onionbagblog

To Moving Image! …on Tuesday evening.

One day you’re sitting in a multiplex massive FUCK OFF screen in Sunny Colch, and then the very next you’re back in a village hall, sitting on a school chair and watching an art house film.

The Moving Image cinematic experience is slightly different to the Sunny Colch Odeon cheapo cheapo grubby fiver Monday afternoon deal.

No one was smoking weed, and a running commentary wasn’t provided by a couple of dickheads who really don’t give a shit about anybody else watching the film.

It’s a shame then that the film wasn’t all that.

Oh dear.

For our enjoyment - or not - on Tuesday evening was the Italian film Primavera. At first I thought this was a film about a Spanish music festival, but nope it was all about Vivaldi and classical music.

This was a real slow burner. It was so slow it didn’t really change gear and never got going. Thankfully it was short in length.

The plot centres around Vivaldi, or rather not Vivaldi, but a young musical prodigy.

It’s quite something when an esteemed name in classical music doesn’t even land the lead role in a film.

It’s a pretty brutal film as well. The story is set in some kind of orphanage where rather wicked proprietors are happy to take the cash off benefactors in order to pretty much keep young girls as musical slaves.

Step forward Mr Vivaldi to lead the whole experience.

One particular young violin player is singled out as the lead character. What’s portrayed is a rather nasty existence.

Scenes involve kittens being drowned and the lead character having her wrist deliberately broken to stop her playing by a particularly nasty male character.

One thing that comes out strongly throughout the film is that men with power can be absolute shits.

There was great chemistry between Vivaldi and the lead character. There was never any suggestion of this being more than a musical relationship, and nothing romantic or even sexual.

The ending was a bit odd. It was a kind of happy ending but not on a musical note. I felt pretty exhausted coming out of the Loveless Hall even though the film was around one and a half hours in length.

There was a faint whiff of ever so- lightly strong weed from the local yoof as I walked home.

Time was a little tight for the bicycle ride on Tuesday. On Tuesdays we ride; on Tuesdays we ride with the North Essex branch of the Forty group.

But not this Tuesday. I had some rare work first thing in the morning.

Pay to play, etc.

With rain forecast all day for Wednesday, my options were limited. I had a couple of hours of daylight left in the day to head out and do my thing.

Chapeau!

Unfortunately that meant that my ride coincided with the school run, which then bled into rush hour. This wasn’t the wisest time to be rolling out.

Adding to this forecast of doom and gloom was that I really didn’t have the energy. I felt pretty much zapped, but a ride is a ride, yeah? Just get out and bloody do it.

I’ve not ridden my triple loops circuit for some time. This involves staying fairly local but, as the name suggests, looping the loop on three occasions.

Two outta Three ain’t bad for Tuesday. The third loop would have involved taking in a pretty hairy stretch of a main road at peak rush hour. No thank you. I decided to cut it short and not be bossed around by petrolhead dickheads.

There was a never ending stench of manure around the lanes throughout the entire ride. It’s good for your nostrils, right?

Some of the remote houses were full of Halloween tat - and when I say tat, I mean the tattiest of cheap tatty tat, plastic tat.

It was all going rather well until my peace was disturbed by a lone paraglider with his small jet engine. Still, it’s better than having some four by four arsehole trying to take you up from behind.

I reached the turnoff stage for the third loop. I admit to pondering, thinking, yeah I could do this. Let’s put in the km’s.

I took one look at the traffic and wisely opted out.

A ride of necessity rather than a ride of complete enjoyment.

I’m not sure what this album was doing on the list. I’d be hard pushed to call it a classic album. It’s not exactly up there with Dark Side of the Moon, Abbey Road, etc. That said, it is quite a nice distraction and proved particularly useful during a morning of work where I needed to focus. The focus was on the work and not on the music. This just drifted by.

⭐ ⭐

Burnham told his government must improve the lives of the working class or risk fuelling a ‘fascist fire’

via Morning Star

HDIF Weller Night

“Finch then developed a distinctive tower block design for the borough, used on a number of sites built in the late 1960s. Eight tall towers with projecting facades were built in the area either side of Kennington Park Road/Clapham Road between Kennington and Stockwell.”

The legacy of George Finch, via Modernist London

“But in recent seasons, the Premier League middle-class have been flexing their muscles: Aston Villa regularly qualifying for Europe and wining silverware, Crystal Palace lifting the FA Cup, Newcastle United the League Cup, Bournemouth and Brighton establishing themselves as top ten clubs with an eye on a trophy, and lest we forget our three semi-finals and seventh place finish. The point being that such clubs might even have achieved more were it not for City’s sham contracts.”

David Marples on Man City

Weller on Clobbered

To the Odeon! …on Monday afternoon as part of the latest instalment in the Grubby Fiver Odeon cinema ticket deal.

But wait! What’s this?

We upgraded our usual tight arse experience of dropping in at Lidl for a bakery bargain for a Too Good To Go surprise bag at a nearby coffee shop.

£3.99 later we walked out with a very weighty blue plastic bag containing all sorts of pastry surprises. It then soon dawned upon us that maybe having a bag full of surprises wasn’t best explored in the darkness of the cinema.

Can you taste what it is yet?

Trying to distract us from our culinary pastry fixation was the film The Digger. We saw a trailer and it looked half decent.

The film chap with Robert Elms on BBC London was a little cold about it and let it slip that there is a major plot twist midway through.

The basic premise of the film is a Texan oil billionaire who is pals with the U.S. president. Both are faced with an impending environmental disaster.

My main aim throughout was to tuck into the Too Good to Go cheapo cheapo bag and try not to fall asleep.

The dialogue was quite gripping. For such an environmental themed film there wasn’t a lot of action to witness apart from the conversation between the characters.

You had to stay awake to witness this. I didn’t stay awake. I think I fell asleep during the big reveal, as mentioned by the BBC London film chap.

He said it wasn’t all that and was surprised that the critics had been told to stay schtum on it. I won’t give away the spoiler here but basically what unfolded was a play within a play.

The environmental message is really powerful, even when delivered through such comic means. You realise that we’re just one madcap U.S. president away from being completely fucked.

Oh, wait.

You can’t really say much more about the film without giving away the entire premise and plot.

There was a rather lovely Easter egg at the end. As the credits started to roll it’s worth hanging around just to hear this and have the shit scared out of you.

Another Easter egg surfaced when I remarked to my film companion, as we walked out, that I thought Tom Hanks was the strongest actor in the film.

“Do you mean Tom Cruise?”

Oh I’m not really cut out for this film review shit.

To the University Table of Dreams! …on Monday morning. Once again, wiff waff.

We rocked up at the University Sports Centre. It was busy, being the first week of Freshers' Week.

A wrong turn to the right and we could have gone straight into a careers fair.

Whoops.

Think carefully. Which direction do you want to go in, Jase? Right for the careers fair, left for table tennis.

Just like 1990, when I was turning out for registration, I made the correct choice.

Careers fair claptrap.

The table tennis itself, to be fair, wasn’t all that. My playing partner was in a very talkative mode.

“Less chat, more play.”

… came instructions from me. She responded with an absolute volley of power shots, corners to corner on the table each time.

Oh dear.

I did find my way back into the game.

“That was a poor game from me.”

…commented my playing partner.

“Yes it was. You were fucking awful.”

In my favour was she her unfortunate timing with a sneezing outburst. I managed to TWAT the ball just as her eyes were closing ahead of the full sneeze trauma experience.

I was always chasing the game. We both got a little reckless towards the end with some fancy Dan shots that didn’t exactly pay off.

I walked away with a 5-1 defeat.

I considered turning right and heading to the careers fair and asking about what opportunities there are to play professional table tennis.

“I’ve been on these trips with corporate platforms, and if they want you gone, you should just take the hint and go, because eventually you will get the point. This is a company that has nothing put spite for the web, or perhaps envy, or individual developers (ie indieweb). They are pure fuckers when it comes to people like you and me.”

Dave WIner on https - and yep, you have to bypass the bloody annoying Google Nanny State to get there…

A stone cold lovers rock classic. It even has the cover to match. Don’t judge a book etc, but that classic iconic photo of Carroll sitting on top of some wheels in South London defines the genre. The music itself is just lush, absolutely sweet from start to finish. The emotion and hurt come across in the songs, yet somehow the lovers rock keeps it all positive and uplifting. It’s a mighty fine South London tradition. It’s one I’m happy to return to again and again and again.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

There was just enough water and light left in the day late on Sunday for something of a WivGigs social row. We launched and did the rowing equivalent of treading water. We were due to pick up a come and try-er in around 15 minutes or so from the public pontoon.

We headed up the trots and then back down the trots again. The Wivenhoe One Designs looked absolutely resplendent, like ducks in a row, with the setting sun radiating off the incredibly sympathetic colour scheme.

Any such poetic rowing thoughts were then soon diminished when one crew member was politely accused of letting rip while sitting in the boat.

AWKS.

This wasn’t quite the case. It was simply that the leather that supports their oars was in need of some more dubbing. They were making a rather unfortunate trumping sound.

We made our way towards the public pontoon for the meet up with the come and try-er. As ever on these occasions, C was out in the water doing his one man swimming thing. Good effort.

Also on the public pontoon was the most friendly and smart bunch of local kids. They were doing a bit of sunset fishing.

They were incredibly accommodating in helping tie up Audacity and making way for us as we had a temporary berth on the public pontoon.

The come and try-er came and then didn’t exactly leave. She was fantastic. Usually these short bursts of freebie sessions last for around 15 to 20 minutes while we explain the basics. Within the first five minutes she had picked it up to perfection.

We offered to drop her off back at the public pontoon before a quick burst of more energetic rowing. She asked if she could stay in the boat simply as a passenger to take more on board of our technique. I predict she will be racing by the end of the season.

I got to cox for a very short while as we headed briefly downstream. We did a very wide turn on an unforgettable buoy. Even with the tide behind us, for some reason the water was incredibly lumpy. We made a slow return back towards the Sailing Club.

Another Sunday, another mad dash to make it to the rendezvous ahead of the 9 am rollout for the CTC Sunday ride.

Chapeau!

It’s always the same: I’m up bright and early on a Sunday and full of energy ahead of the ride. I know what time I need to leave. Plus I also know what chores I need to get done ahead of departing the house.

For chores read arseing around on the modern internet, OBVS.

I reached the University and took up a mountain descent positionas I sped down Boundary Road. There was mist rolling in from the Colne. It felt like autumn.

It might have been early but there were still some students rocking up ahead of the start of the new term. I don’t envy them having a full-on day of unpacking, saying farewell to family and friends, and then looking around and seeing who the fuck it is you’ve got to spend the next three years with.

Good luck.

What was all the rush for? I was at Leisure World for the 9 am rendezvous with five minutes to spare. We rolled out, taking a bit of a higgly-piggly route out of the half town, half city. This included cycling up Roman Road, a place I was settling into some 35-odd years ago.

I’m pretty shit at navigation around the half town, half city. I know my own locations and that’s about it. That’s all that I need to know.

It was therefore slightly unexpected to find out that we all of a sudden we were cycling underneath the grand St John’s Abbey Gate arch.

Quite a pace was being set by the lead rider. This was a little tricky as we had a lot of cycle paths and tight turns to overcome. I was half cleated for the first ten minutes or so.

It then became a bit of a cross-country ride. This wasn’t great for my road bike. At least it meant there was no traffic. It was all about avoiding the cars and getting us out onto the lanes.

But first how about a guided tour of development?

Stanway is an absolute anomaly to me. It is bloody never-ending. We seemed to go around all the new parts of the suburb that have now been submerged into the half town, half city.

I looked up and all of a sudden we were at Turkey Cock Lane. That always raises a smile.

A fifth rider was picked up at a designated rendezvous. He was a new rider to the group. He was riding an MTB. This slowed the pace down slightly.

We were approaching the coffee stop at Tiptree. I had a quick glance over into one of the fields and saw around a dozen or so monkjack deer prancing around and having the absolute bloody time of their lives.

Tea was then taken at Tiptree. Other riders were already waiting for us, leading to a rather sizeable group of 15.

The plan was then to head over on a Mersea Island hop. I decided in advance to take a little bit of a detour and opt out on route.

There were plenty of other cyclists on what was a glorious October autumnal sunny afternoon. We passed one poor fella who was having some unfortunate cleat adjustments in a ditch. My main concern was dodging a few apples that were falling from the trees.

Abberton Reservoir was reached. We stopped for a little bit of birding. I looked around, saw a few birds with feathers, and thought, yep, let’s move on.

I was now on familiar territory as part of my regular 40 km circuit. Most of the other riders headed out over to cross into Mersea. I took a left turn and went back down along through Fingeringhoe.

Ha bloody ha, etc.

That’s 260 km for the week. Happy with that.