Not waterloo Sunset

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Cheers to Rich R in the Lake District for the latest picture from there of a lovely sunset from the other evening, it don’t half look glorious. We even love the way the sun is shining off the barbed wire.

And cheers to Rich also for a pic from last night of ELO Musk’s rocket taking what is called a fuel dump. As it reported on the BBC website “… told the BBC that as he was taking out his bins in Suffolk he saw a “huge catherine wheel which appeared to have its own atmosphere around it”. We’re taking out our bins at Weeds HQ in a minute and hope we don’t see anything like that in the sky here in SE23. Cheers again Rich!

It’s time to choose your handle and pick up your microphone Part 2

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And talking of CB in the last post, here’s some Citizen Band related tunes. The first is a funky/disco number from the island of Jamaica. It’s from Bobby T & The Citizen’s Band (Third World we reckon as it is near enough “Everything is great”) called 40 channels to play. There’s even some shortwave tuning sounds and even a callsign thrown in, “U54 or UW4 (?) Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies”. This is probably the only time CQ DX is ever mentioned on a Jamaican Top Ranking Discomix 12″.

The next is a downtempo CB sampling tune and what sounds like off-tuned SSB (single side band) vocals in parts from Trucker called Interlude 4 – Citizen Band Armageddon. 

And if anyone can comment on Citizen’s Band, Mark E. Smith did with the ditty by The Fall called I’m into CB which contains the classic lyrics:
“This is Happy Harry Plank
From the land of waving palms
Calling out to Cedar Plank
477 CC
There’s no Code 13
In the home of chocolate city
I’m having trouble with the terminology
But I’m into CB”

Above is an odd recording of CB truckers across the pond just as COVID was starting, mad stuff!

Have a good weekend and may the sun shine on your garden again tomorrow.

It’s time to choose your handle and pick up your microphone

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A big thanks to whoever the operator was on the US pirate radio station “High Frequency School of the air” (via Cloudsplitter Radio) for playing Madtone’s i-Society on the shortwaves the other night at 6.24 in the youtube above. We salute you and do love your transmission.

After the Madtone tune a great programme follows, it’s a retro style low down on CB Radio. As the the commentator says “These are the sounds of your new party line, CB or Citizens band radio. It has a language of its own, your new language.” Listen in and memorise the 10 code, more on that here.

More pictures from Kyiv

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Great to hear from Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv and tanks to him for sending us some new pictures today. The above and below are from his good friend Sergiy (UT3UFD) who if you remember has a banana plant growing indoors and they’re great images of the plant that is looking well healthy at the moment.

And Wlad’s green onions on the windowsill are doing great! Cheers Wlad, more pictures please and good to hear from you!

Wow it’s 23 degrees in March (not in the UK sadly!)

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Thanks to Debby H who is away in Tenerife at the moment where it’s a lovely 23 degrees. She sent us some pictures of the garden of where she’s staying at and it looks fantastic. We love this view above.

The bird of paradise/crane flower (strelitza) there looks well established (above) and we did a plant search on the plant below using Plantnet and it came up with agave. If we’re wrong on that, please do let us know but it’s great to see all these brilliant plants on their home turf so to speak and in their full glory. Cheers again Debby!

It looks like spring has sprung

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Pic: The pond this morning.

A big thanks to our good mate Gerry Hectic for sending us a mix to celebrate this first day of spring called “A sunshine mix in spring”. It’s a brilliant garden/nature related mix and one to have on when you’re sowing those first vegetable/flower seeds indoors on the potting table (in our case the kitchen sink!)

Here’s the tracklisting:
Intro – Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Alabaster DePlume – That Was My Garden (Edit)
Tunng – Snails
Oscar Jerome – Smell The Daisies feat. anaiis (Radio Edit)
THSA – In Bloom
Late Nite City – Higher Ground
United Freedom Collective – Moonshine
lovetempo – But I Do (Daisybelle Remix)
Gabril Gosse – Breeze ft. Emile Parisein
Shane Sato – Gardenia
Yahushi Ide – A Place In The Sun
Ebi Soda – Bamboo
Evren Furtuna – Little Flower
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Chaos In The CBD – Midnight In Peckham ft. Isaaz Aesilli
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)

So raise a toast to Jean-Michel Jarre if you’re that way inclined or just to the forthcoming season when one day soon you will wake up and not see a frost. Cheers Gerry!

This is a warning!

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Pic: The grass outside this morning.

The sun’s been out, it feels lovely and warm and you feel a real need to sow those seeds outside or get those seedlings into those freshly prepared beds. Think again, do your research, watch those John Craven’s Countryfile weather forecasts and have a look at the frost calculator here.

You only want to be going to the garden centre/nursery for those bedding plants once. Watch out for frost!

Pic: John “good bloke” Craven

A tale about a railway cutting

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(Picture from Dan S off Foursquare from 2024)

It was great weather today and this morning on the way back from the dentist we helped prune the wonderful collection of geraniums at Honor Oak Park train station.

Well, we were given a pair of secateurs from behind the ticket desk and cut five bits off the massive geraniums so we could use them as cuttings. We stuck 3 in a large pot indoors and put a couple in the cloche outside after dipping the end in some cutting powder. We’ve never taken cuttings on the outdoor variety before but they’re supposed to root easy. Perhaps in the summer it may be a better time to do it but let’s see what happens. More on taking Geranium cuttings from Gardeners World here.

Did you know there was a punk band from Saitama, Japan called Geranium? This is 17 minutes of them on full pelt mode but the first tune is one of their catchier ones (from the good old days of 2007).

And below here’s more of an ambient Geranium themed tune by The Ambient Zone called Red Geranium. A track featuring Chris Coco and Nick Cornu on chilled out guitar. From the good old ambient days of 2021.

Stations that only exist in our imagination

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Here’s a couple of shortwave shows in an Imaginary Stations related style, the first on Wednesday 19th March 2025 at the new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI is another episode of the excellent Shortwave Music Library by DJ Frederick. A show well worth tuning into if you the like all sorts musicwise.

This weekend coming, Imaginary Stations hoist the sails on the pirate ship Skybird again and brings you another audio voyage in the Free Radio Skybird series and it’s the third and final planned broadcast of the station this year.

Tune in on Saturday 22nd March 2025 at 1200 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and also on Sunday 23rd March 2025 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz. As with last week’s show, expect some great tunes, onshore and offshore classics and lots of interesting bits and pieces as usual. At 28 minutes in there will be a mix called Who’d be a pirate (again) by One Deck Pete. Tune in!

 

Stick your plastic plant labels

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We’ve always had this thing about those plastic plant labels. You buy a pack and you have the best intentions of keeping them for ages (using Barkeeper’s Friend to clean off “Lettuce” or whatever their last usage was) then you lose them or they snap and you vow never to use them again.

Yesterday we thought “Never mind that!” and just got a “sharpie” and snapped a few bamboo canes into quarters. Saved us a load of hassle. We then stuck some polythene sheeting on top of some pallet box collars and there you go, a makeshift cloche full of clearly named rows of broccoli, cabbage, leek and beetroot!