onionbagblog

The silent city: How London’s ghost districts are hollowing out the capital

Far Out Magazine on the Nine Elms ghost town.

The aim for the run on Thursday, as ever, was to beat the rain. I set off under bright blue Estuary Wilds skies. I returned with a darkened gloom spreading over the town.

This was a pacey run. I increased my speed significantly compared to yesterday. I’m still very much off the pace when compared to where I was pre-injury. I’m turning into the Dot Cotton of the Estuary Wilds.

Elsewhere, and it was fairly uneventful with little to see. The best it got was a comedy moment with a middle-aged couple fighting a losing battle in trying to keep their umbrella erect. It collapsed within and almost swallowed them whole.

I had a few twinges when I returned, not so much the calf muscle itself, but on my ankle where I think I pressed it a little hard. I admit to relying on the comfort of the Bionic Lidl running shoes.

There’s optimistic talk of a return to parkrun at the weekend. That’s going to go well, right? I always approach parkrun with the mentality that it’s not a race. But then you get sucked into the herd and the adrenaline takes over.

I expect this to be one of my final running updates as I succumb to yet another bloody parkrun injury and have another six months of no running.

Live to run, run to live.

“I really don’t mind if you sit this one out” …is the opening line. OK, I might just do that, fella. I can’t say I was TURNED ON by the idea of three tracks only, and then an interview bolted on at the end. It’s hardly C86, right? If you ignore the Jethro Tull name, then this is half decent. But I find it hard to escape all the Dungeons and Dragons bollocks. English folk music updated and refreshed can be uplifting. This was probably the case for Thick as a Brick back in 1972. Over forty years later and the folk tradition has developed. No genres should stand still. As a timepiece it’s half decent. As a daily listen in 2026 it rambled a little.

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And so Middlesex rocked up at the Oval for the London Derby in the Blast. Surrey are serial underachievers in this competition. There is some misconception in legacy media about how we are the short-format kings. That’s absolute bollocks. We’ve won it once and that was over a quarter of a Century ago.

Hey hoe. Derby days down at the Oval are always fun. It’s a shame that our friends over the river couldn’t return the favour with their poxy 7,000 crowd back at HQ when Surrey were the visitors at Lord’s. That Sunday midday scheduling was just bonkers and should never be allowed to happen again.

The talk ahead of the game on Wednesday evening was that the Oval was a sellout. It didn’t quite get there looking at the telly pictures but it came close. The demographic was the usual Bright Young Things, fresh from their day jobs in the city.

This was a key match for Surrey. A record going into the game of played 2, lost 2 shows that our progress in the Blast was in the balance.

The traditional pattern for Surrey in this competition is to rampage in the group stages and then fall apart when we get down to the business end of the competition. It seems that we have accelerated this pattern this season, with a super quick start and then a super quick tail off already.

Surrey did seem fired up, taking to the field when play started. There was in particular some tight bowling from Will Jacks. Middlesex were poor with the bat. TC has seen better death bowling overs as he delivered three wides and gifted Surrey a paltry more three runs to their final total.

The young Middlesex side came out looking a little sheepish in the field. The game never really got going as a spectacle or even a contest.

Shout out to J-Roy who fell for short on his 50. Olly Pope got us over the line with a timely half century. Surrey won the game with 35 balls to spare, which is something of a comment on the lack of parity between these two once great teams.

And so at the reconvened Colchester City Council AGM on Wednesday evening, to absolutely no one’s surprise, a Tory/Lib Dem coalition was voted in. Fancy that.

The sums were always going to suggest this would happen, even if some of the political ideology and personal grievances would have wanted otherwise.

My attention was firmly focused on my own three local Lib Dem councillors. Would they be prepared to prop up a Tory administration?

The answer came with a named vote. I’m not sure who called for a named vote, but it usually signifies someone is keen to put the voting intentions on the record for future political gain.

Two Lib Dems locally voted for the Tory coalition, one against. The one that voted against is the one that has the most to lose. He’s the golden boy around here. He also made a point of saying in his speech he could not only not support the Tory administration, but he would also step back from his cabinet position as a matter of principle. Well done you, etc.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out locally. Vote Lib Dem, get Tory?

Elsewhere, some of the speeches were full of the usual bullshit about “let’s keep politics out of this”. This is usually a thinly veiled code for “I don’t agree with you and I’m going to try and shut you down”.

It pretty much means fuck all anyway. Colchester Council is now nothing but a ghost council as it limps towards devolution.

The council has one task, and one task only: and that is to dismantle itself ahead of the larger unitary authority.

Democracy is bloody brilliant, innit.

Higher Power CD by Big Audio. By this time in the B.A.D. timeline, the band had morphed into something completely different and had dropped the Dynamite part of their name. I should really look this up, but I think the Big Audio phase comes slightly before the B.A.D. II incarnation.

But anyway, you can never go wrong with a bit of Big Audio, whatever they’re called. Mick Jones has such a way in crafting pop melodies and then working them into whatever he sees around him at the time.

Big Audio was the natural progression from punk, moving into something a lot more dance-based. He then took it full circle around a decade or so later with his production duties for the Libertines, etc.

I know little about the Higher Power album. I’m going for the completest set of BAD CDs. I make it now just the rather elusive PUNK album that I’m missing. The only track I know is Looking for a Song. Maybe I’ll find some more buried away once I finally get round to playing this,

Plans for a swim on Wednesday morning were abandoned due to the bloody Estuary Wilds rain. I’m limited to which bicycles I can use right now. There’s no way I’m getting my Brompton wet for anyone, swim or no swim.

And so a run instead. I didn’t really feel up for it. I never really feel up for it. Just put on your Fores top and go and pound those mean streets of C07, Jase.

I did. The Forest top was something of a surprise. I’m finding long-lost Forest kits following the flat move that I had no idea I actually owned.

My clothing attire of choice this morning, I think, is more of a training top than any match day kit. It had the classic Umbro design, which I feel like I’ve earned as part of my birth rate after sticking with Forest during those mid to late 80s Trent End days.

The run itself was all about beating the rain. Twenty minutes later, my object had been achieved. It started to spit ever so slightly down by the quayside. This was my signal to get a shifty on.

The WFH fella down by the quayside was standing proud by his front window, as ever. He has the best work seat in the house. He stands in front of his screen most of the day, looking out and dreaming beyond the Estuary Wilds. Nice work if you can get it.

I made it track 3, The Wrong Way:

“I’m staring at her tits. It’s the wrong way”

This is a song about a 12 year old girl. I bailed.

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From the allotment: 🍓🍓 Keep ‘em coming #homegrown

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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