onionbagblog

Managed to get the Moulton up College Road and towards Crystal Palace. This feat alone deserves a gold medal #

Queues almost the length of a half marathon to get in at Crystal Palace. Crap #

Meet ‘n greet the athletes turns out to be a nasty corporate tent with the sole aim of athletes saying Adidas as often as possible #

Taken up seats, right by 100m start. Hope Mr Bolt hasn’t been dining at NY Burger stall. Wheelchair 1500 in progress #

WTF are Mcains doing sponsoring an athletics event? Women’s 400m heats up next. Not much sign of crappy chips as running fuel #

Cripes - we’re sitting within striking range of the shot put. Trying not to catch the gaze of a rather muscular Russian female #

Evergreen Christian Malcolm up in 200m. Blimey. Whatever next? Seb Coe at Crystal Palace? Careful what you wish for #

Oh dear. Shout just gone out for a medic to the shot put area. Asafa Powell warming up in front of us #

I was going to model myself on a 1500m runner. Dr A has just turned up with a jumbo hot dog, so shot put build, here we come #

Absolute stroll for Powell in 100m heats. Mr Bolt’s up next, and he stretching out right in front of me. Blink and you’ll miss it #

Three false starts, and mild panic from promoters that he wouldn’t make it, but yep, Usain Bolt is through to the final #

Ah, bollocks. That knobber Sebastian Coe is pruning around Crystal Palace #

Sand pit being raked at Crystal Palace. Hop, skip & jumpers are getting very excited #

Shot putters must be capable of one hell of an orgasmic roar. And that’s just the women #

Bloke sitting next to me at the athletics is sloshed. He must be about 85. Bless. Loving the long jump #

Just been revealed that medic for shot putter was to attend winning male. Steward dropped shot put on his foot. Whoops #

Skies beginning to bruise, with 100m final just around the corner. Fantastic finish to 5000m race. Should have brought my running shoes #

Women’s 4x100m relay. Quadruple the talent on show, so to speak #

So you break a British record in the pole vault, and you get given a big cheque made out in dollars. Gee whizz #

Right, we’re almost at the 100m final. Much excitement. Want to audioboo it, but Dr A said I will sound like a right knobber #

Bolt is dancing away on the starting blocks #

Full flickr set over here.

Another Friday morning, another regular Tuttle Club meet up, give or take the odd three-month lapse in my coffee and carrot cake with London’s social media hub.

Whoops.

I’ve missed out on Tuttle for some time now. Just as one Friday freelance project came to an end, another time specific one started. Tuttle is a very loose, free form type of club. The one rule is that Tuttle meets every Friday. But even a freelancer has to earn.

And so with a rare window in my weekly routine, I cycled off to the ICA on Friday morning for a coffee and a catch up with the lovely folk of Tuttle. Although not exactly a regular, it was as though I had never been away.

Despite all your fancy social media tools enabling greater cooperation amongst the crowd, you still can’t control the English weather. Mid-July, and Tuttle for this week had been deemed an outdoor, al fresco event, held just down The Mall at St James’s Park.

Having rendezvoused with @darryl1974 and @funkturm, the rain chose to descend upon central London. We spent the best part of five minutes trying to decide if a bunch of German teenage backpackers were the new, zestful face of Tuttle. Turns out they were just as lost (and wet) as we were.

No worries - when in doubt, descend on the familiar ground of the ICA. Tuttle was in full flow, and within minutes I was talking with a complete stranger about the potential crossover within the fields of psychoanalytic study and technology. That’s not normally a conversation you have down the Dog ‘n Duck on a Friday night.

I needed the offline inspiration for a particularly painful online project that I am currently having some problems with. Working remotely has great benefits, but isolation is not one of them. Sometimes you just need a fresh perspective, a friendly chat and some inspiration with where to go with the project next. Thankfully I found that renewed vigour within the ICA on Friday morning.

I didn’t get to do the meet ‘n greet with a great deal of other Tuttlers. The rain had slightly dampened my mood, and I was feeling slightly *shhh* unsocial at a social media meet up.

But Tuttle is what you make of it. In many ways it is like the underground parties I occasionally attended in the mid ’90s; you pull up to a complete stranger, ask them what their online ID is and then take it form there. Thankfully the ketamine wasn’t in action at the ICA.

Other chats followed, with a new pal who seems to balance marketing with development. He can roll out systems, and then market them himself. Perfect sense.

With work calling later in the afternoon, I made my Tuttle exit shortly after lunch, feeling better for having made a slight effort, although weary that I wasn’t exactly on fighting form.

There was quite a buzz within the ICA, and the most in demand person is always mien host, the lovely Mr Tuttle. I was therefore pleased to find the most social, social media man in London, taking some time out for himself on the steps leading down to The Mall as I departed.

He seemed justifiably pleased that another successful morning of Tuttle was coming towards an end. Enabling individuals to share their work and ideas together must be a very rewarding experience. I’ll try not to leave it three months again before I’m next Tuttled over.

Each day, at precisely 3:30, a rather peculiar looking gentleman parks his slightly tawdry sports car outside my house, opens the back door and lets his dog out for a bit of a run around.

I don’t live in a particularly green and pleasant part of SW8, and I most certainly don’t live opposite Battersea Dogs Home. The pavement outside is part of the public highway, but unless the rather peculiar looking gentleman actually lives inside his car, then I presume so is the pavement outside of his property.

The pooch probably doesn’t get through more than half a tin of Pedigree Chum per day, and so we’re not talking a Turner and Hooch size mutt. But the tail wagger still squats and defecates in the great outdoors, which according to the rather peculiar looking gentleman, is deemed to be right outside my front door.

Each day at precisely 5:45, a rather lard arse lady parks her old banger outside my house, pauses to eat the final doughnut out of her daily pack of five Krispy Kreme’s, and then waddles away for the evening, leaving her old banger looking a bit of an eyesore outside my property until the morning.

I don’t live in a particularly green and pleasant part of SW8, and I most certainly don’t live inside an NCP car park. The road outside is part of the public highway, but unless the lard arse lady actually lives inside a Krispy Kreme doughnut factory, then I presume so is the public highway outside her house.

The lard arse lady has a parking permit for the local area, even though her actual home is a ten minute waddle away (I once followed her to find out where she was heading with her oversized shopping bag stuffed full of junk food. It was the slowest walk I have undertaken since I mistook the sandpaper for toilet paper following a midnight trip to the toilet.)

It’s true that I’m sounding like a Sunny Stockwell version of Victor Meldrew, but I can’t see why the rather peculiar looking dog walker, or the lard arse lady, can’t go about their business somewhere slightly closer to home. Their home.

How would they like it if I carried out advanced Moulton mechanics outside their front gate? Or maybe if I harvested the compost from my wormery whilst sitting on their front doorstep? Or perhaps even parking up my deckchair to top up my tan on the public pavement within direct view of their front window?

There are enough nutters around here as it is. We don’t need a rather peculiar looking gentleman, or a lard arse lady lowering the tone of the area. That’s what the weirdo with his bike mechanics and sun tan obsession is here for.

For the time being, anyway.

Heads up to @stockwellnews for the doing the digging and finding out why a fake shop front has been built in its entirety outside The Oval tube. As per usual around these parts, my little patch of South London is being pimped out as a filming location for the meeja dahhhlings.

Scenes for London Boulevard, a gangster movie starring Ray Winstone, Kiera Knightley, Anna Friel and David Thewlis are being filmed just where Hanover Gardens meet Clap’ham Road at the Oval.

And so a different day, same old film shoot (although at least the edgy, urban environment isn’t being used to film The Bill, as is usually the case.)

If you fancy a chance SE11 encounter with Mss Knighley, a half pint of lager shandy at the nearby Greyhound may be a good starting point. This is where the assembled caravans of the film crew are currently parked.

If you don’t manage a tete-a-tete with a genuine A-lister, then you’ll probably be stuck with an afternoon with the grim-faced security guy geezer, who hasn’t shifted from his post in the past twelve hours. I don’t think the bib-wearing Chuckle Brother is the leading support actor, either.

As for the shop front itself - is it permanent? One would certainly hope not, seeing as though it adds little architectural significance to an area not exactly know as an outpouring of aesthetic value. But it is very real, built out of y’know, proper bricks, ‘n all that.

I was impressed with the authenticity, if not the artistic taste. The mock computer repair store even has pretend (I think?) postcards in the window, advertising the ‘specialist’ services of a selection of local ladies. Blimey. That’s what happens when @lambeth_council pimps out your local pavement.

Speaking of which - I presume some money changed hands for the venture? And where exactly is that money then channelled? Hopefully in the direction of the locals who have been inconvenienced for the past couple of days. A bunch of camera shy A-listers taking refuge in a grotty caravan outside an even grottier backstreet boozer is a right pain in the backside.

Ah, yes - the laborious nature of shooting a film; 99% of your time is spent bitching backstage, with the remaining time being spent being a bitch in front of camera. It’s a pain-staking slow process, and all for what? A few minutes for a crappy gangster flick with some A-list slapper, who can’t wait to bugger off back to West London.

You could make a film about it.

Sloane Street, WWSI.

A bit of a fashionable street this week. Forming the border of Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Chelsea, we have the street that brought us the Rangers.

Sloane Street has just about every shop that you could never afford to go in. But sickening richness aside, it also has some rather wonderful dutch style architecture most of which were built by Earl Cadogan, who gave his name to the infamous Cadogan Hotel.

Lillie Langtry lived here for some time. It was most famous for the arrest of Oscar Wilde in 1865.

A wee visitor in the early hours, and I knew it was time to buy a mousetrap. I’m surprised we’ve survived so long living in London without the need for such a device.

You’re never more than 5mm away from a human size rat, etc, but the most rodent action we’ve ever had living in two Victorian properties over a fifteen year period is a suspected dead squirrel underneath the floorboards by the fridge. And that turned out to be nothing but spilt milk. Not worth crying over…

And so I set off early on Wednesday morning in search of a mousetrap in South London. Given the number of dirty rats around these parts, it can’t be that difficult, can it?

Heading out for the first time since Thursday… to buy a mousetrap #

The various Brixton Pound Stores around the market stocked the traditional Tom ‘n Jerry style entice ‘em and splice ‘em nail through the forehead variety. Effective, but they played upon my liberal sensitivities. Plus I didn’t want to wake up with splattered mouse membrane the following morning.

Now then - humane or inhumane mouse traps? How evil do I feel? Think of the Mozza fans… #

A trip down Acre Lane, and I soon remembered the delights of local hardware emporium, Clap’ham DIY. It does what it said on the tin - this is a *proper* hardcore hardware store, with the lovely owners even wearing brown aprons, and not in an ironic Shoreditch style, either.

The fragrant mrs onionbagblogger had insisted on a humane mousetrap, although why I’m buying a humane device for a rodent, I fail to understand. Shouldn’t that be rodane? And what’s so wrong anyway with a good old fashioned bang to the head with a wooden rolling pin?

I came out of Clap’ham DIY with a device that looks more like a pet mouse home, complete with a fancy stairwell and feeding tray. I want to catch the little creeper, not entertain it at a 5 star mousetrap, all at my expense.

Clap’ham DIY Centre, Acre Lane - what a lovely local business. Only shop I could find selling humane mouse traps. Now to catch my lunch… #

The instructions state that the trap is:

Safe for pets.

Eh? Stray rodents are a nuisance and are not to be encouraged to outstay their welcome. Or maybe it means that the family pet mouse is safe to play around in the trap, whereas the nasty wild rodent will get an altogether different welcome if he tries to unpack his suitcase in the 5 star snare?

But at least I won’t be splitting up the family - the contraption is:

Suitable for a family of four.

Fantastic! I would hate to think that I’m offering a sub-standard accommodation for would be cheese thieves. Similar size properties over in Docklands would actually sell for a six-figure sum, and not the £7.35 that I was charged by the lovely local Clap’ham DIY store.

Mousetrap set. Twiddling my moustache and waiting… #

And so the trap has been laid (room service, et al) and all I can do now is wait until it’s time for the good Colonel Abrahams to make an appearance.

The instructions advise me to:

Release the rodent at least 1km away.

I’m tempted to post him straight back through the letterbox of the house next door, which I suspect with their poor levels of hygiene, is where the mouse first made his nest.

Mousetrap update: cheese untouched. Starting to feel slightly peckish myself. #

With a reusable mousetrap now on tap, I’m happy to make the bed each evening and allow my little friend to having a rolling check in / check out policy. Any funny business and it’s a swift bang on the head with a rolling pin.

That’s all, folks.

I’m trying to become a jazz nerd. I’m not sure if listening to random acts of brass blowing whilst still suffering from pig sickness is a wise idea. Maybe the trotter-induced indisposition is behind my inspiration to come across like something of a character from the Fast Show? Either way, all that jazz is giving me a right old headache.

I’ve downloaded the New Yorker’s 100 Essential Jazz Albums in its entirety. I’ve become stuck at #6 and Fletcher Henderson’s Tidal Wave. If this is the sound of an epoch defining musical genre, then Dumb and Dumber deserves an Oscar for intruige and storytelling.

Jazz has a reputation for freethinking, liberal acts of indulgence. Speaking as someone who found U2′s transition from fake delta blues rockers to post-modern pop art pranksters something of an issue, maybe I’m just not open up enough to embrace this seismic change in rhythm.

The BIG PROJECT of an anticipated rather large lifestyle change over the next few years started me off in search of my personal jazz odyssey. I had visions of building up my own jazz library in the reading room, surrounded by dusty political memoirs, and passing away my years slowly morphing into a slightly less liberal version of Ken Clarke.

But if this means that listening to Broooce and wearing lycra is something of a jazz-fusion faux pas, then you can stick yer Hush Puppies right up your federalist freefall state.

Lessons learnt from my (limited) immersion in the jazz lifestyle have been mixed. Louis Armstrong can’t but fail to raise to a foot tap (although a five CD box set is stretching it a bit. I tried to match the facial distortions of the New Orleans trumpet blower as I listened along. By the end of Disc 2 I looked like I was overdosing on an incredibly big bag of gobstoppers.)

Bessie Smith doesn’t quite sound as good as her name suggests. Plus the download I’ve got my grubby hands on is recorded in mono, which doesn’t sound very jazzy at all.

I’ve got high hopes for the Count Basie box set that is scheduled to see me through to the other side of my pig sickness. It’s nothing to do with the musical delights on offer, simply that come the end of the good Count’s fifth CD, it will be time for my next dose of tamiflu, necked down with a heavy does of the hallucinogenic Night Nurse.

I’ll come up smiling by the time the New Yorker recommends I play some Charlie Parker. Ah, now there was an artist who knew how to handle his Night Nurse.