Tag Archives: ken boothe

Hot You’re Hot

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My gosh it’s baking today so this makes it “classic lockdown” weather like what we had at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. A time when the only habit to worry about was taking single teabags down to the compost heap a few times daily. That was long before the daily trip down with a garden fork to give the dalek bin a mix took hold. Those were the days my friends…

And talking of friends we had one visit us yesterday evening (above) who perched on the bamboo cane supporting a tomato plant while we were sitting in the Dad corner giving it a bit of a Henry David Thoreau with a mug of tea.

Oh yeah, the erratically sown poppies (below) don’t half appreciate being out in this heat unlike us at Weeds who prefer a bit of shade!

So to all those gardeners (and non-gardeners) in lockdown wherever you are in the world, hang on in there, do keep in the shade and enjoy the current spate of classic lockdown weather with a few reggae tunes.

And while we’re on the Keith Hudson production thing.

Bad weather blues (dance)

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A lovely tune of a reggae hybrid nature heard on Ross Allen’s NTS radio show last week by Lonely C  (Charles Levine – Soul Clap) called Make America Dub Again. Tune!

And from the Tru Thoughts camp (in a old style Greensleeves style label) an excellent dub called Dread Nourishment from The Magic Drum Orchestra. It’s in an “out there” style you’ll want to listen and listen to again!

And the mention of dread nourishment put us in mind of an excellent single that was originally given away with Nutrament from The Messengers with Ken Boothe on vocals, a cover of the Syl Johnson classic “Is it because I’m Black”. The single is on discogs for under £3. It’s a snip!

Hang ’em high!

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Walking to work this morning just around the corner from Clink Street we saw this great plant holder idea. Hats off to all the ingenious hanging basketeers! Seen any other mad hanging basket ideas? Your photographs on a email please…

I’ve had years of being on the wire

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A massive birthday shout out to Steve Barker, Fenny and Jim for Thirty years of the excellent On The Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire. Well worth tuning into Live on a Saturday night from Midnight to 2am on Sunday or on Listen again here. Cheers for the One Deck & Popular and Madtone radio plays in the past, it’s appreciated!

On last week’s show Fenny replayed his first record he ever spun on the show, one that I’ve never heard before by the ace Mark Perry (I’m very partial to Mark’s delivery of Reggae, ATV’s Life after Life is one of my favourite ever tunes!) with a cover of a BB Seaton/Ken Boothe’s “Whole world’s down on me.” I didn’t even know of that one either. Cheers to On The Wire for passing on their musical knowledge yet again!

While we’re on the subject of great radio shows, a big shout goes out to our good friend Dr Strangedub for playing a track off Hayereyah’s new CD on this week’s (September 10th) Echo Chamber on KFAI available on listen again here. Big up the radio!

I’ve got the side bed blues…

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Augustus Pablo – Thunder Clap/ Ken Boothe – Ain’t No Sunshine

In the video above there’s a scene from a pub called The Enterprise which I’m convinced was the one in Camberwell where in the 1980’s I had my first “sunday afternoon stop back” to a soundtrack of old reggae, classic soul and clinking beer glasses plus a free plate of chicken, rice and peas from the generous landlord Louis when everyone else was going home to their sunday roast. In the good old days London pubs used to close at 2.30 then reopen at 7, bonkers!

Talking of which, the weather’s also been bonkers today, while I’m writing this, it’s tipping it down with added thunder and lightning. Yet at just gone 9 this morning the sun was blazing, so a bit of early “tipping about” was in order so I tidied up the beds down the left hand side of the garden. This can you believe was once where a couple of greenhouses stood before one of the previous owners smashed them up. Criminal isn’t it? I’d love a greenhouse (with heating, hi-fi and disco lighting of course!)side bed blues_2The beds nearest the house contain peas, one solitary cabbage, onions, rhubarb, parsnips, beetroot and carrots. There’s not much rhyme or reason to the beds, (I mean just one solitary cabbage!) some rows go north to south and some go east to west. The raised bed to the side of them (made from a couple of scaffolding boards found in a skip) contain runner beans and raspberries (I was given a bag of roots with shoots that a friend of mine was going to chuck out when he was thinning out his raspberry patch on his allotment.) The bed furthest away has a dwarf plum tree, three tomato plants, a couple of courgettes, a pumpkin which is now starting to wander, some borage for the bees to the side and a couple of houseplants that are having a “summer break” in the terrarium/fishbowl thing in the middle. Pick and mix jazz-gardening or what?Side bed blues_3 Talking of tomatoes, I heard a great tip on last week’s episode of The Dirt, don’t forget to give your tomato flowers a light shake to help the pollen on it’s way. Good eh?

Boards Of Canada – Saturday Sun – Warp

There’s a cat in me onions, what am I gonna do?

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bed of onionsJust because it’s coming up to autumn there’s no need to stop planting in the garden. The other evening I stuck in a couple of rows of the onion sets I got last weekend. They’ll overwinter well and hopefully give us some tasty onions come early summer next year.

They’re a piece of cake to sow, normal preparation of the ground as per and preferably there’s been no compost been put in the ground for a season or two (if there was, they’d make the ground hold moisture over the winter thus leaving the sets open to rotting which isn’t good). All you do is make a hole with a dibber (or the other end of a trowel) and carefully put the set in with the top just very slightly poking out (and the root end downward).

I also stuck some sticks and brambles on the top to stop our cats digging them up and also hopefully keep the birds and squirrels away. I plant mine closer together then the usual (about 4″ apart) so I can thin them out and use them as small onions when they’re ready.

Never mind what they say about “onions being cheap in the shops so don’t bother growing them” as home grown onions are a hundred times better than the ones in the supermarket. Grow your own as they’re cheap as chips to buy as sets!