Links for 29-11-25

Vauxhall Could Get One Of The UK’s Tallest Residential Buildings

I’ve long since lost track of the new towers around the VNEB cluster. I rather like them as a spectacle. London is nothing if it stands still. The fight against global capital was lost decades ago. This doesn’t mean that developers should be given a free ride - or Lambeth, for that matter. But if you can’t stop this endless march of capitalism, then at least try and appreciate how London never stands still. This is a good thing.

“Our political system suffered a massive virtual oil spill thanks to Twitter, which we have yet to begin to clean up”

Dave Winer on Thanksgiving.

City Ground honours heroes of ’79 as Dyche’s rejuvenated Forest march on

The Morning Star’s Tricky Tree Correspondent has been busy again.

Album of the Day: The Who - Tommy

Spotify tried to serve me up three and a half hours of this. No ta. I pressed on with the original release. The storyline is BONKERS. I tried to ignore this and focus on the music instead. Rock and opera should never appear in the same sentence. It’s a mess of an album that lectures you. YOU MUST LISTEN! I’d rather buzz off me tits with some drum ‘n’ bass tbh.

⭐ ⭐

Crap Match Report: Forest 3, Malmo 0

One Day in ‘79 was the strap line Forest used for the marketing push ahead of Malmo at home in the Europa League.

One Evening in ‘25 turned out to be half decent as well.

Forest do these grand occasions VERY well. As soon as the draw was made in August pairing us up with Malmo once again, I just knew that the Big Fat Greek would embrace it.

It was a magnificent gesture to invite - and pay for - both teams from One Day in ‘79 to be guest of honours at the World Famous City Ground.

Not everyone could sadly make it. Up until very recently I thought that the Miracle Men were just that. As players from other great clubs passed on, somehow the Forest team were all still amongst us.

Tricky Trev’s departure hurt hard. He was the £1M Man. He wouldn’t be the first to go.

I watched the Forest YT stream from the red carpet from 5pm. David Prutton did a decent job of door stepping old men - who probably wanted to tuck in to the freebie food and booze.

There were some lovely moments though. Colin Barrett and Bomber Bowyer both brought the humour. I confess to a Pavlovian shout of “TINA! TINA! TINA!” when Shilts appeared on screen.

He bloody loves it.

The stream finished an hour later. The final word went to Brian. The final word should always go to Brian.

What a club. What a legacy.

Now then. Down to business and One Night in ‘25.

The team news shortly dropped. SEVEN team changes. Blimey.

I wasn’t sure about John in goal. It was great to see Zak starting. I was looking forward to seeing what McAtee can do. Ditto Kalimuendo.

The old fellas from One Day in ‘79 came out to meet the crowd shortly ahead of KO. Some muppets in the Malmo end got a little over enthusiastic.

I hope we bloody stuff you now.

The sight of Ryan Yates leading out Forest at the World Famous in a European fixture was something to savour. The Skipper rose to the occasion with one of his best games in the Garibaldi.

And it wasn’t just the tops, either. I bloody love it when we wear red shorts. I think it’s an emotional attachment going all the way back to Munich ‘79.

The teams lined up, the game kicked off.

Hang on. Murillo is playing at left back? Blimey.

Yates and Abbot both linked up well. It was genuinely lovely seeing the two Forest Academy boys playing together on the European stage.

A Captain’s goal soon followed.

GEDDIN the Trent, etc.

This was an incredibly one sided contest. Malmo looked like a team that had come to enjoy the occasion, rather than win the game. They were the most passive team we have seen on Trentside in years.

What was the point in travelling all the way over from Sweden, and then not being arsed to even leave the halfway line?

Forest sensed this and tried to kill the game off within the first thirty minutes. I lost count of the number of chances we had.

A goal from Kalimuendo followed. That will do wonders for his confidence.

The third goal after the break from the Serbinator sealed the game. I bloody love VAR, me.

Time to get Murillo and CHO off. Feet up lads, ahead of the Premier League.

But wait! What’s this?

ATTACK! ATTACK!

ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!

Attacking subs were brought on. Whatever happened to Dyche the dinosaur with his defensive style of play?

The game then had the feel of an international friendly. Substitutions broke up the pace of the game.

Yates was brilliant from start to finish. Write him off at your peril.

And so One Day in ‘79 became One Night in ‘25. The 3-0 win won’t be as significant as the magic of Munich, but it will do wonders for our Europa League standing.

Another great European night on Trentside.

This is a very classy - albeit slightly bonkers - club.

Goggles On. Grow Up? Nah

More NEW BITS, via This is Clobbered once again.

K-Way is a new brand to me. It specialises in retro cagoules. The USP is that the zip is at the centre of the design.

Apparently they are all the rage amongst the kids.

I still count, right?

This reminds me of the Nike cagoule craze back at school in the early days of hip hop. Some bastard nicked mine from the cloakroom. It was returned a few months later with fag burns.

I bloody hated school, tbh.

But here I am, still living out those early electro fantasies, still got it.

Just.

This look needs a pair of ski goggles btw to complete it. This was the style back in ‘84, and I see no reason not to ponce it up once again.

I actually bought a pair of ski goggles from Lidl last week.

No shit.

Return to Mu Mu Land

Fancy some more KLF mixes?

COURSE you do.

This is pretty cool - an archive of personal mixes of all things KLF inspired, now dumped on the modern interweb and ready to download.

There’s quite a story behind the philanthropic sharing as well:

“I am a 72 year old totally anal KLF fanatic and sometime DJ …think squats and forest clearings back in the day. Though now on palliative care (dying) I would like to share my vinyl with you all.”

It’s impossible to put together any definitive KLF discog - either official or bootlegs. There’s so much out there, most of it worthy of a listen.

You get the impression that this is encouraged. It’s not as if the KLF themselves were shrinking violets when it came to copyright lifting for their own work.

They’re still at it as well. The KLF name may be gone, but new music - or projects - continue to drop frequently.

Mu Mu Land is a never ending story it seems.

There’s even talk of a Sunny Stockwell gig back at Transcentral in… 2323.

We’ll al be pretty ancient by then.

Yep.

Soft Hands, Hard Win

To the Table of Dreams!

…on Wednesday lunchtime. We were both free. There was brilliant Estuary Wilds blue sky up above.

Make bloody hay, etc.

The tactical decision was taken to play with the conventional, non-wind ball. This took a little getting use to.

We’re use to TWATTING the extra heavy wind ball around the table.

It’s great for rallies where you are both playing power shots and smashes, as each player moves further away from the table.

It’s a macho style of play, almost reduced to an arm wresting contest.

But I like to embrace my, ahem, feminine side in table tennis every now and then.

Spin it to win it, Jase.

The conventional ball is a delicate affair. It needs caressing. It needs the dog shit from the public playing field to be wiped off before play.

The scores were level at 2-2. This would usually be signal to get bored, start showboating and walk away with yet another defeat.

But not on Wednesday. I found a new cautious side to my game. Play safe, wait for her to make the mistakes.

Oh dear, luv. You didn’t want to do that.

My feminine side was well and truly embraced, even if was playing wiff waff whilst wearing the most ridiculous pair of wellies.

Back to Beth Orton

I’ve been listening to Beth Orton’s brilliant Weather Alive album once again. I say once again - I never really got going with the 2022 release.

As ever - I’m a slow listener, reader, watcher.

Beth has been under my radar for the past thirty years or so. I’ve always been aware of her, and in particular the singles. But I’ve never really taken it further.

And then three years ago, she put together an incredible live set for Gilles Peterson at Maida Vale to promote the Weather Alive album. I was hooked.

An ebay deal was done for the album. The entire back catalogue soon followed.

Weather Alive is a haunting album. Her voice sounds so fragile, almost to the point of breaking down. The lead song Friday Night is my soundtrack for walking the streets of South London alone in the evening.

There’s a strong hat tip to John Martyn. I think the Weather Alive album title might even be a reference to Bless the Weather?

So what if I’m running three years behind here. Music is right, right? Any listening is good. Especially if it’s Beth Orton.

Ken High Street Rubber Chic

The Postman Delivers:

Rubber. BLACK rubber.

And so we have a Swedish Stutterheim rain mac. So what if the ebay listing was under FETISH?

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it, etc.

There’s a shopping story behind this, involving R. The last shopping story involving R was centred around buying underpants in the West End.

This time we found ourselves along Ken High Street, doing the charity shop run. You always get a better class of charity shop hauls on this side of town, compared to say, erm, Streatham.

And there it was, staring me right in the face: a magnificent green Stutterheim mac.

“Go on, try it on”

I needed no encouragement from R.

The size ever so slightly put me off; the price tag more so.

A quick online shifty in the shop, and the £150 wasn’t that outrageous. But I had to let it go.

The clincher was that it looks like a fisherman’s mac. I live in a bloody fishing village. I couldn’t get away with that.

“Go on, YOU try it on”

…I told R. It suited him better tbh.

He umm-ed and ahh-ed and attempted to text B to see if she was cool with this.

JUST BLOODY BUY IT.

And so he did.

“You can always shift it on ebay”

…I reasoned.

A couple of hours later and I was back in the flat, searching for a Stutterheim black mac.

BINGO.

A week later and it arrived.

R and I are the Rubber Twins around Town. We look like we are heading out together for a specialist party.

#ponce

#rubberponce

Album of the Day: Fugazi - Repeater

There’s a lot of noise here. And not all of it good. I struggle with the US interpretation of punk and post-punk. It doesn’t speak to me. This sounds more metal than the street talk of UK punk.

⭐ ⭐