Monty Cheesewick's Guide to Essex

01/08/2026

Is it pitchfork time?

When a newspaper prints THAT headline beneath an image apparently recovered from the final breakfast served before the sun was repossessed, one begins to hear the faint metallic clatter of agricultural implements being removed from sheds.

The Times belongs to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, a colossal offshore ventriloquist’s dummy through which dead empires continue shouting at kettles. Every morning, it lowers a fresh bucket into the national subconscious and brings up something pale, furious and frightened of wind turbines.

Much of the British press is owned by billionaires who live elsewhere, pay allegiance to nowhere and regard the country chiefly as a damp laboratory containing voters. From distant marble bunkers, they instruct us which neighbour is stealing our future, which minority has eaten the moon and why breathable air is a dangerous luxury invented by Brussels.

Then comes the headline:

NET ZERO RISKS BLACKOUTS

Beside it, an image suggesting that one more solar panel will cause the pylons to molt, the hospitals to fill with moths and King Charles to communicate exclusively through a dead refrigerator.

Questions must be asked.

Large questions.

Questions with antlers, wet shoes and no reflection in the mirror.

Because when billionaire newspapers repeatedly depict clean energy, functioning lungs and the continued survival of the species as a sinister plot by tofu, it may indeed be pitchfork time.

Not for violence.

Merely to lift the carpet and discover what enormous, whispering organ has been feeding beneath British public life all these years.

14/07/2026

The most terrifying thing in the world:
a train toilet with the lid down.

13/07/2026

Heritage Live has cancelled all its concerts because of financial difficulties, which is sad, although anyone who has attended one may have noticed that the entire business model appeared to depend on preventing people from bringing in a £3.40 Tesco meal deal and then selling them a wet disc of cheese for the price of a minor dental procedure.

You arrive at the gates of a stately home full of hope, carrying only a light waterproof, a blanket and perhaps one discreet emergency Mini Cheddar. Folding chairs are banned, presumably because someone once used one to storm Belvoir Castle or attempted to sell unauthorised lumbar support inside the perimeter.

Within seconds, you are intercepted by six fluorescent marshals and a retired prison sniffer dog called Beverley.

“Any food or drink, sir?”

“No.”

“What’s that in your pocket?”

“My inhaler.”

“We’ll be the judge of that.”

You are then frisked beside an ornamental urn by a man with an earpiece who suspects you may have secreted a chicken and bacon sandwich inside your lower spine. Your bag is searched for apples, bottled water and dangerous homemade couscous. A cereal bar is discovered beneath a cardigan and removed using specialist tongs.

One woman ahead of me was found to have three grapes wrapped in kitchen paper. She was taken behind a temporary screen and has not been seen since. Her family still leave a small punnet at the gate every July.

Once safely stripped of all personal nourishment, you are released into the Heritage Live Food Village, which consists of a horsebox selling “artisan pizza”, a converted ambulance dispensing gin and a wooden hut where a young man called Casper pours room-temperature rosé from a plastic bladder.

The pizza costs £16.50 and has the texture of a damp loft hatch. Its centre is liquid, its crust could be used to restrain livestock and the cheese departs in one piece when you take the first bite, striking you on the chin like a hot flannel.

There may also be a “loaded fries” stall, although the fries are mainly loaded with disappointment and a pale orange substance resembling the sealant around a Travelodge bath.

The wine arrives in a flexible cup which collapses slightly when held, forcing you to support it with both hands like an injured dormouse. It tastes like Blossom Hill diluted with the water from a vase of garage forecourt carnations. A second glass requires remortgaging the east wing.

Payment is card only, except at the one stall where it is token only. Tokens can be purchased through the Heritage Live app, which requires a password containing one capital letter, one number, a medieval rune and the maiden name of your first geography teacher.

Mobile reception disappears the moment you reach the front of the queue.

A volunteer called Martin then directs you towards another queue, which is not the queue for tokens but the queue to join the queue for tokens. After forty minutes, you are given a wristband indicating that you are over 18, despite being 53 and visibly carrying reading glasses, blood-pressure tablets and a packet of Rennies.

With folding chairs prohibited, the general public must lower themselves onto the ground and remain there like survivors of a light aircraft incident. There are a few hay bales, but these are mostly inside the VIP enclosure, where wealthier concertgoers enjoy a moderately less bad version of the same experience.

VIP guests are permitted to sit on straw, buy the identical wine from a shorter queue and use a toilet containing slightly fewer signs of livestock. They are separated from everyone else by a waist-high barrier and the shared understanding that they paid an extra £85 to be inconvenienced at greater altitude.

The concert itself takes place somewhere beyond a forest of heads, picnic blankets and men wearing large straw hats shaped like civic buildings. You cannot see the stage, but occasionally a coloured light moves across the side of the house and everybody cheers because they believe it may be Richard Ashcroft.

Between acts, a recorded voice reminds you that outside food and drink are prohibited. This announcement is made while two security guards eat sandwiches from foil behind a barrier.

The toilets are situated in a distant valley beyond the gin ambulance. The men’s area contains grey plastic urinals arranged in small circles so that relieving yourself requires staring directly into the face of another man doing exactly the same thing.

Nobody knows where to look. Looking down seems intrusive. Looking up feels theatrical. Looking sideways means making eye contact with a third man who has already chosen you as his emotional anchor.

You therefore stand in a ring of six strangers, urinating communally into a plastic flower while silently studying one another’s expressions. It resembles a team-building exercise devised by the Dutch navy.

One man attempts a polite nod. Another stares into the middle distance as though remembering Dunkirk. Somewhere in the circle, a phone rings.

Beside this is the queue for the cubicles, composed almost entirely of women clutching themselves and advancing at the speed of a planning inquiry. Some have been there since the support act. Friendships form. Governments fall. Children are conceived, born and sent to university before anyone reaches the front.

Every few minutes, a woman emerges from a cubicle with the stunned expression of somebody who has seen the machinery beneath civilisation. The door closes behind her and the next person enters carrying tissues, hand sanitiser and a small religious icon.

There is always a heritage element, although it mainly consists of not being allowed near the heritage. The house is roped off. The gardens are closed. The lake is behind metal fencing. You spend the evening sitting on a coat beside a generator, looking at the silhouette of a listed chimney while a man in a tabard shouts, “Keep moving, please.”

Last year I saw the Manic Street Preachers. The year before, Suede. Both were excellent, once you had survived the preliminary ceremony of surrendering your crisps, purchasing a £9 cup of pink vinegar and folding your legs beneath yourself until circulation ceased below the knee.

I had hoped to see Leftfield this year. But I could not face another evening being searched for illicit hummus, financially disembowelled by a pizza van and then made to sit on historic gravel while holding a collapsing beaker of wine between my knees.

There comes a point when even Leftfield cannot justify being treated like a smuggler at a garden centre.

Perhaps Heritage Live’s difficulties were not caused by a lack of demand for live music. Perhaps people simply became weary of paying a booking fee, transaction fee, parking fee, heritage fee, blanket inspection fee and atmospheric dusk supplement, before being told that their bottle of tap water represented a commercial threat to a converted shepherd’s hut.

The music was live.

The heritage was visible in the distance.

The VIPs had hay.

The rest of us were arranged in circles around a grey plastic urinal, staring into the eyes of a stranger called Keith.

13/07/2026

A bird is worth two hands in a bush.

13/07/2026

You’ve made your lie,
now bed it in.

12/07/2026

You can't trick an old teach with new dogs.

21/06/2026

**BUY THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY BEFORE ESSEX BECOMES TOO POWERFUL**

At last, the county of Essex has been explained by a man with no authority and only a partial understanding of dual carriageways.

**Monty Cheesewick’s Guide to Essex** is now available from the respectable book-vending pipe at Lulu for a little over £15, which is less than a disappointing lunch in Chelmsford and considerably more nourishing if you chew the spine.

Inside, you may find towns. You may find marshes. You may find Basildon behaving like a civic cheese dream. You may encounter Maldon, Southend, Frinton, Harlow, Saffron Walden, and other settlements that were clearly assembled during a power cut by men in brown shoes.

This is the ideal book for:

- People who live in Essex and suspect imminent small boat invasion
- People who do not live in Essex but wish to understand why it keeps appearing in television documentaries wearing Lynx Africa deodorant.
- Relatives who require a Christmas/birthday/funeral present but have already received socks, chutney, and emotional distance.
- Anyone who has ever looked at the A12 and thought: “Yes. This is probably what civilisation meant.”

Buy it here, before the estuary reclaims your mind:

https://www.lulu.com/shop/monty-cheeswick/monty-cheesewicks-guide-to-essex/paperback/product-2mejmp9.html?q=essex&page=1&pageSize=4

**Monty Cheesewick’s Guide to Essex**
A book. A warning. A municipal hallucination in paperback form.

Right, pop on your ceremonial flip-flops and take my moist little hand, because we’re going on a tour of Essex so thorough it’ll rattle your pancreas like a maraca in a lift. This is not a guidebook; it’s a laminated premonition with gravy on it. If you’ve come for sensible maps and opening ...

07/06/2026

Toilet graffiti

01/06/2026

The Mega Mind Goldfish.... aquatic philosopher and suspected council official.

The Mega Mind Goldfish does not swim - instead, he .... a r r i v e s.

He comes round the plastic w**d like a retired magistrate entering a Wimpy in 1978, all forehead and authority, wearing his great custard brain-bonnet like he’s just remembered the PIN number to Atlantis. His body is orange, white and ceremonial, as if someone has dropped a satsuma into a wedding dress and taught it minor telepathy. He has the look of a fish who knows where the spare teaspoons have gone.

Every morning he rises from the gravel kingdom with the slow pomp of a tiny pope, lips pursed in judgement, fins trailing behind him like damp legal documents. The bubbles whisper his name: "Professor Nibnib Blenkinsop, Senior Lecturer in Flake Theory and Municipal Water Feelings".

Other fish merely eat flakes, but Mega Mind Goldfish consults them. He approaches one flake, examines it from seven philosophical angles, then hoovers it into his little pink trumpet-mouth with the grave solemnity of a man signing off a bypass.

Some say the great padded dome on his head is not flesh at all, but a meeting room. Inside it sit twelve smaller goldfish in cardigans, debating tank policy.

- "Item one," says the Chairfish. "The plastic plant remains suspicious."
- "Item two," says another. "The human has returned with the light rectangle."
- "Item three: why are we wet?"

And then he turns. Slowly. Majestically. His eye fixes you through the glass.
And he knows... He knows about the biscuit tin.... He knows about the thing you said in 2009.... He knows you once pretended to understand mortgage-backed securities.

Then, having delivered judgement upon all terrestrial nonsense, he waggles his glorious shredded tail and floats away, leaving only bubbles, mystery, and the faint smell of a leisure centre changing room.

The Mega Mind Goldfish is not a pet, but he is a wet oracle in a tangerine dressing gown.

28/05/2026

Brian, 39, is looking for Friendship, which is brave, because his profile reads like a hostage note written by a v**e pen during a custody hearing.

He begins: “U know I’m so tired of women,” which is always the traditional opening gambit of a man who is absolutely ready for tenderness, mutual respect, and perhaps a shared Costco membership.

Then comes the central thesis: women say they want conversation and consistency, but apparently do not provide it — unlike Brian, who has demonstrated consistency by remaining furious from the first word to the last, like a microwave full of wasps.

“IF WE FACETIME LOOK LIKE YO MF PICTURE!!!!!”

A fair request, delivered with the calm restraint of a man trying to land a helicopter inside a Waffle House.

There is something almost beautiful about the structure. It starts as a dating profile, becomes a customer-service complaint, then mutates into a town-crier announcement from the Republic of Bad Dates. By paragraph two, punctuation has fled into the woods and is living off berries.

And then, magnificently, the profile category remains:

Friendship.

Friendship with Brian. Lovely. You meet for coffee. He arrives already shouting at a chair because it “looked different on FaceTime.” The barista asks for his name and he yells “CONSISTENCY” into the syrup pumps. A muffin files a restraining order.

He also has kids, which means somewhere there may be a small child asking, “Daddy, why is your dating profile written like a bin fire learned Caps Lock?”

The whole thing has the romantic energy of a man standing outside a nail salon at midnight, holding a ring light, demanding documentary evidence that everyone’s cheekbones are structurally honest.

“Save us both time,” he says.

Finally, a point of agreement. Consider the time saved. The minutes preserved. The hours rescued from Brian’s emotional combine harvester. Swipe left and live long enough to enjoy soup.