Category Archives: what will be will be

From the shipping forecast to the skinhead

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Big shout to Gerry Hectic for letting us know about the Shipping Forecast all-day special  on Radio 4 yesterday celebrating 100 years of said forecast. All the programmes are now up online on BBC Sounds and all very well worth a listen but here’s one we caught last night about the forecast’s theme tune “Sailing By” here.

A classic tune wrote by a man called Ronald Binge at a room at the end of his garage that was thick with cigarette/cigar/pipe smoke. More on Sailing By here.

And by the powers of the internet we learned there’s a reggae connection too. From Ronald Binge’s wikipedia page here: “Best known today is probably Elizabethan Serenade. A reggae version of the tune, Elizabethan Reggae, was performed by Boris Gardiner in 1970.” Look at his writing credit under the song title.

Before the 40 mph wind came

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It’s been a while since we’ve been out in the garden so we spent a couple of hours yesterday and today tidying up little areas rather than tackle the whole thing (and then possibly feel defeated). We found a giant garlic bulb (below) which was sprouting so we took the cloves apart and replanted them, fingers crossed!

We also had a go at the bed at the bottom of the garden (which has the wild bit behind it which is looking a bit messy at the the moment) which has been overrun with nasturtiums and weeds (below). We’ll be putting some vegetables in again we reckon. The cardoon on the right hand side is still going as well.

We also tidied up the bed by the garage, making it look a lot more tidier. The handful of hours we spent today will hopefully saving us a bit of work when spring finally comes around.

We’re supposedly getting 40 odd miles an hour winds later so it’s doubtful we’ll be sitting around the firepit watching the New Year’s Eve fireworks at midnight.

And talking of the new year, happy 2025 to all our readers and friends worldwide from us here at Weeds.

Oh to be by the sea!

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A few days ago we heard from our good friend from Japan, Stevyn from the great Iron Feather Journal fanzine who is away on holiday at the moment. He said “Hokkaido is minus 10 and there’s tons of snow so we took a mini vacation and flew south to Okinawa (pic above) and now relaxing by the sea side”. He sent us this picture below from his holidays of part of a jungle with a genuine viper warning! That’s brilliant Stevyn. We hope you had a great Christmas and that you’re having a great holiday, cheers for the pics.

More santa business

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And to continue the festive themed soundtrack here’s a clever little number by Bodyswitch from the Stocking Stuffers EP a nice dubbed up version of Carla Thomas’ Gee Whiz, it’s Christmas.

 

And a lovely dub from from R. Santa on Nou Art Records out of Barcelona called “Time Dub”

 

Has Gavin &  Stacey finished yet? And is it really the last one?

See you by the heel stone

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Spotted in a charity shop in Lewisham this morning, this excellent solstice-related jigsaw puzzle. Let’s hope every piece is there or it may be a right pain in the neck when it comes to completing said ancient monument.

 

We thought of a daft thing, wouldn’t it be great to travel back in time and bring the game to a cave and see if stone-age man/women/kids would enjoy the game. We reckon they would be delighted with it especially knowing that it was on sale for the bargain price of 4 quid.

And on the subject of those sacred stones we just found this excellent film on youtube! We even spotted an example of the famous “Punk Kicking Dance” (that we’d never be able to do now) at 3.51 mins in. Happy belated Solstice.

More on the Stonehenge Festival Campaign here.

What have Jean-Michel Jarre, Ken Barlow and King Arthur all got in common?

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Happy Winter Solstice! From tomorrow, days will be getting longer which is great news to us gardeners. If you want to celebrate the great day in style without having stayed up all night in the pouring rain and cold, shivering by the heel stone, why not tune in via youtube (above).

So turn up the heating, put on your best solstice suit, pour yourself a glass of warm mead and pretend you’re at Stonehenge with the best of them. Happy Solstice and a big shout to that yellow round thing we call the Sun.

Indoor plants in north London

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Thanks to Debby H for keeping us updated about her house plants and sending us a couple of pictures. She wrotes “Since we brought in the canna lily, the leaves have grown hugely. It’s now as tall as our orange tree. And at night, the leaves all point up to the ceiling, almost like a religious ceremony! It’s never done that before. It usually goes into a big sulk, and the leaves start turning brown. Not this year!” That’s great to hear.
Also “The orchid flowers have continued to open, which is attractive when there’s not many other flowering plants around.” Great stuff Debby, good to hear from you!

Keep WARM this winter

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Here’s a track we found by pure chance last night while putting together a shortwave mix. It’s from Mice Parade (who sadly we’ve never heard of before but will now research) with a track called Warm Hand in Farmland and it’s the Stereolab remix from a couple of years back. It’s one crazy track, part brass, part acoustic, part hip-hop and part mad and over 5 minutes long but it don’t seem it.

We may be imagining it, but is the piano sampled from the start of The Persuaders theme tune by John Barry used in the latter part of the tune? We’re sure of it.

And if our memory isn’t playing tricks on us The June Brides used The Persuaders theme as walk on music once when they supported the great McCarthy (which featured one Tim Gane oddly enough). Coincidence or a tenuous link to play McCarthy’s brilliant Frans Hals tune again? Who knows.

Now that Darragh has gone

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It seems like a while away now but the weather over the weekend was awful, blustery and wet. We’re back to some sort of normality for this time of year, cold and wet! Cheers to Rich R for the picture from last week just as the storm was arriving in the Lake District. Great to hear it wasn’t too mad up there.

Reggae is outernational

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Big shout to Thomas from Dub Explorations for letting us know about this excellent tune by Professor Skank from Greece entitled Jah Jah Is Coming (The rootsman version). This has taken a couple of days to worm its way into our brain here at Weeds and now we can’t get it out of our heads. A must have tune!