Amsterdam Russ

Fantastic flipside! You can get an 'Outta Sight' copy for a tenner. https://www.northernsoul45s.co.uk/product_detail.asp?id=17377

And an excellent flip, too. Just thought I'd branch out a little as I couldn't resist dropping the word "pollard" into the conversation. I hope you all twigged it. Enough of the puns. Time to leaf them out or they'll only splinter the thread. I'll now take a bough…

In memory of long-remembered cats and cut back trees...

Wikipedia told me that straight after you'd named what type of snail it was! And now I know.

I didn't get that close.

Great stuff, Dave. Much appreciated. Didn't connect that the second pic was of Spindle as I've seen them elsewhere in the woods, but with more of a luminescent magenta colour. And now I know what a snail looks like...

I cycled to the woods of Amsterdam today — armed with camera — on what was a very grey and quite damp afternoon. My destination was a little place in the woods called Vogeleiland (Bird island), which is a small nature reserve. There are no signposts to tell you where it is, so if you don't already know, you're unlikely to find it. Here's a few pics from the trip... I'm useless at id'ing flowers, so if anyone feels inclined to tell me what they are, I'd be delighted.

Loads over here as well, especially in Amsterdam's parks. We even have them out here in Aalsmeer. They roost nearby, so if we're on the balcony in the evening we can't help but hear them.

Yes, he did have a very good presenter's voice. Jim was much better doing the shows by himself. I think I put him off his stride half the time!

Thanks for taking the time to listen. I'm really pleased you enjoyed it.

Looks like they've pulled the site off the web (rather than it being down because of a server problem).

What's the web address?

Bill 'Bunky' Sheppard. Here ya go...

Two shows now uploaded to MIxcloud. More info here:

Encouraged by a number of recent comments about the late Jim Demetriou's Soulcast radio shows, I've decided to upload two of Jim's shows to Mixcloud. The shows were recorded on the 9th of February 2002 and 15th of September 2002. Both feature me as the special guest, for which I apologise in advance. It was always great fun doing these shows with Jim, sat in front of a couple of turntables and a mic and surrounded by all sorts of sound equipment in his cramped West London bedroom. To hear myself from back then makes me cringe now, but it's worth it to hear Jim's voice again, to get caught up in his contagious enthusiasm and to feel the genuine joy he got out of doing the Soulcast shows. I'm not sure when Jim first started broadcasting Soulcast. It must have been late '90s or very early 2000s. Anyone know for sure? Although internet radio was not an entirely new thing at that time, Jim was most certainly an early pioneer in broadcasting Northern Soul-related shows online. He eventually garnered a dedicated audience of listeners from all corners of the world; something that he always found amazing. Occasionally a relative of a soul singer or band member would make contact and tell him how excited they were to have heard someone playing their mother or father's long-forgotten music. This left Jim in absolute awe. Of course, the point was that their music hadn't been forgotten at all; it was and is very much alive in the hearts of dedicated Northern Soul fans, and Jim was helping to keep that flame of soul passion burning through his broadcasts. I have another of his shows - again with me as a guest - on a cassette. If there's any interest in these two shows, perhaps I'll see if I can digitise the recording from tape. I also have some tapes of us doing Northern Soul shows together on Central Middlesex hospital radio in 1991. I've not listened to them in years, so I've no idea if they're worth sharing. I suspect that if Jim, who died in September 2007, was still with us, and we were listening to them together now, we'd both be cringing in mutual embarrassment and having a good laugh at ourselves at the same time, so perhaps it's better if they stay in the tape box! Anyway, if anyone's interested, here are the links to the two Soulcast shows. Show 1: 9th Feb 2002 https://www.mixcloud.com/LomaRuss/jim-demetriou-soulcast-9th-feb-2002/ Show 2: 15th Sept 2002 https://www.mixcloud.com/LomaRuss/jim-demetriou-soulcast-15th-september-2002/

I'm also in a Mac household and agree with your sentiment. Looking further online, everything seems to point to language settings. Most forum discussions suggest changing the language settings of the specific browser being used. However, as you're getting the same problem across multiple browsers, it might be worth changing the language settings of your Mac. System preferences -> Language & text. It seems a long shot, but worth a try. Going off on a different tangent, might this seller have blocked you? Don't know what happens if someone does that, so probably absolutely nothing to do with the problem whatsoever.

Did you try a different browser and if you were using IE, did you change the language settings as per the link?

This intrigued me, so I did a little searching online and found a couple of mentions of the problem being browser specific. Some say it's specific to Internet Explorer, while other say they've had the problem with Firefox and Chrome. If you are using Firefox or Chrome, try with Internet Explorer. If you're using Internet Explorer, the problem may be down to the browser's language settings as is suggested by the short eBay forum discussion found here: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archive-Technical-Issues/I-get-messages-saying-quot-Unfortunately-access-to-this/qaq-p/11363713

Jim could have no better testament than to have someone remember him in the way that you've just done some seven years later. I was also thinking about him last week, and about how I miss him still and think of him often. I was also thinking that it might be an idea to upload to mix cloud or somewhere a couple of recordings of shows he broadcast. The only ones I have are those that we did together - when he was kind enough to indulge me and invite me on as a guest. I also have three or four cassettes from when he was a hospital radio dj (spinning Northern to a captive audience that couldn't sleep) and I was also his guest. These pre-date Jim's online Soulcast shows by some years. Never been quite sure if uploading them is a good idea or not, so any thoughts on that welcomed. They seem so very personal now, but in some respects that's because the only person to ever hear them is me. Anyway, here's to Jim. Wherever you may be, God bless you still.

To be honest, if it hadn't been down to the opposition of Brian Poulton, et al, then everyone from event organisers to sew-on patch makers might have had to pay the Plastic Leatherette Crap Bag Co of Manchester a licensing fee to use the fist/keep the faith design - or be subject to trademark infringement cases. Well done to Brian Poulton and everyone else involved in contesting this bit of stupidity!

Skip to page seven and onwards…

Very interesting reading with a cast of, well, not quite 1,000s, but certainly some well-known names. And the later descriptions of 'the scene' will from now on have to be quoted as legal evidence in those argumentative "What is Northern Soul/" and "Is this Northern Soul?" threads that pop up on here from time to time!

Can just about make something out if I tilt my head over to the left! Having been to that part of the world, I can testify in full accord that the wildlife is something else - especially the lobster on the beach

Save yourself a few thousand and get the cover version by Gwen's daughter for under a tenner. You get a cracking B side into the bargain as well! :yes:"‹

Yes, 'part 2' was and is an option. Perhaps a new one for each season is an idea. Kingfishers - known as Ijsvogels here (literally - ice birds) are marvellous things to see. They seem to generally announce their impending travels with that high-pitched, single note whistle. Hear the whistle and you're almost guaranteed to see a flash of blue lightning streak low across the water. In the summer we were having a waterside picnic in the Amsterdamse Bos (Amsterdam woods). A kingfisher was darting back and forth on the other bank quite frequently and, much to my surprise, seemed to have a preferred spot high in the trees. Certainly that's where it kept returning. By high, I mean perhaps 10m or more off the ground. I'd always associated them with having burrows in the sandy banks of rivers and waterways. Having said that, reeds cover most banks, so perhaps a more woodpecker-like approach was the only practical option for this particular bird.