onionbagblog

To Wivenhoe Town Cricket Club!… Shortly after lunch on Saturday. The Second 11 (I think?) were playing Gawd knows who. Wivenhoe were out fielding in the middle under very challenging weather conditions.

There was absolutely no shade in the middle. Fancy that. My first task upon arrival was to find a large parasol and picnic bench in which to park my sweaty backside.

We managed to find a spot that had a slight breeze running over the wicket and towards the clubhouse where we were sitting.

The game itself was in an interesting situation. The scoreboard wasn’t working. It was like watching a game of cricket with pin the tail on the donkey as the rules. A couple of minutes later and the scoreboard flickered into action.

“Come on the Blobber!” rang out around the ground. Blobber blobbed along doing his thing, bowling from the pavilion end for Wivenhoe.

A boundary conversation took place between one of the Wivenhoe fielders and a bloke sitting in his van with the air conditioning on. Meanwhile a batter for Gawd Knows Who was sitting next to us, sparking up his fag.

Wickets were hard to come by. I think this was a combination of the challenging conditions and what like a batting-friendly wicket. It all got a little too much for the umpire in the middle. He took off his sliders and umpired the game wearing his bare feet. The dirty dog.

Finally a breakthrough came for Wivenhoe: one of the openers fell, stranded on 90. Good effort all the same.

The game livened up slightly. One of the Wivenhoe bowlers took a spectacular fielding dive right in front of the pavilion on what is essentially a concrete patch masquerading as grass. His fresh whites were all of a sudden rather dirty.

There was a bit of an “oh shit!” moment when a very young toddler ran on to the pitch. A slight downpour broke out but play carried on.

The conversation around us turned towards one of the very young batsmen waiting to go in for Gawd Knows Who. He showed his more mature teammates a photo on his phone of a rather fetching very young lady. The story goes that he took her out to his Prom on Thursday. By Friday he was dumped. Oh dear.

Soon the young fella was out in the middle. He was making a right old crack of it and getting a scoreboard turning over. A particularly impressive six was met with a shout from one of his teammates back on the boundary of “Her loss, fella!”

The tea break came, more rain followed; with allotment and work commitments a little later on in the day we cut our losses after watching a very enjoyable first innings of cricket.

Some overnight listening from the always excellent Late Junction. The late Friday night slot was put over to celebrating Midsummer. You would expect nothing less from Late Junction.

As ever this makes more sense to me listening first thing in the morning. It’s a constant weekend delight to start off a Saturday morning with some Late Junction, gentle awakenings.

Steady the buffers, Jase, never trust a hippie etc.

I love the description of presenter Verity Sharp’s observation that Midsummer is the coming together of the real world and the mystical. It’s a time when the heat leads to all types of crazy shit happening - and that’s just in my own lounge as I arse around indoors trying to shake off this crazy, crazy heat wave.

Sure there’s experimental free love nonsense littered all the way throughout Late Junction, plus some rather obscure choices that somehow seem to sum up the mood right now.

I often say that the BBC licence fee is worth it alone for Late Junction, along with county cricket commentary. That’s something you’re unlikely to read in a Daily Mail editorial.

The hit and giggle returns after a rather weird Championship scheduling break. It’s no wonder cricketers don’t know if they are Arthur or Martha when one week they are playing red ball cricket, and the next they have to switch to white ball.

It’s not so much of an issue for Surrey as they strutted along down to the south coast to take on the Sussex Sharks. Our Blast team is pretty much a who’s who of franchise cricket. It’s just a shame that that who’s who is more like a 2016 edition than 2026.

Yes, we’ve had our woes in the Championship this season. We’re actually in serious risk of being dragged into a relegation battle.

There was hope that the Blast might offer a pleasant distraction. We always do well in this competition, right? Not really. That’s just the narrative mainstream media likes to put over. We’ve only won the bloody thing once - and that was during the first season.

The pitch down at Hove looked an absolute belter. Sussex were relentless in their opening few overs. Young Sam Curran, who isn’t that young anymore, was incredibly expensive being hit all around the park.

His brother Tom fared little better.

You have to add in the disclaimer here with any game of cricket that you can’t judge a pitch until both sides have batted. But the way Sussex went about demolishing the Surrey attack was very ominous as balls were knocked towards the umbrellas of the corporate hospitality.

Dan Lawrence made the breakthrough for Surrey, finally taking the wicket of Ward. Spin it to win it, etc. Who knew?

Tom Lawes took out Hughes very cheaply for a well-deserved 45. It had looked as though both Sussex openers were on for a century. Shout out Chris Jordan, who took an easy catch back on his old ground.

Lawrence struck again, taking the wicket of Coles. From 94 without loss Sussex were down to 104 for 3. Game on?

Lawes took the wicket of Carter, sending furniture all over the Hove ground. Carter walked for two, thanks for coming, etc.

It was at this time in the evening that I really should have switched over and watched the Test Match highlights, but England are such a fuck-up right now. I’m always a club over country man, be it cricket, football, erm, basketball.

Meanwhile Mark Church singing The Thompson Twins' Hold Me Now wasn’t something I was expecting on the Sussex feed as part of my evening of entertainment.

It was also that time of the evening when the BOOZE kicked in. A Crap Match Report with zero tactical analysis reverted to form. All I can observe is that the Surrey franchise superstars weren’t exactly involved as some of the Sussex wickets started to tumble.

Somehow Sussex found themselves at 77 for nine after the eighth over. This was something of a remarkable turnaround for Surrey. It was a belter of a surface and the non-Surrey stars making the most of it.

Attention drifted, booze continued, the heat back at home in front of the hit and miss Sussex YT stream distracted me slightly. Meanwhile, Surrey made light work of polishing off what in the end was a lame run chase.

This was mainly thanks to new Aussie overseas signing, Josh Philippe, with a fantastic fifty on debut. He was handed his prestigious Surrey cap, even before he had faced his first ball. I don’t think I was alone in thinking this was something of a nervy moment. But he delivered, and in some style as well.

And so Surrey’s stop/start Blast campaign continues. An appearance in Finals Day should be the bare minimum expected from now on.

Continually chop, changing from Championship to the Blast makes that route not so simple. Factor in the ECB fucking over Surrey with ODI scheduling, and it could be another close but no cigar sort of season.

Ever the optimist.

Hey! Let’s get tattooed. On the hottest day of the year. You absolute dick.

I’ve had a couple of years off the ink action whilst I assess my future vanity plans, not to mention scrambling around to get the cash together.

A couple of sessions were booked in for June and July. I then got lucky as my tattoo man had a couple of cancellations. Grab them all you whilst can. The recovery process with no sport can be tough. You might as well condense these in.

My tattoo man has had a studio move since my last visit. He’s now working out of a pretty cool funky place out in the middle of bloody nowhere. A bicycle route was plotted using my Beeline Velo 2. I rolled out shortly after 7:00 am in search of the middle of bloody nowhere.

I was armed with ice packs, water, and a big bowl of pasta. The BBC temperature had forecast 37 degrees for later in the day. The exact location of the middle of bloody nowhere also happened to be, come the end of the day, the highest temperature in the whole of the UK.

The early start was most welcome. My tattoo man reasoned that we should crack on as early as we could so as to avoid the killer heat later in the afternoon.

To be honest I was very nervous about this; not so much the actual inking itself. You don’t go through two sleeves and still live in fear of fainting under the needle, as was the case for me back in the City of Death during the early 90s.

My nervousness was more about the heat. I really can’t handle it very well. I made it quite clear from the start that I would sweat my arse off, but I’m fine with that as long as my tattoo man was.

I needn’t have worried. Some lovely lovely air conditioning had recently been installed in the studio. It was like being tattooed in an air-conditioned supermarket all day. I’ve never felt so fresh.

The change of studio has led to a slight change in the culture of the place. Those hip-hop bangers have now been replaced with a loosely themed Arctic Monkeys playlist. It made for pleasant background listening as the ink went in.

The main work today was to start on the back of my calf. Like a fool I had forgotten I have been suffering from a calf injury for the past six months. I thought this had healed but when my tattoo man was rubbing down various parts, I got some slight twinges. At least I know now where the exact pain is in the calf. I’ve also got the perfect excuse to lay off the running for a couple of months.

Shortly after 2 p.m. we were both done for the day. I was absolutely broken. I didn’t sweat my arse off, but lying on your front for the best part of the day and being poked around with a needle can physically and mentally take it out of you.

My tattoo man is absolutely superb. He’s the best in the business as far as I’m concerned. His portfolio online speaks for itself. He has a charming bedside manner.

One down, three more to go. Let’s hope the heat wave conditions calm down slightly ahead of my next appointments.

I go through summers where I find myself being sucked towards a particular genre and being obsessed with certain albums as the season plays out.

A couple of years ago it was the Great Blues Summer. I beefed up my CD collection with some classic Muddy Waters albums, as well as some more contemporary takes on the blues. This summer I seem to have unwittingly been sucked into prog. Oh dear.

Prog gets a really bad name. I’m not sure why. It’s basically jazz music for rock bands. I think a lot of the shit around it comes out of the whole stereotypical late sixties to early seventies scene, and the not-so-flattering looks that accompany it.

King Crimson’s Larks' Tongues in Aspic is a worthy listen - or at least I thought it was. It was on their 1001 albums to listen to list. I must have been served this some time in the past couple of years. I added it to my eBay daily watch list. They drop each day, clocking in anything between £10 and £50 or so.

And then one copy dropped for a grubby fiver at the start of this week. I’ll have a bit of that, I thought. A clickety click here and there, and job’s a good ‘un.

Lark’s Tongues in Aspic arrive this morning. I did actually give it a stream before I hit the purchase, just to make sure that my musical judgement from a couple of years ago hadn’t slipped. It had. It wasn’t the masterpiece I had remembered.

But still, a prog summer is a prog summer. I do love this kind of music to play whilst I get on with other tasks. I wouldn’t call it background music, but you try getting to grips with a particularly prickly work project when you’ve got some west coast hip-hop blasting out.

And so farewell the Geordie Maradona. There’s been some uncertainty over the overnight price quoted for the sale of Elliot Anderson to Manchester City. Was it £116 million or £130 million?

I get confused by football finances these days. Long gone are the days when Trevor Francis was sold for one million pounds and you knew where you stood. There were reportedly no add-ons, no obligations, and no hidden costs down the line (although technically it wasn’t a one million pound transfer fee…).

But anyway, back to the Geordie Maradona. He’s been bloody brilliant for Forest hasn’t he? A £35 million pound purchase to a £130 million pound sale doesn’t tell the whole story.

he weird PSR deal that saw the Greek fella head in the other direction towards Newcastle makes it more like a £15 million pound purchase being flogged on for whatever the final price is. Job’s a good ‘un.

I remember hearing loads of hype over the summer when we signed him. Endless podcasts raved about how good he was. I have to confess I’d never heard of him.

There wasn’t even any consensus as to where he would play. It seemed at first that he would be an MGW in waiting. The thinking was that we would get one more season out of Morgan, then Elliott would be able to step up and fill in that central role in the middle of the pitch.

I’m not even sure he knew what his exact role would be at Forest but it’s testament to the player that he pretty much manufactured it for himself. He found a way of playing that made it impossible for our long list of Head Coaches to leave him out. Put simply, he just dominated everything in midfield.

He goes about the job so quietly as well. You don’t want to get too star-struck over these extremely well-paid footballers, but judging by his profile and his rare media interventions, he seems like a thoroughly bloody well-rounded and decent young man. That’s a rarity in the modern game.

Unfortunately I’ve never got to actually see him play live. Getting a Forest ticket at the World Famous these days is near on impossible. Watching him on the telly gives you some degree of understanding as to how he dominates games. I would have loved to have seen him at the World Famous up front and how he can dictate the entire play around the pitch.

I think Forest played a blinder here. We turned down the initial two bids. It seems that the intention was always to agree to the third bid. Man City probably knew that as well. Both sides played the game well.

It works out well for Forest, saying they sold a player for the current highest British transfer fee. Ditto for Man City. He is a marquee signing for what is supposedly a marquee club in English football.

It does leave us with a what next question. We simply can’t replace him, but the money gives us options to buy up to two or even three players that we need to fill that gap.

And so farewell to the Geordie Maradona. In decades to come we will be speaking about him in the same hushed tones as the likes of Archie Gemmill, Neil Webb and Roy Keane, although to be honest I think he tops that list even now.

Anthems! Bangers! Bombastic indie that is somehow caught between Britpop and that weird type of major mainstream indie that chugs along and still manages to fill stadiums! I’ve always struggled with this type of music but I still have something of a soft spot for it. It’s a mighty long way down rock ‘n’ roll from the C86 indie scene to these elongated, stretched-out songs. If they were recorded by someone like Will Young then they would be pure pop perfection. Embrace manage to rough it up a little but it’s still extremely slick. You should listen to this without being a music snob. I find that tough. I think it’s just that at the time I was struggling to shake off my indie past. Embrace made the job an awful lot easier.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Another perfect jazz album for a summer’s morning. Miles has such a calming effect. He’s happy to take a back seat on many of the tracks and allow the piano to take over. But then he’s always lurking there behind the scenes, ready to interject and play his very understated part. It’s actually quite an emotional album without having any lyrics. That’s a pretty clever trick. Music to drink endless cups of tea to as the heat starts to build outside.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

I was pretty sure that I had this album but nope; I was pretty sure that I must know this album inside out but once again no. The lead track is something of a well-trodden path. Sure, it was recorded live but it would have sounded much better as a bedroom DIY effort than with all the whoops and hollers coming from the crowd.

Once you’ve skipped the crappy live opening track, then you’re in classic Neil Young territory. Old Shaky is obviously at his best when he’s doing the Old Shaky thing. This involves an understated vocal performance, bashing away on an old acoustic, and the general light touch all round. This album is also boosted by some breezy saxophone, which helps it swing a little. Decent.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

A crappy Insta ad for the Duran Duran gig as part of BST at Hyde Park cropped up in my feed far too early for me on Wednesday morning but it did kinda catch me. I was caught up in the early morning Wednesday Duran Duran vibes. I never knew such a thing existed.

I had little spare time as I slurped away on my endless morning cups of tea, pondering life and wondering at what time of the day it would be suitable to give up on the idea of doing the housework during a balmy heat wave.

I admit to getting sucked in ever so slightly down a Duran Duran rabbit hole. I never thought I would be spending my Wednesday mornings doing this.

My own Duran world never really get going with the first album, but I went in big time with Rio. I say big time, that phase probably lasted no more than a couple of months. That’s the pace at which the musical timeline operates when you have a young and eager musical mind, and £3.99 to indulge in vinyl each week.

I started scrolling, following the links, and generally being ushered into places in the Duran universe where I really didn’t want to be.

One of those portholes was Neurotic Outsiders. This was the supergroup that involved John Taylor, Steve Jones of the Pistols, and a couple of members of Guns and Roses. I thought I went to see this rabble back at the old LA2 club in Soho around 1996. What can the modern interweb provide me with here?

The gig itself was part of my different life when I was working in the crazy world of Rock and Roll. Every night was GIG NIGHT back in those days.

I rode the Britpop wave, blagging up all the freebies, seeing the most shitty, shitty Britpop bands in toilet venues, to then dining out with royalty at the major Britpop events.

Something such as Neurotic Outsiders didn’t really fit the times. They were an LA rock supergroup, very much out of kilter with the Cool Britannia vibe that was going off.

I have very vague memories of the evening. I remember it being bakingly hot. I have no idea what the set list was, and if I close my eyes I can just about visualise what I saw on the stage. I may have even left early.

I managed to stumble on an online review from some Pistols fanboy site. There’s no grainy YouTube footage of the LA2 gig, but there is of other Neurotic Outsiders gigs.

The set list surprised me. They opened that LA2 gig with Planet Earth. I’m sure I would have remembered that at the time? Some Pistol songs, as well as even a Clash cover, are in the set list. I was probably boozing, but I doubt if I was completely out of it.

This then got me thinking about all those gigs that I attended from around 1990 in Sunny Colch, a manic period of a year and a half or so of some truly classic early Britpop gigs at the Charlotte in Leicester, and then my two years of gigging and ligging it on the London music scene.

Tickets weren’t really a thing those days. Most of the gigs on the London circuit were either showcases or guest lists as part of my job. It was a pretty cool as fuck job to be honest.

I really would struggle to perhaps name possibly even a tenth of the gigs I went to during that period. I did have a long lost digital file of the artist I interviewed, but even that has somehow been lost in time.

I really wish blogging had been around back during that period. My archive would have been an absolute goldmine for me personally in trying to capture and remember many of those live performances.

I often whinge now seeing Young Boys and Girls Around Town trying to capture every single moment of live experiences on their phones; just live for the moment, etc.

Maybe that’s the approach I should take with my long lost years of Sunny Colch, Leicester and London gigging. I had some hit and miss moments, but the highs definitely outnumbered the lows. I’m sure they meant something special to me at the time.

Lesson learned: never fall down a Duran Duran rabbit hole at 6 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.

Oh - and something I do remember is interviewing part-time Duran guitarist Warren Cuccurullo in his Putney home during this period. It was another heatwave day. The front room was completely blacked out and he had an unhealthy collection of dildos on his mantelpiece.

Like I said, the crazy crazy world of rock and roll.