A bike’s a bike, how do you describe a bike?

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We love those 1970’s information films here and have spliced the “Lock Your Bike” classic film from 1974 over the top of a little bit of BiggaBush‘s excellent Beat Dem in Dub. A big cheers to BiggaBush for giving it the thumbs up and Gerry Hectic for linking the tune with the original video. What’s a frame number?

 

Big shout to Dr Strangedub who debuted the tune on the brilliant Echo Chamber here on KFAI at 96.40 mins in. If you love reggae and dub you must tune into this weekly show. Listen closely and you may even hear a couple more public information dub instrumentals. Big up the Echo Chamber!

Here’s another couple of classic films from time gone by.

As Half Man Half Biscuit once sang “It was loft ladders what killed our Martin”. If only Martin had watched a public information film before his trek into the loft as he would be around to tell his tale now.

Seen in the garden this morning

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Morning! While we were giving the garden a comfrey feed this morning we noticed that the Thompson & Morgan‘s Black Moon tomatoes are doing well (above). There’s a little bit of green in the underneath of the fruit but they are mainly black on the top and look great.

And on the poppy tip (from the anarchically sown “thrown them anywhere” method) here’s a couple of nice ones that have sprung up this morning. Poppies are well worth it!

Also we may have news about our cosmos but they are so planted so close to some love in a mist we’re a bit confused, more on those soon.

Slow down a little via shortwave radio

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A big thanks again to DJ Frederick and all the Imaginary Stations Crew for broadcasting the Downbeat on Shortwave 2 show over the weekend via those radio transmitters at Shortwaveradio.de

The show featured a hands across the world collaboration between Jesse Yuen from Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from Catford Village, UK who played two 15 minute mixes each in a back to back style featuring some downtempo business to slow things down in our life.

We’ve posted up two recordings of the show. The first is the stereo studio recording and below that, the off-air recording via the shortwaves recorded in glorious mono. There’s added texture to the show thanks to signals bouncing off the ionosphere/groundwave propagation and someone next door switching on their toaster.

Got a spare few grand?

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Big shout to Gerry Hectic for sending us the link to an auction this month called “The John Peel Collection” featuring all sorts of stuff from Peel Acres. There’s John’s copy of Joy Division’s Ideal for Living 12″ with a letter from Rob Gretton. Got £3,000 handy? Have a butcher’s at what else is up for grabs if you’ve got some spare cash here.

And we’re pleased as punch to see the fanzine Ded Yampy in a couple of lots (below). Nothing as pricey as the Joy Division rarity but still a couple of hundred quid we ain’t got. Did we really send him 3 copies of Issue 1?

Years ago we faxed John Peel a couple of pages over with details of one of our Steroid Abuse nights to see if he would read it out on his show. We were suprised when he started reading said fax out saying, “News just in that Steroid Abuse have a party in London this Saturday. I can’t tell you where it is, who is on or how much is it to get in as the last page of the fax has failed to come through.” How daft is that? Bloody faxes eh?
R.I.P. the great John Peel.

Two towers of power

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Cheers to our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for the picture of his mullein plant which as he says “is in its next stage now!”

And here’s ours down by the pond. Coyboy’s toilet paper indeed.

A shortwave slow down

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Imaginary Stations will be bringing another Downbeat on Shortwave this weekend (cheers Fred!) on Saturday 5th July 2025 at 1200 hrs (UK Time) on 6160 kHz and on Sunday 6th January 2025 at 1000/1400 hrs (UK) on 6160 kHz and at 2100 (UK) on 3975 kHz/6160 kHz.

Our good dub gardening friend Jesse Yuen from Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from Brockley Village, London will be bringing you two 15 minute downtempo mixes each in a back to back downtempo style.

Tune in your shortwave radio this weekend or if you haven’t got one, via an online Software Defined Radio here (tuned into 6160 kHz) at the right time in AM mode and listen in and chill out to their slow-mo selection.

Why buy seeds when you can dry seeds

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It’s great to hear that Gerry Hectic is taking on a new seed saving project after tasting a strawberry that was so nice he got given one that he is now saving seed from and trying to grow a plant from it. He is now trying the same method on the above!

We will keep you posted on how he gets on! Fascinating stuff though and more free plants if they take. We found a great link about seed saving here. Good luck Gerry.

Pollinators in full effect

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Thanks to Mike & Julia for sending us some pictures of some pollinators doing their thing (cheers to Mike for the blog post title). Talking of pollinators, we were told this week that bees, flies and whatnot are not supposedly that keen on geraniums/pelargoniums.

We have not heard that before and just checked with AI “Bees, in particular, often avoid pelargoniums, especially those with double blooms, due to the difficulty of accessing the nectar”. That’s a new one on us!

Taking a breather from the garden

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We cleared out a lot of stuff from a couple of raised beds yesterday which revealed some spindly tomato plants that haven’t been staked properly let alone side-shooted or nipped out after 5 trusses. It just looks like we just let them go mad, sadly we did. We have a level of shame here as usually we love taking off side-shoots and tying up the plants to a garden cane at regular 2-inch intervals with green garden wire. 

The (above) are the Black Moon variety that the Thompson & Morgan Blog team kindly sent us alongside some other seeds. It’s been an odd year here this year so lost track of things and we’re not sure what else we have of the other seeds (we lost the plant labels and did have a couple of seed disasters we remember) but we’re sure by autumn other stuff will surface. We’ll keep you informed about how things turn out especially with the black moon.

Here’s another bed (above) that has been thinned out showing the San Marzano tomato plants we grew from seed (well worth growing if you want to make sauce from them). We wonder if the chilli plant at the front is the Thompson & Morgan Quick Fire? It would be great if it is, as it mentioned on the pack that you can get up to 100 chillies per plant!  

Some “hot” themed tunes. The second youtube goes out to our mate down south who loves buses like we do, Gerry Hectic. No idea why the bus video to go with the Big Youth tune but we don’t care as it is great. “No standing on the top deck please”, “Tickets please” and “Hold tight” of course. Keep cool today and keep in the shade.