Big shout to all the bus and train spotters out there! This Sunday grab yourself a shortwave platform ticket and hop on aboard CTRN via WRMI at 2200 utc on 9395 kHz for some locomotive classics.
Below is an old CTRN from last year with all sort of railway tunes including a mix from One Deck Pete at 40 minutes in called “Off the rails”.
Here’s the track listings:
Instantly Distant: Samples, Foley and Field Recordings – Bank Negara Station The Lamplighters – London Station
Commodore 98 – Mind the gap (interlude) Dennis Brown – Westbound Train/Version Dub Syndicate – Night Train
Cheers to everyone who have been sending us recommendations of accordion tunes over the last week or so on Twitter coinciding with our two WELK transmissions.
Thanks to CatfaceMcMeowMeow for sending us two tunes, the first from Patrick Wolf called Pigeon Song. This isn’t a million miles away from us here at SE23 as it seems he may be from the parish of Brixton. Good tune!
And we love this one from Red Elvises called Memoirs of aPhuket Geisha. Brilliant! Thanks CatfaceMcMeowMeow!
Steve Barker from the great On The Wire radio show played a track off this LP by PaulineOliveros the other week. Great cover by the way and what a smart accordion!
And also thanks to Mark Paytress for suggesting these two which contain some serious squeezebox. The first is from Melanie called InThe Hour which features some nice bass playing too.
And also this one Back Street Girl from The Rolling Stones. Cheers Mark!
And this tickled us the other day, an example of that well-know thing Air Accordion, brilliant stuff and we love his smile!
And there’s even a bit of squeezebox in this one from Rod Taylor called Lucifer.
Last night’s transmission of WELK 2 is now online below featuring all sorts of squeezebox tunes and includes One Deck Pete‘s “More squeezeboxes on shortwave” mix at 20.58 featuring tunes from Ellis Island Sound, Nijim, Danijel Zambo, Yanga and Dubskrollz.
Another adventure into accordions this evening on the shortwaves. WELK 2 is broadcast this evening on 9395 kHz at 2200 UTC thanks to the good folks at WRMI.
It features a mix from One Deck Pete at 21 minutes in called “More squeezeboxes on shortwave” featuring tunes from Ellis Island Sound, Nijim, Danijel Zambo, Yanga and Dubskrollz. Tune in for something a little Lawrence Welk-like this Sunday evening.
It’s going to be hot this forthcoming week, we’re looking at nearly 30°C in SE23 and we think the garden is going to enjoy it. So get the watering, weekly feed and any fiddling with a hoe out of the way early and then park yourself in the shade and enjoy the weather.
The courgette/zucchinni plant we stuck in a pot as we couldn’t find any space (above) is doing well, giving us some nice flowers. The area around it with the raised beds of potatoes (below) are also on their way but impatient as we are, we keep looking around the plants and still only getting golf ball sized spuds.
The one raised bed of tomatoes are now setting fruit and we’re checking that there’s no side shoots forming and tying the main stalk to the support canes when we remember.
And on the wildlife tip, we’ve put another “pothole pond” down the wild bit (below) after being influenced by Bill Shimmers’ great pond here. We stuck some wood leading into the water after Bill mentioned in his reply of our effort on Twitter. “Any water body adds extra wildlife habitat to a garden. One thing I always include, any steep sided ponds need a sloping shelf or ramp to allow critters to get out as well as in. Stones or branches will do.” Our one is not exactly steep but we’re including the sticks to add further disguise to the former B&Q product container.
And in our main pic this week are the inhabitants of our pond, well part of the mob that are in there at the moment. And the big question is where do they disappear to? Enjoy this great weather when pondering on that thought.
Cheers to our good music/gardening/radio friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending us some great reading on Hugelkultur, this time on the greatly named Druids Garden (which has no affiliation to Ken Barlow sadly) site here.
We’d never even heard of the system before he told us about it a while ago but it’s looks well interesting and if you can get your hands on some logs, you’re in!
A big thanks to our good gardening mate Gerry Hectic for sending us pictures of the story so far in his garden. Loving the runner beans in the pot with a trolley from Aldi at the bottom so it can be moved around to catch the maximum of sunlight. Our other good friend Phil Harmony in Berlin used to also use that idea on his balcony for his veg growing. As The Merton Parkas used to sing “You need wheels”.
The peas and tomatoes look great too! Just water them daily and add a weekly feed, all will hopefully be grand! More pics of your progress in a few weeks please Gerry!
Now some of the flowers have dropped off the tomato plants we’ve been giving them and other fruiting plants a weekly feed of comfrey liquid. We’re also been giving the tomatoes some support with canes and garden wire as in a few week’s time some of the fruit will get heavy.
We’ve been using the home-made feed sparingly as we haven’t been getting that many comfrey leaves to make the liquid out of. We usually try and pass the feed on as it’s brilliant stuff but up until now have just about enough for ourselves. Fingers crossed we get a splurge of comfrey leaf growth soon.
The zucchini/courgette we planted in a in a pot is starting to flower now too and the climbing beans plants we got from Shannon’s are setting fruit on one of the three runner bean cane tripods we put in. As for the other two tripods, one went for a burton through underwater and the other one has been overun with blackfly. It’s strange as there’re only a couple of feet apart from each other.
So keep on with the watering through this dry spell and get some plant feed to your vegetables to get the best out of the plants cropping wise.
And while we’re on beanpoles here something brilliant bean support-wise from a few years ago from Vic Godard from The Subway Sect’s Dad’s garden. It’s a 16 caner with a nice tying system at the top and it really looks the part!
This week we found some wonderful examples of custom-made wildlife ponds on twitter by Bill Shimmers (above) @shimmers58. His ponds are works of art and look brilliant!
We’re always looking for new things to do in the garden so we had a go on an Airfix model scale using Bill’s pond as inspiration. Our bottom of a crock-pot mini-pond filled with some left over pond plants just looked like a bottom of a crock-pot filled with some left over pond plants until it was given a bit of a mini-overhaul using some wood from a woodpile, some old bark and whatever else we had lying around.
Of course our attempt is no way as grand as Bill’s brilliant creations (and it’s about a 50th of the size) and we won’t be winning any Chelsea awards this year with our microscopic version with some wood just thrown about over the top of it but it’s made the old version look a tiny bit better. We even caught the cat having a drink out of it and there were some bees buzzing around it earlier so it must be alright!
Cheers for your inspiration Bill and we’re going to have another go in the “wild bit” at the bottom of garden and we may even use something bigger next time (a dustbin lid perhaps?) Well it’s best to start small until we get the gist of this wild pond thing.
Weeds up to me knees 