This might seem a bit previous but I’ve just found out the date of the next Potato Day & Seedy Sunday in London. Save up your seed, save up your quids and get up there!
Sunday 26th January 2014
11.00am-3.00pm
London Potato Day & Seedy Sunday
Sydenham School
Dartmouth Road
Forest Hill
London SE26 4RD
It’s a good one to break up the post-Christmas/skint at new year comedown too!
Big shout (and Happy Birthday too!) to our good friend Doctor Strangedub for telling us that the last post but one (A blast from a bonkers past) reminded him of Bedward the flying Preacher, another non flying event. For those who don’t know about Alexander Bedward the flying preacher, let Prince Fari tell you about him.
And let wikipedia tell you more!
A happy old tune from Junior Kelly played on this week’s excellent David Rodigan show on 1Xtra. One to kick off those steel toe-caps and chill out to on this cold Friday evening!
While going through a box of old fanzines the other day, I found a poster (designed by yours truly) from the attempted Levitation of Parliament event Twenty years ago (organised by the Association of Autonomous Astronauts and the London Pychogeographical Association). On a Sunday in October in 1994 an assembled mass of people conducted an experiment to levitate the Houses of Parliament from the square opposite. Unfortunately, due to possibly the wind being in the wrong direction, bad vibes or too many people wearing garments made out of wool, the experiment failed. A mad day indeed!
I finally got out yesterday and tidied up the family veg plot at the bottom of the garden, runner bean canes were cleaned up and stored away and the bottoms of the runner bean plants were left in the ground as they’ll add extra nitrogen to the soil. It was the first time for a while that I’d got out for a couple of hours in the garden with the fork. I was in bed until midday today, must have been the body going into a state of shock after that bit of hard work!
The wormery has been covered with sacking over a layer of fleece for the winter (if it gets bad I will move it into the garage as those brandling worms hate the cold!) I also used the old fish tank I found in the street a few months ago as a cloche to overwinter some Peas and Garlic. It could have done with having a few holes drilled into it for ventilation but I still hadn’t got around to it. Also sowed the same combo under the old trusty window frame found last year in a cold frame stylee. God know what will happen what with all the cold weather that we’re supposed to be having next week!
Cheers to David Rodigan for playing these two great tunes which we’re featuring tonight. The above is a lovely bit of 2013 dub with Pablo vibes and a nice throbbing bass.
Over the last few days I’ve been thinking of what to plant for next year as it’ll be great to grow something that the family will actually eat! Saying that, spuds, onions, garlic and carrots are winners here even if they are cheaper in the shops to buy, but who cares? The back garden is nearer than the local shop and home grown veg is tens times fresher! Remember, always grow stuff that you’re definitely going to eat (not what gardening magazines tell you what you should be growing) as it’s a big waste of time and effort if not and just ends up on the compost heap!
And to go out with here’s the “cross, angry, miserable” (just like me on a monday morning) Bounty Killer on a right bonkers tip (featuring a lovely horn sample). Not one to play loud early on a Sunday morning on the ghetto blaster down the allotment.
Thanks to Keith Perron for featuring music by Madtone as the theme tune and jingles for the excellent Media Network Plus Programme on PCJ Radio International out of Taiwan over the last few years.
PCJ Media are now making the music available for free for a limited period only through their ftp site. All files are MP3 and come with CD artwork. Here’s their FTP address:
HOST: ftp.pcjmedia.com
LOGIN ID: madtone
PASSWORD: madtonecdpcj
More info here. Thanks for spreading the word Keith!
More on the ‘umble coach written by my good self from Steroid Abuse fanzine many many moons ago. Beware kids, there’s a wee bit of swearing thrown in for good measure. Turn off now if you’re easily offended! Just click on the image above to read the article.
Yesterday I was up at the ungodly hour of 4.50 am to get my son ready for his school coach trip to Belgium, which got me thinking…
Years ago in the Midlands was a travel company who would charter out their coaches for next to nothing. Word got around to the local punks who took advantage of the offer. Out of town gigs were now easy to get to and dead cheap, so the coach trips were well popular! Also, the coach was always driven by the same bloke who didn’t seem to care what went on and the punks used to turn a blind eye to his antics as long as he got them back home in one piece!
Some of stories will go down in Punk mythology. Like the time when the windscreen was “bricked in” in some sort of inter-town rivalry. The driver muttered something about “I don’t want to get the company involved so I’m not going to ring the AA” and had the bright idea of driving them all back without a windscreen as it was only ten miles down the road. Trouble is it was a winters night and it was snowing, madness!
Once on the way to a gig after everybody was picked up from the pub meeting point, someone on board realising the coach didn’t have a loo had the bright idea of popping into his mums house to using theirs as it was on the way to the motorway. His mum and dad must have been well happy when their son turned up at the door with a coachload of punks dying to go to the loo behind him. I bet there was a few net curtains twitching that night in the cul-de-sac!
Legend has it at one gig the driver got a bit over-excited, had a few drinks and even went down the front and done the “punk kicking dance” (as demonstrated above!) At the end of the night the punks were so worried that he wouldn’t get them home alive, a couple of them forcefed him coffee from his vacuum flask until he sobered up and then took him outside to “get some air” before the drive home. The sight of two Sid Vicious look-a-likes either side of an older bloke in a smart blazer and cap walking around a car park must have been bizarre. How he didn’t get stopped by the police on the way home I don’t know. Absolutely mental!
I’ve really been caning the Bar Keepers Friend since getting a bottle the other month. It’s bonkers stuff!
Work surfaces, old burnt pots, the kid’s trainers, old coins, anything I can get me hands on gets given the BKF treatment (I’ll probably find out now it’s well unhealthy for the environment). The greatest breakthrough is using it to get the many layers of indelible felt-tip off those plastic reusable seed labels (just a little on a cloth, a wipe and a good old rinse and it’s gone!) Now you can clearly see what you’re growing!
Weeds up to me knees 