onionbagblog

Away tickets for Premier League to stay capped at £30 for two more seasons

via Morning Star

Greenwich Labour councillors sit up late to restrict public scrutiny

Democracy in Greenwich

This was a decent find - Alphonsus Idigo and Search. It’s slice of Nigerian reggae pop from 1987. It’s not going to change the world, but it most welcome and uplifting during these current times. I often felt like I needed cheering up back in 1987, but nowhere with the same sense of impending world doom and dread that I experience whenever I turn on the news these days. Forty odd years ago and it was on / off relationships that had me in search of music to make me smile. I don’t now anything about Alphonsus Idigo; I don’t feel I need to. It’s a happy go lucky short burst of reggae pop. It has me foot shuffling and giving me a bit of boost when times are flagging.

Bert Jansch’s Avocet. Bloody hell - I wasn’t expecting a book as part of the CD package. And what a beautiful thing it is, too. I think I was first alerted to Avocet via the always excellent Late Junction. An ebay search was soon set up. Most items clocked in at around £15. No ta. And then one appeared for a fiver. I’ll have a bit of that, thank you very much. Music about birdwatching is about where I’m at these days.

Short and sweet - which was a blessing as that was all that I could tolerate. Indie shite doesn’t speak to me. How the chuff are you expected to dance to this nonsense? Some of the Pixies bass line pricked up my interest. But that was about it I’m afraid.

⭐ ⭐

“I know that such a documentary is the director’s construct, telling the story he wants you to know. But I really did come out of it feeling warmer about Elvis the human being, and even more regretful about the opportunities he missed.”

Richard Williams on EPiC: Elvis Presley

There’s a tremendous amount of energy on this album. It’s not exactly bedtime listening. It kicks you up the arse and offers up a rallying call. I’m not quite sure what the message is, but it sounds like fun. It’s also quite a messy album as it progresses. It descends into music hall nonsense. That’s where I gave up.

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“There are also people out there who’d make appalling local councillors, not because you disagree with their policies but because their character is fundamentally flawed. They might be lazy, untrustworthy, clueless, toxic, fraudulent, even criminal… and a three week vetting process is never going to be able to weed out all the worst candidates.”

via Diamond Geezer

Everyone gains when more people cycle”: New report suggests cycling saving the NHS more than £72m per year

via road.cc

“The 13 players signed in a £200m summer recruitment campaign have contributed six goals between them. Two of those are from defender Nicolo Savona. Three of them have already left.”

Ouch

Tuesday afternoon at the Table of Dreams 🏓 Lost 5-0. Big dog stopped play. My mind was a little cluttered.

The fourth album in a six-act story? Blimey. I may have missed the first three, but there’s no way I’m going to binge on a catch up. The final two acts can do one, as well. I’m being harsh. This wasn’t the rock opera shit I was expecting. It’s almost soft rock, sounding like an album from 1979, not 2015. One for the committed.

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To Wrabness! For a big old birthday walk! Technically it wasn’t my birthday. And nope, I’m not Royalty with two birthdays. But I do rather kindly get given a day off work for my birthday, which happens to be a little later in the week. I’m busy with work stuff on the actual big day, and so Monday was put aside for a day of walking over in Wrabness.

The plan seemed simple: catch the train to Wrabness, and then walk The Essex Way all the way across to Harwich. ChatGPT told me it was a leisurely 14km stroll. Never trust Chat GPT, natch.

I was a little knackered before we even started. I was running low on energy. We had a few false starts finding our way out of Wrabness and down to the shoreline. There were plenty of signs saying Private Road. Having wandered for around fifteen minutes trying to find a cut through, we thought BALLS to that, and walked down a private road anyway.

Any progress was halted with a sign saying: DANGER! Coastal erosion! Do not pass. This birthday walk really was trying its best to spoil my big non-day.

Soon we found The Essex Way. It was a bit of an arse, and wasn’t exactly well sign-posted. In fact it was so crap, that it threw us out on a main road for about half an hour. Maybe this is the Essex Way of doing things?

Soon we were off the main road, and back trudging through shit. There was a lone detectorist doing his detector thing in a nearby field.

The final stretch took us towards Dovercourt, with Harwich visible not too far away. Except it was a bloody long walk still to go. I was absolutely knackered and found it a chore. Birthdays have never been so much hard work.

Destination Harwich was reached. It was pretty dead for a Monday afternoon. We did manage to raise some life in a local tea room. Afternoon tea and Cornish pasties is quite a combination.

Hey! Shall we walk back over the 17km route towards Wrabness? Shall we bollocks. The train from Harwich took us back to Manningtree, and then a change for Sunny Colch.

There was a really freaky conversation taking place in the carriage between a middle aged woman and a fella who looked about ten years younger. It was hard to piece it all together, but the general flow was that she was going to tell his Mum how they had both caught the early morning train from Clacton to London en route to the hospital. He then disappeared down a carriage and she caught him with a prostitute and had the photo to prove this.

Sunny Colch couldn’t come soon enough.

Wtf is wrong with this place?