Monthly Archives: April 2026

The day after Dave came

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Cheers to Rich in the Lake District for another lovely picture from his front garden (possibly a contender for our nicest view from a front garden award). He told us yesterday “It’s a fairly nice day today, wind has dropped and only a sprinkle of snow on the highest hills.”

During the storm they did have a power cut which lasted as long as it took them to find the candles and torches, light in comparison when during past storms they’ve had them for up to 5 days. Blimmin’ eck!

Good to hear Storm Dave didn’t kick off too much or create much trouble (as some Daves do when they get angry.)

Happy Birthday Rich and good luck to all gardeners if they’re doing some Bank Holiday gardening today.

Disclaimer: * We are not getting at any Dave in particular and have mentioned it for purely humorous purposes. We know a few by the way (Mad Dave, Tai Chi Dave and Dave across the road) and all are lovely Daves.

We love interval signals

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Further to our last post about interval signals, cheers to our mate John F for sending this interval signal over on Facebook from Radio Tirana, Albania (above). Simple but effective like all the best interval signals, and we’ve just found out it was a trumpet version of a tune called With Pickaxe and Rifle. Blimmin’ eck!

That got us thinking of another old one, this time from Radio Prague, which was recorded off the shortwave and put on an LP by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Here’s a live version with an orchestra, shortwave noise and a vocal through a megaphone.

Our friend Kit G5KIT from Bristol got in touch and mentioned this excellent one from Radio Berlin International “The one I heard most as a kid”. Cheers Kit, now that is a classic!

And a favourite tune of ours from years ago that had an interval signal sampled on it, was  Rephazer‘s Interval #1 from his excellent Interval Signals set here. Here’s a Madtone re-edit of the track with a Jasmine Tutum vocal over the start as a bit of an exclusive for a shortwave mix a few years ago.

Through researching this post we have rediscovered a clip of the late great Holger Czukay listening into shortwave radio from1984. It don’t sound like any intervals signals are contained here but it’s such a good clip it has to be aired again.

There’s a great collection of interval signals here from the SWLing Post article and on this classic site here. Have you a favourite interval signal? Do send them to us here.

Just to end, here’s a lovely classic musical box/ice cream van type interval signal from HSW Bangkok Meteorological Radio (supposedly a version of “Wandering The Plains” from the Nintendo game Super Mario World). Big shout to all interval signal fans all around the globe!

It only takes a minute

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Reading the latest article on SWLing Post here about BBC interval signals, it reminded us of the wonderfully simple and direct “B–B–C” in the tonic scale used on shortwave for the BBC World Service and other transmissions to Africa.

We’ve always loved it and recently used it in a one-minute slightly odd piece from Madtone called “It Is AI, but we created it” for the 60 Sec Radio 2026 contest here, where “anything is possible as long as it’s 60 seconds long.”

The piece is below and features the said BBC interval signal alongside an excerpt of an strange ham radio conversation on 2 metres about AI generated music. We’re not that keen on AI generated music here funnily enough.

The contest is still open, so if you have 60 seconds radio collage, send it to the website here.

Before Dave came

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Yesterday was a lovely day. We started on the garden early, around 7:30am, when it was still grey and a little cold but as the hours passed, the weather gradually improved. After lunch, the grass was cut and looked great in the sunshine. The top right-hand corner of the lawn is the “wild area,” a tribute to a cat who passed away last year and loved to sleep there among the longer grass. Now the cat has gone, a fox has been kipping there on and off.

The side bed towards the bottom of the garden was cleared, and in place of the weeds, wildflower seeds were sown. It’s still cold, so whether they’ll thrive remains to be seen as it’s a bit of frost pocket down there. We were also told by a neighbour a few doors down that an underground stream runs through the gardens around that area. Whether that is true or not we’re not sure, but the soil is a bit on the boggy side around there.

Talking of seeds, one of our favourites plants has to be Night Scented Stock (above). While they may not be the most visually striking of plants, their fragrance more than makes up for it, especially on warm summer evenings when placed by an open back door.

Something we picked up last year as a single plant from Herne Hill Market was Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’. It’s now doing well and starting to spread nicely at the bottom of the garden by the pond. It gets semi-shade there, along with a daily watering (without overdoing it), and it seems to love the spot. We’ve since added a couple more plants from eBay. They’re still quite small, but we’re sure it won’t be long before they begin to spread too.

Happy Easter weekend (gardening) everyone!

Continuing the Dave theme:

Northern beaches and birds

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Many thanks to Rich in the Lake District for sharing a couple of photos he took from his recent break in South West Scotland, where he visited Gatehouse of Fleet, Portpatrick, and the South Ayrshire coast. As he put it, “Spectacular, but cold.”

Above is a great picture of Ross Bay, while below is an ace shot of a red kite in flight, showing its distinctive long, deeply forked tail (we have just read about the tail so didn’t have a clue about it before). More information about the red kite here.

On a wildlife tip…

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While we were sitting on the garden decking around 5:45pm this evening, enjoying the sunset, a fox strolled in as bold as brass up by the pond and joined us to watch the view. Behind is last year’s Christmas tree and in front to the right, a Dalek of the small variety.

Sprouting spuds in the springtime

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Joe Maiden (RIP) used to say that Good Friday was the ideal time to plant potatoes. Meanwhile, Spike from Morschen43 in Le Puy-en-Velay, France, plants his around April 10th and if all goes well, they’re ready to eat by July 6–7th.

We got ours in a few weeks ago in the raised bed (and some in another bed under jam jars) with plastic covering them, and they’re already sprouting. There’s still a risk of frost though, so we’ll be putting the plastic back over them in the evenings to keep them from any cold weather or potential frost damage.

We checked http://www.lastfrostdate.co.uk above again and hopefully we should be okay, but you know what the weather will be like, it could be snowing here tomorrow and then a heatwave over the Easter weekend. We say stick your spuds in but keep an eye on the weather and if there are frosts forecast, stick some fleece, fabric or net curtains over the top! Good luck.