onionbagblog

Another day, another run, another calf that went ING! You bloody idiot.

And so I’ve been enjoying the past three days doing some hardcore serious running on the indoor treadmill. It’s the coolest place to run during these balmy days, with the whole gym floor being air-conditioned to absolutely lush proportions.

I also like the challenge of a treadmill. I can pre-programme it to do the exact same workout that I was doing back in my Brixton Rec days in 1995.

Still got it, Comrades, still got it.

Except I haven’t. I was doing all fine for the first 10 minutes at a gradient of 5% and an average speed of 10 km/h. The next stage is always the tricky one. I decrease the gradient to 3% but increase this pace to 13 km/h.

Oh that doesn’t feel too good. Hang on that feels most uncomfortable. Just keep on grinning Jase, you’ll get through this.

PING!

Like a fool I pressed on for the final 2 km to complete the OCD-pleasing 15-minute time trial duration. I did offer a few concessions by not increasing the pace further, as is the case with my old Brixton Rec running schedule.

The only saving grace this time is that it’s my right calf and not my left. It was my left that did me for around nine months with no running action.

The slight irritation I’m now feeling on my right is nowhere near as painful as what went previously on the opposite leg.

My lesson learnt from the last nine months or so is just not to do anything until it’s fully healed. ParkRun is in my favour. Sadly it’s been cancelled tomorrow in Sunny Colch through a lack of volunteers. That seems like a first.

There’s the nonsense of the live music events in the park for the next fortnight, which keeps ParkRun away. I’m optimistic that a three-week running break might be sufficient to sort out this latest ping incident.

Also in my favour is that I’m back in the pool next week. My black ink should have healed after a month since my last tattoo session. I’m also back in the saddle and on the roadie, so there’s plenty of fitness options.

I’m quite looking forward to having an excuse not to go out pounding the mean streets of CO7.

Another day, another MAD DOG bicycle ride on the roadie. It’s been quite liberating having access to my road bike once again. Have bicycle, will travel, etc.

And so that’s exactly what I did, rolling out shortly before midday in the general direction of the Tendering Peninsula.

I was feeling especially brave crossing over the Borough boundary on the morning of the victory that wasn’t a victory for the dickhead Farage.

Great Bentley Green was reached first. Great Bentley Green wasn’t exactly very green.

By now I was absolutely bloody loving the road bike. It is able to generate such speed as well as being incredibly agile with its handling.

The next location I sped through was Ainger’s Green. The village still has crappy, tatty St George’s flags flying at half-mast from various lampposts.

Who died?

Oh I see, it’s just little man syndrome. You couldn’t even get your poxy flag to the top of the lamppost. Never mind.

The wind turbines around the coast then became within my sight. These were absolutely lifeless.

It’s been six months or so since I last completed this route. Another housing estate has started and has now been finished since I last passed through.

I allowed myself a brief stop for a drink along my favourite stretch of this route. The water was warm. The road surface was sticky.

Back at base Strava tells me I was two minutes behind a PB on this route. Not bad for a heat wave.

This is very jingly jangly. Sure they have the harmonies but it’s also incredibly twee. I felt as though I should have been wearing corduroy whilst listening to it. The songs are of high quality and you can’t fault the musicianship. It did feel a bit however that I was listening to Dylan outtakes - which most of the album is. A decent record but one that seems more suited to playing in autumn than during yet another bloody heat wave. To everything there is a season, etc.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

What a sprawling mess. His earlier work shows how he can string together a half decent tune. This just seems to be noise for noise sake. aka DRUGS. There are some hidden delights and a little extra depths, if you can be arsed to stick with it all. But these moments are rare. Self-indulgent twaddle.

⭐ ⭐

And so shortly before 7pm on Wednesday evening I fired up some Kula Shaker hippie shit and sat back to take in the eclipse. Where’s Bonnie when you need her?

Blink and you’ll miss it etc. What was that all about?

The Kula Shaker hippie shit takes me back to the 1999 eclipse. I think it was 1999, right? At the time I saw no sense of irony in cycling up to the top of Brockwell Park along with half of the rest of South London.

I lay back, bare feet, and let the grass spread some peace, love and understanding amongst my toes. The Coffe Ponce of SW8 will be triggered by this OCD complete breakdown if he ever gets to read this.

Twenty seven years ago I played the Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts album through a CF Walkman as we experienced a blackout at the top of Brockwell Park. It was pretty crap back in the day; it was half average this evening.

But anyway, about that Kula Shaker album. My musical tastes have since advanced to realise that there’s much more to prog than a Peasants, Peak and Astronauts. But blimey it’s an absolute tie dye banger.

Kula Shaker became something of a cartoon caricature of themselves after the huge success of their first album. They also had big money thrown at them by EMI at the time.

I interviewed them just as they were on the cusp of playing a headline gig at Brixton Academy. You could tell that they were scared as shit public school boys who had been caught in the headlights.

Insert your own eclipse joke here.

By the time the second album came around, and by the time of the first eclipse, something was missing from Kula Shaker. It might have been the drugs, which always lead to that second album syndrome. But now I think Peasants Pigs and Astronauts is something of a lost masterpiece.

Yer man Crispian turns up all the hippie shit to 11, but there are tracks on there, such as the simply delightful Shower Your Love. It’s the sound of a band breaking up but still showing plenty of brotherly love towards one another.

I pondered this briefly as we hit the eclipse blackout this evening. I then turned on telly and watched the shitty hundred whilst downing some more cheapo Lidl lager.

Chin chin.

All aboard the Essex Fun Train on Tuesday morning. We were bound for The Oval, and a key match for Surrey in the Metro Bank as they had a head-to-head shootout with Notts to see who would qualify for the next stage of the competition. ho

But wait! What’s this? Half the carriage on the Essex Fun Train wasn’t wearing the proud three feathers of the ‘rrey, but instead those rather intimidating three blades that make up the Essex badge.

Oh I see. The Essex slappers also at home at Chelmsford. Best to keep my mouth shut for the train journey until all the good owd Essex boys had departed half an hour or so later. I think I had the better half of the deal for the day out.

I actually dozed off in between Chelmsford and Stratford. I thought I would get the forty winks in whilst I could ahead of what could possibly be a challenging day on the field - and on the piss - in the Peter May.

But first, how about something a little more sedate? I’m all for breaking routines and trying new things. And so instead of making a beeline to Peter May we instead chose the rather tranquil atmosphere of the Bedsar. Blimey.

It must be over 15 years since I’ve last sat here. We always view it on the other side of the ground, as the absolutely no-fun old boy duffers stand. There’s usually around five people in there at max. The South London sun trap that is the Oval somehow manages to cast a heavy shadow over the Bedsar.

It was all very relaxed in there, with what seemed like the Bedsar being boosted by fellow shade seekers. A cursory glance around however, and we realised that it was also BOOZE free.

Oh dear.

The calculations for the final round of group matches in the Peter May required a GCSE in mathematics to understand the different permutations throughout the day. Put simply, Surrey had to win in order to progress.

The selection of J-Roy for his first List A match in seven years seemed to prove the point. The Surrey coaches knew that at least a couple of players needed to ramp up pressure on the scoreboard.

It was also interesting to see Worrall back at his County after playing for his horrid 100 franchise shitty team the night before.

Surrey started incredibly strongly with The Vicar and Patel at the crease. Unlike the fuck up away at Somerset on Friday, the skipper had learnt that when you win a toss in this competition, you bat first and put the bowling team under pressure.

Young Ahmed for Notts was struggling at first with his spin. Rhino twatted him for a glorious six ahead of making a superb Oval century. I bloody love a bit of Rhino. He’s perhaps just lacking a little to step up for the Championship, but he’s a bloody good player for list A games.

Sadly he fell a few balls later on a fine 102.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. You could visibly feel and hear the nerves around the old ground. Now would not be a good time for J-Roy to fuck things up.

Two runs later and he was back in the hutch. See you again in seven years J-Roy.

The skipper fared little better. We actually missed his incredibly short time at the crease as we got bored with the no fun Bedsar and headed back round to go on the piss with the Peter May boys.

Walking around the back corridors of the Oval was interesting. It’s here where the multi-faith room is located. There is also what Surrey call a chill room. I felt slightly triggered by what I had just seen from J-Roy and contemplated a little personal time out myself.

I remarked to my cricketing companions, once we had repositioned ourselves back in the Peter May, that it was down to The Vicar to really put the pressure on Notts. He was out next ball, natch.

Young Ahmed had now found his stride for Notts. We still found his Haka style positioning ahead of his run up slightly comical.

Also doing it for the kids was young Thomas and Sykes for Surrey. They put on a decent partnership together but it still didn’t look enough runs on the board for what was to come.

The interval came. Surrey finished on 296. I took this as an opportunity to do a little more exploration on such a fine sunshine Transpontine day. I headed up to my fave place in the entire ground on the top tier of the SSE.

Who needs a chill room when you have such a splendid location in which to take in all of South London? SHOUT OUT to the yoga dude who had found his own personal chill space on some of the top tier astroturf and was going through his stretches.

This seemed like a pretty much even game ahead of the restart. What was clear was that Notts needed a decent partnership to match what The Vicar and Patel had put together for Surrey.

What was needed from me was a more mature approach to my drinking. The lesson learnt from today was don’t buy cheapo BOOZE from Home Bargains that tastes like piss.

The rest of the afternoon disappeared in something of a haze. My one memory was mistaking a very strange-looking yellow pigeon for a South London parakeet. At this stage of the afternoon Surrey were very much a dead parrot in cricketing terms.

The game came to a very abrupt end when Notts piled on the pressure with some ease and pretty much batted out a T20 innings to get them over the line.

This starts off light and breezy and once again was another perfect early morning jazz working soundtrack. It then gets a little over enthusiastic in places with some particularly energetic blowing. The bass playing remains brilliant throughout. Better Git Hit to close the concert is a highlight. I should really explore more Mingus.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

This all sounded a little too Walt Disney. It’s as though the band suddenly have access to a brand new recording studio and they’re going to make sure they play with it all bloody day long. A lot of it rests on whether or not you like THAT song. Yes it’s got its merits but when you’ve heard it pretty much non-stop on crappy radio for the past 40-odd years then it does tend to get on your tits. Stringing out an entire album themed around Nights in White Satin is a little excessive.

⭐ ⭐

Another Monday evening, another sailing club table tennis social. We’ve been playing as part of a sailing club get-together for pretty much a year solid now. It’s a lovely group of people, all with varying skills. We’re finding our levels are being raised as we get to play different opponents.

Another important member of the social group is Pebbles the dog. He rocked up on Monday evening after a fresh shampoo of his already very curly hair. He looked most fluffy.

Downstairs below the sailing loft and there was a GC meeting taking place with all the Sailing Club top dogs. I think it was a lot more fun upstairs, TWATTING a ball back and forth over the table tennis table.

To everyone’s surprise - including myself - I was absolutely unplayable this evening. I was on fire, with pretty much every shot being won in my favour.

One particular return that I smashed down the side of the table from what looked like a lost cause; it was perhaps the best table tennis shot I’ve ever played.

We called it quits just as the Estuary Wilds light was starting to fade. A very optimistic small dinghy was taking the opportunity of high water to launch at the hard below. I hope they’ve got flood lights.

The usual daily harvest of tomatoes (red and yellow, natch) and courgettes. These are both of the more conventional style and also the spherical courgettes that we have still yet to decide what to do with.

Also slightly out of shot and lurking on the allotment naughty step is a cucumber that looks more like a knobbly knee. It is lime green and not exactly enticing me to rustle up a tomato and cucumber sarnie.

Even with the fifth heat wave during this estuary wild summer, the cucumbers have failed to deliver.

We’ve got the Wivenhoe Allotment and Garden Association annual show at the weekend. I might have to take out a small tin of green paint and tart up the sorry-looking cucumber. The cucumber trophy has already got my name on it.