onionbagblog

This was a weird one. For some reason I always thought Barenaked Ladies were indie lite shite. But wait! Whats this? There’s a nice breezy start to the opening. I thought Spotify had fucked up, and had served me up the new Paul Heaton album. The accent certainly seemed to suggest this. The first track then even segued into Happy Hour. I was quite enjoying the ex-Housemartins latest release. But it turns out that it was in fact Barenaked Ladies from back in 1992. Blimey. How odd. The album then became very goofy. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, etc. I bailed on the stupid Yoko track. Barenaked Ladies sound more like a pub band.

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To Moving Image! Or rather not to Moving Image on Tuesday evening. We did have plans to go along to the village cinema to catch the screening of The Essex Ways film. A quick shifty with the online trailer, and you can actually watch the whole film at home via YouTube. It would be rude not to.

Never say that I am keen on saving money, plus various household bits and bobs got in the way of a trip out to the village cinema. We made sure we had a clear path, so to speak, and then fired up the YouTube video with a strict rule of no phones or other distractions.

It’s more of an online film to watch, tbh than paying to watch it at a semi-pro village cinema. It follows the footsteps of James, a young man who decides to walk the Essex Way and record his adventures on camera.

I thought that we had walked the Essex Way a couple of months ago. My lack of local knowledge puts me to shame. We walked about a tenth of the Essex Way as we made our way from Manningtree over towards Harwich.

James completes the real serious business, pretty much circumnavigating the entire county, starting in Epping and then being washed up in Tilbury.

In between, he takes in many locations that are on the edge of our patch. The nearest he comes to us is Brightlingsea. Hesomehow manages to skirt away from Colchester. Walton, Frinton and Mersey Island all feature.

The film is a homage towards nature. There’s a very powerful message that is superbly told by James as he weaves in his personal narrative connected to the county, and a wider picture of declining nature and global warming.

We debated at first what time of year their film was shot. He mentions St. George’s Day midway through, which is the dead giveaway. It seems a perfect time of year to capture this county. Spring is pretty much in full bloom, and he seemed to have picked a favourable time when it comes to the weather.

It left me feeling that we have so much more to explore around these estuary wilds parts. He makes it to the other side of the Blackwater Estuary, something which, to my shame, I have yet to do.

He also addresses many of the Essex stereotypes. This is the great misunderstood county. I was surprised, and also very pleased, to hear him address class snobbery.

Within that, he also identified a north-south Essex divide. He came out with the conclusion of there being one Essex. He also managed to drop in the Crass slogan of the only war is the class war. Later in the credits, we see how Crass members were involved with the film.

His final destination of Tilbury seemed to symbolise what the whole film has been about. He describes being on the edges of London, with Tilbury being a mix of nature as well as something of a dumping ground. This is illustrated quite literally in the form of Tilbury being once a dumping ground for London.

There is optimism in the final scenes from Tilbury. Nature has reclaimed the slag heaps and is managing to work its wonders in disguising what London has done to the outer edges of the county. It was a very optimistic message in which to end.

I still have much more walking around these parts to do.

Two new stories sit side by side in my feed. The first is the positive news that back in Lambeth, the new Green-led council is pausing plans to close the dementia day centre on the Central Hill estate. Talk about your first 100 days in office, etc. Shout out to Councillor Martin Abrams, who has taken the no-nonsense move to reverse this cost-cutting policy of his old Labour Party.

Meanwhile, a little closer to home, I read how the newly Reform run Essex County Council has also wasted no time. Top of the agenda back in Essex is to cancel any so-called net zero projects. The so-called, by the way, is not my own personal interpretation. It seems that any cancellation of so-called net zero projects has to begin with the so-called prefix.

What a world we live in.

Meanwhile, caught somewhere in the middle is Colchester City Council. To the surprise of absolutely no one, it has been confirmed that a Conservative-led coalition alongside the wishy-washy Lib Dems will be voted in at the AGM tomorrow morning. Because of course the centrist third party, free market liberal model always knows best. Slow hand clap for the Colchester Labour splitters alongside their own neoliberal idiots that have caused this one almighty fuck up in the town/city.

More homegrown goodness from the allotment. We’re rather happy with the strawberries and raspberries, that are starting to come into fruition. These are genuine homegrown goodness, transported from the back garden and planted at the allotment just in time to catch the May heat wave tanning session. Expect more of the same over the next month or so.

Another Monday night, another social table tennis get together at the sailing club. We’ve been playing for almost a year now. It’s the same players: me, K, A, A agin and N. We’re pretty much all of the same standard. We rotate playing each other for an hour and a half or so, with no one ever really emerging dominant.

I’ve really enjoyed playing different players and opening up to their various quirks and techniques. We’re learning how to master each other, with some bloody decent rallies taking place.

This evening was a bit of a sticky one up in the Sailing Club loft. We had the balcony door open, with a table against it to stop the ball heading out into the river. That’s something that the world table tennis championship players don’t have to contend with.

It took a while to find my length on the indoor table. It’s a much faster game. Balls go flying and get lost around all the various crannies in the Sailing Club loft.

We usually finish up with a game of doubles. Time and tide literally were a little tight for us all this evening. Monday evenings are becoming the new Friday nights for me.

Blimey. The new album by The Coral is bloody decent. They’re a band that I’ve always liked, but one that I’ve also not always known too much about.

I managed to keep up with them for the first four or five albums. They then became so prolific that any new music seemed to pass me by.

But here they are, back for the summer of 2026 with an absolute banger of an album, 388. I’m not sure what the 388 stands for. Maybe it’s their 388th album?

I was first alerted to it via the always excellent Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London, and then the new Q Online despatch this morning had an extensive interview as well as some useful links for the album. This included an impressive Spotify playlist that clocks up almost five hours.

At first I wasn’t quite sure of some of the track selections that were curated around the album. Most of it appeared to be early to mid-seventies reggae, a lot of it centred around Lee Scratch Perry. I know The Coal are quite a diverse bunch, but even that sounds a little odd for them.

I fired up the 388 album. Straight in there with the first track, and it sounds like it could have come out of Scratch Perry’s own studio. There’s an incredible amount of detail that has clearly been paid to the production and trying to sound old school analogue with that early ska beat.

The band are a real anomaly. I’m not even sure they know which universe they exist in. You can always blame the hard skunk, but I prefer to view The Coal as being musical geniuses that haven’t exactly slipped underneath the radar, but they should be a lot bigger than what they actually are.

There’s also some genuine soul moments on the new album. It sounds like they had a lot of fun recording it. To their credit, it’s not one of those albums that is a deliberate head nod to all their influences. Springsteen fell very short with his soul covers album from a few years ago.

The Coal are so unpredictable that it might be that their next release is a death metal album. It’s probably already been recorded and will be out next week, soon to be followed by a Disco Anthems classic.

There was a small but enthusiastic turnout for the Monday lunchtime community pickleball session up at the university. We’re talking exam season here. Usually we play in the sports centre. Because of the students sweating over their finals, we got shunted into the big boy sports arena.

The very mention of the word sports centre and exams still terrifies me. My place playing pickleball on Monday lunchtime was much more preferred.

The sports arena is absolutely outstanding. The facilities are incredible. A cheeky trip to the toilet involves using the professional changing rooms of the Rebels. We’re talking almost Premier League standards here.

Anyway, the pickleball; it wasn’t exactly elite level, but I am improving.

It’s not unknown to have up to 18 players rock up for these community sessions. Today we had a dedicated player quota of five pickleballers, which is a bit of an odd number when you’re playing doubles.

We played a game with one person sitting out and then rotated. One of the players was a new face. He was a student who had obviously come straight from the world of tennis.

My calf held up well. Recent pickleball sessions have seen me laying off slightly and not quite going 100%. I didn’t get pickled once today.

Blimey. The new album by The Coral is bloody decent. They’re a band that I’ve always liked, but one that I’ve also not always known too much about.

I managed to keep up with them for the first four or five albums. They then became so prolific that any new music seemed to pass me by.

But here they are, back for the summer of 2026 with an absolute banger of an album, 388. I’m not sure what the 388 stands for. Maybe it’s their 388th album?

I was first alerted to it via the always excellent Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London, and then the new Q Online despatch this morning had an extensive interview as well as some useful links for the album. This included an impressive Spotify playlist that clocks up almost five hours.

At first I wasn’t quite sure of some of the track selections that were curated around the album. Most of it appeared to be early to mid-seventies reggae, a lot of it centred around Lee Scratch Perry. I know The Coal are quite a diverse bunch, but even that sounds a little odd for them.

I fired up the 388 album. Straight in there with the first track, and it sounds like it could have come out of Scratch Perry’s own studio. There’s an incredible amount of detail that has clearly been paid to the production and trying to sound old school analogue with that early ska beat.

The band are a real anomaly. I’m not even sure they know which universe they exist in. You can always blame the hard skunk, but I prefer to view The Coal as being musical geniuses that haven’t exactly slipped underneath the radar, but they should be a lot bigger than what they actually are.

There’s also some genuine soul moments on the new album. It sounds like they had a lot of fun recording it. To their credit, it’s not one of those albums that is a deliberate head nod to all their influences. Springsteen fell very short with his soul covers album from a few years ago.

The Coal are so unpredictable that it might be that their next release is a death metal album. It’s probably already been recorded and will be out next week, soon to be followed by a disco anthems classic.

Another day, another run. By this, I mean a proper run this time. Sure, it wasn’t the usual 10 km that I crave, but I did manage to get just under 5 km back in my legs.

This horrid, horrid injury has dragged on for far too long. My calf first went pop! back in early November. I’ve managed some rehab over the past couple of weeks, back on the treadmill in the gym. Small steps, etc.

I took it easy out there today. Sure, there’s no such thing as an easy run whenever I am concerned. I always aim to put in a PB. Today was maybe a very doubtful PB, let’s just tread very carefully around the mean streets of CO7, and see where it ends up.

20 minutes or so later, I was beaming. Running really is an aphrodisiac for the soul.

The first major harvest of the season. Ha! Blink and you might miss it, etc. But yep, these are nature’s bounty from our own first personal harvest. We inherited a patch of land that included some very limp rhubarb stalks, as well as the fag end of a leek crop. The strawberries and the raspberries are our own making. Tuck in!