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.

GAWD bless Stone Rock Records in Sunny Colch. I’ve been in a few times, flicking through the vinyl crates. I’m not really in the market for buying new vinyl these days or even secondhand vinyl.

I had a little more time to kill on Friday morning. I wandered past and noticed a small CD selection that should kill 10 minutes or so with a bit of crate digging.

It looked as though a job lot had just been bought from someone who has rather fine and ever so slight left of centre indie tastes. It wasn’t the usual meat and two veg indie.

The prices were most defo of the cheapo cheapo variety. We’re talking £1 per CD or £2 for three. Blimey that’s even better than charity shop tat.

Staring straight at me right from the start was a CD version of the PiL Metal Box album. It was even in the metal tin.

SHIT THE BED. That can’t be £1, can it? I had no idea what this currently fetches on eBay. An online shifty later in the day revealed anything between £40 and £50. I’ll have a bit of that, I thought.

Added to the pile were a couple of Wedding Present albums. You can’t go wrong with the Boy Gedge as he grumbles away and his guitar grunts back at him.

The Clint Boon Experience debut album was another half-decent find. I’ve always loved the lead track White with No Sugar. Let’s add that to the pile.

I also picked up the Chemicals debut. They can always cut it. I don’t think I’ve actually ever owned a copy of Exit Planet Dust. I’m always a sucker for any Chris Rea.

And so £4 for 6 CDs. Christ, that’s fantastic value. The owner behind the counter is also a lovely lovely fella.

To the Mercury Theatre! …early on Friday morning. I was booked in as part of the Heritage Open Weekend on a freebie guided tour.

This was only my second visit to the Mercury. The first was also a freebie during a local elections hustings. At least I know what my price pinch point is.

I really rather enjoyed the morning in the company of a couple of incredibly friendly guides. I really should make the effort to take in some of the shows.

My issue, as ever with everything is the cost. £30 probably isn’t an unreasonable price to pay for any theatre performance. It’s just that in the back of my mind I still think that most theatre seats can be bought for a tenner.

I still only paid a grubby fiver for the performance of As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe earlier in the week. I find it hard to understand the economics of the Globe and how a £5 Groundlings ticket hasn’t increased since the Globe first opened more than a quarter of a century ago.

Anyway back to the guided tour of the Mercury.

My name was called out by the lovely host. Another fella put his hand up.

Hang on, mate. That’s me not you.

It turns out that within a group of a dozen or so people you really can have two blokes sharing the same slightly obscure second name.

It was something of a whistle-stop guided tour. We were told on many occasions that a more considered look around the theatre can be taken if you are prepared to hand over your shekels.

Our first stop was the new performance space. The Mercury has been pretty much transformed over the past five years or so with the refurbishment.

The performance space was a fantastic size. It looked ideal for small-scale performances with anything between half a dozen and perhaps even a solitary cast member. It was also a good area in which to try out possible new creative directions.

We were then allowed to look through into the rehearsal area. Preparations were full on for the forthcoming production of Jane Eyre.

I got a sense that the tour was becoming a little Spinal Tap. We were walking endlessly through corridors, passing signs saying Stage Entrance with arrows pointing and twisting around.

It didn’t surprise me that, in front of the main big stage door for the theatre auditorium, there was a large mirror. These actor types certainly do know how to ponce up before putting on a performance.

The highlight of the tour was actually entering and treading the boards of the Mercury Theatre stage. Don’t put your son on the stage, etc.

The acoustics standing on the stage were incredible. You could almost feel the sense of calm around you.

The tour then went a little wonky. A battleaxe old couple took issue with our charming guide. His role was part of engagement and not a high-profile financial position within the theatre.

The old battleaxe couple took him to task about the refurbishment. They demanded to know why he personally didn’t organise the expansion of the theatre to something around 1,000 seats or so rather than create dance studios and fringe theatre spaces.

He very politely tried to bat this aside but the old battleaxe couple wouldn’t let it lie.

Fuck me. Some people.

We entered the construction workshop. Preparations were already underway for the panto scenery. It looked very industrious.

Meanwhile the costume space was miniature. It looked like a lot of hard toil goes into creating the finer details for each costume for what might even just be a walk-on, walk-off part.

And so a very decent half-hour whistle-stop tour around the Mercury Theatre. I’ll try and make sure I actually pay something when I return next time.

Some snaps of Sunny Colch, for no other reason than have content, will publish. I spent pretty much all of Friday walking around the half town, half city. I had a few errands that were time dependent and so had time to kill. Have time to kill, have camera, etc.

It helped that it was also Heritage Open Weekend. I’ll have a bit of that, I thought.

As well as dropping in on a freebie open tour of the Mercury Theatre, as posted elsewhere, I also managed to get a look behind the usually closed doors of the Baptist Church along Eld Lane.

My memories of ‘O’ Level RE - Grade B, I’ll have you know - are that I actually attended a baptism back in the day. It was a full-on thing: a grown adult being dunked in the water, John the Baptist style.

SPLASH. Gotcha.

The Sunny Colch Baptist Church was almost Art Deco with a stunning curvature up in the balcony.

I sniffed around a little, poking my nose where perhaps I shouldn’t. I was in search of their indoor Lido.

Where the fuck is it? It’s got to be here, right? What’s the point of a Baptist church without an inbuilt Lido? Although technically, a swimming pool that is indoors is a swimming pool, and not a Lido.

The very friendly guide tipped me off and showed me the magic markings on the centre stage where the water was underneath. It was almost like the trapdoor in a theatre.

Elsewhere around Sunny Colch I was hoping to take part in a Billy No Mates audio walk around the half town, half city. One of the popular apps that usually charges for a guided walk through your phone was offering up a freebie for the weekend.

If I’m ever going to do this then I’m going to do it during Heritage Open Weekend when it’s a freebie, right?

I tried to book the freebie the night before. Nothing. Ah ,no worries, betcha it only rolls over on the day of the actual freebie walk.

I tried once again on morning. No, nothing. Arse.

You picked the wrong person to dangle the carrot of a saving £3.99 for a freebie walk, mate.

I marched off to the Colchester tourist people, or whatever they are called these days. They were most charming and incredibly friendly. They were also a little saddened to hear I couldn’t access my freebie walk. Some emails were fired off.

Oh well I still had my camera. I still had time to kill. I did my own guided tour around the half town, half city. I was my own personal guide, taking in some of the locations that I’ve not really been to in around 35 years or so.

We’re talking around the edges of the old Roman wall and the Castle Road and Roman Road area. I spent a very interesting year living here. Some memories are best forgotten.

I walked past the old house. The frontage looked pretty much the same, although the small front garden has certainly been tarted up with a new garden wall. I lingered perhaps a little too long, peering into the windows. I noticed one was open. I looked a right stalker, and so decided to get a move on.

I did manage to walk around the back. Our own back garden, during that one year along Roman Road, actually backed onto the Roman wall. I stood in the back garden and had a quick shifty through. Someone was hanging out the washing.

Whoops. Now would be a good time to move on, Jase.

And so a decent day also walking around the town. My errands were all done in time to catch the train home. I had a camera full of snaps, some cheapo cheapo CDs, and half a dozen pants from Primarni.

LIVE the dream.

To the Odeon! …on Monday lunchtime. You know the score by now. Monday is cheapest chips day at this Sunny Cold Odeon. Book online and you can snaffle up a ticket for a grubby fiver.

I have made the point of looking at the cinema listings to see which is the longest film. Never mind the length, feel the thickness etc. If I’m going to buy a dirt cheap ticket then I want to stretch it out so I can spend as much time in the cinema, getting real value for money.

Which brings us to Odyssey of course. I admit that I hold no great knowledge when it comes to the classics. I was first introduced to the Odyssey back in SE17 whilst working on the school website. The Year 5 kids knew more about The epic tale than I did.

We’ve wanted to see this film for some time now but time and tide haven’t behaved very well for us. If you’re going to watch a three-hour film then you need to set aside three hours in a day to take it all in - which pretty much rules out doing anything else either side of it.

It didn’t get off to a good start in Screen 2 at the Sunny Colch Odeon on Monday lunchtime. Just as the opening scene was starting to build up, someone let rip at the back of the cinema with the most almighty fart. You dirty dog.

I tried to put this to the back of my mind and focus on the film. It proved rather tricky. Even throughout a film three hours in duration, I wanted to turn around and see who the phantom farter was. This is school holiday time. This explains a lot.

But anyway, the Odyssey. I knew I might struggle with some of the intricacies of the plot. I was just about able to keep up with Jackass 5 last time round at the Odeon. The Odyssey was a little bit higher on the intellectual level.

Having said that it is a truly fantastic film. It’s a complete epic which had me gripped for more or less the entire duration. I think I just about managed to keep up with what was going on.

What helped was the rowing WivGigs action taking place. A lot of the film is sea-bound. You have plenty of sweeping shots of the Greek army doing their best WivGigs impression and rowing round and round and round. I was familiar with terms such as holding water.

The plot line is pretty predictable but I guess that’s not down to Christopher Nolan as he’s only following the classic piece of literature that he was presented with.

The villains really are pretty bad boys, whilst you find yourself cheering on the heroes, which are highly likely to have a happy ending.

There was a slight twist towards the final scene, which I wasn’t expecting. I also wasn’t expecting the Phantom Farter to then spark up and fill Screen 2 at the Sunny Colch Odeon with a haze of incredibly strong weed.

Never a dull moment in these Monday Cheapest Chips Sunny Colch Odeon experiences.

You could say it was an Odyssey all in itself.

I wasn’t expecting a big security guard geezer and a bag check ahead of entering the Duncan Grant exhibition at Firstsite. Sadly some of the right-wing nut jobs have taken offence to the idea of homosexuality being celebrated in art form, dickheads. The broad theme for the exhibition is the changing ways some LGBTQ+ people find one another online and offline. Truth be told it’s pretty average art.

There was some X-rated action behind closed doors where you were given plenty of warning about what you might see. The artwork itself was hardly shocking. If anyone is going to take offence then it might be from the potty-mouth profanity coming out of a PA system. I couldn’t see what all the fuss is about to be honest.

What We Did During the Plague at the Minories in Sunny Colch was half decent. It’s a retrospective exhibition of the work produced by Phil Jupitus during those weird lockdown days. It shows his unique approach to collages using Polaroids and creating custom postcards for his pals. There’s a lot to take in with over 100 pieces of work. The detail changes within each postcard but the format and formula remain the same. I just about got all the cultural reference points.

To Firstsite!… on Saturday morning. I had a little spare time to kill whilst in sunny Colch. Window shopping is not for me. Ponsing around in an empty art gallery is where all the real action is.

There was a time when I was completely across the Firstsite schedule and agenda. Not one single exhibition was missed. I felt like something of a Firstsite completist.

Not so these days. I find myself less frequently in the strange hybrid town/city. I pop into Firstsite whenever I can, but I confess to not having a clue as to what is currently being exhibited.

That’s sometimes the best approach when it comes to art. Just go for a quick shifty with low expectations.

The low expectations approach worked rather well on Saturday. I wasn’t blown away; the art or arse game tended to move along the sliding scale a little more towards the latter.

Three exhibitions are currently showing. The first is the University Centre Colchester UCC Degrees show, To Be Continued. This hints very strongly at what is to come with some emerging local artists.

Most of the work in the Berryfield space was physical rather than artwork. There was an awful lot of fine detail on show. My only thought was that it must have taken a long while to produce all of this - which I guess is the whole point of a three-year art degree.

I haven’t got a clue what it’s all about but I don’t think that’s really the point.

The major exhibition, a little further down the bonkers banana-shaped art gallery is from an artist called Nalini. This is a photographic series that explores the history of her mother, her grandmother, and herself.

It’s very thoughtful in documenting how the three generations are interconnected using art as the building block. It was also a very personal exhibition. It felt more like flicking through a giant family scrapbook.

There were some fantastic photos on show, showing great depth and capturing inner city scenes.

At the other end of the scale there was also some macro photography, which was particularly impressive. The subject matter was very much less is more, focusing on the small and finer details of your life to tell a larger narrative.

By now I was on a mission; my mission was to tick off all three current Firstsite exhibitions. I made my way down towards the far end of the gallery for a major exhibition by the artist Godfried Donker.

The exhibition is called It’s a Numbers Game. It’s quite a mishmash of history, memory, sport, music, migration, trade, and popular culture. The blurb says it uses these themes to explore how people are connected across time.

A large part of the exhibition references the slave trade. It can be uncomfortable viewing at times.

I confess to rather enjoying the contrasting background colour schemes painted on the walls to hang the artwork, rather than the artwork itself. There’s a time and place for the bland white gallery spaces of London. Thankfully Firstsite has taken a more radical approach to offer something a bit different here.

Collage features heavily in the work. Some interesting ideas included extensive use of stocks and shares listings from the old Financial Times dating back to the early 2000s. Black imagery showing exploitation is placed over this. The message of finance and covert racism is staring you right in the face.

So that was Firstsite ticked off for another season. It’s always an interesting place to wander in and have a shifty as to what’s going off. Some of the main structural artwork at the front of house is in need of a refresh and update, mind.