Days of gardening questions

I've always liked listening to Down to Earth on BBC Radio Leicester. It's the longest running gardening programme on local radio and has been broadcast every week for over 45 years, and that's no mean achievement.

Geoff Amos chaired the programme for many years, and Dave Andrews has been the popular presenter for the last decade. But this year, I've had a chance to present this programme too while Dave was away on holiday, and had some extra time off. It's been wonderful fun, and great to meet so many BBC Radio Leicester listeners out and about in the county.

Here's one programme in Huncote we made earlier this summer...on the panel left to right are :Chris Gutteridge, a garden designer who won a silver gilt medal at Chelsea last year; Ray Coombes, who is the most knowledgeable man I've ever met when it comes to seeds and vegetables and Josie Hutchinson, who is a former lecturer at Brooksby College and so warm and chatty.

 

 



They are just a few of the panelists who turn each week to either record programmes at churches, community centres, village halls and pubs, or to appear in the studio for a live phone in.

 

They're wonderful, all of them...Derek Cox is a former nurseryman who has been appearing on the programme for about 46 years, and still has a wicked glint in his eye as he teases other members of the panel, the audiences and me. John Smith owns a fuschia nursery and has also been on the panel for over 40 years, and the very helpful Mike Salotti from Brooksby Hall is another regular.

 

The two youngest on the panel are nursery owner Helen Osborne who has the most raucous laugh and a great sense of humour, and Ady Dayman, all round good egg and extremely talented cheeky chappie.

Another great stalwart of the programme is the sound engineer Maclolm Pugh who's been in charge of recording the outside broadcasts for over 30 years.

 

 

 

So as you might guess, I've had such fun presenting these programmes and learning so much about gardening from them all.

But there's another gardening programme which I love to listen to and that's Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time.

The programme is recorded each week in a different location, and about ten days ago, the team came to the University of Leicester . Eric Robson was in firm command in the chair,  Anne Swithinbank and  Bob Flowerdew were on the panel with Matt Biggs who received a large cheer from the crowd - he grew up in Leicester!)

 I went to watch with Ady Dayman...we were very interested to see how the programme was put together, and sat on the back row like naughty schoolchildren. Well, there was nowhere else for us to go, the hall was packed.

We noticed that as well as Eric chairing the programme with his posh script, there were two sound engineers and a producer....we only have one engineer, and I'm afraid I have to produce myself.

 

 

Apart from staffing, in essence, it's exactly the same as Down to Earth...those who ask questions are placed on the front row, they ask what they want to know - "Could the panel please tell me why...." and all the panel  seem to have different ideas on way to deal with a query or a problem.  Many of the questions cover similar topics to those in Down to Earth, such as squirrels in gardens and getting rid of slugs and snails , which seem to have been popular this year!

 

Anne Swithinbank radiates calm, Matt made everyone laugh and Bob Flowerdew became quite poetic about a certain plant..."When gorse is out of flower, love is out of fashion."

 

 

All in all, an enjoyable evening, especially afterwards when Matt Biggs, Ady Dayman and I went for a pint. If we're being pedantic, they had pints , I drank a mojito and we all had a great chat about gardening, broadcasting and more besides.

 



 

 





 

 

Today's track is an old favourite....beautifully paced, it's off the seminal album by Neil Young, "After the Goldrush."

 

 I wonder where my old vinyl copy went to? Still, the track has a very appropriate title which is "Tell me why"



 

 

 

 

 

A day on Radio 4's Food Programme...

I love food. That's why I'm not a skinny malinky kind of woman....I have curves. Ok, so they're perhaps more curvier curves than perhaps I should have...but hey...

It's not that I'm stuffing myself morning , noon and night....I'm not.....but I like to grow my own food.....
 

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and cook. Sometimes the urge to cook just takes over...for example I wasn't going to bake today. No way, too busy ...but then I spotted the bananas in the fruit bowl....mmmn, a tad too speckly...and the next minute I was making this...a banana, chocolate and walnut loaf.

 

Food...growing, cooking and sharing it ... makes me happy. Even when I'm cooking a  recipe from someone I've loved and liked, and who's now not with us.......I like to remember the happy times
we shared...and using their recipes keep those happy times alive.

Over the years, I've collected quite a number of recipes from Granny, my lovely mum in law who died seventeen years ago, Mama..that's my gorgeous mum (who thank the lord, is still very much alive and kicking) and lots of friends. The recipe book has now lost it's  covers, it's so tatty and dog eared, and some of the pages are decorated with cake mixture splodges. But it's one of my most valuable possessions.

Cooking their recipes , the smells coming from the oven take me back to conversations, events, and meals gone by. I 've now transferred the  recipes to a new book...lovingly rewritten them out, just in case the original book completely falls to pieces one day...

This week, the addictive and always excellent " Food Programme "on Radio 4 looks at food and bereavement, carefully crafted by producer Anne -Marie Bullock ....and my darling daughter and I will be sharing our memories of Granny et al and talking about my recipe book during the programme.
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Here's the link to what's coming up

http://bbc.in/12SIddD   


 Do have a look....and do listen on Sunday at 12.30pm or Monday at 3.30 on BBC Radio 4 on FM 92.5–96....or you can sit at your computer and listen on t'internet. Go on, you know you want to......

Today's track is called "Remembering "by the Avishai Cohen Trio.....

 

days of the living dead

I've been spending quite a long time with the living dead recently, and I've been having a whale of a time.

I've not become a zombie I hasten to add. No, I've been treating myself to hours and hours with some of the great minds, intellects, musicians, singers and comedians of the twentieth century. At the moment, I'm still having a ball back in the 1950's, where the dead are still very much alive.

It all started back in January here...
A New Year and a treat for 2013


So, I started off with morning coffee tea with  the actress and writer Naomi Jacob, lunch with Joan Sutherland, the opera singer, tea with film director Paddy Carstairs, wine with Alfred Hitchcock, and was washing my smalls as Benny Hill the comedian tried so hard to please.

Over the last few months I've been listening to the most amusing conversations , some stilted ones which just did'nt quite jell,and some which made me want to know so much more about that person..

Most of the people who I'm listening to have perfect diction....received pronunciation for some, their voices conjure up a different world. A different country, a post war world, where one keeps one 's innermost feelings to oneself, and one is oh so polite.

I'm listening to Desert Island Discs...not just a couple of programmes , but the complete archive of Desert Island Discs which is available on the BBC website, in chronological order from the very first broadcast presented by Roy Plomley.

Imagine you've washed up on a desert island. Alone. You can choose eight records to listen to, a book to read, and select one luxury while you're on the island. That's the premise of the programme since the 1940's  - so simple, yet still so entertaining.

As I said, I'm immersing myself in the fifties at the moment, and I've decided to ban myself from listening to current Desert Island Discs programmes for a while...because although the format of the programme is still the same, what you hear is so utterly different. These days there's a real warmth to presenter Kirsty Young's questioning, and the interviewees, as a whole ,are so much more open and candid about their lives.

Back in the1950's, the programmes were amusing half hour interludes, but without the depth of today. For example , the comedian Jimmy Edwards was interviewed for the first time in 1951. He'd attended the same school as Roy Plomley , who devised and presented the show for nearly 2,000 editions.There was a sort of gung ho humour and banter between them, but it wasn't until I googled Jimmy's life that I found out that during the war, serving in the Royal Air Force, he was shot down over Arnhem.

 I remember seeing Jimmy Edwards on TV as a child, and always wondered why he wore such a large handle bar moustache. Well, it was to hide the facial injuries he's sustained in the war, and he was actually a member of the Guinea Pig Club. The club consisted of patients of a surgeon called Archibald McIndoe who underwent experimental reconstructive plastic surgery generally after being burnt in aircraft during the Second World War.

There's so many aural treats here listening to the archive....listening to those who knew names that we are in awe of these days. At school, our choirmaster would always wax lyrically about Sir Malcom Sargent, the composer and conductor, who lived as a child so close by in Melton Mowbray and played at the deMontfort Hall. Thanks to Desert island Discs, I can hear him ...the man who got his big break from Sir Henry Wood...and who continued Wood's legacy of the Proms.

It's all such fascinating stuff. ..why don't you just dive in, and listen to a few programmes? Tex Ritter, Dave Brubeck, Sir Thomas Beecham, Paul Robeson, Count Basie , a very young David Attenborough,...the list is endless....and that's just from the 1950's.....

And you'll find some lovely people who you would really like to have known. I'd never heard of Naomi Jacob, before I began to access the archive, and there's sadly only a five minute clip available, which was recorded six years before she died. A writer and actress, she was such fun to listen to, with such interesting stories. Serving as a VAD in France during the First World War, she got trench foot...yet so jolly with a  wonderfully rich Yorkshire voice.

And there's so many more like her to discover over the coming months. These castaways are waiting for you, as well as me on that desert island.They'll be there with their favourite records ...you'll hear some wonderfully stirring, sad, funny songs and they'll share their luxuries with you too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs

Today's track is from David Gilmour..called On the Island. It's a brilliant, live performance of a beautiful song, performed at the Albert Hall . Apparently David wrote about it..."It's an atheistic song, you could say, about how people live on in your dreams and your memories. And that's the only place I can meet up with these people. It's a very sad thing, remembered with joy."

 

A new year and a treat for 2013

 A new year , a fresh start.....there's something so invigorating about a new year isn't there? A year full of possibilities, potential and new beginnings. A chance to take stock, to hope, to make the most of what the next twelve months have to offer.

I've promised myself a  major treat this year. Something which will give me hours of pleasure, make me laugh, cry and think....and do you know what the best thing  of all about this delicious aural treat is? It's not going to cost me a penny.

I'm going to listen to the complete archive of Desert Island Discs which is available on the BBC website, in chrnological order from the very first broadcast. I can't wait.

For those of you living abroad (and there's lots of you reading the blog in Australia, USA, Canada and France) Desert Island Discs is a wonderful , must listen to programme on Radio 4 where prominent , famous people are interviewed. They are castaways who can choose eight records, a book and a luxury to take with them to a  mythical desert island.

Do have a listen

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs

The programme began in 1942....and deservedly is still going strong. On the website you can listen to some real jewels  ...what about the actress Margaret Lockwood, the conductor Sir Malcolm Sergeant , the opera singer Joan Sutherland and war hero Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery of Alamein from wayback in the archive?

More up to date castaways include Dawn French (she cried ) and Dustin Hoffman .....there's so many different personalities..and you can learn so much about who they really are by skilful interviewing as they remember their favourite music.

Ah, music....with today's track, you get two groups for the price of one. Both with a fine back catalogue, which I often listen to. Chicago plus Earth, Wind and Fire came together about six or seven years ago... - here they are with "Beginnings". I would have loved to have been in the audience for this.....