onionbagblog

It will never cease to amaze me the amount of tat you can give away. And so we’re having something of a garden redesign. This involves getting rid of all the tat which we have out-tatted. Apologies to any of the tat dippers who have picked up our tat from outside the house, but also, equally, a thank you. You’re certainly helping us out.

The speed at which this stuff disappears is quite incredible. Our water butt this morning lasted less than a couple of minutes. That surely got to beat even the South Lambeth Road tat timings. Good effort, tatters.

Another Saturday morning, another lost album find by the always excellent Late Junction. My morning catch up from the night before led to Late Junction dropping a very laid-back soulful track. It felt very contemporary = think Kiwanuka, with the soulful vibe dialled down even further.

But wait! What’s this?

And so here we have Eugene McDaniels and the rather bonkers Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse album. Late Junction reliably tells me this dates back to 1971. It was something of a lost masterpiece until a recent re-release.

The story goes that Eugene was a minor pop star towards the late 60s. He then took something of a major left-field step and came up with the Headless Heroes Masterpiece.

Late Junction added that the album came under great scrutiny during the fevered days of early 1970s US Conservative politics. Fast forward 2026 and same as it ever was, etc.

There are early elements of funk here but soothing soul holds it all together. After a couple of listens it’s already a companion piece to the equally bonkers Aphrodite’s Child by 666, which I stumbled upon this summer.

Like I said I was born in the wrong decade.

“Blair opened his premiership on the Aylesbury Estate, a few minutes' walk away, in which he promised to rid the country of “no hope areas” like the flats behind him. “There are estates,” he said, “where all that is left of the high hopes of the post-war planners is derelict concrete. Behind the statistics are people who have lost hope, trapped in fatalism.” The narrative was set: estates as archaic decay, a Labour framing that met an existing Tory one halfway."

The Londoner on the framing of the Heygate.

Hey! Want to see a one-man-band transporting half the contents of his home garden over to the bloody allotment? Good news! Especially if you were anywhere around the mean streets of CO7 on Friday lunchtime.

Domestic issues back at vase has meant we need to offload some of the garden shit ASAP. Aha, I know - we rather handily have an allotment plot where a lot of this shit can be dumped.

Maybe I should paraphrase that. Yep, I have carefully read the T’s and C’s of the Town Council lease regarding the allotment. I can confirm that I am not dumping fridge freezers, food scraps, or even a dodgy old porno collection.

We’re talking the odd brick here and there to support the allotment verges, plus what we salvaged from a decking that has been ripped up. These will serve as useful planks for navigating from the strawberries to the courgettes to the sweet corn, etc.

A pair of wheels were sourced. We opted for a folding trolley to make the short 10-15 minute journey back and forth.

The test drive went very smoothly. I urged caution, as ever in my life, and didn’t overload it. Job’s a good ‘un.

I reached the allotment from the other side of the fence. I could see that Cricket Week at the cricket club was in full swing. The marquee is standing and looking rather proud ahead of President’s Day on Saturday. A game of cricket was also taking place throughout Friday afternoon.

I had a quick look around the patch before my second trip with my new trolley. The pumpkins are ripening rather well. The poppy weeds have dried off. The allotment is now lacking a little colour without those wonderful early summer red poppy flowers.

This will soon change with the tomatoes. SHIT THE BED, we have bloody loads of them. Some are red, some are of the yellow variety. It’s going to look like an organic psychedelic disco once they hit their peak.

Unfortunately the raspberry canes are not looking quite as healthy. They haven’t died off but they have yet to produce any produce. This is a shame as back at base we had raspberries growing out of our arses. This was one of the reasons for the much-needed garden redesign.

And then we come to the courgettes. OH MY DAYS. These are also going to be another bumper crop this year. I have looked at the possible options of selling these online. I don’t think I will get to be the Courgette King of CO7 before Christmas.

The first trip with the new trolley was a success. I turned around, headed back to base, loaded up the trolley, and then did it all over again.

I was a little more reckless on my second visit. Half a dozen planks of decking were transported. The trolley swayed from side to side as though it had enjoyed a lunchtime tipple too many. The 10–15 minute journey became 25 minutes.

The allotment was reached, the cricket game was still taking place, and the bloody raspberries had still yet to grow.

Allotment life, innit.

To the Table of Dreams! …for the second consecutive day. The public park was eerily quiet. In the distance we could see smoke emerging from Fingeringhoe Wick. This is something of a worry. The fields around these estuary wilds parts are absolutely tinderbox dry. I did think of doing a rain dance before we had our wiff waff warm-up.

Our first decision was which ball to use. We started TWATTING the ball from corner to corner using the conventional indoor ball. The wind picked up picked up and the warm up became a little more anarchic. Time for the heavier ball.

The wind ball carries plenty of momentum when you it the sweet spot and the ball bounces a few metres back. It then continues to roll way down the long slope of the hill, such is a lack of friction on the bone dry grass. I confess to taking great pleasure in achieving this kind of shot and making my playing partner increase her step count for the day.

The game was interrupted by a celebrating clucking from one of the hens in the nearby coop. “She’s just laid an egg!” declared my playing partner. Yeah, well done you. I’ve got a game of table tennis to try and win.

Somehow I found myself 2-1 in a best-of-five. This isn’t gonna last, right? We went into the final game decider, with everything to play for.

The score actually went up to 10-1-, with 11 needed for victory although two clear points to seal it. I bottled it. Blame the clucking hen that put me off my stroke.

The new album from Beth Orton is something to cherish. The Ground Above carries on from Weather Alive with a voice that feels like it might break down at any moment. She somehow manages to hold it all together. You’re through some of her shared pain along the way.

I really regret missing out on Beth over the past three decades or so. This is her ninth album. All those cliches of being the Comedown Wueen somehow passed me by. Truth be told and I never really came down during those tired and emotional days of living the party lifestyle.

The vocals on The Ground Above are so weathered. There’s some fine jazz musicianship on this album, but it’s the voice that breaks through and remains front of centre.

Somehow Beth Orton has managed to emerge as one of those unique and celebrated British female voices. Sure she’s never going to trouble the charts. This is non-commercial music that is still being allowed to be released and managed by the mainstream.

We should cherish her.

Oh dear. Bailed after less than a minute. Horrid, horrid rock rap. Whingy white boys. Wanky guitar solos. Nope. SEE YA!

⭐

Another year, another album from Cleaners from Venus. Yer man Mr Mule seems to drop these almost monthly now - that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point; productivity somehow naturally balanced with a laid-back slackness governs his own micro world.

And so here we have Beryl and Ruff Go Shopping. But OF COURSE they do. I’ve not dug deep enough yet to find out the meaning behind the title. I’m sure I’ll read about it on Facebook in another 5,000-word essay.

All the usual themes appear to be present and correct. We’re talking seasonal change. It’s four seasons in one album. There’s no one else who quite paints a picture of the changing small-town England landscape than Mr Mule.

The sense of Englishness lingers heavy throughout the album. That’s Englishness being celebrated for all its quirkiness, rather than any flag-waving nonsense. It’s like life stopped in 1983 for Mr Mule, yet somehow he still manages to make these DIY records at a remarkable pace.

For all his self-confessed Luddite tendencies, I don’t think he recognises that he is actually something of a digital disruptor and maverick. Self-recording, self-producing and self-distributing music at such a pace is very much for the modern world.

He’d hate to hear this comparison but he’s something of an Estuary Wilde’s Prince. ARF. That made me chuckle.

The music is pretty timeless. He knows how to pen a bloody good tune and then add his usual jingle jangle and reverb all around it.

I tend to lose track of the amount of music he’s creating these days, but that’s not the point. It’s some legacy that is being built up.

To the Table of Dreams! …on Thursday afternoon. We did umm and ahh about whether a game of wiff waff in extreme heat was a wise idea. In the end you have to just get off yer arse and bloody do it, yeah?

The park seemed remarkably quiet. I know it’s the holiday season but still.

There was a gathering of a couple of young families playing boules on the newly installed Town council surface. This was rather reassuring to see.

Back on the wiff waff table and we opted for the non-wind ball. It felt like we had to give it an extra smash just to get it over the non-net net.

After twatting around a little with our warm-up going corner to corner, we entered into the game. As ever, I started off brightly but then lost heart. I really couldn’t be bothered.

At one stage it got so ridiculous that I took some steps back and delivered my killer spin serve from about three metres away from the table. It worked once but not the second or third time. Oh dear.

I walked away, not in shame, but still with a 4-1 defeat.

There was an exceptionally high tide as I made my way down Quayside ahead of another lunchtime walk on Thursday. I was surprised not to see the flood barrier closed.

Disguising the smell of mud and shit from the Estuary Wilds was the midday pub food being cooked. It was rather tempting but I had km’s in my legs that needed walking off.

I reached the Sailing Club. WivGigs were preparing to land after a social row on the high water. I did my dutiful trolley dolly thing and helped them out with the recovery.

A little further down the muddy banks and there was the magnificent sight of the entire fleet of Wivenhoe One Designs in a single line. It is WOD Racing Week this week. That sounds purely for the committed. They seem to have the weather as well as the wind.

I reached the wooded area along a sea wall. We had the news yesterday of a tree in Wivenhoe Wood falling due to the intense heat, and taking down a power line on the railway. Whoops.

Along the sea wall another tree has fallen, requiring you to do something of a limbo dance in order to have a safe passage.

Halfway around my circuit and the heat became incredibly repressive. I did have plans for the 10km round route but this involves a little extra distance as well as walking on the main road.

BALLS to that. I opted instead for the more scenic route, which takes in the abandoned and derelict St Peter’s Church at Alresford.

I always love looking around here and taking snaps, whatever time of the year. I’m no believer, but it is a very powerfully emotive location any time of the year.

I descended back down towards the Estuary. The gravel paths that link Alresford back to the river have now become sand. Flooded plains around the fields have long since disappeared. The ground is bone dry. One downpour and the water will drain off back down towards the Estuary.

There was a sign up by the private fishing lakes saying that there was an OAP fishing match taking place this summer. I’m not too far off from signing up for this myself.

Walk to live, live to walk, or something.