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.

To The Odeon! …in Sunny Colch on Monday afternoon. This is becoming something of a regular visit for me as part of the cheap as chips start of the week routine. £5 for a film on the big screen? Would you like to add food and drink before you check out? Would I chuff.

The grubby fiver film screenings do have their drawbacks. They attract a certain type of clientele. That clientele isn’t quite me just yet. But I do fear that I’m getting there. Sitting next to me for the screening of Glenrothan was a 60 plus couple. I now know more about than I would care to about Mr and Mrs Chatty.

They talked LOUDLY over the adverts. Fine, I’m cool with that. And then also the trailers. This got on my tits ever so slightly. One hour into the film and they still hadn’t SHUT THE FUCK UP. This was simply unacceptable. I bet they put their feet up on the train seats as well.

Having spoilt the first half of the film for me, I was determined not to let them get the better for what remained. I politely asked them to hold back on their general chit chat until they got home.

“FUCK OFF, YOU CUNT.”

What a charmer. But it did have the desired effect. The conversation ended, and they chose to actually take in what they had also paid a fiver for - which was a half decent film in Glenrothan.

But seriously, SOME people.

There’s a growing genre in cinema that I’m calling Local Hero 2.0. It’s essentially feel good films, usually centred around ideas of national identity. The genre can border around the fringes of Farage flag waving shit. But then it also cuts back with some more progressive ideas, both in terms of the script and appearances on screen.

And so joining the likes of Fisherman’s Friends and The Ballad of Wallis Island, here we have Glenrothan. It’s Brian Cox’s directional debut. He also takes up the role of Sandy, one half of the local Scottish whiskey distillery, alongside his rock ‘n’ roll brother, Donal.

The plot involves Donal losing his Blues club over in Chicago, and then having to confront what he left behind in Scotland over four decades ago. We’re talking family relationships, personal relationships, notions of identity etc.

It sounds pretty heavy stuff, but Local Hero 2.0 always allows for some strong humour. There’s a couple of lol lines - possibly more in the first half, but I couldn’t follow the full dialogue thanks to Mr and Mrs Chatty. The ending wasn’t sign posted, but it was a happy one.

Glenrothan is the type of film you see on a Sunday evening, and not a Monday lunchtime. Given my Sunny Colch Odeon experiences of late, Im not sure that you should see any film on a Monday lunchtime tbh.

We popped into The Minories whilst in Sunny Colch. I would hesitate to call it an art trail, but being right next door to Firstsite, and well, it would be rude not to have an extra serving of art or arse.

The current Anglian Abstract exhibition is very much of the art variety, rather than the anal. It celebrates modernism in East Anglia. This is a landscape that is often captured in watercolours, and not rigid, geometrical patterns. Anglian Abstract adds a little balance.

Many of the works on show are either models, or 3D in presentation. The artwork leaps out at you, not waiting for you to chin stroke and come up with some crap about what it represents.

It all felt very earthly, even for a medium that can be cold in outlook. It all felt very analogue and not of the modern world, despite the modernism tag.

Artwork with straight lines can work wonders for an OCD obsessed amateur art critic.

Sue Webster’s Birth of an Icon at Firstsite has the type of bombastic exhibition title that you would expect from a confident artist. Tell It Like It Is, etc. Thankfully she just about gets away with it.

Birth of an Icon is no doubt a little playful, a tongue in cheek description to herald her first major solo exhibition. It comes right out of the punk playbook that the exhibition celebrates.

Basically it’s an exhibition spread over four gallery spaces, documenting how the first four Banshee albums shaped the artist. There’s some incredible detail with the various artefacts on show.

The main gallery walls resembles the contents of your loft being carefully curated and put on full public show. It’s a timeline of late 70’s, early 80’s post-punk culture, all presented in not quite a lineal style.

What works really well is the orange string that joins up the dots. It can be confusing at first, but it makes all the connections, showing how different artists, scenes and experiences are all related.

I worked my way along the timeline, surprised to see that Bowie was nowhere to be seen. Ah, don’t worry; there he is in some of the few, final spaces, showing how he helps to hang it all together.

The second gallery space has a stunning collection of DIY punk leather jackets, all bastardised showing love for the Banshees. A third room has some self-portraits of the artist whilst pregnant in her 50’s. The final space was a little too happy clappy for me with scented candles.

Oh - and I bloody loved the Crazyhead reference.

“This story was one-sided”

Cycling campaigners criticise BBC coverage of “irresponsible e-bike users”

High water down at the Hythe as I cycled through on Friday morning. Which can only mean one thing: Haven Road is flooded, innit. I don’t quite understand the physical geography of why Haven Road cops it, whilst King Eddie Quay somehow gets away with no extra water. I don’t think the stalled Hythe Taskforce does either. I’m just grateful for having a safe passage and the opportunity for a few cheeky sunshine snaps.

Everyone loves a big old red boat, right? There’s no finer sight than the Colne Light Ship on a crisp autumnal morning. Sure, the Estuary Wilds sun rays may highlight the urgent need for a paint job. But the Hythe has always been a little rough and ready.

Gotta say that the result from the New Town & Christ Church by-election for Colchester City Council was something of a surprise: a Labour HOLD.

For the record:

ALLAN, Angus (Tory) 200

BOURNE, Richard (Lab) 800 ELECTED

CHILD, Simon (Reform UK) 600

MCCORMICK, Alex (Green) 401

PARTRIDGE, Ian (Indie) 38

WHYBOURN, Chantelle-Louse (LD) 657

First things first: the final totals of 200, 800 and 600 for the Tory, Labour and Reform candidates suggests that the counting took place in bundles, or the good folk of New Town & Christ Church are OCD in their voting habits.

Note that no one called for a recount, natch.

The Labour HOLD - and by some fair margin - is a surprise. I’m not telling you anything new when I say that the party isn’t exactly experiencing a national love in.

Locally on the ground in Sunny Colch, and the picture is a little more mixed. There is the view that Colchester Labour has some good eggs, along with some rather unpleasant characters.

It’s the same for most CLP’s around the country, tbh.

Factor in that the seat became vacant after City Councillor Pam Cox managed to get elected as the MP for the Colchester constituency over a year ago, and the Labour HOLD is actually quite remarkable.

If ever there was an opportunity for the national party to get a good old kicking locally, then New Town & Christ Church was a gift horse.

Reform is the other obvious talking point here. They have come from nowhere locally, with little to no organisation or local party structure.

Never underestimate the foot soldiers and data that are required to fight a successful local campaign. Starting from scratch and blagging 600 votes is a bloody good effort, not to mention a rather frightening one.

If Essex devolution ever happens and the new Unitary authority finally gets set up, then you can see how three party politics in the city has come to an end.

Elsewhere and it’s difficult to comment on the level of tactical voting that may - or may not - have taken place.

The progressive vote with the Greens, Labour and LibDems is strong. If any of them can be arsed to enter into informal coalitions, then this is the way to stop Reform at this level.

I wonder how many votes were lent by the electorate to each of these three parties with a view to crowning the progressive poster boy or girl?

Playing 3D chess at the ballot box is a dangerous game.

Overall it means that there is no overall change in the seats at Colchester City Council:

Conservative - 19

LibDems - 14

Labour - 14

Green - 1

Indies - 1

The LibLab love in limps on, although behind the scenes relationships are a little more ahem fractured.

The 29% turn out yesterday was poor, btw. It was pissing it down all day to be fair.

Just kick it until it breaks, etc.

A pleasant early autumnal walk along the Trail towards Sunny Colch. Not a bad little place to live, etc.