onionbagblog

Movin' On

2009-06-17T15:45:00.003Z

Movin' On

Wednesday 17 June, 2009

Here be the final ever post on onionbagblog.blogspot.com.

Blimey.

I know I've pulled this trick before, but this time I really mean it. Thankfully I have the handy get out clause of including the infuriating .blogspot domain to my rather major statement above.

Ah, I see - so not goodbye onionbagblog, just goodbye onionbagblog.blogspot.

See what I've done there?

Essentially I'm moving over to Wordpress. Blogger has just become unworkable and too restrictive for me of late. The functionality is far from ideal, albeit for a free service. It's like trying to produce a colour supplement on a Gutenberg printing press.

So bye bye blogger, WOW! Here comes Wordpress.

Thank you kindly for reading, commenting and RSS-ing the old onionbagblog.blogspot. Please kindy update your bookmarks over here (do people still use bookmarks?)

A more reader friendly RSS feed is available here.

Onwards.

Movin' on up.

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Cumbrian Comedown

2009-06-02T16:49:00.003Z

Cumbrian Comedown

Tuesday 2 June, 2009

And so that was Tour de Lakes, 2009. Five days, 150 (ish) miles and a few mountains thrown in. Plus temperatures touching 25 degrees, which are about as rare around the mean streets of Cockermouth as a Chelsea supporting Cumbrian on Cup Final Day.

Highlights included meeting up with old friends from Poland and the US. For one week only, Cockermouth was indeed the centre of the cycling universe. Lowlights were giving the London cyclists' finger to a beeping Petrol Head pushing up my backside around Bassenthwaite, only to find that it was a friendly greeting from the lovely Polish Tour support car.

Whoops.

Crummock Water came *shhh* close to matching the lovely lido (oh how I have missed thee,) although I'm pleased that my bathing around the waters of Crummock came after the cattle herd decided to use it as a public toilet.

The time trial to Maryport was accompanied by an even quicker return leg. I think that tells you more about the delights of downtown Maryport, than any athletic endeavour on my behalf.

The rest day was spent in search of Withnail. No sign of everyone's favourite thespian anti-hero, but I was told to 'shut that gate,' as well as getting involved in a slight inter-change in the tearooms of Penrith.

Listen!

Country cottages were sourced. Shame about the prices.

Oh, and next time I'll remember not to have the 35 mile Cockermouth to Penrith uphill route as the crowning glory as I crossed the line wearing le Maillot-jaune.

Listen!

Back to the track this Saturday.

Chapeau!

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Tweets, Boos & the Twittering Owl

2009-05-30T12:33:00.004Z

Tweets, Boos & the Twittering Owl

Saturday 30 May, 2009

Listen!
Listen!
Listen!
Listen!

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Climb Every Mountain

2009-05-28T11:21:00.003Z

Climb Every Mountain

Thursday 28 May, 2009

And so a long weekend of cycling awaits. Wonderful. We're on route once again for another holiday by mistake up in the Lakes. The added value this time is that I'm taking the road bike with me. Chapeau!

But even a keen hill climber would be hard pushed to pedal all the way up to the tearooms of Penrith. That's where shoddy Virgin Trains comes in, with it's rather useless on board WIFI, and only slightly better provision for bicycles.

Leaving my Giant wedged between a shipment of water bottles and a stepladder (every train should have one,) didn't leave me with much confidence for a smooth ride as we pulled out of Euston early Thursday morning.

Never mind - it's all about the bike, and not the train. I knew we would be in for a good few days of rolling out around the Lakes when I had the good fortune to pass a Moulton as I cycled along Waterloo Bridge.

This is only my fourth spotting of one of Dr Alex's dream machines in London. It looked the part within the urban environment of SE1, and made my road bike appear as out of place as a blank column on an MP's expenses form.

I did ponder with the idea of taking the Moulton up to Cumbria. I'm waiting on a few minor frame adjustments (um, the frame split into two!) first. With a backpack stuffed full of lycra and not tweed, I'm sure I've made the right choice with the road bike.

The plan is to have bike, have GPS on the iPhone, will travel. It really is as simple as that. I'm already missing my mornings spent at the lido, but I'm sure a bit of breaststroke in Bassenthwaite at the start of each day will be a fine alternative.

I'm keen for some serious mountain climbing on the bike. But everything that goes up, has to come down, which is where I wimp out and apply the brakes.

The fragrant mrs onionbagblogger is doing a fine service as race back up. Not quite a water carrier, more of a MacBook carrier, as the first stage (Penrith to Cockermouth) kicks off whenever Virgin Trains manages to overcome the engineering works that are making this journey almost as slow as the crappy WIFI.

I can almost smell the lakes.

Lycra time...

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Crap Boo Report

2009-05-27T07:03:00.009Z

Crap Boo Report

Wednesday 27 May, 2009

Sussex 184-9 beat Surrey 163-9 by 21 runs.

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Funny Bones / Arms

2009-05-26T11:44:00.003Z

Funny ~~Bones~~ Arms

Tuesday 26 May, 2009

Bank Holidays were meant for booze. All the better if the beer is flowing in your (semi) local, and the evening's entertainment is a work pal who has crossed over the great divide to become a genuine friend.

Remember rule #1 in the onionbagblog work mantra: make genuine friends who will remain with you outside of the coalface.

And so the fragrant mrs onionbagblooger and I, plus a couple of other ~~colleagues~~ close friends from Peckham (blimey) made our way across Sunny Stockwell and the short walk through Albert Square (seriously) to the Cavendish Arms, for a bit of comedy with @comedybeard. Naturally.

I'm ashamed to say that even as SW8 locals, this was our first visit to the Cavendish Arms. I've heard glowing reports about the live entertainment venue for around six months now, but it's always been just a bit too far on the other side of Sunny Stockwell to make it our local.

Not so now - what a bloody brilliant venue! A spacious bar, and then a backroom that looks as though it should be holding court somewhere along Piccadilly, rather than the mean streets of SW8.

Essentially the performance space is a large Punch 'n Judy booth. Not so large that there's no atmosphere, but the red velvet lined stage area certainly gives a very agreeable vaudeville stage presence.

I regret now not coming along to The Cavendish sooner, following the refurbishment of two summers ago. But is your pint glass half empty or half full? We may have missed out on some top nights, but hopefully there's more to come at The Cavendish over the coming months.

Monday night is Comedy Virgin night. I think that's a singular expression, rather than a plural take on the performers. For your FREE entry fee, you got to see just under twenty comedians, each given five minutes on the mic to showcase their talent.

The quality ranged from vaudeville virgins, to a handful of skilled performers, who are clearly taking this comedy lark rather seriously (ha ha) and hopefully might even be able to turn it into some sort of profession.

I wasn't expecting @comedybeard to fall into this latter category, but blimey - Mr Beard has progressed at an alarming rate since we last saw his show. Incredibly confident, commanding the packed audience, and a rousing cheer at the end.

Listen!

It's not a beauty contest (although Mr Beard would probably fare rather well if it were,) but our man with the mic walked off with the audience led Performer of the Night trophy. Well deserved, and which just happened to be the darts boards from the old boozer - all the old darts trophies had been handed out in previous weeks.

I'm no observational comedian (I think that's a singular description,) but I did notice a lack of female performers, perhaps the only downside to the evening. Only one female with balls, battling it out with around twenty testosterone males. But being an open mic policy, then there's an open invitation to address this gender imbalance.

Despite only two pints downed all evening, every comedian got at least a couple of laughs from me. And here's lies my slight worry with the Cavendish business plan:

I really hope the venue survives - it is a rare treat on an otherwise soulless Stockwell entertainment circuit. But the format of the evening was to buy a pint, take it through to the Ballroom, and then sit down in the bar-less Ballroom for the first hour of the set. A brief bar break, and then repeat again.

The intimacy of the Cavendish Arms would have meant it rude to wander off mid-set for a top up. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I hope that the fine Mr and Mrs Cavendish aren't cutting the profits for the sake of comedic respect. I would happily have doubled my offerings behind the bar, had the moment felt right.

And so we wandered off into the balmy Bank Holiday SW8 evening air, cheered on by much comedic love for @comedybeard, and happy to have found a new home at The Cavendish. Mr Beard and the other non-Stockwell crowd seemed to like both the pub and the area, and so hopefully they'll return.

I hope they weren’t joking.

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Philosophy Football

2009-05-24T19:49:00.005Z

Philosophy Football

Sunday 24 May, 2009

Cheer up Alan Shearer. The Professional Geordie Whinger may be feeling even more morose than normal come Monday morning, but at least he didn't have to limp around a North London football pitch for six hours on Sunday.

The Guardian's annual 5-a-side competition was competed up at Old Street this year under brilliant Bank Holiday sunshine. And whaddya know - my team was also rather brilliant as well.

Past form has taught me that you turn up for these competitions with a number of late pull outs; your team of vagabonds kick off full of enthusiasm, only to find that your tournament has finished with the Sunday carvery still yet to be served.

But Team Mod (of which I can lay a distant degree of professional association) competed rather well. P3 W3 is a track record that the Professional Geordie Whinger can only dream of. Our team of *shhh* ringers and rough diamonds somehow found ourselves in the quarterfinals after the morning qualification competition was complete.

A horrific injury to a midfield maestro dampened our spirit, but his support for the team in staying up at Old Street for the afternoon, even though an ambulance was called for, certainly helped to carry us forward. Fine work, fella.

Our team tactics seemed to be centred on frustrating the pants off the opposition. Don't be fooled by the Love Me I'm a Liberal agenda - Guardianista work culture is actually rather competitive, and slightly sporty. All except Team Mod, one of whom had arrived in EC1 after an early hours DJ session.

'But you don't look like footballers,' as one (defeated) opponent accused of us after we progressed to the semis at the expense of his team of corporate Sport Billy's. Don't be put off by appearances - power is all contained within the finger pointing.

Ah, yes - a proven team tactic was to eye up the opposition before kick off, and point randomly at various players. It fooled not only us, but also our opponents, all the way through until the semis. A 5-1 defeat at the hands of The Observer Picture Desk was an image just waiting for a witty picture caption.

I officially retired after almost twenty years of park football just over a year ago. My knackered knee could take no more, and swimming and cycling were winning the day. But a rare, one off run out with the Graun folk just about passed my pain threshold. The Professional Geordie Whinger may be hurting inside, but that's nothing compared to the need for a stair lift before I hit the age of forty.

Cheer up, Alan Shearer.

Full flickr set over here.

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Welcome to the Cheap Seats

2009-05-23T17:44:00.007Z

Welcome to the Cheap Seats

Saturday 23 May, 2009

I know it's not rock 'n roll, but I LOVE attending gigs where you know what the next song will be. It's a reassuring presence, and gives a pre-defined start, middle and end to a show.

But blimey - with the Groove Machine clocking in at just over thirty-nine minutes on vinyl, The Wonder Stuff rolling out their debut from start in finish in Shepherd's Bush on Friday night could have been something of a blink and you'll miss it gig.

No worries - that's what the back catalogue and the beauty of all those bonus tracks are for, filling out start to finish album gigs. It had me head scratching though. I had no idea what was up next after the final power chords of Poison.

Back in the day and by my estimation, we wore out three cassette (!) copies of The Eight Legged Groove Machine, with the Groovers on Manoeuvre I use to run around with in the rolling countryside lanes of South Nottinghamshire. It was the soundtrack for our pub crawls, love bites and bruises.

Phew, rock 'n roll.

And so how would the Grove Machine shape up, some twenty years later? For a start, it's actually the Four Legged Groove Machine. The Bass Thing and Martin Gilks have gone to that great mosh pit in the sky. Squabbles and rivalry has resulted in a band that now only contains Miles Hunt and Malcolm Treece from any recognisable line-up during the Stuffies glory years.

Listen!

The Groove Machine show on Friday was basically in two halves, with a rather pleasing middle segment. First off it was heads down, Groove Machine from start to end - last one to finish has to go for a girly haircut.

The first encore was where it got really interesting - the B-sides that accompanied those glorious rally calling early singles:

Goodbye Fatman
Who Wants To Be The Disco King?
Ooh She Said
Astley In The Noose
A Song Without An End

Doubt we're gonna get to hear these live again for some time.

And then we were back in more familiar (and almost mainstream) Stuffies territory:

Mission Drive
On The Ropes
Here Comes Everyone
Circlesquare
Golden Green
Don't Let Me Down, Gently
The Size of a Cow
Ten Trenches Deep

There was a sense of pantomime to the occasion; but then that has always been the case with Miles Hunt and his acidic tongue. The music in West London was more about the memories for me, rather than the moment.

The Stuffies at their peak were still a band out of time A final run through of the Groove Machine, twenty years since the release, wasn't going to upset the Midlands Grebo musical timeline.

The fragrant mrs onionbagblogger lapped up the opportunity to be transported back to the early '90's indie girl that she has always been at heart. The girl did well in resisting the urge to buy yet another Stuffies T-shirt; the complete collection from '88 - 98 takes up half the house.

The evening was complete with a totally unexpected reunion with a couple of other Groovers from back in the day. Hugs, memories and middle age regret all round.

'I remember a time when I was feeling down,
and I never ever wished you were here.

And now I need a hug and now I need a hug,
and I really really wish you were here.'

Mr Hunt threatened us with a twenty-year anniversary waltz around Hup next summer. Country 'n Western meets Grebo I can do without. We didn't wear out a single cassette copy of that difficult second album back in the day.

Listen!

Hup! Hup!

Hup!!! Hup!!! Hup!!! Hup!!!

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Twitter Tour of 2012

2009-05-21T21:51:00.005Z

Twitter Tour of 2012

Thursday 21 May, 2009

A thrilling Thursday evening being shown around an East End building site - seriously.

But this wasn't any old East End building site. In three years time, one billion people will be looking at the same building site, as the Games of the XXX Olympiad opens in London. Here's hoping they get to disembark from their bus.

Ah yes, the bus tour. The lovely nu meeja folk at London 2012 invited a number of London based bloggers for a state of the nation tour of the Stratford site. I wasn't alone in expecting hard hats, hi res jackets and a bit of a walk around.

Instead we were stuck in traffic on a Thursday night in some East End hell hole, only to be bussed around the building site with the doors remained firmly locked. A bit of a disappointment, and certainly not photographic friendly (if indeed you ever wanted to take photographs of a rather large building site.)

But we did have a half decent running commentary, as well as a very helpful bus driver who managed to sync the images on his plasma screen with the planned finalised architectural designs of each venue as the wheels on the bus went round and round.

Yes, it's easy to become frustrated at the lack of access that we had; being so close to what will become the epicentre of global sporting and cultural activities for two weeks in 2012, yet still so far away from actually experiencing the feel and ambience of the site.

But given that a building site is a building site is a building site, the early cynicism gradually disappeared as I got to see the scale of the project.

Endless facts and figures are available - we even had an on-board Olympic quiz (sample Q: How many corporate partners has London 2012 signed up with? Its all about the sport...) Instead I'd like to present my online observations from the 2012 Blogger's Tour in a medium in which they deserve.

Limited access meant limited opportunities to get out there and gather information. I was blessed with audioboo and Twitter, even though we were asked to turn off mobile devices as it would 'interfere with the rolling commentary' (yeah, right...)

So rather than bore you with construction stats (just Google 'em,) here is my online timeline from a rather enjoyable Thursday evening spent being bussed around a rather big building site in the East End.

Heading off to Stratford for a blogger's tour of the 2012 site. Who else is in? #

2012 Blogger's Tour 1

Listen!

2012 Blogger's Tour 2

Listen!

Mmm - so the 2012 Blogger's Tour is... a bus journey around East London. Open mind, but I (and others) was expecting site access. #

They better get this bloody East London traffic sorted out before 2012. Stuck on a bus. Not feeling sporty. #

Passing the time stuck on the 2012 bus with an Olympics quiz. "How many corporate partners do we have?" It's about the sport, isn't it? #

2012 Blogger's Tour 3

Listen!

2012 Blogger's Tour 4

Listen!

Fans of large scale building sites, as viewed on a bus, would love the 2012 Blogger's Tour. #

Hockey is replacing the Hackney Dogs Track. There's a legacy for you. #

I think I just saw the fosil of one of Ken's newts, right in the middle of the handball arena. #

Just passing the home of Leyton Orient, 2013. #

2012 Blogger's Tour 5

Listen!

Cynicsm aside, the Aquatic Centre for 2012 already looks spectacular. Main stadium is meh. #

2012 Blogger's Tour 6

Listen!

End thoughts:

The site itself didn't seem that large. Maybe that's because the majority of it still remains to be built? This is no bad thing, as ease of access should give a genuine village feel during the games. Post 2012 and the expected White Elephant might also become slightly easier to disguise.

The Aquatic Centre is stunning. OK, so describing some pylons of varied heights hammered into the ground as 'stunning' is perhaps stretching it; but this is the one venue where already you get a sense of the occasion, helped along with a genuine eye-turning design.

The Olympic Stadium is meh. You've seen one mega bowl, you've seen them all. I'm personally more impressed with the early '90s transformation of Meadow Lane from a wooden dump to a state of the art old Fourth Division ground. Still, at least the dear old O's will have the option to turn down a half-decent new ground, post 2012.

The tour itself was useful, albeit behind the windows of a bus. My lack of photographic evidence is partly in protest of this, partly because I couldn't be bothered. The bus full of bloggers all had their shutter fingers flicking away all evening. The images will be out there soon, once again I suggest a quick Google.

And so many thanks to the nu meeja folk of London 2012 for the invite. Not quite what I expected, but at least I'll be prepared for hopefully what will become an annual event over the next three summers.

As ever, the best bit of the evening was the impromptu blogger's booze up after hours. Lovely company with the likes of @ianvisits janeslondon @mattfromlondon @diamondgeezer Londonist Duncan and London Reconnections. The walk from the bar to our backroom table was the best leg stretching exercise I had all evening.

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The Bulls*****r & the Bike

2009-05-20T19:23:00.008Z

The Bulls*****r & the Bike

Wednesday 20 May, 2009

As the embedded boo below states, I don't usually podcast on matters of a personal nature. But blimey - I got wound up over a bike today. Not so much the bicycle per se, but the silly Islington banker boy who thought he could pull a fast one on me.

But he who takes on a contemporary urban South London ~~anarchist~~ cyclist, risks the wrath of lycra.

Never trust a banker, especially if the useless tosser works for RBS.

Listen!

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Crap Boo Report

2009-05-20T18:11:00.002Z

Crap Boo Report

Wednesday 20 April, 2009

Yorkshire 330-6 beat Surrey 329-8 by four wickets

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The Rambler

2009-05-20T06:38:00.004Z

The Rambler

Wednesday 20 May, 2009

Before the next Bank Holiday is upon us, I thought it was about time I finally got round to editing and posting up the photo-dialogue pieces from the start of the month.

May Day! May Day! Excessive photographic submissions and audio ramblings ahoy!

Actually there was plenty of rambling at the start of the month. What better way to celebrate Worker's Day than walking around our green and pleasant land?

*shhhhh* I mean South East London of course. Not quite my patch, so I called in the cavalry, in the form of @darryl1974, as Our Man in Greenwich for the day.

We were following in the footsteps of @TimeOutLondon's South East London walk. The walking issue at the start of the year seemed like a task that we needed to tick off. A different route for all four corners of our city.

North and West can wait, probably until Bank Holiday 2059. I felt slightly sea sick travelling out as far as the badlands of South East London.

And so the basic route was starting at leafy Blackheath, cutting through Greenwich Park, a bit of @darry1974 detour around the historic streets of Greenwich, crossing at the foot tunnel, more walking (and booze) at Mudchute, before finishing in the Bank Holiday ghost town of Canary Wharf.

The complete route can be seen HERE (gmap-pedometer: sort out your embedding functionality!)

I became slightly shutter finger snap happy along certain sections of the walk, not so during other locations. The effect is for the second dialogue piece to display a frame roughly once per second, whereas the foot tunnel leg is like watching paint dry.

No worries - you can peruse the complete photographic set on flickr over HERE, totally, raw, straight outta the box and not a Photoshopped image in sight. I really couldn't be bothered, to be honest.

Walk this way...

Greenwich Leg of the SE Walk
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Walking the Backstreets of Greenwich
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Going Underground in Greenwich
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Final Leg of the SE London Walk
Listen!

And so a big thank you to @TimeOutLondon for the original inspiration, as well as @darryl1974 for the local knowledge. @Jason_Cobb if anyone fancies a five minute ramble around the Stockwell / Oval / Vauxhall triangle.

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Crap Boo Report (s)

2009-05-19T19:27:00.002Z

Crap Boo Report (s)

Tuesday 19 April, 2009

Surrey 241-7 beat Sussex 162 by 79 runs (D/L) (Surrey 2pts)

Listen!
Listen!
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Sheepish

2009-05-18T21:45:00.006Z

Sheepish

Monday 18 May, 2009

Lambs Conduit Passage, WC1, WWSI.

'Lambs Conduit Passage is a gorgeous little cut through from Red Lion Street to Red Lion Square. It's narrow passageway is lined with little shops, and the excellent Dolphin Tavern sits on it's corner. Further in is a small patio area with seats and cafe tables.

It can be a busy little street and a great people watching area, yet it comes into it's own at night.

There's not a huge amount to photograph, but what there is, is so pretty, you'll not be short of a shot or two.'

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Hey Nonny

2009-05-17T08:22:00.005Z

Hey Nonny

Sunday 17 May, 2009

Another charming Saturday evening spent down at Bankside, for what remains officially the Best Priced Ticket in Town. Five of your English pounds gains you admission to Shakespeare's Globe, a price that hasn't changed since the Wooden O by the river re-opened back in 1997.

The beauty of being a budget groundling is that you can happily walk away at the interval, should the production not be to your liking. In twelve seasons spent at The Globe, we've walked out only the once (and that was because of my knackered knee.)

It took a tossing of a coin to make our mind up on Saturday night. The Specials were once again calling from down the road at The Academy. With tickets being touted for around £100, the credit crunching sums of twenty Shakespeare productions equating to one night of moonstomping with The Specials influenced our decision.

A wise call.
Listen!
The production of Romeo and Juliet was slightly more sombre than what The Specials were getting up to back in SW2, not at all playing upon the potential for comedy (R & J, not The Specials.). We saw a Brazilian production of R & J at The Globe some ten years ago that played out almost as Carry on Verona. Not so on Saturday night, with the complexities of love being at the centre of the narrative.

This was a highly technical production, both in terms of the sword fighting choreography (and masturbation potential - eek,) as well as the action transferring frequently down to the groundling level around us. The fragrant mrs onionbagblogger's bicycle helmet almost saw off our young romantic hero. Romeo must die, etc, but failing that, then tripping over a cycling accessory will have to do. Whoops, but at least mrs obb ventured out with her helmet.
Listen!
And so three hours later, and a resurrected R & J took three stage bows as Bankside celebrated a fine performance. I was applauding both the performers on stage, as well our own endurance in surviving a chilly evening spent on our feet for three hours.

That's possibly it for our Globe outings for this season. We have been regulars in previous seasons, catching all performances in the schedule.

'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale.'

That might be the case for mrs obb, but my knackered knee can't take too much of this standing around. Likewise my wallet can't take anything higher than a £5 groundling ticket.

Listen!
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Sounds of Brixton

2009-05-16T14:33:00.006Z

Sounds of Brixton

Saturday 16 May, 2009

Brixton is best heard, ~~not seen~~ not eulogised in some some contemporary prose, pontificating the cultural coming together of class, ethnicity and bangin' beats. Some people just don't get SW2, making the mistake of confusing social class for race.

In a brief, audioboo attempt to redress this balance, I went for a walk around Atlantic Road on Saturday lunchtime, returning en route from le velo and the lido. This is Brixton Frontline, although thankfully the feel of the area has changed considerably from almost thirty years ago.

If you want to get a feel for how Londoners are feeling, you should head for Brixton; if you want to get a feel of how Brixton is feeling, best find yourself down at the market.

Saturday morning is always heaving around here, with locals buying up both basics and the many food delicacies from around the world. I left the iPhone rolling, recording the audio as I walked from Atlantic Road towards the train station.

Of course I should have actually spoken with my fellow Brixtonins to get a more balanced feel. But Brixton is essentially a place where individual identities are allowed to interact together. There is no one Brixton - it's all about the buzz.

Welcome to Brixton, my spiritual home for the past fifteen years.
Listen!
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Crap Boo Report (s)

2009-05-15T20:15:00.003Z

Crap Boo Report (s)

Friday 15 May, 2009

Durham 287-4 beat Surrey 227 by 60 runs

Listen!
Listen!
Listen!
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Pay to Play

2009-05-14T21:11:00.006Z

Pay to Play

Thursday 14 May, 2009

Good work, @lambeth_council (blimey) for getting back to me regarding my Twitter question asking why I have to pay twice to swim in Lambeth owned pools - once for GLL membership at Clap'ham, and then again for a lovely lido season ticket with Fusion.

As with all matters relating to local government, the answer wasn't quite so simple, and certainly couldn't fit into a Twitter friendly 140-character tweet. Still, it shows that @lambeth_council is embracing Twitter, and not just using the platform for publicity purposes.

For the record, here's the reply:

'The use of the REAL wellness memberships across all the council's leisure centres is part of the contract with GLL to manage the leisure centres. GLL keeps the income from the memberships and other activities and this helps to reduce the subsidy paid by the council to operate the centres.

[um... the REAL card image depicts a swimmer diving into a what appears to be an outdoor pool. Whoops.]

The arrangement for the Brockwell Park Lido is different. In return for a major funding investment to refurbish the Lido, Fusion were granted a 25-year lease to run it. The result of this agreement is that the Lido is run independently of the council by Fusion but under the scrutiny of the Brockwell Lido Steering Group and the council.

The council therefore has no direct control over the Lido and all the income from the Lido goes back to Fusion to help repay the investment. If the REAL Wellness membership was used at the Lido, Fusion would not receive any income from the monthly fee, as this goes to GLL, and would require the council to compensate them for this loss of income.'

So it's a case of you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours. Not quite as dodgy as manure and moats in these days of backhanders for elected representatives. But I can't help thinking that the financial arrangement benefits Fusion, and not the Lambeth electorate. Plus our local authority manages to remove any responsibility in managing another public service.

I would get angry over this, but Fusion is proving to be the perfect pool operators down in SE24. It may be making money on the Brockwell project, but in return, we're getting far better customer service than we'd ever get from Lambeth Council.

Changes have been made following feedback from BLU. The staff are the friendliest I have ever encountered in the public sector and the heritage of the lido is something that Fusion genuinely seems to respect.

So yeah, I'm resigned to be paying twice to swim in Lambeth owned pools. Coming up for air at 7am in the morning in an outdoor pool, and catching a flock of geese fly over your head tends to have this kind of effect upon you.

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Crap Boo Report (s)

2009-05-13T21:11:00.002Z

Crap Boo Report (s)

Wednesday 13 May, 2009

Surrey 306-6 (50 ov) beat Gloucestershire 142 (33.3 ov) by 164 runs

Listen!
Listen!
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More Specials

2009-05-12T22:42:00.008Z

More Specials

Tuesday 12 May, 2009

Some reunions I couldn't stomach. The Jam? Nothing left to prove with a couple of jobbing musicians, geezer; The Smiths? Sorry, Mozza, but your late 80's angst was very much of the time; The Stone Roses? Style over substance, and What the World isn't Waiting For is 22-inch bellbottoms once again.

But The Specials have unfinished business. Bowing out with a No. 1 single on the happy, happy sound of the Big 1FM, all about, um, recession and unemployment, and then just as genuine subversion of the mainstream music industry threatened, the parting of the waves took place. Smiling Terry went all pop, and Jerry Dammers went back in the studio for another three years. The moment was lost, the world moved on and we were left with knobbers like Nik Kershaw.

At their irresistible peak, The Specials meant something. Overlooking the debt that everyone from Rancid to The Streets owes to them (that's quite a cultural leap of faith, by the way,) The Specials had the political edge over the pantomime pop of Madness. The message of the 2Tone man couldn't have been more symbolic - they didn't press up the logo on the labels in black and white to save on colour printing, y'know.

But now the moment is back. Britain is back in recession, unemployment topped the 2m mark today and mainstream media is once again looking at our friends from other lands to lay the blame at for our current woes. Perfect excuse for a five-night bender in Brixton, moonstomping with a revival from the original revivalists.

I've waited thirty years for this gig, never quite believing that Terry Hall would ever return to his 2Tone roots. The official reason is to celebrate thirty years since the release of *that* first album. But with five sold out nights at The Academy, and tickets at £35 a pop, money and merchandising must have been a factor as well.

Money talks, and so does Jerry Dammers:

'I founded The Specials, and now they've excluded me,' said the man who also founded 2Tone records.

Rumour is rife as to the reason for Dammers not being part of the reunion: the classic 'musical differences,' seems plausible, with Dammers wanting to re-interrupt the songs with a contemporary arrangement, whereas the Rude Boys in the band just want a bit of Brixton skanking. Dammers has been seen more behind the DJ decks than his keyboard over the past two decades - can he still cut it?

No worries. The absence of one seventh of The Specials was a minor gripe. Plus I saw Dammers last month on the same Brixton stage as Rico. So that just about Makes It Alright, then.

And so Brixton bound, early evening on Monday, and it really did feel like I was setting off for a Friday night of skinhead moonstomping at the village youth club, thirty years previous.

The Canterbury was buzzing, even before the doors at The Academy opened. A five-night run has been kind to everyone's favourite backstreet Brixton boozer. The enterprising Seamus even booked in a ska DJ for the backroom. I don't think it was local boy Jerry Dammers (although Roddy Radiation was in the building, looking resplendent in his rockabilly meets ska uptown natty dress sense.)

Remember the old joke: 'What's the definition of beans on toast?'

The updated version is 'looking down from the stalls at Brixton Academy'. I've never seen so many old school skins in one place.

But first things first: choose your gig-going immediate radar Rude Boys and Girls wisely. I ended up being sandwiched between an old school skin, sweating away as though he had a power shower installed in his forehead, and a mad hair girl who kept on shaking her mane in my face. Sweaty ska boy kept me moisturised; mad hair girl mopped it all up. Everyone's happy.

The Specials were always a highly charged band, transferring all their onstage energy over to the audience. Come curtain call on Monday night (Monday night FFS!) and the anticipation building up around Brixton Academy became physical. Sweat was flowing before the band came on stage.

And that was just the Rude Girls.

Yet another ska DJ warm up act, and the crowd were heated up nicely. All the old Jamaican classics were given a spin, plus a stray playing of Geno, which just about worked.

And then the band opened with the reprise of Enjoy Yourself, silhouetted behind a curtain. You've waited thirty years, you can wait thirty seconds more.

The curtain then descends, and you're right in there with Do the Dog:

'All you punks and all you teds
National Front and natty dreads
Mods, rockers, hippies and skinheads
Keep on fighting 'til you're dead.'

Welcome back, boys.

Everyone has aged, on and off stage. Smiling Terry still doesn't smile, but then that was always his appeal. You know all the songs - first album start to finish, More Specials minus Dammers (although there was a doppelganger on keyboards) plus a few maverick B-sides thrown in (Friday Night and Saturday Morning - blimey!)

Man at C&A was equally disturbing as it was danceable. Nite Klub had the Academy shouting out 'slags' and 'piss' in unison. Too Much Too Young was just mental.

An hour and a half of ska 'n sweat (Toooo HOT! in there. Bloody hot) later and that was yer lot. We finished off with the Skinhead Symphony of Longshot / Liquidator / Moonstomp, and then it was back to where we started with Enjoy Yourself closing the set.

And so what next for The Specials? More gigs, but hopefully not an album of 'exciting and new material.' You can re-enact, but you can't re-capture what you once had. Smiling Terry will probably get bored before the summer is out. Expect that Fun Boy Three reunion tour in two years time.

'Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as you wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself
It's later than you think.'
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Engaging

2009-05-10T20:30:00.003Z

Engaging

Sunday 10 May, 2009

So yeah, *shhh* I did the Trekkie thing during the opening weekend - in Surrey Quays as well. Blimey. It was a work related outing, and a convenient excuse not to splash out £15 plus for an Imax Trekkie ticket with non-work related Trekkie types.

But there wasn't much change out of my crisp tenner over in South London. I got my moneys worth by managing to get my ears blown off with the migraine inducing volume level that rocked the screens of Surrey Quays. When did cinemas become so bloody loud?

What of the film? Well... I approach the Star Trek franchise with the same warped (ha!) logic that I approach my music. The Jam? Yeah, so so, but The Style Council always mattered much more to me. The original Enterprise crew didn't quite cut it for me; Mr Worf sitting proudly on the bridge of The Defiant does the business.

Which all meant that a film showing the backtracking of the Trek story wasn't quite the Star Date I was searching for. I almost choked on my overpriced popcorn when a not so young Mr Paris had a walk on / walk off part; the referencing of Admiral Archer was a Trekkie teaser too far.

And that really is my main issue with backtrackers - two hours of your time spent watching a whole franchise plot being shoehorned into place. What made Kirk so stubborn? How did the brains of Spock get to play second fiddle to the brawn of his captain? And why did the Vulcan snog Uhura in the lift? (Never really answered, or even touched upon, in the original series.)

You watch the film knowing the conclusion, and working out how the producer will make it all fall into place. That said, the plot is actually half-decent for the first backtracker. I managed to stick with it all the way through until the end, something I often struggle to do in other Star Trek films.

With Enterprise getting more risible with each week, Star Trek seems to have got the franchise back on course; believable characters are back with us once again.

I suffered the unfeasibly high volume all the way through until the final credits, and was then rewarded with Mr Nimoy reading out the iconic opening speech credits at the end of the film - the journey is just about to start, all over again.

These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise...

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Brrrrrockwell

2009-05-10T19:44:00.003Z

Brrrrrockwell

Sunday 10 May, 2009

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Crap Boo Report

2009-05-08T21:52:00.002Z

Crap Boo Report

Friday 8 May, 2009

Close of play, day three: Surrey 388 & 60-1, Middlesex 445.

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It's all about the aggregation

2009-05-06T20:53:00.003Z

It's all about the aggregation

Wednesday 6 May, 2009

Aggregation is the new content, apparently. Used effectively, pulling together similar feeds into one source can be highly effective. Used badly and it's simply online prostitution.

Thankfully the planetarium seems to fit into the former.

Of particular interest around these parts are the micro sites for Herne Hill and Dulwich that have just been rolled out.

Developer @lloydsheph is keen to aggregate blog content next. And there lies the challenge: pulling in RSS feeds is relatively simple; building a site with relevant blog content stripped from elsewhere needs some editorial guidance.

Hopefully the planetarium concept will come close to reaching the modern interweb gold dust of hyperlocal that we are still waiting to happen effectively.

Heads up @nmcintosh

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‘They used to call them leaflets’

2009-05-05T20:51:00.012Z

‘They used to call them leaflets’

Wednesday 5 May, 2009

@paulbradshaw's wonderful Online Journalism Blog has joined in the growing debate criticising local councils for believing that their information sheets are in fact stand-alone newspapers. There is a serious issue here concerning the control of the local news agenda, as well as the waste of Council Tax money in delivering propaganda to the electorate, all wrapped up as a fortnightly newssheet:

'...if indeed people deserve to know what their Council Tax is being spent on, then there should be restrictions on how council newspapers do that: just the facts, please. No spin, no adverts. They used to call them leaflets.'

This form of vanity publishing by our esteemed politicians is happening over in Greenwich, as 853 has picked up on of late:

'Amid all the latest guff about whatever the council’s doing, there was more - yes, more! A TV listings guide! A review of the new album by the Killers! And some stuff about Charlton Athletic being crap. Hold on a second? Why is the council offering to tell me what's on the telly?'

Political propaganda puff pieces are also an issue down in my little patch of South London, as one *cough* commenter on the OJB has been keen to point out:

'Lambeth Council's fortnightly Lambeth Life has fallen into the trap of believing that it is a stand alone news publication, and not a medium for communicating council policy to the electorate. A recent edition carried the front-page lead [PDF] 'reporting' on concerns that local newspapers were carrying ads for massage parlours in the area.

Fair point. The South London Press was the clear target here, and it does itself no favours by having a full page each week for local prostitutes trading as adult massage.

But is this really worthy of a front-page splash in the Council Tax financed information sheet? Where is the benefit to the electorate in such a cheap dig at a publication that Lambeth Life clearly sees as a rival?

Competition in the market is healthy, both in terms of advertising, and more importantly, in terms of chasing down news leads. The introduction of Lambeth Life into the local news distribution chain however has led to the South London Press changing a previous objective editorial stance towards Lambeth Council, to launching a sustained attack on the local council across most issues.

There is no reporting of the facts, just a tit for tat onslaught as each rival publication lays into one another.

Ultimately it is the electorate that suffers, as well as democracy and local politics.'

Bradshaw expands the argument to explore how online distribution could carry out the job for local councils, either using their own platform of communication, or even by allowing council data to be mashed up by third parties. Lambeth Council returns a search string of Boo! over at the excellent Mash the State , an online campaign for RSS feeds to be rolled out by local authorities.

Interestingly the Leader Column in the latest Lambeth Life isn't the usual 400-word gush piece penned by at @cllrstevereed, Labour leader of @lambeth_council. Reporting restrictions around the European elections being held in June don't allow for propaganda to be published at the expense of the Council Tax payer.

Instead we have a leader written by Jean Haley, a 'community champion who has been working tirelessly in the Gipsy Hill area for almost 25 years.'

And what a refreshing read it is to. No mention of what a wonderful job your local council is doing, but instead a passionate piece arguing for more active local community campaigning to achieve real change working together.

Local councils (and local newspapers) could learn a lot from Jean.

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Golden Days

2009-05-04T21:15:00.004Z

Golden Days

Monday 4 May, 2009

And so the Best Day of the Year in South London came and went with the opening of the lovely lido for another summer season in SE24. No worries - we've five more months of this al fresco aquatic experience to enjoy.

It wasn't the sunniest of starts on the morning of Bank Holiday Monday, but an outdoor pool is an outdoor pool; that's perfect enough for me.

Entering the art decor splendour of Lake Brockwell for another year, and the sight of a fully functioning 1930's period piece pool being enjoying by the local community put a huge grin on my face. This remained for a further five minutes, before I took the plunge and dived into the tepid waters of seventeen degrees (yeah, right...)

I knew what was coming. I've felt this way on the Best Day of Year in South London for the past fourteen years. Dragging your arse over to Brockwell early in the morning is the hard part; once you're there, you're gonna swim. There's no point poncing around, dipping your big toe in the water. One, two, three and you're away.

The first length of the season is always the most exhilarating. That's a polite way of saying that I questioned my sanity in splashing out for a season ticket, tying me down for a further five months of this early morning madness.

Come the turn-around for length two, and I was feeling pity for my old swimming colleagues, sweating away in a sterile, soulless environment indoors at either Clap'ham or Brixton.

Sixteen lengths late of the Olympic size pool, and time was turning against me. Pleasure certainly wasn't. I could have remained water bound for the rest of the morning. Time for the recuperation period and a steaming hot shower.

I'm pleased to report that the shoebox size changing rooms have had a major revamp for this season. There are now individual cubicles, as well as a general changing area. Plenty of room to swing around yer *shhh* wetsuit.

Did I mention that? Whoops.

Catching up with the lido community is another high point of the Best Day of the Year. These are my front crawl comrades with whom I will be spending my early mornings with for the following five months. You have a whole winter season of gossip to catch up on, all exchanged with that knowing glint in your eye, recognising that something special is about to be shared over the coming summer months.

And so another year, another start of the South London lido season. I'll truly wouldn't want to live anywhere else right now. Same again tomorrow.

Golden days.

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Withnail and Me

2009-05-03T15:17:00.006Z

Withnail and Me

Sunday 3 May, 2009

It's been some time since I last kicked my heels around Camden Town. Back in the day and I was a Saturday night and Sunday morning regular around the backstreets of Mornington Crescent, doing the indie kid Camden shuffle.

A rarity then to find myself on the mean streets of NW1 on a Sunday morning with ten hours sleep already clocked up in reserve. Following an eventful bicycle ride up to North London involving yet more Moulton love and an offer to buy further into my growing Moulton empire, the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and I were on the trail of everyone's favourite anti-hero, Withnail.

Aye.

Withnail and Me is an exhibition at the Camden Proud Gallery, showcasing the work of Murray Close, a photographer who had a licence to roam all around the set for the 1986 seminal film.

Our Camden days may have been long lost to the grind of meeting mortgage re-payments, but our love of all things Withnail remains. The DVD gets a showing around these parts whenever we get a new delivery for the wine cellar. Which is roughly about once a month.

The basic geographical plot of >london >penrith >london is an all too familiar journey for mrs obb and I. It's a road trip we're making again at the end of month, and one which will no doubt include many drunken moments in Lakeside pubs demanding the finest wines known to humanity.

It's fitting that the photography for the film is being exhibited up in Camden, the spiritual home for Withnail. Camberwell must have come a close second, and it would certainly have been a location better suited for our Sunday morning cycling.

Camden market hasn't changed a lot in the past ten years. It's still Glasto comes to the city, selling the same old tat to the same old washed out faces. This was our first visit to the Proud Gallery in its current form. We were regulars in the old stables, now spruced up to host mini bars in each paddock. I'd rather do my drinking in somewhere more civilised than an old horse stable though.

The exhibition itself was wonderful for any Withnail enthusiasts. Unlike most other cult films that go mainstream, Withnail remains unique in that there hasn't been an entire industry springing up themed around the film.

Sure, there's the video and now DVD, but even this is strangely void of any of the usual extras twaddle. The simple reason is that the film was shot on such a tight timeframe and budget, what you see is more or less all that is available. Which is why the rare behind the scenes photographs of Murray Close are to be treasured.

mrs obb wanted to treasure these slightly more than I did, flashing around her credit card for a £279 signed print. Think of all the finest wine known to humanity that such a sum could buy us back at base, as I reminded her in a last bid to try and talk her out of such excessiveness. But Withnail doesn't do things in half measure, and neither does mrs obb.

'I must say, that represents a level of hypocrisy in you that I'd previously suspected, but not noticed due to highly evasive skills,' commented mrs obb, as we departed Camden with a rather expensive Withnail print and an even more expensive plan hatched to move on to stage II in my Moulton buying master plan.

I'll drink to that.

Chin chin.

All images copyright Murray Close.

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Watercolours

2009-05-03T07:02:00.005Z

Watercolours

Sunday 3 May, 2009

The second staging of the Modern Movement at the lovely lido must mean that the Lido Days are almost upon us once again. The art deco fair held by the waters of Lake Brockwell signifies the start of the South London lido season. But first, Saturday was a day for artistic chin stroking, ahead of the Best Day of the Year on Bank Holiday Monday.

Hosting an art deco inspired art fair around the 1930's period piece makes perfect sense. The lido is many things to many people. For me it's the coming together of swimming in an environment of classic design. It reflects a period when swimming wasn't all about energy boosting bars and body hugging swimwear.

Having said that, I did buy a wetsuit later in the afternoon, in preparation for the temperatures of ten degrees that would give me a watery wake up call come Monday morning - whoops.

And so under glorious South London sunshine, Modern Movement II made for a fine way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Business was brisk in Brockwell, although I preferred to save my pennies for the ~~energy boosting bars~~ wetsuit.

The waters of Lake Brockwell were slightly disappointing. The pool has been pumped full of water for the past fortnight. A slight mishap with the filtration system earlier in the day on Saturday saw all the gunk from the winter months enter into the filtration system, leaving a not so art deco inspired layer of oil across the service. Lido management reassured us that the traditional blue waters of Brockwell will return, come Monday morning.

And so on the morning of the 4th, come on in - the water's brrrr. VERY brrrr. But then that's what outdoor swimming is all about. We're going all the way through until the end of September this season. My South London summer is complete: track racing at Herne Hill velo, the start of the new cricket season and now, the opening of the lovely lido.

Golden days.

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Back to Beauty in Larkhall

2009-05-01T11:28:00.004Z

Back to Beauty in Larkhall

Friday 1 May, 2009

Back To Normality In Larkhall Park, SW8Listen!
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Clap'ham Pool is Falling / Closing Down?

2009-04-30T21:14:00.007Z

Clap'ham Pool is ~~Falling~~ Closing Down?

Thursday 30 April, 2009

And so an afternoon spent at a Customer Forum over at Clap'ham Manor Leisure Centre. Let's cut to the chase, and here's the headline news:

The brand new Clap'ham leisure centre that our friends over at @lambeth_council have been bangin' on about in Lambeth Life, um, probably will still happen, but it's slightly more shaky than it was six months ago.

*that's why I no longer write headlines for a living*

In brief, the developers have run out of dosh. This splash (see what I've done there?) came straight from Labour Councillor for Claph'ham Town, Helen O'Malley. I'm not sure if the admission was on the record or not, but it's certainly scribbled down in my notes. So that's all right then.

'There is no fixed date for the closure of the existing facility,' said the good Councillor O'Malley. 'Planning application has been approved for the new centre, but it is all reliant upon the developers raising sufficient capital.'

Ah yes, the developers. This is Council speak for commercial partners who are propping up the whole project. You scratch my back, I'll build you a brand new leisure centre, not to mention some private apartments in a swanky SW4 postcode that we can then flog on for profit.

But the profit has taken a bit of a dive of late (see what I've done there?) The deal was good to go pre the crunching of the credit. Now the Council finds that it has got into bed with a company that can't deliver what was initially promised because of a lack of funds.

This is all so frustrating. I really want to back Labour led Lambeth Council in the building of a new facility. But, y'know, they aren't winning over many friends in the PR campaign.

Swimming in Clap'ham is actually a highly politicised issue. The three Clap'ham Town seats were won at the last election largely on a Labour promise to Keep Clap'ham Swimming. Ugly rumours were spread around that the previous LibDem ruling administration were going to close the Clap'ham pool.

And then along came our friends @lambethnews (that will be Lambeth Tories then, bless) with an equally ugly smear campaign last month, claiming that Labour were going to 'axe' swimming in Lambeth.

Arf!

Of course they're not - they're going to build a brand new pool. Aren't they? Um, aren't you, good Councillor O'Malley?

You might as well toss a coin on the outcome, it seems.

Plan B is in place - and that plan B is to... keep the existing leisure centre, close it for a couple of years and then renovate it. It is a bit of a dive, after all (see what I've... Oh, forget it.)

Elsewhere in the meeting and it was all lively, healthy debate. Ten of my fellow early morning swimmers showed up, which is ten more than last time. I didn't quite recognise them with their clothes on.

The cleanliness of the pool area was a major concern. The management team from Greenwich (don't ask) Leisure Limited accepted responsibility and took a hit on behalf of the Council. That's what happens when you pimp out your core services to a private contractor.

I raised my own bugbear point about having to pay twice to swim in Lambeth owned pools, once for a membership to swim indoors with GLL, and then once again for a season ticket for the Fusion managed lovely lido (four days and counting.) The answer was, as ever, fudged. Different facilities, different profit margins, same infrastructure.

There was plenty of lemon sucking for the poor GLL folk. I think diplomacy must be a key skill set in the GLL management job description.

I did pitch in for a brief podcast with Dave White, Centre Manager at Clap'ham. Yer man seemed like a decent chap, but he would have had to jump through various corporate hoops to have the all clear. GLL management, Lambeth Leisure management, a list of proposed questions to be asked in the pod, etc.

Mmm - it's all about the here and now, Dave; capture the moment whilst it is still fresh. And so I did the job myself from the back of Clap'ham Manor. As ever, a right of reply is open. Have bike, will travel, have iPhone, will podcast. Tweet tweet.
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And so where does this leave the electorate with local Council elections looming next year? Labour need to make a move, one way or another about what they actually intend to do with Clap'ham. I fear the decision is out of their hands, having done the dirty deal with a nasty capitalist property developer (I fear the decision is even out of the hands of the nasty capitalist property developer.)

The LibDems sent out the message last time of wanting to close down the Clap'ham pool, with no viable alternative offered. Lambeth Tories seem happy to put out pointless press releases - pointless in that they contain a load of twaddle, and pointless in that Lambeth 'aint ever going to go True Blue.

Once again - it's all about the swimming, isn't it?

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Jase'll Fix It

2009-04-29T20:09:00.002Z

Jase'll Fix It

Wednesday 29 April, 2009

Flippin 'eck - so where did all the fixies around town suddenly come from then? A morning ride from Clap'ham to the West End, and I was the odd one out. Proudly pedalling along on my Moulton, I calculated that every other bike was a fixed wheel. Gears are for girlies, etc, but even the girlies about town have got in on the fakenger culture.

There's nothing so smug as a reformed ex-fixie, but it seems that the fixed wheel culture has peaked in London. It's now gone mainstream, with most major bicycle chains stocking their own brand of purpose built bikes.

Each to their own, but doesn't this somehow miss the point of the DIY ethos of riding fixed wheel? Purists would argue that track bikes are best kept for le velo. The geometry of a track frame doesn't translate well to the open road, even with the addition of a front break.

The fun of riding fixed wheel is all about customing the bike yourself. Take a 70's road frame, fit a fixed hub and throw out your back brake. But now it's all branded bikes that are technically not for the track, and culturally out of place in this whole fixed wheel pirates of the road fantasy. You may as well ride a powacycle, such is the worst of both worlds characteristics that these mass produced synthetic track machines show.

Yeah, yeah. I'm *sooo* over fixies. Actually I'm not. Despite selling the Fuji last month, I still have a couple of fixies in the fleet. The Bastard remains my bike of choice for the track (um, it’s a track bike,) whereas Sir Walter gets me around town whenever the weather conditions tell me not to risk riding out on the Moulton.

But since falling back into the classic bicycling habit of brakes and gears, I admit to having scorned somewhat at the legion of fixie boys (and girls) cycling off to the City each morning. Fakengers, every one of them.

Selling the Fuji was a great financial and freedom-enabling move. The bloke who bought it wanted hand delivery up in Kilburn. Bugger. I battled around Regent's Park with the stiff frame, having not taken the Fuji out for a spin for sometime. It was a struggle, and a rather uncomfortable one at that. I actually enjoyed the bus journey back into town.

Not quite as much as I enjoyed my first morning out on the Moulton, an experience that I anticipate more with each ride. I'm not sure if London is quite ready for a mass Moulton phase, and given the lack of frames currently on the market, I doubt if the bike shops are either.

But here lies the point: the bike snob within is proud to be riding a machine that wasn't mass-produced and isn't easy to come across. You can still buy decent fixed wheel bikes, although probably not from a major high street store. The City boys I see each morning are struggling along on a frame that may as well be a £79 Halfords boneshaker. It's all style over substance, and even then, they're pushing it, sometimes quite literally.

My Moulton was lovingly made, lovingly passed down generations, and now lovingly lusted over in a way which even I think is not quite healthy for a middle-aged man.

I'm happy to be back to my freewheelin' freedom days of traditional bicycling. It's not about the look; it's all about the enjoyment. Which is just as well, seeing as though more than one acquaintance has asked of my Moulton:

'Why are you riding a girly bike?'

It's got gears, my friend. Gears are good.

For the next six months, anyway.

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Folk Devils & Moral Panics in the Park

2009-04-28T11:44:00.005Z

Folk Devils & Moral Panics in the Park

Tuesday 28 April, 2009

Nobody likes to see a public park closed to the public; more so, nobody likes to see a public park that is closed to the public because of a murder enquiry.

Having exchanged tweets with other South London twitterati bemoaning the constant presence of police helicopters the night before, I awoke Tuesday morning to find that a murder had taken place in my little patch of South London.

Details are currently skethcy, although police have confirmed that one teenager was stabbed to death overnight in Larkhall Park, whilst another is currently in a stable condition, having also been stabbed. Four men have been arrested.

Reports suggest (speculate?) that SW8 was the scene of a mass gangland fight, spilling over into the park. The entire perimeter of Larkhall was under a police cordon, come early Tuesday morning.

I was only thinking last week how the folk devil and moral panic agenda that the mainstream media whipped up last year over teenage stabbings seems to have disappeared. Time has proven that the reporting of teen crime leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, with a continuation of related incidents appearing in quick succession.

The story of a teen stabbing ticks all the right boxes for the mainstream media. The youth of today are out of control; there's a personal angle to focus on and speculation as to what Yoof will do next is as wild as it is rife. He'll probably read the reports, tool himself up and then play up to the stereotype that the mainstream media has so conveniently created for him.

Or maybe, just maybe, Yoof is singular, not plural. Possibly Yoof actually has a mind of his own, and is able to dismiss such debase reporting by the fools who write the headlines. My personal experience of working with Yoof in South London certainly suggests so.

A trawl through my site stats in the past twenty four hours reveals that my archive of Larkhall Park pages have figured prominently. Someone has been snooping around. I hope they find a feeling of the true spirit of Larkhall Park within. Yes, it can be a slightly unnerving experience walking through the place at dark, but then so can walking through any city centre at night.

In an area that is often choking with constant traffic passing through Stockwell, Larkhall Park provides a welcome retreat for locals to go out and play. Families treasure the space, with Clap'ham Common slightly off their walking radar, not to mention being nothing but a big patch of barren land.

Larkhall Park has an almost amphitheatre like presence. The banking around the boundary provides a genuine ambience that blocks out the noise of the inner city. Plus any park that can boast the four chimneys of Battersea as a backdrop has to be something special.

I hope Larkhall is open again soon, with the same haste that I hope the injured youth recovers. Thoughts are with the family and friends of the deceased; not so with the in and out reporting of the mainstream media, happy to use the situation to keep their teens and stabbings stereotype high up on their agenda.

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North London Martyrdom

2009-04-26T09:33:00.003Z

North London Martyrdom

Sunday 26 April, 2009

And so up to Islington for what was possibly the twee-ist festival I've been to in over twenty years. The TUC organised Tolpuddle in London day celebrated the 175th anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

Back in 1834 and 100,000 people protested about the deportation of the six Tolpuddle Martyrs, sentenced to transportation to Australia for setting up a friendly society. The Trade Union movement was born, and in celebration of this, a mass procession from Copenhagen Fields down to Kennington Common took place.

My Saturday afternoon re-traced the route in reverse, travelling South to North. I'm not a fan of North London, and as I approached the badlands along York Way, I was reminded why m'colleages at The Gruan bemoan the supposed regeneration of King's Cross, now creaking under the recession. NW1 is still a dump, despite the splendour of the nearby St Pancras trying to resurrect the area.

But then I turned the corner into Caledonian Road and snaked my way into Edward Square. The twee-ness was almost as intoxicating as the traffic fumes I choked on cycling through King's Cross.

It was like a scene from a 1984 TUC rally. Union banners were on show, proudly depicting scenes of struggles past; entry was free, but the traditional whip round of a bucket was paying the rent. Stalls somehow uniting the international struggle with the micro-economic division of labour is NW1 almost made sense.

Remembering the Tolpuddle Martyrs
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But whereas the rallies and gatherings of my political past have had a hard, antagonistic edge, Tolpuddle in London day was like listening to Arthur Scargill speaking at the Big Chill.

Picnic blankets adorned the grass square with the traditional TUC picnic of home made sarnies and home brew keeping everyone entertained for the afternoon. The sun was shining and children were enjoying the face painting activities. Maybe this is where the Left went wrong back '85? A brightly coloured butterfly on the ginger bonce of Neil Kinnock would have surely seen off Thatcherism.

No left wing festival wouldn't be complete without a turn from Billy Bragg, and Tolpuddle in London didn't disappoint. I've seen the boy Bragg play over the years in all manner of venues; record shop counters, toilet venues, mid-size theatres, Clap'ham Common and the rolling fields of Somerset and Avon. Oh, and the Phoenix Festival. But this was without a doubt the most wonderful ambient arena that I have had the pleasure of experiencing the Bard in.

Sun, Cycling (sort of) and Bragg
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England, Half English, There is Power in a Union and a rather misplaced strumming of Sexuality - it was all good stuff. And then just as I was contemplating upping sticks and moving to North London (it really was that lovely,) I was tapped on the shoulder by a complete stranger who then gave me a great big man hug.

Awwww.

There are very few situations where heterosexual males should embrace over, but a shared love (and ownership) of a Moutlon bike is just about acceptable.

Bragg, Booze and Moulton Bikes
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And so I cycled back down to the Beautiful South, following in the footsteps of the 100,000 early Trade Unionist 175 years ago. I'm not sure if this mass of neo-Marxists then stayed and settled in South London, but I was flying the red flag and back on familiar home turf.

Few things get me excited in North London. Billy Bragg, Boris bashing and Moulton bikes were the perfect combination. I must remember to bring my own picnic blanket and home brew next time.

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By George

2009-04-23T17:43:00.003Z

By George

Thursday 23 April, 2009

Five scenarios in which to celebrate St George's Day:

Follow the example of the good folk of SE17 by flying the flag of St George from your Aylesbury balcony. The bicycle ride into school this morning was made all the more merrier with the sighting of the cross of St George being proudly displayed across the estate. OK, so some of the flags have been flying since the 2006 World Cup, but even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. I do hope that the overt patriotism from the good folk of SE17 is to celebrate a secular Saint, who is also celebrated by our brothers and sisters across many other continents. The flag flying isn't for me though.

Later in the morning of the 23rd and I received an invite to toast our patron saint in an SE17 pub that evening. 'A late bar, bangers 'n mash,' and even 'St George karaoke' were planned. Crickey. I wonder if the songs on offer include any traditional Ethiopian folk tunes, as we join together around the world to celebrate the international man of mystery that was St George? I had work commitments later in the evening, and so made my apologies for the pub party. Plus I was slightly weary that it was the same SE17 boozer that hosted the notorious work Christmas Party, gatecrashed by none other than Mad Frankie Fraser. No thanks.

Back in the (occasional) day job and the lovely kids of Somewhere in SE17 celebrated St George with an afternoon of face painting (plus a cheeky little podcast also thrown in.) A facial white background with a red cross was available to any child who wanted to show support for the patron saint of this land. We ended up running out of paint, such was the popularity of the public display of affection for St George. This activity came closest to connecting with my understanding of national identity.

'The school is larger than most primaries and serves an area of considerable deprivation. Many more pupils come from ethnic minority backgrounds than in most schools, and the proportion of pupils at the early stages of learning English is high.'

So said that nice Mr Ofsted, shortly before awarding the school an Outstanding status. I was on official photography duty for the face painting, trying to capture the moment for the school archives, not to mention avoiding a face paint for myself. I usually tend to think too hard in these situations about the ethnicity ratio of a group of children I am capturing on camera. Not so on St George's Day. Boys, girls, black, white and all shades in-between were bouncing for joy with their crosses of St George painted on their face. A true celebration of this international man of mystery.

A walk later in the afternoon through the back streets of Nine Elms, and I noticed The Gladstone celebrating St George in all its glory. The SW8 boozer is situated in a corner of Sunny Stockwell where everyday seems like St George's Day, such is the high density of Red Cross flags flying. The Gladstone chalkboard declared 'St Georges' Day Alldayer Today.' The punctuation and choice of words could have done with a slight re-write, but the sentiments seemed fine to me. If anyone was in any doubt as to how St George was being celebrated in SW8, then a brief look at The Gladstone would have cleared up the situation: You down a dozen or so pints of lager, and then play football in the small shopping area outside the pub. It's easy to smirk, but I think I was more jealous than judgemental. No sign of St George's karaoke, but once again, no sign of my participation. The football was fine, but I fear the twelve pints would have finished me off.

And so I ended up celebrating our patron saint by staying indoors and working. We're a nation of penny pinchers, and so this seemed like a frugal way to honour the strange, misunderstood man from the East. My fifth scenario for celebrating St George was tested out twelve months ago. I attended Billy Bragg's alternative St George's Day at The Barbican, an event that was so alternative it had me pining for the twelve pints back in The Gladstone. Uncle Bill was on fine form, as ever, but I couldn't help but think that even this Love Me I'm a Liberal event was painfully secular. The brilliant Kitty, Daisy and Lewis managed to find a Hawaiian angle to St George; the pained and dour performance from Rachel Unthank & the Winterset had even the mass audience of Guardianistas wanting something a little more gawblimeyguv to help pass along the performance.

And so I've struggled all day to find a form in which I can personally celebrate St George. I felt uncomfortable with all the flag flying around SE17. The karaoke with Mad Frankie wasn't for me. Face painting seemed the most fun, but I bruise too easily. Football and Fosters at The Gladstone seems a slightly strange way to celebrate a man who in all probability didn't take part in either of these activities. Preaching your point with the Barbican liberals trying a little too hard to map out their multi-cultural credentials left me feeling like a fraud.

It was only later in the evening that I finally realised that my failure to celebrate St George is borne out of my own personal identity. I don't see myself an Englander, whatever character traits this might incorporate. I'm a Londoner living in Europe. Sadly there isn't a patron saint to celebrate this particular identity.

I'm happy though for once a year to skate around the edges of the other Londoners that do feel the need to fly the flag, take part in crappy karaoke, paint their faces, drink booze and play football, if only for the reason that it keeps the agenda away from the nasty BNP [no linkage.] I only heard the term 'racial foreigners' once today, and that was enough for me to turn off my radio, paint my face and then go and play catch up with the Gladstone boys, both in booze and footballing ability.

Here's to you, oh mystery man of the East.

Cheers.

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Thames Hopper

2009-04-22T20:18:00.004Z

Thames Hopper

Wednesday 22 April, 2009

Chelsea Bridge, SW1, The Way We See It.

'Another week, another bridge. This week we're off to Chelsea Bridge, one of the two most ornate bridges across the Thames. The original bridge was built in 1858. The one standing now dates back to 1937 and was designed by G. Topham Forest.

There used to be a famous tea stall here which was a hangout for Rockers who'd come looking for a 'bit of talent' from the local Battersea Fun Fair. Sadly the stall has gone the way of the Rockers, although at least it's been preserved in the Transport Museum.

If you get the tide right you can also see the exit to the river of one of North London's famous underground rivers, the Westbourne. If you are on the right walking towards Chelsea you should just be able to see it set into the wall of the Thames.'

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links for 2009-04-21

2009-04-21T11:44:00.003Z

links for 2009-04-21

51st State

It's a mighty long way from the enclaves and gated enclosures of Mayfair to... the fruit 'n veg market at Nine Elms, Battersea, Guv. But it's a (proposed) move that the US Embassy is so keen to get kick-started, it has set up a website to document the process. Pros: great for the SW8 local economy. Cons: cowboy style takeovers of the streets of Sunny Stockwell, with diplomats declaring immunity from the driving laws of the land.

Cycle Proficiency

Forward thinking from @lambeth_council, instructing all drivers employed by the borough to take up cycle safety lessons. But even the cyclist within feels it slightly heavy handed. Cycle safety is a two way process, with cyclists having the power to protect themselves. It's simple: Never cycle side by side with a HGV, as the excellent Moving Target keeps on reminding us.

NIMBY

Following on from the Freedom of Information request that required @lambeth_council to tell the squatting community of South London where all the vacant residential properties are located, here comes a similar scheme from some a quick thinking scamp. I wonder if any Council owned buildings will show up in the search?

Epitaph

Heads up @cllr_robbins for pointing me in the direction of the online haterz.

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Thou Birthday Boy

2009-04-19T22:00:00.003Z

Thou Birthday Boy

Sunday 19 April, 2009

Happy birthday Will Shakespeare, born on 23rd April 1564, died on 23rd April 1616, which can't have been the best of birthday presents for Uncle Bill. And so on the nearest Sunday to the Bard's birthday (not technically true, but you get the idea,) Shakespeare's Globe traditionally celebrates all things Bill.

The occasion is also used to usher in the new season at Bankside. Young Hearts is the theme for the following five months ahead. Expect plenty of hey nonny nonny, and not much of the old King Lear.

I took the opportunity on Sunday lunchtime to take in a freebie at The Globe. I wasn't alone, with queues for Sonnet's Day stretching all the way back as far as the Tate Modern.

It was rather lovely waiting patiently in the queue, being serenaded by a bloke with a dodgy beard reading me my own personal sonnet. Shane the moment was somewhat lost with the rude interruption of a bonkers bagpipe player standing on the Millennium Bridge.

Inside The Globe and it was a free for all for all things Jacobean. The sword fights were pretty spectacular, the singing of the sonnets, um, not quite my kind of thing. I edged away nervously to the rear of the Wooden O when the invite went out for groundlings to deliver their own sonnets on The Globe stage.

And so have a good one, Mr Bill, 445 years old.

Blimey.

'With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.'

Sonnet Sunday at Shakespeare's Globe
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Crap Boo Report

2009-04-19T08:49:00.004Z

Crap Boo Report

Sunday 19 April, 2009

Surrey drew with Gloucestershire.

Sorry Surrey Collapse
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Chapeau!

2009-04-18T15:59:00.007Z

Chapeau!

Saturday 18 April, 2009

'But I need to test out mapmyride,' I told the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger, early on Saturday morning as I rolled out for a spin with the Dulwich Paragon. Technology comes before household chores, and so I saddled up and sped (sort off) up College Road and towards the first rendez vous of Cafe St Germain at Crystal Palace.
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I've been cycling with the lovely Paragon people since just after Christmas now. I'm still only a regular on the Saturday social ride; the Sunday race training of 80 miles plus would only, um, get in the way of all those household chores.

I love the freedom that road racing gives you, once you escape past the suburbs of Bromley and roll out into the Kent countryside. Fifteen minutes is all it takes until you get to see the cows of Kent.

But I'm exceptionally crap at either leading the route, or even knowing where the b***y hell we are. Which is where the GPS facility of my iPhone comes in. It may not be as meaningful as a restaurant tip calculator (can't believe Apple chose the most crappy app to plug in the TV ad,) but mapmyride does just that. And it draws pretty pictures for you, which you can then embed, as below.

The final data tells me that we cycled 27.89 miles on Saturday morning. It seemed more like 278 miles. Plus don't forget the ten-mile or so round journey to get to Cafe St Germain.

I was disappointed to see the data telling me that our average speed was a poxy 12mph. You need to take into account the numerous feeding stations along the route, plus the ten stationary minutes back at base where I forgot to stop logging my movements.

Whoops.

The Paragon roll out each Saturday morning at 9:15 from Crystal Palace Parade. All are welcome, just look out for the blokes in lycra looking all manly as they try and avoid household domestic duties.
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Bonnington Boo

2009-04-17T13:20:00.004Z

Bonnington Boo

Friday 17 April, 2009

Back to Bonnington Square for a bit of audioboo podcast action. Much like the charming South London square itself, it was all rather anarchic and unplanned.

A spare five minutes in the working morning (brevity is the key for audioboo,) and I found myself walking along Langley Lane, having seen off my sister on her way back to St Pancras. Perfect for a brief peek at Bonnington, once the centre of the squatting scene in South London.

I've blogged before about Bonnington, but I wanted to see if the horticultural delight of SW8 has changed since. For all the talk of peace, love and understanding, we're still talking about property and ownership here. It's hard to have a love in over your lentil soup when your next-door neighbour is cashing in on one of the most desirable locations south of the river.

The community ethos is still evident around the Square. The Pleasure Garden is indeed a pleasure, even during a drizzly Friday morning meander. Property prices remain buoyant, despite the crunching of the credit.

And so Bonnington doesn't appear to have changed much in recent years. If anything, the Square and surrounding roads are even more overgrown with shrubbery. This is no bad thing. Bonnington Square remains a place of beauty, albeit a rather pricey one.

The Delights of Bonnington Square, SW8
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Basket Case

2009-04-16T14:31:00.005Z

Basket Case

Thursday 16 April, 2009

Old Church Street, SW3, The Way We See It.

'Over to see how the other half live this week as we're heading to Chelsea. In fact we're heading to one of the oldest streets, Old Church Street.

It's a very long, and in places very narrow road, and the only one in Chelsea to run from the Fulham Road to the river. It's a fascinating, mostly residential, place where you really can be incredibly nosy.

No. 53 was home to the young John Betjeman, and 46a used to be Sound Techniques Ltd, studios where the likes of Pink Floyd, T-Rex and Nick Drake all recorded.'

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Crap Boo Report

2009-04-15T20:37:00.004Z

Crap Boo Report

Wednesday 15 April, 2009

Surrey Vs Gloucestershire, close of play day 1, Gloucestershire 321-8.

Tea at the Cricket
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Walk On

2009-04-15T00:01:00.003Z

Walk On

Wednesday 15 April, 2009

I've not really talked about my Hillsborough memories since my experience in South Yorkshire twenty tears ago today. None of my travelling friends have either. It's just something that we experienced together, and then stored away, almost never to be mentioned again.

I can't speak for my friends, but for me personally, there seemed little point in recounting what was a very difficult day for us. Being in the 'other end' of course meant that our experiences as Forest fans were far different from those associated with Liverpool.

But Forest were very much part of 15th April 1989. Witnessing 96 deaths is not something that you are easily going to forget about. And so we don't talk about it, but the memories always remain.

Twenty years on, and I felt that I needed to try and make sense of my memories. I wanted to put together a chronological sequence from the day, so that it was there for the record whilst I still have the ability to recount all the details.

The plan was to place this in word form. But then there's a tendency for words to portray a fictional account of a story, whereas an oral account is as brutal and as honest as you can get when trying to Tell It Like It Is.

I'm hoping my Hillsborough memories will always remain within. They are part of what has shaped me as the man over the past twenty years. But just for the record, here's my public account of a day out at the football, twenty years ago today.

This is MY Hillsborough story. What is yours? Record over HERE, and I'd be happy to embed and create a Hillsborough oral archive.

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Lost of London

2009-04-14T14:45:00.004Z

Lost of London

Tuesday 14 April, 2009

Adelaide Street, WC2, The Way We See It.

'Excuse my selfish choice of location this week. Adelaide Street in all honesty is something of a horrible little pedestrian rat run into Charing Cross Station. It has a couple of saving graces, and one of those is why I have chosen it.

Maggie Hambling's sculpture A conversation with Oscar Wilde took a lot of campaigning to get erected.

Just up from the sculpture is a quite extraordinary urinal, quite who thought anyone would use it beggars belief. That said you do get rather nice views of the rear of St Martin's here, so there is some benefit.'

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The Good, the Bad & the Bonkers

2009-04-13T11:51:00.010Z

The Good, the Bad & the Bonkers

Sunday 12 April, 2009

A strange Sunday lunchtime spent at Speaker's Corner, witnessing the good, the bad and the bonkers of British democracy. But it was all really about the brilliant audioboo, proving once again that the medium truly is the message. Which is just as well, given the freedom of speech at Speaker's Corner that allows incitement to racial hatred to surface on the streets of London.

Bonker's Speaker's Corner #1
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Bonker's Speaker's Corner #2
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Bonker's Speaker's Corner #3
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Bonker's Speaker's Corner #4
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Bonker's Speaker's Corner #5
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Bonker's Speaker's Corner #6
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Rock On

2009-04-11T14:36:00.005Z

Rock On

Saturday 11 April, 2009

And so as predicted, a bit of a wash out of a Good Friday. Rain meant that the annual Herne Hill Velo meet took a sabbatical. This is such a shame, as the good folk of VCL spend a great amount of time preparing for the highlight of the South London cycling calendar each year. Plus I was eager to flash around a few grubby fivers and pick up some bargains at the bicycling jumble sale.

Brixton bound instead, the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and did the Bank Holiday blues thing of going to the cinema. The Boat That Rocked was our film of choice, although I was keen for a second showing of The Damned United.

Basic premise: set in the late '60s, TBTR tells the story of pirate radio and offshore broadcasting in the UK. Partly politicial, partly promiscuous, the plot perfectly captures the culture clash of the period. The anti-establishment ethos of the pirates reminds you what a stuffy place late 60's Britain must have been.

As with most modern films, TBTR is about half an hour too long. I even stooped to pick up my jacket, expecting the end credits, and then whoosh! Woh, what was that? A Titanic plot change in every sense (um, the boat sinks) came along, totally unexpected, and totally unnecessary. Sorry for the spoiler, but I've probably saved you two and a half hours of your time, should it rain on Bank Holiday Monday.

Here's the audioboo:

The Boat That Sort of Rocked
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And then back to Brixton later in the evening, for the ska-tastic sounds of Mr Rico Rodriguez. Rico is the sound of Jamaican trombones. You probably know him from the haunting outro of Ghost Town. The old boy is pushing eighty, bless, and so it only seemed polite to see the genuine ska legend whilst he was playing on my local patch.

This was out first visit to the old George Canning / Hobblogin since it was renamed Hootenanny and re-branded as a bonkers Brixton Scottish theme bar with a Thai restaurant at the back. Only in Brixton.

But Friday night is ska night in SW9. There's a wonderful line-up over the coming months, which truly takes me to back in the day of the old village youth club and moon stompin' with the rest of the rude boys to, um, Rico.

Fitting for a Brixton gig that local boy Jerry Dammers was the warm up DJ. I didn't like to point out to the toothless wonder that just as he was spinning his old ska 45's sometime around 11pm, over on BBC2 and a Band called The Specials were reforming without their founder on Later. Whoops.

Dammers has distanced himself from the whole Special nostalgia reunion. Artistic differences etc, with the word on the mean streets of SW9 being that he wanted to reinterpret the back catalogue, whereas smiling Terry and the boys were after the cash cow of a five show Brixton Academy run playing the first two albums from start to finish.

A brave move, as all five Academy gigs sold out within two hours. Two Tone is set to for yet another revival over the coming weeks, but I can't help thinking that it will be nostalgia led, rather than capturing the energy and vibrancy that made such an impression on me during the early '80s.

It needn't be such a blatant money-spinner, as Friday night in Brixton proved. Ska is alive and well in South London - witness the old school skinhead boys, cherry DM's, Ben Sherman shirts and braces, stompin' along to a classic ska set from Dammers.

And then cometh the hour (way past my bedtime around midnight,) cometh the old boy with his big trombone. Rico's set was more reggae than ska, but given his age, the tight arrangements required to stomp around with a ska set can be excused. He's a man of little words, or even little trombone solos. But blimey - Rico Rodriguez playing in Brixton alongside Jerry Dammers.

I think I just about caught my reflections as we waited for the 133 bus back to Sunny Stockwell in the boo below.

*alcohol influenced? definitely...*

Rico Rocks Brixton
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And so Good Friday was rather good, despite the lack of cycling action. Next up - the cricket season starts in South London once Bank Holiday Monday is out the way. Brilliant!

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links for 2009-04-09

2009-04-09T20:48:00.003Z

links for 2009-04-09

Mash Up

The idea behind Mash the State is simple: the site is a call to arms for local authorities to produce RSS feeds of the endless news stories that they spew out each day. Why is this important? Well, once the data is out there in XML format, developers can then use the data to create tools that will open up local democracy. There are parallels with the Lambeth Walk widget, not to mention Charles Arthur's excellent Free Our Data national government campaign.

Tandem

A bad week for London bicyclists. Two deaths this week, one at Elephant, and one up at Old Street. Both locations are on my commuting radar, both overstretched roundabouts, which sometimes feel like a free for all. Take it easy out there.

Chapeau!

It's very difficult to generate any enthusiasm for cycling following the deaths, but the annual Good Friday meet at Here Hill velo is always one of the highlights of the cycling calendar. Rain could possibly play a part this year, and so hopefully the archive footage below will put a smile on your face.

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Tell It Like It Is

2009-04-08T22:27:00.004Z

Tell It Like It Is

Wednesday 8 April, 2009

A lunchtime cycle around Parliament Square, en route to the West End, and I was surprised to see thousands of Tamil protestors assembling opposite Westminster. Mainstream media had been quick to report the protest against the lack of British intervention in Sri Lanka. But the bulletins had since moved on, along with the protestors, I presumed.

But this wasn't a one man Brian Haw point being put across opposite Parliament; a crowd of 2,000 plus were making a very loud protest, with a heavy police presence surrounding Parliament Square.

So why the ignorance of the media? It's not so much ignorance as apathy. A protest is a protest is a protest. Unless the story has moved on, then it's time for the cameras to ignore the issues and move on to the Next Big Thing.

Armed with the iPhone, this was another opportunity for me to test out audioboo. I haven't really got any agenda with the Sri Lankan situation, apart from like most people I imagine, wanting peaceful solution.

I tried to capture a snapshot of the story (of which there were many,) finding a young Tamil gentleman who kept on apologising for his English (it was better then mine.)

It seems that the protest isn't going away until at least the weekend. A large march to Hyde Park will signal the end of the Westminster occupation. Read all about it, if the mainstream media can arsed. AFP and your '100 campaigners' - complete tosh.

Get out there, observe, engage and Tell It Like It Is. Sitting in a multi-media facilitation node re-writing endless copy off the wires is not why you entered journalism in the first place.

Or is it?

Tamil Protest Continues
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Old Vic

2009-04-06T21:05:00.007Z

Old Vic

Monday 6 April, 2009

Victoria Embankment Gardens, WC2, The Way We See It.

'The Victoria Embankment was an amazing piece of engineering, designed by Joseph Bazalgette and completed in 1870.

It's a wonderful place, a haven from the hustle and bustle of London. There are fountains and sculptures to be seen, but most impressive is the Water Gate, which was once alongside the Thames.

A great location - flora, fauna, people and sculpture.'

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Put the Champagne on Ice...

2009-04-05T22:34:00.005Z

Put the Champagne on Ice...

Sunday 5 April, 2009

...we're going to Wembley twice (or whatever the korfball equivalent of Wembley is. Croydon?)

Crikey - another weekend, another korfball championship. And so a big congratulations to the mighty Supernova II, newly crowned champions of the London & District Korfball Association, Division Two.

A 9-3 victory over Mitcham III was sufficient for the seconds to lift the trophy. Not that there was any actual trophy, and so we celebrated down the nearby Latchmere pub in Battersea with half shandies all round.

Supernova is the most central of London korfball clubs. We're always on the look out for new players, either beginners or *cough* old timers. It would help greatly if you don't have a knackered knee (and in no way will playing korfball knacker yer knee. No Siree.)

The club website is a good starting place for a korfball overview. Basically it's boys, girls and booze, and not always in that order, either.

Caught up in all he championship winning excitement on Sunday, I still managed to knock out a brief podcast:
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Plus there's some video action below.

Congratulations to all at the club. 2009 - our most successful season ever!

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Me & Mr Jones

2009-04-04T22:42:00.004Z

Me & Mr Jones

Saturday 4 April, 2009

An intriguing Saturday afternoon, spent at the lovely Chelsea Space gallery, SW1. @funkturm and I were on the trail of the Mick Jones Rock & Roll Public Library.

Essentially it's a warehouse packed full of popular culture artefacts collected by yer man Mick over the years, transported over to South West London for all to admire. It was like witnessing three decades of youth culture crammed into an art space of a tardis.

The Clash of course figure heavily, but let us not forget the brilliant Big Audio Dynamite. With clothing, gold discs and personal possessions on display, there was a very real sense of seeing pop culture history right in front of you.

The personal note from Uncle Joe to Jones was probably the highlight of the exhibition for me; the original lyrics for Good Morning Britain I could have done without.

@funkturm seemed to enjoy the analogue hardware on show, but then he's a genuine rock & roll star himself. I didn't expect him to get excited as I was over the Elvis Monopoly.

We passed a pleasant half hour or so poking around. We could have stayed longer, but I think we were starting to attract a bit of attention with our LIVE! podcast action (whaddya mean you weren't listening?)

The Mick Jones Rock & Roll Public Library is on show at Chelsea Space until the 18th April. Highly recommended.

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About audioboo

2009-04-01T22:20:00.008Z

About Audioboo

Wednesday 1 April, 2009

I'm starting to get my head around audioboo. Podcasting on the fly via your iPhone is essentially what's on offer. It's bloody brilliant.

I've been watching from a distance in recent weeks some of the ways that @documentally and @se1 have been using audioboo as an instant distribution channel for their content. Recording, uploading and then broadcasting your podcast, live from the scene, is a truly remarkable tool that may just be the missing link to finally put us on par with the mainstream knobber media whores. Oh, plus finding a peak audience of a couple of million users or so.

The process really is as simple as pressing record, uploading and then moving on to your next story. There's even added functionality with a Google map appearing next to your pod via the iPhone's GPS, as well as the ability to upload and tag an image from the camera.

Twitter integration handles the promotional part for you, automatically sending out a tweet as soon as you have uploaded. Back at base (and back down below,) you can then embed the audio across other platforms.

I've been podcasting around the school for a couple of terms now using the more traditional method. The energy that the kids pass on is sometimes lost in the whole laborious procees.

You record the podcast, and then export it as an mp3 file. A web page needs knocking up, then you embed within. The working day still isn't done, as you need to not only publish your static page, but then upload the mp3 as well. RSS comes as standard, but that then requires a separate feed to be built. Don't forget to promote the pod via the iTunes store by pinging your feed as well.

Phew.

So a five-minute podcast with the brightest minds in SE17 can take an afternoon of your time to get out there.

Not anymore.

Audioboo absolutely changes the game. Your audioboo profile page also comes with an RSS feed, as well an instant upload to the iTunes store.

The trick is knowing when and how to use audioboo. The platform is there, now it's time to build on it. It must be exciting times for the bestbefore.tv crowd, knowing that they have created something that is about to explode big time.

But where to? Follow the youtube model and the message will get drowned out. Content isn't king if it's a LIVE! podcast coming from your local pub as your mate Dave lets rip. Access to all is important, but I can't help but think that audioboo will only become influential if it is adopted by news gatherers. And did I mention that videoboo is just around the corner?

With all this in mind, I experimented with audioboo out and about on the mean streets of EC4 this afternoon. The backdrop of the G20 protests was just a means to an end. I could have produced podcasts LIVE! from the end of my road when South London Yoof dropped his crisp packet on the floor.

Back in the day and I probably would have been fired up on the frontline with the rest of the contemporary urban anarchists. But I was more interested in a pleasant bicycle ride across to The City than any riotous action. What is totally revolutionary though is audioboo.

*this post will of course become self-contradictory come the start of the cricket season, when a boozed up South London blogger will file endless boos about how absolutely nothing of interest is happening at The Oval*

Southwark Bridge, Heading For The City
Listen!
King William Street - Wot No Anarchists?
Listen!
The Winking Copper Of EC4
Listen!
I Don't Predict A Riot
Listen!
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Good Job

2009-03-31T23:27:00.007Z

Good Job

Wednesday 1 April, 2009

Without Prejudice

I am pleased to announce that I have accepted a job offer from Lambeth Council. As from today, I will be taking up my new position as Executive Officer for Factual Accounting and Responsible Reportage within Local Government. It's a new role that has been especially created, and one which I am very much looking forward to carrying out to the best of my abilities. I feel I am in for a busy time ahead.

As part of my contract of employment, I have agreed to a number of clauses as part of the conditional job offer. Being a Council officer requires a certain level of professionalism and duty to both the post and the public. As a consequence, I have had to delete a number of references to my new employer contained within this blog.

In total 183 blog posts dating back to October 2003 have been removed. For the record, I am required to state that these have been deleted in all forms electronically, both online, digital storage and hard copies printed out on paper.

Furthermore, in order for me to take up my new employment, I require any other weblogs linking to any of my previous posts which make reference to Lambeth Council, to also be deleted. Please accept this request as notice that as a blogger, commenter, or passing observer, any link to my blog that mentions my new employer in either a positive, fair, or inaccurate position of unreliability, has now been deleted from your own archives.

My new role will involve actively monitoring and moderating online content for false portrayal of Council activities online. Failure for you to remove any link to my blog that mentions my new employer in either a positive, fair, or inaccurate position of unreliability will be logged within the Lambeth Archive, and it is without prejudice that I have to inform you that subsequent legal action may persue.

For the record, I would like to state that it is with great pleasure that I will be able to serve as a Council Executive. Lambeth is a progressive local authority that listens to the electorate, and acts with due diligence. I am very much looking forward to becoming part of such a highly rated, transparent and valued organisation.

Posts around here may be a little sparse in the coming months.

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Sinking

2009-03-31T15:38:00.004Z

Sinking

Tuesday 31 March, 2009

Early Monday morning business in Brixton, and so a rare excursion to Brixton Rec for the daily dip. I don't think I'll be making the same mistake sometime soon.

Regular readers may remember that good 'ol Rec (the onionbagblog spiritual home, back in the day) underwent a £2.3m refurbishment (ha!) The flagship leisure facility in the Rotten Borough was then pimped out to Greenwich Leisure Limited (yeah, I know...) on behalf of @lambeth_council.

My morning visit during off-peak hours started off with the traditional SW9 activity of customer queuing. It's a quaint custom that is something to be proud of in this country. Pity the poor reception staff though - I couldn't work out if they were lacking in resources / lacking in training / or simply lacking in any concept of customer care.

No worries - the £2.3m refurbishment included major work on the reception area with, get this - fancy fast track automated machines to allow members through. Jobs a good 'un.

Except... the fancy fast track automated machines won't accept swimming only membership cards. No surprises that there isn't a sign to tell you about this either. Still, at least GLL has the resources to pay a member of staff to stand next to the fancy fast track automated machines to help out any confused customers. The extra resources sort of defeats the object of the fancy fast track automated machines; it would perhaps also be useful as well if the fancy fast track automated machine man told swimming only members that they're wasting their time trying to use the facility before they actually, y'know, try and use the machines. Massive FAIL.

And so I joined the back of the reception queue and tried not to get angry over the incompetence of a payment system that would be more efficient if every customer tried to pay for their activity using a bag stuffed full of 1p coins.

Membership card swiped, time to swim, finally. But first I needed to find somewhere to get changed. The new / old changing area was completely closed off, all apart from six solitary male cubicles. And one of these had a mystery substance smeared across the floor, that on a good day, I would give the benefit of and assume that an unfortunate customer had had a slight mishap with a melting bar of chocolate.

S***.

Still, a swim is a swim, and it remains the finest way to start your day. Assuming you can find somewhere to swim, that is. Three lanes were out of bounds for the paying public, with a supposed school swimming gala taking place at eight in the morning. No signs warning of this, and no sign of the schools either.

It was every man / woman / breast stroking granny (euhhh) for themselves in the one lane open to the public. I was pulled under by an Olympic hopeful, narrowly managed to avoid knocking a heavily pregnant female, but found myself in a very uncomfortable position bringing up the rear of the breast stroking granny (euhh.)

Brixton Rec. B**** hell.

It was back to the bad old days of Leisure Connection and counting down the time before their period of pimping on behalf of @lambeth_council expired.

'We WILL open on 1st July!' declared on Councillor Lib Peck, Lambeth's (then) Cabinet Member for Environment and Culture at a public meeting back in March 2007. What the good cllr didn't mention at the time was that she probably meant 1st July, 2009. Cllr Peck has since been shunted out to Housing and Regeneration, wasting no time in drawing up a squatter's charter.

Bruised from the Brixton experience (and still thinking of the breast stroking granny - euhhh,) I returned to Clap'ham come Tuesday morning. My mood was lifted when I saw a sign stating that the recent price increase in my monthly membership now covers swimming in ALL London GLL managed pools. London Fields lido is managed by GLL - lovely!

I returned refreshed back to base, and thought it worth receiving confirmation of this before cycling up to Hackney later in the week:

********

Dear GLL Person

I note that my GLL annual membership to swim is about to increase to £26 per month. I took out this membership at Clapham. Can you confirm please that this membership is also valid for swimming at London Fields Lido?

********

Dear onionbagblogger

Thank you for your recent email.

Please be advised that you can only use your swim membership in the borough of Lambeth. The centres that you are able to access are Brixton Recreation Centre, Clapham Leisure Centre, Ferndale sports centre, Flaxman Sports Centre & Streatham Leisure Centre.

You are unable to access London Fields lido due to this centre being located in Hackney borough. If you attempt to utilise this centre you will be charged at a non-member rate.

********

Dear GLL Person

Thanks for the clarification. Maybe you should consider changing the misleading promotional signs at Clapham. These clearly state:

"Swim in all GLL pools with your swimming membership."

********

Plus come next month and it will be that time of year once again when @lambeth_council decides to charge me twice for swimming in their pools: a monthly payment with GLL for indoor swimming, and then a separate summer season ticket for the Fusion managed Brockwell Lido. I can't cancel the GLL membership because nasty re-joining fees kick in once the lido shutters close for the season.

I think I'll just sit back and become a lard arse, bloating up to thirty stone and demanding that @lambeth_council come round to deliver me meals on wheels three times a day. It's got to be the healthier lifestyle when compared to using Brixton Rec.

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That Championship Feeling

2009-03-30T21:54:00.004Z

That Championship Feeling

Monday 30 March, 2009

All praise the *cough* mighty Supernova III korfball team, newly crowned champions of the London & District Korfball League, Division Four.

Blimey.

I last picked up a korfball championship medal just under a decade ago (that's not strictly true - it took five years for the coach to get round to actually dishing them out.)

Astute flip cam observers will probably pick up on the point that you can't play korfball and shoot footage at the same time. That will be because I was subbed at half-time after a rare off day underneath the korf basket.

But still - LDKA champions - bloody good effort, team.

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Only When I Laugh

2009-03-29T22:12:00.004Z

Only When I Laugh

Sunday 29 March, 2009

A rare Saturday West End (ish) night out, as the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and I went along to support occasional work colleague @comedybeard, doing his, um, comedy thing with his big beard.

Holborn? You're 'avin a laugh, aren't you?

The restaurant venue wasn't quite suited to comedy. I was half expecting chicken in a basket to make an appearance during the interval. But the company was enjoyable, even if the £3.50 for a bottle of Becks wasn't. Thankfully I was wearing my corset, for I feared my sides would burst, if not from all the laughter, then from a stomach pumped full of overpriced crappy lager.

My experience tells me that you can judge the success of a comedy club by the body language of the clientele at the start of the evening. The sight of a bloke standing at the front of the stage listening to his iPod didn't bode well for the laughs per minute comedy count.

Curtain time, and we were introduced to our compare for the evening - a man so camp he had used tent pegs to position his hair in place. It may seem a mighty long way from London town comedy cool to Duncan Norvelle end of the pier campness, but I swear our happy camper said 'chase me!' within the first minute.

Fisting Norman Lamont was funny back in the day; the 2009 re-write involving inserting unfeasibly large objects inside the orifice of Joe Cole didn't quite cut it for me. Or Joe Cole, I imagine.

On to the acts for the evening. To book one heavily pregnant comedian guaranteed some original material. To book two heavily pregnant comedians, and then have them following each other, made any unfertilised lady in the audience appear like the odd one out. Has there been a mass orgy of late that I didn't get an invite to?

I took a toilet break, and took a pregnant pause when I noticed a poster above the urinals advertising 'Christmas party bookings for 2009!'

Taking the p*** / 'avin a laugh, etc.

Yer man @comedybeard came on later in the evening. I don't think the world (or even Holborn) was ready for the revelation that he gave birth to Richard Madley (yet another preggers punch-line.) His observations on the life of a clotheshorse, not to mention trying to mend Broken Britain at least had the attention of the iPod yoof.

Comedy was once the new rock 'n roll, doncta know. Fifteen years ago and mrs obb and I were out on the comedy circuit more than we were gigging. But just like music, somehow it all went corporate. Marketing turns everything into s***.

We returned back down to the Beautiful South for an early night, £20 each lighter. Maybe comedy has a social role to fill in these times of the credit being crunched? A West End venue with a compare having more double entendres than Finabarr Saunders let loose in a sausage factory failed to blow my big comedy horn.

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Damned Lies

2009-03-29T07:23:00.004Z

Damned Lies

Sunday 29 March, 2009

Damn The Damned United. You see Brian was all about MY club. Eighteen happy years at Trentside, and anything that happened beforehand is irrelevant, especially if it involved forty-four days at Leeds United. I'm totally ambivalent to Clough pre-Forest. The D***y days didn't even happen in my personal East Midlands history lesson; the Leeds incident is nothing but a football myth.

And then along comes The Damned United, devoting ninety-seven minutes to the D***y and Leeds days, and a cursory closing frame of John McGovern lifting the European Cup, twice, with Nottingham Forest. I think the wrong film was made; the Blessed United following the Forest glory years can't come quick enough for me.

Forgetting Forest loyalties, The Damned United is a fascinating film. Sure it's fiction masquerading as fact, but the parallel story of success at D***y and failure at Elland Road is told with a gritty and comedic realism that captures the period perfectly.

Having sat through the hour and a half slush-fest of ITV's gushing Clough programme mid-week, you can see why the Clough family turned to the network to put across their sanitised version of events. The Damned United is a joint production between BBC Films and Left Bank Pictures. The irony is that even beyond the grave, Brian is still playing games with the national broadcast networks.

The pace and plot is breathless, jumping back and forth in time between the Baseball Ground *shhh* glory years, and then the arrogance of Elland Road. The two events finally collide and catch up with each other, as Clough falls foul at D***y, and finds Leeds at the perfect reason to avoid the managerial wilderness that is on offer at Brighton.

There's little in new revelations, but being a piece of fiction, you shouldn't take the sequence of events seriously anyway. It's wonderful to simply sit back and watch the endless football myths that have been forever told down the years come to life on the big screen.

Michael Sheen (Clough,) Timothy Spall (Peter Taylor) and Stephen Graham (Billy Bremner) all put in fine performances. I couldn't see beyond Chief O'Brien with Colm Meaney's portrayal of Don Revie, which added a whole new intergalactic dimension to the life of Brian.

youtube-ing classic Clough before you watch The Damned United is time well spent. It's clearly something that those involved in the film have been doing before filming started. Truth is stranger than fiction. In particular the final Clough Vs Revie showdown could have been the work of a skilled scriptwriter. But then you find out that the standoff is actually being re-enacted word for word, straight from the archives of the original Yorkshire TV clip. Classic Clough.

And that's really what The Damned United is all about. I came out of the cinema with a huge smile that lasted, oooh, all the way down Brixton Road until a car cut me up outside the Texaco garage.

Damn The Damned United.

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State of the Union

2009-03-26T18:19:00.008Z

State of the Union

Thursday 26 March, 2009

Union Street, SE1, The Way We See It.

I rather enjoyed my late afternoon leisurely stroll along Union Street, SE1, with The Way We See It this week. I actually walked from the Warren Street end of Tottenham Court Road, via an unexpected bus journey to West Hampstead (don't ask,) and then back down to around Blackfriars. Being a London flaneur could well be the future. Can't see there being much money in the life of rambling leisure.

And so I arrived at Union Street late afternoon, with the shadows starting to set across the railway heritage that cuts a sway through the centre of the street. This really is the best time of the day to experiment with photography. It's all about natural light, and finding new ways for it to manipulate and play tricks with your camera.

I had no idea that Union Street was so long. Being (temporarily) bike-less for the afternoon, I easily failed the onionbagblog WWSI challenge of a strict hour for door-to-door cycling coupled with the photography. I probably spent forty-five minutes being the young flaneur around SE1.

This was my most enjoyable WWSI for some time. The weekly discipline has helped to maintain a healthy interest in photography, at a time when audio and video have been taking me in a different direction professionally.

We're not quite at the Video Killed the ~~Radio~~ Photography ~~Star~~ bloke yet; combining my images in a slideshow presentation serves as a handy workaround (and also prevents photography thieving scum from their evil ways of the right hand click.)

Flaneur for fun!

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Cricket Notes & Queries

2009-03-25T18:19:00.004Z

Cricket Notes & Queries

Wednesday 25 March, 2009

A selection of stats / quotes pruned from the Surrey County County Cricket Club Report and Accounts, 2008, and the Surrey Members' Guide, 2009.

Phew, rock 'n roll.

'The Report relates to the Club, its wholly owned subsidiary, Kennington Oval Limited (KOL) and Oval Events Holdings Limited (OEHL) which is a subsidiary of KOL and is the joint venture between KOL and Compass PLC. OEHL was established as a subsidiary of KOL to carry the business of OEL which from 31st March 2008 became a subsidiary of OEHL.'

Blimey.

It's all about the cricket, isn't it?

'After charging for depreciation of £1,882k the Club profit was £583k before tax. The tax charge is estimated at £579k giving a profit after tax of £4k'

'The Club up to date has committed £540k for professional and legal advice.'

Gosh. Someone is playing a straight bat.

'Total attendance in 2008 was 125,323 (123,815 in 2007.) Twenty20 matches garnered 63% of the total attendances and 82% of the domestic gate receipts.'

2,075 ~~fools~~ spectators watched the County Championship match against Nottinghamshire. 19,743 ~~p***heads~~ spectators watched the T20 match against Middle! Middle! Middle! Sex! Sex! Sex!

'Style of dress within members' facilities must conform to normally acceptable standards of a County Cricket Club. Bare torsos are not acceptable.'

Glam Girly Friend, take note.

Two weeks and counting.

C'mon the 'rrey!

technorati: surrey county cricket club
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Chancer

2009-03-24T20:29:00.003Z

Chancer

Tuesday 24 March, 2009

I took a chance with Chancery Lane, WC2, a recent Way We See It location. My basic rule is that if the destination is South of the river, the bicycle ride from onionbagblog HQ II, the photography and then the return journey can just about be squeezed into a one-hour session. Every second counts, especially so if you're working from home that day and have a tight deadline.

I also rather like the added timeframe that you impose on yourself for the photography. Why waste time trying to find that perfect composition, when the clock is ticking and the pressure is on to return with three half-decent images?

And so I cycled off to Chancery Lane last Wednesday with only an hour to spare before I was required back at base for work commitments. Ah, but WC2 doesn't sound like much of a South London postcode, I hear you ask.

A quick sprint over Waterloo Bridge, around Aldwych and you're in the acceptable area of North London (and the acceptable area of North London is one where you can bugger off back down to the Beautiful South in under five minutes flat, should you take a funny turn.)

But it's all about timing. I managed four photographs this week, which is one more than was required. I was back in my office with a cup of tea and a refreshed state of mind for the afternoon shift. What I didn't have however was a rare scene of genuine photojournalism, missing out on the *ahem* Great Fire of London part II.

A few hours later and the burning embers of the Breams Building would have been within my radar. I returned instead with sun-drenched images of a historic London street, looking slightly average.

Time and tide, etc. Take a chance on me.

technorati: chancery lane, wc2
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links for 2009-03-23

2009-03-23T20:33:00.002Z

links for 2009-03-23

Lambeth ~~Lou~~ Steve

Another twittering Lambeth Councillor to add to the Lambeth Walk widget. Welcome @cllrstevereed, leader of Lambeth Council. Blimey.

On yer bike

A progressive policy from a local authority that is *shhh* appearing more progressive by the day. Give up your Lambeth parking permit, and you're entitled to a £200 bicycling voucher. A wonderful move, although much like bike insurance policies, I'm slightly weary as to where you can actually spend your bicycle voucher. I doubt if yer man Bob will be accepting it.

Holiday by mistake

The fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and I were out-priced in the recent purchase of Withnail's spiritual Penrith home. The new owner's 'not from London,' and appears to have some form of community plan for ~~Crow Crag~~ Sleddale Hall. PLUS: The Proud Galleries has a Withnail exhibition about to open up in Camden. Chin chin.

technorati: twitter, lambeth, withnail
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2009-03-22T19:21:00.003Z

Moulton Morning

Sunday 22 March, 2009

A spring Sunday morning, spent cycling around Battersea Park on the Moulton. With added jazz value.

technorati: battersea park, moulton
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Away From the SW8 Numbers

2009-03-22T10:40:00.003Z

Away From the SW8 Numbers

Sunday 22 March, 2009

You see I was going to blog about how a Saturday night out in South East London took the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and I on a four hour round trip, travelling a door to door distance of 7.5 miles. Our regular journey to Penrith takes less time (and involves less pain.)

I was going to bang on about how despite 20,000 people expected to attend a soulless enorn-o-dome on the outskirts of South East London, Jubilee Line engineering works meant that our outward journey on the dreaded 188 bus included three unannounced changes, as each driver seemingly lost interest and shut up shop.

Perhaps I should post about the return back to base, y'know, the bit where TfL decided that a solitary 188 bus every half hour would be sufficient for the mod masses returning back to civilisation from the South East London s***hole.

To put together some well thought our prose telling you how my Oyster card was then charged on seven different interchanges, taking the (incorrect) cost to over £10, may seem like not the best use of modern interweb space.

But instead I think I'll put aside my transport woes and simply tell you that Weller was (once again) wonderful. From the opening chords of Peacock Suit, to the grandstand finish of Town Called Malice, yer man more than made up for the crappy commute.

First of all, a word from our corporate cabbie sponsors: @cabbiescapital has proven that there is true value in Twitter, and that very value happens to be able to secure a couple of Weller tickets for mrs obb and I. Follow that, um, cabbie now.

Fresh of haircut (finally!) and with some new tunes to showcase, Weller's O2 show was a transition from the epic 22 Dreams of last summer on to something new. Enorm-o-dome gigs aren't to everyone's liking; I suspect Weller himself wasn't entirely happy with the corporate venue. But a BIG show was needed to wave a fond farewell to an album that dominated the past year for many.

New additions aside, the set was very similar to the Brixton shows back in December. No surprises that I cast a wry smile at my 188 woes when the stabbing chords of Shout to the Top sprung into action. I think Weller just about got away with a twelve piece all female string section, all sporting short black skirts and stockings, looking like extras from the Addicted to Love video.

Butterfly Collector and the firing of the Eton Rifles pleased the fishtail parka massive (spotted: one ace face wearing a pair of red, white and blue suede bowling shoes - TRUE!)

Much of Stanley Road was revisited, and even the mid-show acoustic noodling and dub heavy version of Wild Wood somehow made sense.

And so sometime around 1am, mrs obb and I were back at base, tired, but not broken by TfL. Watching a fifty year-old bloke strutting his stuff inside a soulless enorm-o-dome in South East London made up for the transport misery.

I hear Weller's planning some Japanese gigs later in the year. At least the travel plans should be simple to sort out.

technorati: weller
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Rolling out with VCL

2009-03-21T18:18:00.003Z

Rolling out with VCL

Saturday 21 March, 2009

There's a lot of mystique centred around cycling - much of it perpetuated by the cycling community itself. Shimano SPD's or shoeplate? 170mm crank or 190mm crank? Lycra or, um, lycra? (ALWAYS lycra!)

But really it's all about the bike. You mount, you pedal, you achieve.

Saturday morning track sessions at Herne Hill velodrome really are as simple as that. And so to take some of the mystique away from the great sport, and to hopefully encourage new riders, I decided to take my flip along to SE21 on Saturday morning.

The plan was to mount it on the handlebars of The Bastard, but I was a bit optimistic, knowing the cautious nature of the VCL coaches. Instead we have a simple Tell It Like It Is short film of what to expect at Herne Hill.

*stick with the video past the first minute - I foolishly forgot to bring along my mic wind muff*

Here's what you need to know:

You need to be inducted (or even abducted, as I think I said in the video,) 9am, Saturday morning. Track bikes are provided; wear something sporty (LYCRA! - although a trackie will do.) You won't fall off. It's all about gaining confidence during the induction / abduction.

You can then progress to the track training sessions from 10:30 onwards. These are aimed at teaching you how to ride in the pelaton, wheel to wheel, as well as race tactics. Once again - you won't fall off.

And it really is as simple to that. Membership of VCL is encouraged (a bargain price of £20 per year.) £6 a session sets you up for a Saturday morning.

To get a feel of track racing, the traditional Good Friday meet takes place at Herne Hill on... Good Friday. Come along, sample the cycling and see how there really isn't anything mysterious about cycling endless laps of a genuine Olympic pedigree velodrome.

Remember - you won't fall of.

Chapeau!

technorati: herne hill velodrome
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Chapeau!

2009-03-20T20:04:00.004Z

Chapeau!

Friday 20 March, 2009

So yeah, I've bought another bicycle, taking the onionbagblog fleet up to a current total of six. Ouch.

That can't be healthy, not only for the household storage space, but also the patience of the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger. Each to their own; I reckon her two softball bats are a bit excessive.

But this 'aint no ordinary bicycle, No Siree. I've gone back to the future and bought a totally beautiful Moulton Deluxe model from 1965. As ever, I blame Jack Thurston and the brilliant @thebikeshow.

Halfway into the Bike Show two-parter on the social history of the Moulton, and I knew I would somehow be owning one within the week. Jack puts across a genuine feeling of warmth and affection for the Moulton, correctly identifying it as both practical and stylish, yet never eulogising the Moulton machine.

You can listen to the shows over HERE and HERE, but be warned: the genuine love for all things Moulton that Jack puts across in a couple of pieces of audio is likely to have you on the hunt for a Moulton as well. I got lucky. I liked the show so much, I bought the bike off the broadcaster. I am the Victor Kiam of bicycling.

'You've just got your hands on the Vespa of bicycles,' the good Jack told me as I rolled back to base on my new machine. He wasn't joking; my Moulton started to turn heads before I even had chance to change gear for the first time.

Cycling along the Albert Embankment and I started to balance the comfort with speed. Moultons were actually used for track racing - Tom Simpson is captured on camera putting in the laps at Herne Hill.

I soon realised why the UCI decided to outlaw the unique design from competing at track meetings. I cycled along with pride, unintentionally burning off a racer boy with his latest ultra light carbon frame before we hit Vauxhall Cross. Whoops.

It's all about the physics and having a low centre of gravity and highly pressurised tyres, which make for a most pleasant ride. Apparently. I'm just the purchaser of bike Pr0n.

Here's the helpful science lesson from the (soon to joined) Moulton Bicycle Club:

'With a much smaller rotating mass of the wheels on a 'conventional' bicycle, it is possible to accelerate and brake faster.

They offer a lower rolling resistance to large diameter wheels, due partly to a smaller contact point with the road.

They are extremely stiff and much stronger than larger wheels because of the short spokes.

The aerodynamic drag is lower; there is less frontal area and less spoke area causing turbulence to slow you down.

The centre of gravity is lowered, resulting in improved stability.

The small wheels free up space normally occupied by large wheels, allowing luggage to be carried lower.'

Plus the rear luggage rack makes a Moulton the perfect ride for bicycle touring.

I've pimped my ride with the addition of a bicycle bell. Blimey. My man over at Bob's Bicycles (that will be Bob, then) is equally as excited as me. He's just finished a custom gold spray job of a Moulton Deluxe. Yer man tells me he is looking forward to getting his hands dirty poking around within. Aren't we all, Bob?

And so that's two bikes this year, and we're not even a third into 2009. Whoops. I blew my bike budget on technology last year, so I'm playing pedal catch up. Nope, mrs obb isn't buying it either, although I am slowly winning her over with the argument that the Moulton would make for an ideal ride for her about town - assuming she can ever get me off it. You can't decide if you want to ride it or look at it. Or maybe that's just me...

You can track how my Moulton and me are getting along via daytum.

Now then - following the fragrant mrs obb's strictly one in, one out bicycle household policy, anyone want to buy a Fuji fixie?

Chapeau!

technorati: moulton deluxe
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Manchester - so much to answer for...

2009-03-18T08:33:00.002Z

Manchester - so much to answer for...

Wednesday 18 March, 2009

I really couldn't get my head (or camera) around Manchester Square, W1, for a recent WWSI shoot. An overcast afternoon didn't help; my legendary poor timekeeping (five minutes flat to find three half-decent pictures) also conspired against me.

It's times like these where the means really doesn't justify the ends. Maybe I should have accepted defeat and returned with my photography pride in tact. The modern interweb is bursting with a billion crappy pictures. Adding three more to the stock pile isn't exactly going to advance the cause of digital photography.

But there's something about WWSI that is almost slightly obsessive. I've calculated that I've missed only four locations in nearly four years - and these were bunched together during the great house move during the summer of '06.

Plus it's not about perfection; it's a learning experience. Coming back with the doom and gloom of Manchester Square only inspires me to try something different next week. One thing is for sure - I think my F717 has seen the last WWSI action for some time. Too bulky, not flexible enough and a very poor colour balance for composing images.

And so much like it's Northern namesake, below is the bleakness of Manchester Square, W1.

technorati: manchester square
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Here Be Bakery

2009-03-16T09:36:00.004Z

Here Be Bakery

Monday 16 March, 2009

Build it and they will come...

It's still very much early stages for the new Di Lietos, but one of the most famous names in Sunny Stockwell is set to return. Well, to the edges of the ~~The Oval~~ ~~North Brixton~~ South Island Place, anyway.

Which just happens to be within the 'still warm bread' radius of onionbagblog HQ II. The margarine will be melting on my French stick by the time I return back to base to spread it - BRILLIANT!

Brief history: The Di Lieto family have been baking bread in Sunny Stockwell for twenty-seven years. Their previous South Lambeth Road premises are now a (half-decent) Polish food shop.

A planning application was put in to build a new bakery on the South Island Place corner of Brixton Road. The @lambeth_council planning committee originally turned down the application because of 'noise and disturbance, including fumes and smells.'

Brixton Road currently contains a cluster of crappy chicken wings style takeaways, creating fumes and smells nowhere near as pleasant as that of freshly baked bread.

The South Island Place plot of land has historically been a bakery - Schmidt's and latterly Wilson's. The original Hovis brickwork is still visible on the front of the building.

Local LibDem @cllrrobbanks stepped in, mobilising local support both online and offline, very effectively:

'We used our right as local councillors to refer the issue to the planning committee, so the final decision would be taken by elected councillors in public rather than non-elected officers.'

And thankfully the decision was over-turned.

'We hope to open within three months,' Mr Di Lieto Jnr told me on Saturday morning. 'We'll be selling a range of products very similar to the old South Lambeth Road shop.'

Plus don't forget there is also a Di Lietos cafe around the extremely bohemian enclave of Bonnington Square.

*totally unrelated to Di Lietos joke of the day: why did the baker have smelly hands? ...cos he kneaded a pooh*

technorati: di lietos
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Back in the Saddle

2009-03-14T18:34:00.003Z

Back in the Saddle

Saturday 14 March, 2009

The first track training session at le velo for the new season, and the constant threat of closure to Herne Hill didn't seem to have any effect on the number of riders. The track capacity of eighty was exceeded, but with the fragrant Tessa Jowell MP more concerned with a photo opportunity than joining the pelaton, I think we were just about safe.

The MP for Dulwich and West Norwood was wearing her Minister for the Olympics hat in SE24, as well as a cycling helmet. Not that it was needed as she balanced on a stationary track bike and did her best to look interested for the press pack. Best to look the part with so many photographers around, eh Tess?

And so what bought the Right Honourable MP down to Burbage Road early on a Saturday morning? I don't think she was there for the pelaton rotation that took up most of my time.

As you may have read in recent news reports, le velo is currently at the centre of a property postcode price tag war between @Southwark Council and the mysterious Dulwich Estate. Trapped in the middle is the future of le velo and the good folk of VCL.

With the current short-term lease held by VCL coming to a close in July, Dulwich Estate has dangled the carrot, indicating that a twenty-year extension is likely. Having this extended time frame would help VCL generate the estimated £3m funding to bring the track and clubhouse back to international racing standard.

The sticking point is a small stretch of land owned by Southwark Council. Dulwich Estate won't grant a lease until the land is sold to them, to enable 'a suitable exit to the site.' Not at all about putting pressure on the local authority to get the best buyer's price. Nope, not at all.

But property prices around SE24 tend to be rather steep, something Southwark Council understands all too well. You may remember we've been here before - four years ago to be precise.

Cycling is caught up in a political and economic battle over who runs Southwark. The local authority, or the charitable trust that owns the majority of land in the borough?

To be the local authority that closed down a sporting site with genuine Olympic pedigree as we approach 2012 would be political suicide. The problem with le velo is that it is caught between a rock and a hard place.

The level of disrepair isn't so great as to become a health and safety issue and warrant a complete closure; but the current state of the facilities aren't exactly going to attract future sponsorship and investment. The track just exists, albeit with a lot of love from VCL and the South London cycling community.

Plus there's the sheer size of the site. To bulldoze a track of 450m length of pure concrete is quite some engineering feat. Something tells me that le velo 'aint going anywhere - unlike the fragrant Tessa, who posed for the cameras and was out of the area faster than it took me to complete my first lap of the track following the winter break (which was surprisingly rather pacey.)

But at least the local MP put in an appearance. Out wonderful Mayor was also invited to show his support for grass roots sport in South London. Being the weekend and all that, Boris was probably back at his country pile.

I rather enjoyed my Saturday morning. The re-opening of le velo for the first meet of the year comes a close second to the re-opening of the lovely lido as the BEST day of the year.

The Bastard was all the better for a bit of maintenance the night before (OK - I pumped the tyres up.) I help my own in the intermediate sprints, and then put in a semi-decent performance in the 30-lap rotation race at the end of the session.

We're going all the way through until mid-October once again this season. That's assuming that Southwark Council, the mysterious Dulwich Estate and let's not forget the fragrant Tessa can all come to sort of agreement to keep track cycling alive and well in South London.

It's all about the bike - isn't it?

Chapeau!

technorati: herne hill velodrome
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links for 2009-03-13

2009-03-13T17:07:00.015Z

links for 2009-03-13

Well spotted

@shanerichmond comes up with the best use of Spotify I've seen yet - putting together playlists for Peel's Festive 50 throughout the 90's. Simply drag and drop the links into your Spotify app and hey presto, time to throw away all those C90 tapes containing the Christmas gold dust from the good man.

We are the Lambeth Boys

A great piece of social history, filmed just around the corner from these parts. A different age, but the landmark of Alford House is still up and running as a youth club around The Oval. The themes remain the same - music, girls and fast food. Time for a 2009 re-make? I think I would rather have been a teenager in 1959 than some fifty years later.

The Bicycling Shops of London Town

Note the concentration north of the river, particularly around the fixie heartland of Hackney. My pedal purveyor of choice isn't listed, and *shhh* I'm not going to tag him either (finders keepers.) And yeah - about to buy bike #2 of '09. Always blame the brilliant @thebikeshow for any new bicycling investment.

technorati: spotify, festive '50, lambeth, bicycling, moulton
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Safe as Stockwell Houses

2009-03-12T18:39:00.003Z

Safe as Stockwell Houses

Thursday 12 March, 2009

And so off to St John's Church Hall along the Clap'ham Road on Wednesday evening for the quarterly meeting of the Larkhall Ward Safer Neighbourhoods Panel. Note the use of safer rather than safe; don't have nightmares, etc.

The SNP has the practical function to support the work of the Larkhall safer neighbourhood police team. After two and a half years of in existence, the evidence suggests that real results are being met on the ground.

The meetings have an air of curtain twitching about them, but it's all positive and pro-active. With representation from the local Sergeant, this isn't the glorified policing of The Bill, but a real sense of plods on the beats, helping and working within the local community.

Membership of the SNP is open to all in the ward (or even *cough* those living on the boundary borders but who seem to spend more time in over Larkhall than The Oval ward.) This form of open democratic accountability is hard to criticise, but with the policy power that the SNP has, I couldn't but help think that ten individuals directing policing in the entire ward wasn't entirely representative.

Down to business...

Most of the agenda was taken up with Sergeant Williams giving feedback from his team for the previous quarter. No surprises that Stockwell Gardens Estate remains the main problem area in the patch. A recent sweep of the estate found firearms and class A drugs statched away in communal areas. Banning orders are in place for non-locals causing a problem; dealing with offenders closer to home isn't quite so easy.

Stockwell Gardens has a gang problem, summed up by Sergeant Williams as one which:

'...we may never solve, but we have to try and tackle.'

Gangs are kicking in the doors of empty properties, which then become used by rough sleepers. Burglaries remain stable, but the multi-occupancy nature (and access) to much of the estate means that entry to adjacent property is possible.

Burglaries within the ward are down from twenty-five in the previous quarter, to sixteen in the current. This of course all depends on the definition of a burglary; the theft of my wheelie bin was raised. Plus the crime figures don't take into account unreported incidents.

There has been a clampdown on cannabis use around Larkhall Park. Sergeant Williams observed that the majority of this came from the adjacent South Bank University.

There was also mention of the notorious Grandma's takeaway, situated opposite Clap'ham North tube. Newcomers to the area would be surprised to see a sandwich shop trading past midnight. Despite the SW4 postcode, a nut honey ciabatta is unlikely to be on the menu. But Grandma (or even Grandpa as it happens) has now expanded to become a music emporium. Except the old fella is lacking somewhat in stock.

Sergeant Williams noted that prosecution for either selling or possession (not of ciabattas) is extremely difficult and frustrating because of 'technicalities.' Meanwhile the nighttime economy continues too flout the law on the mean streets of Clap'ham.

Cannabis possession counted for the highest recorded crime in the ward for the previous quarter with 55 arrests. The second highest recorded crime was for bicycle theft, with a worryingly high figure of forty-four. It was at this stage of the meeting that my mind turned towards my Raleigh locked up outside the front of St John's...

But the work of the SNP is not all about nasty burglars or substance abuse. The Youth Inclusion Project is the preventative, friendly face of Larkhall policing. This project has been focussed around the Springfield Estate of late. The youth club at St John's has just been re-launched, and work is taking place by the local police within Larkhall Primary School. Catch 'em young, keep 'em clean.

A new initiative led by the new Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson is that of the PC Pledge. Put simply, your local plod will state what level of policing constituents can expect from the local constabulary. The concept is to 'empower communities.' The consensus in the room was that in reality, this is not achievable.

It's very easy to see the SNP as a quango of quasi middle-class liberals trying to keep South London Yoof away from their pricey SW4 property. Sergeant Williams however revealed though that if necessary, the peak policing hours that he can call upon is for a Friday and Saturday night along the Clap'ham Road when the 'night time economy' heralded by @Lambeth Council kicks off in a very real Rugger Bugger sense.

The SNP concluded with the business end of the meeting. Three achievable targets had to be put forward for Sergeant Williams and his team to focus on. Stockwell Gardens Estate and Yoof remained high on the list, joined for the next three months by a focus on the Clap'ham Road Estate. This is an area that the panel felt has been overlooked of late.

And so with a two hour meeting and a hastily hashed blog post, that dear reader is community policing in the Larkhall ward addressed for the next quarter. It really was as simple as that in influencing some form of local, democratic input towards community policing. Such a shame though that only ten people in the ward could come forward to put their views forward (and two of them were those lovely tweeting Lambeth councillors.)

Speaking of which - I was politely ticked off by @clrr_robbins for attending a meting that was borderline for my little patch of South London. Technically I didn't vote on the issues, and yeah, I still beat the good councillor home.

All Lambeth wards hold these quarterly meetings. It is your chance to directly engage with the local police and put forward your concerns or suggestions. Use it or lose it.

Evenin' all.

technorati: larkhall, stockwell, sw4, sw8, safer neighbourhood panel
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cough, croak composition

2009-03-11T18:10:00.006Z

*cough, croak* composition

Wednesday 11 March, 2009

Aldwych, WC2, The Way We See It.

'This week we're off to the 'old-settlement' - known to you and me as Aldwych. It's not been around that long - created in 1905, but a settlement has been here for much longer. It's an interesting street; crescent shaped joining The Strand at both ends and at its peak, on to Kingsway.

It's home to many famous theatres and the Waldorf Hilton. The crescent is dominated by Australia House, Bush House and the Indian High Commission - all very imposing buildings.

It's a street that has a bit of everything: architecture, people and if you're into night shooting - it's wonderful!' (as @funkturm found out...)

*plus you're guaranteed a stinkin' rotten cold if you visit for a lunchtime shoot on a balmy spring day, that will linger with you for over a week*

technorati: aldwych
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Plug & Play

2009-03-10T09:40:00.007Z

Plug & Play

Tuesday 10 March, 2009

Some services I've been playing around with of late...

Boxee

The premise is simple: a social media centre that sits on your desktop; in practise it's a little more complicated.

Having streamed content from global partners is great. It's like the iPlayer on a truly worldwide platform. The problem though is the bloody navigation. Boxee is a clumsy beast at best, pretty much unworkable at all other times.

A basic hand to mouse navigation system has worked as a successful user interface for over forty years. Why then does Boxee feel the need to confuse users with a complicated command of keyboard strokes? I can see in front of me the content I want to watch; activating it is another matter altogether. Massive FAIL.

UI aside, the selling point for Boxee is the social media aspect. You create a network of friends, and then you follow what your contacts have been watching or recommending. There's even a handy Twitter sign up tool, that will automatically send out a tweet once you have accessed some media (or not so handy, as I found out having listened to Gardener's Question Time. Not quite the cool 2.0 kid now, eh?)

Looking beyond the navigation, I enjoyed the functionality to import RSS feeds and then view these in one handy location. This means that you can bypass the big media boys, and then streamline shows from youtube, vimeo, viddler etc.

Boxee is still in alpha - and it shows.

Twitterfone

Another simple selling point: speak tweets from your mobile. And that's essentially it.

I've struggled slightly with the rather compact keyboard on my INQ1 typing out even 140 character messages. Twitterfone takes away this input pain. You simply dial into your account, speak your tweet, and then allow the voice recognition software to translate to text and automatically send out the tweet to your Twitter account.

I remember playing around with voice recognition software in the late 80's, sounding like a cross between Davros and Stepehn Hawking. Twitterfone takes away this pain (although my tweet about 'cycling in Kennington' was translated as 'fighting in Kennington.')

The tweet also auto-generates a url that takes users to a Twitterfone page that will actually play back the audio from your original tweet.

The cost of using the service is no more than the price of a local call, which all sounds rather cheap. I can't help thinking that Twitterfone is trying to build up a considerable user base, and will then become one of the first companies to moneyterize (urgh!) Twitter by hiking up the charges.

Still, a nice little tool in its current form.

Daytum

Essentially an online abacus for people who like counting occurrences. You customise your content to fit whatever irrelevant data you want to keep track of. I'm currently counting the number of lido days I have had (or not had) this year, as well as which bicycles from the onionbagblog fleet I'm rolling out with each morning.

Truly worthy statistics.

Setting up your interface is fairly simple, and data entry is easy as well. You can even update via Twitter. Spot a theme here?

But where's the interaction with other users? Without this sharing functionality, isn't daytum just Excel online? Or even a glorified version of the spreadsheet in Google docs? Am I missing something?

If nothing else, then I look forward to daytum providing me with a Lovely Lido count tipping point. The current total of 67 non-lido days compared to two lido days (London Fields and the Serpentine, natch) makes for some very depressing reading.

By my very crude mathematical calculations, the lovely lido is open for approximately 120 days of the year between May - September. This is roughly the same time frame from those nasty non-lido days of January - May.

Daytum will give me the incentive to make the most of the lido season, so that some time around the end of September, hopefully there will be a lido tipping point when I'm out of the black and into the red. Or maybe even nto the blue.

Like I need an incentive.

Like 99% of the modern interweb, daytum is totally pointless. But it passes the time of day. I've always been a more qualitative than quantitative sort of guy anyway. Never mind the length, feel the thickness. I can't see myself keeping it updated past, ooh... the weekend?

The idea of updating a feed to my blog using voice recognition, or streaming content to my iMac from US TV networks sounds like Tomorrow's World stuff. But it's all here, and it's all happening right now.

Where to next? Flying cars seem fanciful. The electric tin opener blew my mind away. Anyway, must dash - I've got a video conference call with m'colleague on the other side of The Atlantic.

Interesting times we live in.

technorati: boxee, twitterfone, daytum
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No Bike? No way...

2009-03-07T20:32:00.005Z

No Bike? No way...

Saturday 7 March, 2009

I love the idea of No Bike Week, as proposed by Jack Thurston over at the brilliant Resonance Bike Show. Thing is, I just can't see myself surviving seven days without my wheels.

The proposed concept is to subvert the patronising Bike Week themes put out by town planners, as a lazy attempt to solve the public transport problem. A bike isn't for one week in the summer - it's for life (well, until the latest sexy model tempts and teases you from within your local bike shop, anyway.)

Some may call it biting the hand that feeds - I'd call it how to isolate yourself in central London. Public transport? I'd rather walk.

My bike IS my London. Without it and I might as well be living in Wigan. Plus No Bike Week also coincides with the re-opening of le velo for an extended summer season (assuming we even make it that far, what with all the political posturing taking place.)

No Bike Week? I'd rather be celibate for seven days to be honest. Big up those taking part though. I trust you come out of your week without wheels by bingeing on all things bicycle.

Sniffing seats is allowed.

technorati: no bike week
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Serp's Up

2009-03-06T18:54:00.012Z

Serp's Up

Friday 6 March, 2009

I really enjoyed my cycle around the Serpentine, shooting away for this particular WWSI location. I haven't done the Hyde Park thing since last summer with Jacques Thurston and @thebikeshow. I used to be a regular around W1 and way out West. But then I realised that having Brockwell Park right on my doorstep was all the natural beauty I needed.

It helped that my Hyde Park visit was (un)officially the first day of spring. T-shirt weather down by the banks of the Serpentine, with what seemed like half of London taking the afternoon off and sipping coffee out by the lido.

I was tempted for a quick dip. A VERY quick dip. But the big birds got the better of me (feather variety,) and so it was back to the bike and the photography.

My hour or so spent over in West London proved that people really are transformed once the sun is shining.

I encountered more than one professional dog-walker. I assume that was the profession of choice, unless walking around London with half a dozen dogs on a lead is acceptable behaviour in Hyde Park. I thought it was all rather cheap. Moonlighting with other mutts would slightly annoy me if I had paid someone to take out my Bonzo for a bit of a walk.

The pace picked up (people, not dogs) around Bayswater Road. The countryside comes to the city swung back in favour of big business with the nearby office blocks interrupting the afternoon idling taking place elsewhere around the park.

I completed a full circle, once around the Long Water, probably the longest stretch of location that we have yet to encounter with TWWSI.

Now then – eight weeks until the lovely lido season starts proper. Come rain or shine, you’ll still be smiling.

technorati: long water, serpentine, hyde park
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Clap'ham Whispers III

2009-03-05T22:10:00.005Z

~~Chinese~~ Clap'ham Whispers III

Thursday 5 March, 2009

Ah, lookey here - the man from South London Tory Blue Central very kindly offers me a reply via email regarding the 'axing' of swimming in Clap'ham.

Interesting that @lambethnews chooses to ignore the criticisms contained within my blog posts, and decides instead to concentrate on all matters web 2.0. I'm all for geekiness, but I'm more interested in swimming. I think I was quite clear in the points I was trying to put across in the previous posts.

Anyway, yer man @lambethnews said:

'There was a 48 hour backlog on comment approval for the site because I was out of town and didn't have a laptop (annoyingly I can't get the Wordpress iPhone app to work). Usually it doesn't take that long to approve comments - rest assured they have all been approved now.

You raise an interesting point about conjecture and engagement. Blog posts on our site come from all corners of the borough and appear through Twitterfeed. The Twitter account and @replies are maintained by one person so it isn't always feasible to reply immediately and offer detailed knowledge on all issues. For instance, I am not a member of the team in Clapham Town and haven't been involved in this issue, hence the 'conjecture' yesterday.

It does raise the question of whether or not using a feed for all blog posts can be useful if you can't @reply as you'd like. I want @lambethnews to be transparent and responsive to all tweets, rather than leaving it as a press release feed. So your blog post has prompted me to give some more thought to how that can be improved. Ideally every candidate and councillor from each party would sign up, but that's unlikely.

I will summarise this on Twitter separately, but wanted to provide you with a more detailed response on the particular issues raised.'

So no explanation or back down from @lambethnews regarding the original story. Yep, that's right - Labour led Lambeth Council is indeed *still* going to 'axe' swimming in Clap'ham, according to our Conservative friends (of course they're not – Lambeth Labour are building a brand new pool.)

Still, an inner-knowledge of the mechanisms of the twitteratai over at Lambeth Tories is worth knowing. On a semi-serious note, @lambethnews does indeed make some very valid points about how local government is currently engaging with constituents via Twitter.

@lambethnews seems to give the impression of openness and a genuine desire to engage. But the hive mentality doesn't translate very well to Twitter where the personal most definitely becomes the political. What you see is what you get.

Lambeth Labour has reversed the national political trend by stealing a march online locally. Seven twittering Lambeth Councillors (and still counting) means that the views from the red side of the Borough comes from the individual Councillors, and not a collective voice. As a strategy, it all works rather well for Lambeth Labour.

The problem for @lambethnews is that Lambeth isn't exactly a blue rinse borough. The Tories would be struggling to take on Labour online around these parts through sheer weight of numbers.

Which is a bit of a shame as there is the very real danger of suffocating local debate. In place of any genuine local opposition in the Borough, it's left to either the electorate, or the odd stray LibDem Councillor to keep watch on our ruling party online.

This is exactly what happened around my ward this week. The twittering LibDem @cllrrobbanks alerted locals online about the absurd decision to prevent planning permission for the famous local name of Di Lietos bakery to return to Lambeth. Lambeth Labour was recommending a refusal of planning permission for Di Lietos at South Island Place, fearful that the 'smell of baking bread would be unpleasant.'

There are many unpleasant smells coming out of Lambeth Town Hall - baking bread isn't one of them.

@cllrrobbnaks was quick to mobilise local opinion via Twitter. The story even went offline and was picked up by the South London Press. The result was a welcome return to SW8 for Di Lietos, following a midweek planning committee meeting. I like to think that local opinion mobilised online was a factor, but in all probability, a fear of the return of the Loony Lambeth headlines was the main factor in the Council's u-turn.

You can see how having instant access to a micro-local level network online via Twitter can produce real results.

Lambeth Council itself (singular) is seeing this potential as well. Confused by a call-centre system that has more twists and turns than Hampton Court Maze? Can't afford to take a day off work and queue in the 'one stop shop' Lambeth Council customer service counter? Or maybe you just want to let the Rotten Borough know how local services can be improved?

@lambeth_council is your new twitteratai friend. It's quite a job, communicating and (hopefully) interacting with constituents in a 140-character tweet. Here's hoping the collective voice of the Council takes as well to Twitter as lb_southwark has managed.

Tip: posting up endless links to press releases does not entail twitter-quete. It's all about engaging, as @lambethnews mentioned in the above email.

And with this in mind, eyes right and scroll down once again for some New! Improved! Lambeth Walk widget action. Recent additions include @cllrrobbanks, @labourstockwell and @WeLoveLarkhall. My favourite part of the widget remains the RSS feed stripping the latest tweet referenced with Lambeth:

I got a £500 bailiff's notice from Lambeth parking dept for 3 driving (!) offences that DIDN'T happen in 2007

Having said I'm not working today due to illness, I'm now having to write letters to Lambeth challenging their £580 parking fine. Grrr.

Lambeth Council are a bunch of thieving bastards. Somebody somewhere should stop them. Sigh. I guess it'll have to be me.

The voice of the twittering electorate has spoken, and that voice sighs a collective Meh...

And here's me still trying to work out if swimming in Clap'ham has been axed or not.

technorati: lambeth, tories, labour, libdems, twitter, um, swimming
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Clap'ham Whispers II

2009-03-04T23:39:00.004Z

~~Chinese~~ Clap'ham Whispers II

Wednesday 4 March, 2009

It seems that my blog post below on swimming in Clap'ham has created a bit of a, um, splash.

@lambethnews (Tories in twitteratai disguise) took issue with my accusation that their press release didn't 'contain one piece of factual information, but plenty of rumour and conjecture.'

The Man from South London Tory Blue Central tweeted me, claiming:

'The team in Clapham Town support improved swimming facilities but are raising valid concerns about the risk of demolishing first.'

Ah, a *proper* politician's answer, from a chap who probably fancies himself as a *proper* politician. No tabloid talk this time of 'axing' swimming in Clap'ham though.

In return, I tweeted @lambethnews, asking the King of Conjecture to correct the press release making the claims. I wasn't interested in @lambethnews putting the record straight, more concerned that our Conservative friends are making themselves appear more foolish than they actually are with the contradictions contained in the presser.

No response, so I decided to leave a comment on the Tory blog, questioning the claims. All comments are in pre-mod, probably to stop mischievous sorts from posting 'S***, f***, w***, b*******s, D***y' on a Tory blog. Which would just be a bit silly. I think.

No comment approval as yet, but no worries - I took a screen grab before submitting.

Note to @lambethnews: this web 2.0 nonsense - you're either transparent or you might as well not bother. Sink or swim, etc.

I wasn't alone in being slightly annoyed by the glaring inaccuracies put out by @lambethnews in their attempts to politicise swimming. My blog post was picked up by the good @DaveHill over at The Graun, guaranteeing that the Tory story was read by a wider audience. It's rather good this modern interweb, isn't it @lambethnews?

But as ever, it's left to the local man on the Clap'ham omnibus to speak the wisest words.

Reader Geoff dropped me the following line in my inbox:

'During the last local election campaign, the previous (LibDem / Tory) coalition proposed (in a manifesto commitment, and made clear in council resolutions), that they wouldn't close Clapham Pool until a new one was built on the Mary Seacole House site on Clapham High Street.

Labour responded with an allegedly neutral site called Keep Clapham Swimming that claimed the LibDems and Tories wanted to close Clapham pool (but no mention of the promise to build a new one before closing the old one). Labour also promised, as part of the same campaign, not to demolish the pool but to refurbish it. That was quietly dropped without consultation soon after being elected.

As a long time Labour voter the whole Labour campaign disgusted me as it was full of negative campaigning and lies rather than positive truths about their own plans. What's even sadder is how effective that campaign was (being the only council in London to go against the anti-Labour swing).

So the fact that the Tories are now using exactly the same tactic back at Lambeth Labour, while equally disgusting, is hardly surprising. After all, if you're prepared to misrepresent another party's position for electoral gain, you can hardly be surprised when they throw it back at you.'

And so there we have it: swimming in the Rotten Borough is a hot political potato with more backstabbing than backstrokes. And a few mixed metaphors thrown in as well.

All I want to do is to start my day with a gentle stretch in the waters of Cap'ham, and then a shower of the short 'n curlies. Politicians have no place at swimming pools. Unless they want to join me with my Speedos each morning.

technorati: clap'ham, swimming, tories, labour, libdems, lambeth
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Clap'ham Whispers

2009-03-03T15:50:00.004Z

~~Chinese~~ Clap'ham Whispers

Tuesday 3 March, 2009

And so let's take a little closer look at the press release put out by ~~@lambethnews~~ Lambeth Tories, telling us all about how: 'Swimming in Clap'ham is to be AXED.'

Yikes.

It's got me back paddling for sure.

'Three years after fighting the last council elections on a promise to Keep Clap'ham Swimming, Labour Lambeth have announced plans to close and demolish the Clap’ham Leisure Centre in September.'

Ah, bugger. There's always Brixton.

'While Lambeth Council says that another will be built on the site...'

Eh? Hang on. So where is the great swinging of the loony Lambeth Big Red Axe of Evil? Sounds more like out with the old, and in with the new.

'...even by their own figures Clap'ham would be without a pool for at least 17 months - and many expect it to be much longer.'

Likewise, Lambeth Council could be without Conservative rule for at least 17 months - and many expect it to be much longer.

Events, dear boy. Events.

'Labour has betrayed the people of Clap'ham,' says former Councillor Bernard Gentry [PROPER Tory name...] 'They promised to Keep Clap'ham Swimming and now they are closing the pool.'

Yep, and re-building a brand new one.

'Their actions are reckless and risk leaving Clap'ham without a pool for several years,' adds Sebastian Lowe.

Um, do the sums, Seb. By your own press release admission, Clap'ham could be without a pool for seventeen months. Which by my calculations isn't even a year and a half, let alone several years.

I know @Gordo 'aint that great at economics right now, but I can only hope that those nice people at Tory central office are a little better at basic arithmetic than our local friends @lambethnews.

Look away from the Punch & Judy show, and time for some (semi) serious comment.

I have been sceptical of the Future Clap'ham project since it was first introduced way back in the day (which makes it now more of a Past Clap'ham project - plenty of pretty PDF brochures, not much action on the ground.)

Clap'ham has a lovely 33m pool; it also has a relatively clean shower and changing room area and a real friendly sense of local community. I personally see little sense in starting again with some glass box style modernism approach to architecture, and losing 8m of swimming lane. But hey - change is gonna happen.

What is risible though is crappy press releases being put out by the Conservatives, not containing one piece of factual information, but plenty of rumour and conjecture.

For all it's Future Clap'ham faults, Lambeth Council ISN'T axing swimming in Clap'ham – it's proposing to build a brand new pool. Local residents won't be without a pool for several years - Brixton is nearby.

By this logic, nothing would ever get built in the Rotten Borough. Lambeth would still be a patch of barren grazing land somewhere between London and Surrey. And you can bet that @lambethnews would still be bangin' on about how our horse troughs are being AXED (...and being replaced by running water.)

technorati: clap'ham, swimming, lambeth, knobber tories
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Thanks for the Memories

2009-02-28T19:39:00.004Z

Thanks for the Memories

Saturday 28 Februay, 2009

A charming Saturday afternoon spent at the Stockwell Memories event, staged by the quaintly titled Stockwell Village Association. I would link, but our good friends at the SVA have no web presence. As a historical society, this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. I think I did rather well though in trying to convince Mr SVA that his interests would be better served (and reached) with a basic online presence.

As has been observed around these parts on many occasions, the problem with Stockwell is one of identity. If South London were a class register, Stockwell would be the boy sitting at the back whose name everyone always forgets.

Much of this is brought about by boundary definitions. After arguing the cause for the modern interweb, Mr SVA and I debated at length the Stockwell Boundary. Stockwell Road has to be included by definition. I also prefer the old name of the O2 Stockwell Academy, which Brixtonians have since tried to reclaim as one of theirs. Stockwell Green is no longer considered part of Stockwell, whereas the boundaries of Battersea around Nine Elms are.

The rest of the afternoon was spent listening to a lecture on how to research the history of your household. Fascinating stuff, but given some of the weird finds we've discovered down in the darts dungeon, the history of OBB HQ II is somewhere I'd rather not go.

The plan was to put together a short video, documenting the afternoon, and hopefully taking the discussion online. But with Mr SVA not being web friendly, pointing my flip in his face was perhaps over ambitious. Or maybe it was just my interview technique that put the local historical types off?

I did manage however to have a brief chat with Elaine Kramer, the one-woman walking journo of SW8. Elaine puts together Home Ground, a quarterly publication on behalf of Hyde Southbank Homes. Local news stories, features and events are all included. Given the identity crisis that Stockwell encounters, it's a wonder that Home Ground manages to appears each quarter with such a fresh, localised agenda.

The conversation gets a little lost midway; an over-excited children's entertainer seems to be obligatory at these type of events.

In the absence of a SVA website, you could of course always share your own Stockwell Memories online yourself. Or even make your own memories. There is a rich story out there waiting to be told. Or even one waiting to come along.

Many thanks to Elaine for the chat. Home Ground is widely available to pick up around Stockwell (Studley Centre, Stockwell Partnership etc.) Plus there's some PDF action. Simply send an email to homegroundmagazine@gmail.com.

technorati: stockwell memories
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Tutt Tutt

2009-02-27T17:02:00.006Z

Tutt Tutt

Friday 27 February, 2009

Another Friday morning, another session spent sipping cappuccinos with the good folk of the Tuttle Club over at The ICA. With @funktum busy doing the day job thing, this was my first solo outing towards Tuttle.

Filled slightly with trepidation, I needn’t have worried. Much like the online world of social networking, there's an offline coffee club network each Friday at Tuttle helping to guide you around the room and introduce you to new folks.

A few friendly faces from my first outing, and then friends of friends became friends (and even followers,) as I spent the best part of a couple of hours talking about Boxee (more of which to come,) my social media phone (still loving) and the twittering folk over at Lambeth Council.

Plus I got to touch the machine upon which TweetDeck was built! Let me say that again:

I GOT TO TOUCH THE MACHINE UPON WHICH TWEETDECK WAS BUILT!

@iaindodsworth is clearly a very clever chappie to come up with such a brilliant Twitter app. He's also a lovely bloke to have a coffee with and ponder the potential brilliance of Boxee, but then bemoan how bloody useless the user interface is.

But yeah - I touched the TweetDeck machine.

A bit more circulating and I hooked up with other Tuttlers sharing a similar interest in online communities - not the virtual sort (valid though they are,) but the very real, physical online local communities that then become something more solid and useful offline.

Ideas were exchanged along with Twitter details. This promises to be an exciting time ahead. Creative ideas are at an absolute peak; funding clearly isn't. The challenge is how to make use of this technology to help local people who are likely to be up against it in the next twelve months or so.

Time on their hands? Bring them along to Tuttle, I say. It's all about the big conversation.

technorati: tuttle
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Lose Me I'm a Liberal

2009-02-27T00:07:00.004Z

Lose Me I'm a Liberal

Thursday 26 February, 2009

Those poor old Love Me I'm a Liberal lot over at Lambeth Council. It's saying something when even the Tory party beat you to the 2.0 modern interweb superhighway and have a Twitter account ahead of you.

But no worries; the Love Me I'm a Liberal lot are happy to rely on the good old-fashioned blogosphere. And a bloody commenting system as well.

It's all fine and dandy to have a blog-based interaction with your constituents (not technically in power, but y'know...) You also need a moderation policy as well (in fact *any* policy coming out of the Lambeth LibDems would be a step in the right direction.)

A moderation policy doesn't consist of deleting a blog post, just because a constituent has asked a nasty question that you can't answer. All I wanted to know was why the LibDems spoke against the two year freeze in Council Tax, as proposed by the ruling Labour party at the full Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

In case you missed out on the action (shameful!) then there's a helpful catch up option with (count 'em) FOUR tweeting Labour Lambeth councillors live from the chamber over on the Lambeth Walk widget.

But back to the LibDems: No worries - no one is listening anyway. If you can't do the modern interweb, then go back to yer bloody knitting.

As you were.

(Although I accept that the screen shot below was taken from my RSS reader, and not the bloody blog itself, er, which seems to be fine. But still, y'know - if you can't do the bloody modern interweb... Never let a half-decent screen grab get in the way of a cheap blog post.)

technorati: love me i'm a liberal
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In the Clink

2009-02-24T21:46:00.006Z

In the Clink

Tuesday 24 February, 2009

Clink Street, SE1, The Way We See It.

'Down by the riverside this week for a touch of old Dickensian London for you and probably one of the most trodden of tourist haunts, Clink Street.

The cobbles lead you from the Golden Hind at one end, past the Bishop of Winchester's Palace and through to the museum that stands on the location of the former Clink prison.

Burnt down in the Gordon Riots of 1780 the prison was resurrected in the 1990's to allow out of work actors and makeup artists somewhere to earn some pennies.

The street is usually fairly packed so there's plenty of action to be had, but it's also somewhat eerie and atmospheric, should you manage to get there very early or very late.'

technorati: clink street, se1
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links for 2009-02-23

2009-02-23T20:43:00.005Z

links for 2009-02-23

School dope

Smokin'...

Heads up @Londonist.

Micro-mapping

Another micro-mapping site.

Heads up @jonmhill.

And finally...

No linkage (Lambeth Council+pimping out of pools to highest bidder=bloody awful online communication strategy) but... Lambeth pools will be offering FREE swimming for under 16's as from April 1st. I hope this date isn't related to the information I was relayed. Good luck in finding a pool that is open. This deal doesn't include the Lovely Lido; officially in Lambeth, officially owned by Lambeth, but pimped out to a different contractor.

Three months and counting until my lido summer starts...

technorati: druQs, micro-mapping, swimming
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In Search of Stockwell

2009-02-22T19:03:00.010Z

In Search of Stockwell

Sunday 22 February, 2009

Following on from Tradescant Road's search for the Freeman's redevelopment in 'Clap'ham,' I thought I would ask the construction company Galliard exactly whereabouts in South London we can find this 'conservation area amid opulent tree lined Georgian terraces and Regency villas.'

Galliard's marketing bumf boasts: 'The streets of Clapham are alive and buzzing.'

Brilliant! Get me out of the Stockwell ghetto, Bruv, and point me in the direction of the 'boutiques and curios providing fascinating shopping.'

********

Hi there

I am very interested in the Galliard development in Clapham.

I went for a look around the area recently. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find the development. Could you tell me where the location is please?

Many thanks

onionbagblogger

********

The corporate communications man from Galliard came back to me with a steaming pile of Inbox corporate junk.

'A contemporary masterpiece surrounded by classical style.'

...as this picture clearly demonstrates.

There was also a rather handy radius diagram, showing me the epicentre of the 'landscaped square peppered with café's and restaurants.'

And that epicentre certainly wasn't in Sunny Stockwell. My little patch of South London wasn't name checked amongst the corporate PDF's anyway.

Looking slightly out of the inner ring and the epicentre for all the cafe nonsense isn't in downtown Clap'ham either; strange, seeing as though the whole Galliard leisure lifestyle is being sold around the 'buzzing streets of Clap'ham'

Good news though: Galliard tells us that Chelsea, Belgravia and Westminster are all nearby. Look towards the top left hand corner of the image, and you can even see that Buckingham Palace appears within walking distance. Blimey.

Brixton is literally off the radar.

I'm lost. Just exactly where can we locate the Galliard SW9 investment?

Ah, investment. Now we're talking. Digging deeper into the PDF file that my man from Galliard sent, and what have we here?

Tempting though it may sound to live out a lifestyle in a tree-lined Regency Clap'ham villa, Galliard is not interested in tempting the fine local people of SW9 into the investment. The most important document in the portfolio PDF is the one entitled income_guarantees.xml

'...our aim has always been for this tried and tested end-to-end solution to deliver profitable low risk yields from a reputable Company with an exemplary track record of success for our numerous investors.'

I think our man from Galliard is talking about making lots of wonga for you. Great to know that the shell of the building that use to be the economic heartbeat for the local area is still working to make money. I can't quite see all this income being generated remaining in the Sunny Stockwell economy.

You pay for what you get though. In these days of the credit being crunched, I feel obliged to outline to any interested ~~investors~~ readers the cost of living in the leafy suburbs of ~~Clap'ham~~ Stockwell. The northward price clocks in at £995K; this scales down to a bargain £295k for the cheapest property, a one-bedroom flat as well.

Will the inconvenience caused by the construction work to nearby properties over a two-year period be worthwhile? Will the credit crunch make the Clap'ham investment a cropper? And where the chuffing hell are the Regency villas lined with opulent trees anyway?

My corporate communications man from Galliard didn't quite answer my questions.

It's all about Sunny Stockwell, innit?

technorati: galliard, clap'ham road, sw9
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links for 2009-02-21

2009-02-21T12:47:00.003Z

links for 2009-02-21

High Fidelity

The superb spotify was supposed to simplify listening to music online. Instead, here we have a Hornby wannabe taking a photograph of his entire CD collection, and then linking each spine to the relevant track details on spotify. Fine work, fella. But... why?

*eight Spotify invites still available DM @Jason_Cobb if you are interested*

Cycling as Standard

The Standard's U-turn on all things pedal power continues, with a dedicated bicycling blog. It's all good stuff, and raises some relevant points for London cyclists. But... RSS action please!

Hopes and Fears

Nope, not a crappy Keane album, but a rather intriguing project that plays upon everyone's primary emotions.

Heads up @JazCummins

technorati: spotify, cycling, hopes & fears
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He's the rollin' stone...

2009-02-19T22:39:00.005Z

He's the rollin' stone...

Thursday 19 February, 2009

You see the thing about spending an afternoon along Baker Street is that you can't get *that* saxophone solo out of your head. And neither will you, once you have watched the photo dialogue piece embedded below. Bob Holness has got a lot to answer for. I always preferred his guitar solo on Layla anyway (yeah, right...)

And so my bike ride off to Baker Street with the Way We See It on a wet February afternoon was somewhat overshadowed with the disturbing news that Gerry Rafferty was missing.

But then a week later, and I'm putting together the dialogue piece, and the overcast black and white images of Baker Street are brought back to life with the news that Gerry is fine and dandy:

'Contrary to reports, Gerry is extremely well and has been living in Tuscany for the last six months,' reports @channel4news. 'He continues to compose and record new songs and music, and he hopes to release a new album of his most recent work in the summer.'

I think it will take something slightly more uplifting than six months in Tuscany to get dear old Bob Holness back on the sax.

You'll be singing this song when you wake up tomorrow.

technorati: baker street
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Twidget

2009-02-18T15:22:00.011Z

Twidget

Wednesday 18 February, 2009

Scroll down and eyes right for some new sidebar widget action.

As the *cough* developer, I'm calling my new tool the Lambeth Walk widget. Essentially it strips the RSS feed of the tweets sent out by the good Twitterati folk over at Lambeth Council, and then aggregates the data in one central location. If I was part of the Nu Labour Third Way persuasion, I may even be tempted to describe the tool as:

'Joining up the dots for an integrated communication platform policy. Oh yeah, for hard working families, 'n all that.'

But the Lambeth Twitterati is not all about Nu Labour Luvvies. Our Conservative friends (note the cheeky use of @lambethnews as a username) are of course placed on the top of the pile; in an online sense, anyway.

Astute observers will notice that there is a lack of yellow presence from the Love Me I'm a Liberal Lot. Just like Parliamentary seats, the hand wringers are also lacking on the local Lambeth Twitterati front.

I've positioned a placeholder for our fence-sitting friends, should a Lambeth LibDem presence ever become available. No proportional representation here - first past the post / first to sign up to Twitter rules apply. Do they even have the modern interweb over in LibDem Land?

The final tweet branded in the colours of the Twitter livery at the base of the app pulls up the latest tweet from the public timeline with a search string of 'lambeth.' It's the online Lucky Dip for the Rotten Borough.

Grouping together tweeps related in some way is nothing new; TweetDeck does this to perfection. Having the tweets embedded in a web page has great potential though. It opens up Twitter to non-users, and demonstrates the power of the 140-character post when similar themed tweets are place next to one other.

Lambeth Council can't boast many things, but the Rotten Borough is actually home to the highest number of local councillors using Twitter. This can only be good for local democracy and transparency.

Why should this matter? Well, it won't slash your Council Tax bill overnight, but it does provide the electorate with an instant form of engaging and having direct contact with their elected representatives. Ultimately it all comes down to how each councillor uses twitter. @cllr_robbins is actually rather good, and has 'fixed' various requests on my behalf using Twitter.

The good councillor has also been experimenting with live tweets from within the council chamber itself. Following endless local authority financial debates online may not be your idea of a good night in, but having an app such as the Lambeth Walk widget stacking up opposing tweets on the same subject may just bring a little excitement to local politics.

The next step if to try and convince the *not so good* corporate communications crowd over at the council to register a generic Lambeth Twitter account to become the public face of the Borough online. This needs to be implemented properly though to succeed. Simply re-tweeting press releases is not good enough; Twitter only works as a two-way process, and genuine interaction between the council and constituents is needed.

The widget itself was built using the wonderful @sproutbuilder - my online find of the year so far. The only problem I've had is that there is a size limit imposed on your work area - so no more Lambeth tweeps please, I can't fit you all on (although I suppose you could just fiddle around with the back end code, or even just build a second widget and stack it underneath.)

I quite like the idea of creating something new from other people's content. It uses their data for a different purpose from what the original intention was. Here lays the beauty of this brave new world; share and share alike, for everyone's benefit.

The app can be embedded into a variety of other social media platforms, or even into your own site. Simply add the html shown when you click on the share option.

Ultimately the Lambeth Walk widget is only of any use if the good people of the Council actually tweet regularly. Some are better than others. If nothing else, then giving them an extra platform in which to communicate with their constituents may encourage a little more twitter action.

If you're a local Lambeth councillor and you want your feed added to the widget, tweet me @Jason_Cobb.

technorati: lambeth council, twitter
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links for 2009-02-18

2009-02-18T11:51:00.002Z

links for 2009-02-18

Dongle dangle

Remember the 'officially s***e' 3 broadband dongle that gave me so much grief last summer? Looks like the knobber from the Car Phone Warehouse wasn't joking when he helpfully suggested I 'dangle the dongle out of my window' to improve reception. The latest design for the dodgy dongle Down Under allows the hardware to swivel 270 degrees to pick up a better signal. Back in the day, and the phrase 'go swivel' meant something slightly different back at school. It could equally be applied to the officially s***e 3 'broadband' dongle though.

*INQ1 still lovely though*

Labour Isn't Working

Jack Thurston provides some thought provoking debate over Nu Labour's very late entry into the brave new world of the modern interweb. For a party that ten years ago was keen to put across the image of a young, vibrant political beast, how the hell did Nu Labour manage to get so far left behind online? Playing catch up is always going to mean that you are trying to implement an online strategy when the will isn't really there.

Plus: Watch Jacques' wonderful short film all about the history of the Lambeth Estate.

Pedal power

Speaking of the @Big Clunking Fist... I can't quite see Gordo as part of the tweed cycling set. Meanwhile, Dave may tick all the correct boxes when it comes to pedal power, but there's one small thing bothering me - ah yes, the Conservative Party underneath his name in the ballot box.

Twicked

Maybe @lancearmstrong should take a look around Brick Lane market on a Sunday morning. Could this be the first case of the Twitterati catching Bike Thief Scum? I thought I came close to finding Lance's stolen set of wheel yesterday morning down by Borough market.

Holiday by mistake

~~Crow Crag~~ Sleddale Hall sells for £265k - slightly north of our original budget.

Chin chin.

And finally...

Monumental

A truly beautiful art project. Wait for the sun to come up...

technorati: 3 mobile broadband, labourlist, cycling, lance armstrong, withnail, monument
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Tea's Up

2009-02-15T23:24:00.007Z

Tea's Up

Monday 16 February, 2009

Another Saturday afternoon, another Shoreditch photo shoot with @funkturm. I'm seeing more now of my old East End pal than I did when we were both marooned deep down in a bunker somewhere along the Gray's Inn Road.

Remember Rule #1 in the onionbagblog work mantra:

Make genuine friends who will remain with you outside of all the work nonsense.

Jobs a good 'un.

And so Saturday afternoon, and @funkturm took it in his stride to show me around his part of town as part of a Way We See It photo shoot. Like a couple of eager to impress exchange students, I'm rather hesitant as to how he'll take to the return leg when I bring him back down to the Beautiful South.

But Shoreditch was certainly photogenic. The whole Hoxton scene may be about as dead and buried as our old Gray's Inn Road bunker days, but the legacy of the Bright Young Things has left an imprint all over the East End.

The good thing about shooting around EC2 is that almost everyone walking around is waiting to be discovered, dahhhling. You won't get any agro as you point your lens in the face of a pretty young thing walking by. The girls won't give you any grief either, boom boom.

In the end it was mainly graffiti-to-go for me. @funkturm resolved a potential East End conflict, by suggesting we promptly purchase a tea or two from the cafe where the proprietor was taking issue with our lens action.

PG Tips should be used as a bargaining tool for world diplomacy. Problem aborted, tea drunk and an SD card of Shoreditch's finest to cycle back to Sunny Stockwell with.

It almost took me back to the tea trolley days back at Gray’s Inn Road. Plenty of conflict there, little diplomacy.

technorati: rivington street, shoreditch, ec2
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Tuttling

2009-02-13T13:45:00.010Z

Tuttling

Friday 13 February, 2009

An interesting and most useful morning spent at the Tuttle Club, just off The Mall. Work commitments usually prevent me from attending the weekly Friday morning social media chitchat. A bit of balancing with Somehwere in SE17, and my Friday morning was free for some ICA action.

I'm not normally very good at this networking nonsense. But given that you've made the effort to trek along to Tuttle, there's no hiding in the corner and being the social media social hermit.

I needn't have worried. I didn't even get the chance to order my first Cappuccino before I was befriended by some lovely chatty people, welcoming me to the big conversation and asking questions about how I go about my work.

It should come as no surprise to find that people who operate in this space are just as social offline as they are online. It's all about dialogue, sharing and then hopefully action. This is an area of work where cooperation is key. I might not know the answer to your problem, but I bet I can find someone within the ICA who does.

It was all very informal, being passed around from one little gathering to another as we exchanged ideas and observations. It was impossible to blitz the entire room in one session, and that isn't the point of Tuttle anyway.

I made a few introductions, swapped Moo cards and then went away thinking about possible future work projects. Failing that and it was good to get out of the house and away from the constant collision of freelance / household commitments.

My video and audio content seemed to generate most interest from the few people I spoke with. Podcasting in a school seems to be a niche area. Exploiting it would be a slightly strong adjective to use, but there is definite potential in podcasting around local primary schools. It's got to be better than the day job option.

And so an all round positive first time Tuttle experience for me. I need to balance the Friday morning commitments, but I'll certainly be back. It would be great to see you there as well.

Sign up wiki over here.

technorati: tuttle
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Twignore

2009-02-11T20:35:00.003Z

Twignore

Wednesday 11 February, 2009

Follow on effects from using Twitter:

(i) Neglect of RSS feeds. All linkage now comes through Twitter.

(ii) Neglect of email. All correspondence now comes through Twitter.

(iii) Neglect of blog. In-built mechanism for all blog posts now set to <140 characters.

Solution?

Shut down RSS reader, email client and... blogging platform?

@Jason_Cobb

technorati: twitter
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