onionbagblog

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.

This feels like one of those absolute masterpiece albums that I should be familiar with. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do when it comes to my jazz noodlings. The early start with So What is, of course, exemplary. I have to confess that my introduction to this song was via good old Smiley Culture on the Absolute Beginners double soundtrack. Oh dear.

What I love about Miles is that you can never really tell if it’s a live album or not. This is a complement. The playing and arrangement are simply magnificent. This feels like it could equally have been a drawn-out recording process, such is the perfection captured in the live environment.

One play in and this already feels like a classic to me. I do very much enjoy exploring and discovering new jazz as I continue with my quest for knowledge.

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Yet more bloody tomatoes. Or more to the point, not so bloody red tomatoes, but yellow tomatoes.

Tomatoes are the new courgettes, right? They’re coming out of our arses, so to speak, right now.

The heat of the past few days helped to deliver these. We still weren’t quite sure if they were ripe or not. What shade of yellow do you need to pick a tomato?

But the heat had loosened them from the stems of the plant. This is nature’s way of saying get these down yer neck ASAP.

I did have the brainwave of making some tomato sauce out of them. Would it still be tomato sauce if it was yellow? Perhaps I should make mustard?

To be honest I haven’t really thought this one through.

Allotment life, innit.

The bass playing on this album is phenomenal, as you might expect. At first I thought it was a trombone, but nope, it’s Bruce plugging away and getting some extraordinary lush heavy sounds out of his bass. It’s also a very soulful album. All that guitar heaviness puts me right off Cream. Songs for a Tailor is a sound with some soul and emotion that I can get behind.

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We’re getting quite close to allotment BUMPER season here. Most of the growing has been done. The Estuary Wilds sun is working its magic, and then some. Everything seems to be exploding and growing at a tremendous pace these days.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying we have a fully rounded meal on show, but we’re getting close to self efficiency. Good luck in surviving on a meal of courgettes and tomatoes. That will be interesting if nothing else the following morning.

Don’t be fooled by the colour of the tomatoes. You say tomato, I say tomatoe, etc. These are yellow toms. They have proved a little problematic in that we’re not quite sure as to which shade of yellow signifies full ripeness. We didn’t want to take any chances, and so picked them a little early.

Meanwhile In Courgette News: loads of them. Bloody loads of them. Keep those courgette fritters coming. It’s my staple diet as we enter the hazy days of August.

Also coming up in August is the WAGA Show, also known as the Wivenhoe Allotment and Garden Association Show. Think the Lambeth Country Show without the vegetables shaped as penises. Although having carefully scrutinised the competition rules, there’s nothing overtly in there saying that you can’t enter a vegetable shaped like a penis. That will liven the stiffs up, etc.

I’m not sure what we’re going to enter. Artwork is even an option. I might dig out some of my CSE Grade 3 art from the loft and pass it off as one of my 2026 originals.

Estuary life, in it.

I’m not a fan of these confessional life story type albums. It’s the narrative as told by those wanting to write their own history. Sure, hip hop needs that bravado but there are two sides to every story. The beats and delivery are as tight as you’d expect. I wanted a bit more joy, a bit more happiness. I think that was lacking in the 2Pac story.

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Tom Waits, Small Change. You couldn’t get away with an album cover like that these days.

I never know when to start with Tom Waits. The trick is just to dive in, strap yourself down and be taken along for the ride. You can’t get all muso-obsessive in understanding what he’s done and where he’s going.

Small Change is no different. It starts with what I call the Waltzing Matilda song, which isn’t even Waltzing Matilda. He then starts to ramble as his bottle becomes increasingly empty.

I won’t call it a masterpiece but then I don’t want musical perfection from Tom Waits. It’s more about the mood. Small Change provides this.

Fella can sing, blue eyed soul and all that. But he ain’t no rapper. It just doesn’t speak to me. It’s not part of my world. I felt like I was only one step away from wearing a dumbass stupid MAGA cap.

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