I should really look this up, but I think the Big Audio phase comes slightly before the B.A.D. II incarnation.

But anyway, you can never go wrong with a bit of Big Audio, whatever they’re called. Mick Jones has such a way in crafting pop melodies and then working them into whatever he sees around him at the time.

Big Audio was the natural progression from punk, moving into something a lot more dance-based. He then took it full circle around a decade or so later with his production duties for the Libertines, etc.

I know little about the Higher Power album. I’m going for the completest set of BAD CDs. I make it now just the rather elusive PUNK album that I’m missing. The only track I know is Looking for a Song. Maybe I’ll find some more buried away once I finally get round to playing this,

Plans for a swim on Wednesday morning were abandoned due to the bloody Estuary Wilds rain. I’m limited to which bicycles I can use right now. There’s no way I’m getting my Brompton wet for anyone, swim or no swim.

And so a run instead. I didn’t really feel up for it. I never really feel up for it. Just put on your Fores top and go and pound those mean streets of C07, Jase.

I did. The Forest top was something of a surprise. I’m finding long-lost Forest kits following the flat move that I had no idea I actually owned.

My clothing attire of choice this morning, I think, is more of a training top than any match day kit. It had the classic Umbro design, which I feel like I’ve earned as part of my birth rate after sticking with Forest during those mid to late 80s Trent End days.

The run itself was all about beating the rain. Twenty minutes later, my object had been achieved. It started to spit ever so slightly down by the quayside. This was my signal to get a shifty on.

The WFH fella down by the quayside was standing proud by his front window, as ever. He has the best work seat in the house. He stands in front of his screen most of the day, looking out and dreaming beyond the Estuary Wilds. Nice work if you can get it.

I made it track 3, The Wrong Way:

“I’m staring at her tits. It’s the wrong way”

This is a song about a 12 year old girl. I bailed.

⭐

From the allotment: 🍓🍓 Keep ‘em coming #homegrown

This was a weird one. For some reason I always thought Barenaked Ladies were indie lite shite. But wait! Whats this? There’s a nice breezy start to the opening. I thought Spotify had fucked up, and had served me up the new Paul Heaton album. The accent certainly seemed to suggest this. The first track then even segued into Happy Hour. I was quite enjoying the ex-Housemartins latest release. But it turns out that it was in fact Barenaked Ladies from back in 1992. Blimey. How odd. The album then became very goofy. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, etc. I bailed on the stupid Yoko track. Barenaked Ladies sound more like a pub band.

⭐ ⭐

To Moving Image! Or rather not to Moving Image on Tuesday evening. We did have plans to go along to the village cinema to catch the screening of The Essex Ways film. A quick shifty with the online trailer, and you can actually watch the whole film at home via YouTube. It would be rude not to.

Never say that I am keen on saving money, plus various household bits and bobs got in the way of a trip out to the village cinema. We made sure we had a clear path, so to speak, and then fired up the YouTube video with a strict rule of no phones or other distractions.

It’s more of an online film to watch, tbh than paying to watch it at a semi-pro village cinema. It follows the footsteps of James, a young man who decides to walk the Essex Way and record his adventures on camera.

I thought that we had walked the Essex Way a couple of months ago. My lack of local knowledge puts me to shame. We walked about a tenth of the Essex Way as we made our way from Manningtree over towards Harwich.

James completes the real serious business, pretty much circumnavigating the entire county, starting in Epping and then being washed up in Tilbury.

In between, he takes in many locations that are on the edge of our patch. The nearest he comes to us is Brightlingsea. Hesomehow manages to skirt away from Colchester. Walton, Frinton and Mersey Island all feature.

The film is a homage towards nature. There’s a very powerful message that is superbly told by James as he weaves in his personal narrative connected to the county, and a wider picture of declining nature and global warming.

We debated at first what time of year their film was shot. He mentions St. George’s Day midway through, which is the dead giveaway. It seems a perfect time of year to capture this county. Spring is pretty much in full bloom, and he seemed to have picked a favourable time when it comes to the weather.

It left me feeling that we have so much more to explore around these estuary wilds parts. He makes it to the other side of the Blackwater Estuary, something which, to my shame, I have yet to do.

He also addresses many of the Essex stereotypes. This is the great misunderstood county. I was surprised, and also very pleased, to hear him address class snobbery.

Within that, he also identified a north-south Essex divide. He came out with the conclusion of there being one Essex. He also managed to drop in the Crass slogan of the only war is the class war. Later in the credits, we see how Crass members were involved with the film.

His final destination of Tilbury seemed to symbolise what the whole film has been about. He describes being on the edges of London, with Tilbury being a mix of nature as well as something of a dumping ground. This is illustrated quite literally in the form of Tilbury being once a dumping ground for London.

There is optimism in the final scenes from Tilbury. Nature has reclaimed the slag heaps and is managing to work its wonders in disguising what London has done to the outer edges of the county. It was a very optimistic message in which to end.

I still have much more walking around these parts to do.

Two new stories sit side by side in my feed. The first is the positive news that back in Lambeth, the new Green-led council is pausing plans to close the dementia day centre on the Central Hill estate. Talk about your first 100 days in office, etc. Shout out to Councillor Martin Abrams, who has taken the no-nonsense move to reverse this cost-cutting policy of his old Labour Party.

Meanwhile, a little closer to home, I read how the newly Reform run Essex County Council has also wasted no time. Top of the agenda back in Essex is to cancel any so-called net zero projects. The so-called, by the way, is not my own personal interpretation. It seems that any cancellation of so-called net zero projects has to begin with the so-called prefix.

What a world we live in.

Meanwhile, caught somewhere in the middle is Colchester City Council. To the surprise of absolutely no one, it has been confirmed that a Conservative-led coalition alongside the wishy-washy Lib Dems will be voted in at the AGM tomorrow morning. Because of course the centrist third party, free market liberal model always knows best. Slow hand clap for the Colchester Labour splitters alongside their own neoliberal idiots that have caused this one almighty fuck up in the town/city.

More homegrown goodness from the allotment. We’re rather happy with the strawberries and raspberries, that are starting to come into fruition. These are genuine homegrown goodness, transported from the back garden and planted at the allotment just in time to catch the May heat wave tanning session. Expect more of the same over the next month or so.

Another Monday night, another social table tennis get together at the sailing club. We’ve been playing for almost a year now. It’s the same players: me, K, A, A agin and N. We’re pretty much all of the same standard. We rotate playing each other for an hour and a half or so, with no one ever really emerging dominant.

I’ve really enjoyed playing different players and opening up to their various quirks and techniques. We’re learning how to master each other, with some bloody decent rallies taking place.

This evening was a bit of a sticky one up in the Sailing Club loft. We had the balcony door open, with a table against it to stop the ball heading out into the river. That’s something that the world table tennis championship players don’t have to contend with.

It took a while to find my length on the indoor table. It’s a much faster game. Balls go flying and get lost around all the various crannies in the Sailing Club loft.

We usually finish up with a game of doubles. Time and tide literally were a little tight for us all this evening. Monday evenings are becoming the new Friday nights for me.