To Broad Lane! …on Saturday afternoon to see Wivenhoe Town at home to AFC Pegasus.

Now that’s a proper NU football club type name. I’m not exactly one of those Against Modern Football types but I do fear future Premier League matches will see fixtures such as Everton versus Hashtag United and Arsenal versus AFC Pegasus.

I arrived on time for once and actually managed to see the kick off. I confess it disorientated me slightly. Wivenhoe were kicking towards the car park end in the first half. This threw me.

Sadly I was only there for the first half with basketball duties an hour or so later at the University. this meant I had to put my foot down and go for it with my hit and miss photography.

And WOH, yeah: this really was hit and miss photography. The Estuary Wilds sun was in, then out, in, then out. You could make some crude joke here but I’m not that type of fella.

This all meant I could only take snaps with my preferred higher shutter speed when the sun was aiding me with my attempts.

I carried on with my usual walk around the ground, finding different angles to take photos of the same old shit. Somehow I got caught up in a game of kids' football.

Out in the middle, the Broad Lane pitch was looking remarkably green after the recent early autumn sand bowl. It’s amazing what a week or so of rain can do to resilient grass.

I missed an early goal for Pegasus as I was lining up my camera, trying to get a perfect picture of the Lino in sync with the stand. More fool me.

It was great to once again hear the young Wivenhoe ultras making a right old bloody racket. I hope they carry this through season upon season, before they become some OAP band of ultras around the year 2076.

This was a highly competitive game. Wivenhoe started in 8th place in the Eastern Counties Division One, with Pegasus in 9th. It was a true test for Wivenhoe after their strong start to the season.

Having gone 1-0 down, they came back with a powerful equaliser and an incredibly strong header from a corner.

I put my camera down and went pretty batshit crazy. I’m starting to celebrate Wivenhoe goals now in the same way I celebrate Forest goals.

Whoops.

That was about it for me. I was surprised I managed to fit in almost 200 or so photos in my 45 minutes at Broad Lane, but basketball was beckoning.

A brief scroll a little later in the evening, whilst waiting for the second basketball match, showed that Wivenhoe managed an impressive 3-2 victory. They went 2-1 down but came back fighting.

Dragons!

To the Sailing Club! ..on Wednesday morning.

The aim of the WivGigs midweek social was to beat the rain. The forecast looked bloody beastly from around 11 am onwards. Thankfully the Weather Gods coincided rather kindly with the tide and time.

It was a little misty preparing both boats for launch. We had Audacity and Varuna heading out on a Wednesday morning.

That’s not bad going for a rowing club that only a few years ago struggled to get weekend crew. We’ve been fortunate in recent months in that a number of our members are a little more leisurely these days.

Some might call it the midweek retirement row. I prefer to call it for what it is: the Bum Dosser Crew.

It was wonderful to see the come and try-er from the weekend also joining us once again. She is no longer a C&T-er but a fully paid up member of WivGigs. My prediction is that she will be racing by the end of the Harkers Yard series this winter.

I’m not sure how this happened but the split of crew for the boats basically worked out as a boys' boat and a girls' boat. I was placed in the girls' boat as the odd one out, natch.

No worries. I actually wrote on a work feedback form ahead of a team re-organisation that I prefer working with girls. My rather belligerent line manager at the time then placed me in a team full of blokes.

Cheers, rather belligerent line manager.

I was designated stroke for the session. I decided to take it fairly gently, given we had a new crew member and this was, after all, a leisurely row.

The riverside banks were surprisingly busy. There were a number of walkers and runners getting their km’s in ahead of the rain that was forecast.

There also seemed to be an abundance of local school kids out and about. It must have been a local INSET day. I did enjoy seeing some of the youth spending their early morning casting their rods out and fishing, rather than staying in bed, which would have been my choice back in the day.

We headed downstream and then downstream and then downstream some more. It was that kind of row. It was most peaceful.

I offered to cox for the return leg. This gave everyone a chance to have a decent row.

To my surprise the designated cox actually asked if I would take Audacity all the way back up to the Sailing Club hard for the recovery. This is not as simple as it seems. It’s like landing an aircraft, albeit without responsibility for the livelihood of 300 or so passengers.

We managed a successful recovery. We didn’t sink. We didn’t crash into any of the other moored boats.

We were also back on dry land just ahead of the rainfall that fell for the rest of the day.

Perfect.

I turned on the radio just in time to hear Kemi Badenoch deliver her keynote speech at the Tory Party conference:

“Those who can work, SHOULD work.”

Not today, Kemi. Thank you very much.

To Moving Image! …on Tuesday evening.

One day you’re sitting in a multiplex massive FUCK OFF screen in Sunny Colch, and then the very next you’re back in a village hall, sitting on a school chair and watching an art house film.

The Moving Image cinematic experience is slightly different to the Sunny Colch Odeon cheapo cheapo grubby fiver Monday afternoon deal.

No one was smoking weed, and a running commentary wasn’t provided by a couple of dickheads who really don’t give a shit about anybody else watching the film.

It’s a shame then that the film wasn’t all that.

Oh dear.

For our enjoyment - or not - on Tuesday evening was the Italian film Primavera. At first I thought this was a film about a Spanish music festival, but nope it was all about Vivaldi and classical music.

This was a real slow burner. It was so slow it didn’t really change gear and never got going. Thankfully it was short in length.

The plot centres around Vivaldi, or rather not Vivaldi, but a young musical prodigy.

It’s quite something when an esteemed name in classical music doesn’t even land the lead role in a film.

It’s a pretty brutal film as well. The story is set in some kind of orphanage where rather wicked proprietors are happy to take the cash off benefactors in order to pretty much keep young girls as musical slaves.

Step forward Mr Vivaldi to lead the whole experience.

One particular young violin player is singled out as the lead character. What’s portrayed is a rather nasty existence.

Scenes involve kittens being drowned and the lead character having her wrist deliberately broken to stop her playing by a particularly nasty male character.

One thing that comes out strongly throughout the film is that men with power can be absolute shits.

There was great chemistry between Vivaldi and the lead character. There was never any suggestion of this being more than a musical relationship, and nothing romantic or even sexual.

The ending was a bit odd. It was a kind of happy ending but not on a musical note. I felt pretty exhausted coming out of the Loveless Hall even though the film was around one and a half hours in length.

There was a faint whiff of ever so- lightly strong weed from the local yoof as I walked home.

There was just enough water and light left in the day late on Sunday for something of a WivGigs social row. We launched and did the rowing equivalent of treading water. We were due to pick up a come and try-er in around 15 minutes or so from the public pontoon.

We headed up the trots and then back down the trots again. The Wivenhoe One Designs looked absolutely resplendent, like ducks in a row, with the setting sun radiating off the incredibly sympathetic colour scheme.

Any such poetic rowing thoughts were then soon diminished when one crew member was politely accused of letting rip while sitting in the boat.

AWKS.

This wasn’t quite the case. It was simply that the leather that supports their oars was in need of some more dubbing. They were making a rather unfortunate trumping sound.

We made our way towards the public pontoon for the meet up with the come and try-er. As ever on these occasions, C was out in the water doing his one man swimming thing. Good effort.

Also on the public pontoon was the most friendly and smart bunch of local kids. They were doing a bit of sunset fishing.

They were incredibly accommodating in helping tie up Audacity and making way for us as we had a temporary berth on the public pontoon.

The come and try-er came and then didn’t exactly leave. She was fantastic. Usually these short bursts of freebie sessions last for around 15 to 20 minutes while we explain the basics. Within the first five minutes she had picked it up to perfection.

We offered to drop her off back at the public pontoon before a quick burst of more energetic rowing. She asked if she could stay in the boat simply as a passenger to take more on board of our technique. I predict she will be racing by the end of the season.

I got to cox for a very short while as we headed briefly downstream. We did a very wide turn on an unforgettable buoy. Even with the tide behind us, for some reason the water was incredibly lumpy. We made a slow return back towards the Sailing Club.

And so after all the waiting around following the RACE DAY in Manningtree last weekend, Friday afternoon was a much more relaxed affair with another WivGigs social row.

I don’t think I’m alone in the club in coming to the conclusion that race days are a little bit too much stress without much reward.

I don’t personally get stressed out with it all, but hanging around all day with some very tense rowers for what can be a 20-minute burst is difficult to justify at the weekends.

Social rowing it is then. You have time for conversation, you have time for gossip, you have time to do not a lot of rowing and just sit around in the boat and take pretty pics.

Whatever.

We launched at the Sailing Club hard, having been kindly waved through by a couple of dinghy sailors waiting to launch. The chap, in particular, had the most magnificent sailing beard.

I was also experimenting with my own appearance. It didn’t quite go to plan. I opted for my wet rowing shoes and then some ridiculous cycling luminous bib shorts that I rolled up to my knees as I waded in the water.

I won’t be troubling the front page for any fashion shoot of the next edition of Sexy Rowers Monthly.

We headed downstream, which was a surprise to me. I was half expecting the row to be cancelled. It was rather windy and the waters were incredibly choppy once we reached the Creek.

I’m not into all this nature shit but perhaps the highlight for me was some birds (GAWD knows what) that decided to speed past us at an incredibly low angle, almost hugging the water.

We reached a buoy. I’m not sure which buoy it was. You come back to this blog for these kinds of details, right?

The turn was made and then we had a bit of a brief water break before making the row back upstream. We must have downed oars for no more than two minutes. We had drifted around 500 km or so already back towards the Sailing Club. It was that kind of tide.

Talk in the boat then returned to race rowing. I had absolutely no idea there is a 300 Club option available for the Harker’s Yard series.

To qualify you need to have at least 300 years of age in the boat for all four rowers and a cox.

This could work perfectly if you somehow got a centurion in the boat who did pretty much fuck all and then some rather energetic 50 year-olds.

We recovered Varuna with still plenty of water around the Sailing Club. This was a nice ying to the yang of the Manningtree chaos of last weekend.

Indoor chores and crappy weather conditions meant that most of Wednesday was spent indoors. That’s no place to be.

Late afternoon and the bloody Estuary Wilds skies had cleared. I had cleared out the To Do list of indoor chores.

Hey! Let’s head out for a walk. How adventurous. You know how it goes by now: the usual schlep around the 10 km or so Estuary Wilds circuit.

It was still a little slightly overcast when I set off and incredibly windy. Remarkably however, it was warm.

Rowing had already been cancelled earlier in the day because of the wind. However it still felt like the dog days of August, even though we have October rapidly approaching.

In the AirPods was the latest pub cast from Deserter. It meant I was walking along with endless chuckling. The AI News in particular raised a smile.

There were signs of a particularly high tide earlier in the day, with water still lingering down at the quayside.

I was pleased to be wearing my walking boots and not having the OCD stress of having to clean up a pair of trainers back at base. The conditions were definitely soft to firm.

Dog walkers were out there getting in their last session of the day. I had just enough light remaining to get around my circuit at a fairly steady pace.

I reached Whitehouse Beach. The summer camps and the celebrating sixth formers and other students have long since moved on, although the remains of their barbecues haven’t.

I had a bit of a moment on Whitehouse Beach, taking in the serenity of it all. The shingles all around look like my new garden. Maybe I should just stay at home to have these hippy shit moments.

To the Conga! …on Sunday evening for the return of the autumn series of the Music Mix jazz events.

There is something of a secret club ethos around these superbly curated local gigs. It’s not so secret in that there is a half-decent marketing push, but secret in that, on a Sunday night, you have high quality jazz musicians visiting your local church village hall. It’s got to be better than stupid Songs of Praise.

Appearing at the Conga on Sunday was the Simon Spillettt Quartet. This is a collection of musicians who follow the lead from Simon and his love for all things Tubby Hayes. We all love Tubby Hayes, right?

Tubby had something of a reputation for enjoying the finer things in life. I felt it only appropriate that upon arrival I bought a bottle of the house’s finest red wine and sat back to enjoy the jazz.

Chin chin.

The only problem was I almost came a cropper before even the first notes were played on Simon’s sax. I narrowly avoided a red wine incident over my lovely recently purchased women’s sheepskin fur white gilet.

Whoops.

I took a little time to take in the surroundings. It appeared that we had Donald Trump sitting in front of us. I never had him down as a Tubby Hayes fan.

As the evening developed I realised it wasn’t the dickhead dictator himself but just someone who liked a good old-fashioned comb-over blonde haircut.

The Quartet took to the stage bang on 7:30 pm. They looked the absolute bollocks, suited and booted, and ready to put in a classic jazz performance.

I’m never entirely sure what happens with jazz music with regard to how it’s played. Maybe I don’t want to peek behind the magician’s curtain. Do the band make it up as they go along or are they playing note for note Tubby Hayes' songs?

Either way it looked bloody tiring up there on stage. I was also impressed to see Simon Spillettt never failing to run out of breath with some of his stretched out saxophone solos.

In between the wonderful songs we had plenty of stories. Simon is something of a storyteller and also the world renowned fountain of all knowledge when it comes to Tubby Hayes.

This was a very suave and sophisticated performance. It certainly wasn’t a crappy tribute act.

The band even ventured into some of Tubby’s ballads, which can always be a problematic choice. You can get away with the anarchic nature of the faster arrangements, but not so with a ballad.

“Scorecards at the ready”

…remarked Simon before the Quartet pulled it off with a plum.

The pace picked up a little for the second half of the show. In particular Don’t Fall Off the Bridge had all the energy and rumbling drums, as the song title suggests.

I do love the freeform nature of this music. Even the count ins for the rest of the band were a little odd.

“1, 2, 3, 2, 2.”

What’s that all about?

And so a pretty special evening with high quality musicians appearing in the local church hall.

Talk about blowing your own trumpet, etc.

To Manningtree! …early on Sunday morning - or actually To the Sailing Club first. The occasion was the first race of the Harker’s Yard winter season. It’s been a while for me.

I’m not sure why but I did put my name forward to be considered as part of the race crew for both Manningtree and then Rowhedge in a couple of weeks' time. I kinda of stopped racing a few years ago. It just wasn’t doing anything for me. There was an awful lot of faffing around, eating into your valuable Sunday time.

But here we are again, with a rendezvous down at the Sailing Club at 7:50 am. As ever. I was rushing. I surprised myself by being on time. Out of around a crew of 15 or so people, I was one of only three rowers on time. Oh well, time and tide and all that.

What became very clear was that there was plenty of nervous energy down at the Sailing Club even before we had left. I get nervous about many things, many stupid little things that really shouldn’t bother me. But when it comes to racing, you just get in a boat and fucking do it, right?

I thought it best to stay clear of those who knew what they were doing rather than me bumbling through. There was an awful lot of organising and packing as we prepared two gig boats to hit the road and make the short journey over towards Manningtree.

The journey over there was simple. We parked up and took a look out over at the estuary water in front of us.

Hang on, where the fuck is the water? We’re going to need some of that if we’re going to race, right?

I then realised that it may have only been 9 am but the first race wasn’t until midday. Like I said there’s an awful lot of faffing and waiting around whilst race rowing.

I looked around at the scene and who else I could see. Most of the other dozen or so rowing clubs had many new faces who I’ve not raced against before. SHOUT OUT to the dude who was wearing a pair of Wham-style badminton shorts and then the most ridiculous chunky pair of wellies.

All this nervous energy led to some pretty bat shit crazy conversations. We spoke for around ten minutes or so about the possibilities of breaking a thole pin and what to do if you find yourself in the exact same situation.

We then made our way over towards the race HQ. This involved navigating our way around a game of beach rugby taking place on what the locals in Manningtree optimistically call a beach.

It was reassuring but also a little scary to see a sizeable team from St John’s Ambulance on show. I was reminded of the Round Mersea race, where we ended up being rescued.

Whoops.

The situation then became extremely surreal as one of our experienced crew members unpacked out of his sailing bag half a dozen small cardboard cutouts of gig boats. But it didn’t end there. There were also various obstacles that we might find on the course, such as buoys and other boats.

I was actually enthused by all of this. I loved the idea and it triggered something of the obsessive within me about planning for these events.

I was all set to role-play out a race with the cornflake packet cardboard cutouts were put away as didn’t want to give away the race tactics to other crews who were lingering nearby.

Time passed rather slowly; and then some more time, even slower.

Finally it was time to get prepared. I had one last toilet pit stop. I had made the basic error of wearing a pair of cycling bib shorts. You try standing in a busy gents' urinal as you take off your rowing vest and then strip down the straps for the bib shorts. How to alienate other rowers, etc.

“This must be where the big cox hang out.”

No one laughed.

We then had a brief race prep with our cox. I was racing in the men’s race for our second crew. The cox was talking about how we were going to handle the turn. She then mentioned she wanted to feel the water and also feel you. Blimey I don’t think it was that kind of race.

Twenty or so gig boats then needed to be taken off their trolleys and placed on the water that was finally starting to arrive. There were some incredibly tight manoeuvres launching on Manningtree hard.

Best of all was the washing line pulley system that you had to use in order to go from the hard over to the jetty where the boats were now moored up.

Our men’s crew then took to the water with around 40 minutes or so before the race started. I think we went a little too early. I was all for keeping warm but I didn’t want to use up too much energy.

Some pretty random bird spotting took place, with one of our crew members being something of an expert. He pointed out a whole bank of godwits who did look rather resplendent.

The Manningtree course, on paper, looked really simple but it didn’t really take into account the number of moored boats which have to be navigated.

The race started. Soon we found ourselves in the centre of a boat sandwich. There was some tricky rowing taking place and it’s quite a miracle that we had no major clash of oars.

The instructions then came from the cox:

“Row like fuck.”

I don’t think you’ll find that motivational training in the British Rowing manual but it did seem to work.

I thought we got off to a half-decent start. We were certainly in the race for the first 5 minutes or so but then the other fleet of boats managed to push ahead. We had our own little private race with another boat as we pushed ahead of each other and tried to compete not to pick up the wooden spoon.

I didn’t hang around for the results but I think we might have picked up the wooden spoon.

It all then got a little argy-bargy with some of our other crews. An official complaint was put in after a rival club allegedly blocked the course and crashed into our boat. It was like waiting outside the headmaster’s office as we prepared to submit our evidence.

Eight hours later I was back at base. I had rowed for around 20 minutes. You have to be very committed to take part in gig race days.

Apologies but I am most definitely a non-committal type of guy

To Broad Lane! …on Saturday afternoon. I arrived in brilliant Estuary Wilds sunshine. I was fashionably late, natch, but the surprise here was that Wivenhoe Town were already 1-0 up.

The visitors were Dussindale and Hellesdon Rovers - which seemed a bit unfair: two teams versus one. Non-league football can get very confusing at times.

There’s no such thing as a big game in football. They’re all kind of big games, even down in the non-league pyramid.

This was something of a tester for the home team however. After a really encouraging start to the season. Wivenhoe, have let it slip ever so slightly of late.

Sure, there was a great cup win on pens midweek, but the league form, whilst not slipping back to those dark days of last season, hasn’t quite been the promotion push that was suggested a month or so ago.

Dussindale scored a scrappy equaliser. This flushed out a fair number of travelling fans who were in the ground. Good effort in making the trip.

Broad Lane is currently a dust bowl of a pitch. Seed was put down, but it has yet to take root. It all meant that whenever a player hit the surface it was hard to see what was happening. There was a plume of dust cloud hovering up above.

I was just happy to snap away under the bright sunshine conditions. Make the most of these GOLDN DAYS. As soon as winter comes under floodlights, then I’m clutching at straws when it comes to my camera. It’s all about the natural lighting.

An injury led to an enforced drinks break. Please don’t let this shit creep into our game, especially at non-league level.

Wivenhoe kept on pressing, and an absolute worldy of a goal was then scored with a perfection of a lob from out wide. Jack Colback would have been proud of this back in his Forest days. This got the young ultras going.

This was now shaping up to be a great game. There was a decent crowd and it could possibly be the last hurrah of the summer months before the autumn stretches out in front of us.

Another superb solo effort soon made it 3-1 to Wivenhoe. The ‘keeper came out but was caught stranded and the ball was taken around him.

Both teams out there are incredibly young. The game reflected this. It was played in almost a playground football spirit, but with a lot more skill, obvs.

Half-time came and then Wivenhoe wasted no time in making it 4-1 with a brilliant header from up on high. What the fuck is this that I’m watching? This is unknown territory for us down at Broad Lane.

“You missed a goal.”

…I remarked to a friendly football face returning from a pit stop.

“Who scored it?”

…came the response.

“Fuck knows, some fella mate.”

Every time we were on the attack it looked like we were going to score. This was perhaps the most skilled performance I’ve ever seen from a Wivenhoe team.

SHOUT OUT in particular to the young tricky new winger who was recently signed for the club. Every cross was pin-perfect.

What I think I enjoyed most was having a non-league experience not being soiled by the absolute stress of another Premier League Saturday. It was a joy to watch the game without having Forest in the AirPods and leading to me pacing around like a nut job.

It was also a joy to watch two young teams playing with plenty of skill, pace, and absolutely zero cynicism. The away team weren’t as poor as the scoreline suggests. It’s just that Wivenhoe were absolutely superb. Blimey I never thought I’d be saying that.

I even had a time to catch up with Mr Chairman, Mr Owner, and Mr Groundsman. In club news: the brick wall around the perimeter is coming down in the next few weeks and there’s also talk of new floodlights.

Mr Chairman is also optimistic about the visit of Chelmsford City in a cup match next month. A crowd of around 300+ is expected.

Back on the pitch and a right old goal-line comedy scramble took place in the final minute or so. Somehow the Dussindale ‘keeper kept the ball out of the net but then a fifth followed for Wivenhoe.

The Dragons were absolutely dominant.

Tide and time were in our favour for the WivGigs Wednesday midweek social. There was no scrambling around for a 6 am launch, or flapping about later in the day to try and make the most of the fading Estuary Wilds rays. The Tide and Time Gods granted us a very genteel launch time of 9:15 am.

No surprises for a midweek row in that there was absolutely bugger all any other traffic out on the water. Everything seemed gorgeously green. The leaves on the trees along the seawall were hanging on to their late summer hue. This was reflected down on the water in front of us.

We did spot the tall lone plastic picker dude out along White House Beach. Respect, fella. He was doing his daily duty of walking around and picking up any old crap that dickheads had discarded.

It looked as though the migrating birds were having something of a weather check. Various flocks of Gawd knows what were circling around us, possibly planning their next expedition back for the winter months.

Not so the cormorants who were still perched proud on the poles within the water.

We headed downstream and then back towards the Sailing Club. There was something of an aborted attempt at landing, but our cox had other plans in mind, with a little further stretch down to Windy Corner in Rowhedge.

We were treated to the most spectacular flypast from around a dozen or so Canada geese who were flying with perfect synchronicity over our heads.

A decent midweeker.