I first came across Mikey Tomkin’s Edible Map of Croydon over a year ago via my friend Andrea. I was intrigued by his idea of feeding the 1,425 residents of 25 hectares of London’s most popular borough purely on food grown within these limits, especially considering that actually I knew two such denizens, my friends Justin and Dan.

I got in contact with Mikey on a whim, and subsequently passed on the guys’ emails - they had already started to convert the bit of council-owned turf in front of their flat into a vegetable patch, and were enthusiastic about engaging with Mikey’s vision for the “urban nightmare” and “concrete mess” that is my beloved hometown.

Things might not have progressed much further if our green-fingered friend Clarkey hadn’t moved in and taken full control of the aforementioned plot, and spurred on by her success in growing courgettes, pumpkins, sweetcorn and tomatoes herewithin, in June she met up with Dr Mikey to talk about setting up a garden on top of Surrey Street Carpark.

As it turned out, this wasn’t quite as practical as it first seemed (apparently soil and water aren’t just “nice to have”, but quite essential), but a few months later and Clarkey is attempting to realise at least a modest aspect of the Edible Map vision. In a time of zero public money and the (alleged) breakdown of society, she may have her work cut out, but her idea is to “put the ‘jungle’ back into ‘concrete’” and create a community gardens local residents can own, grow in, and enjoy (without council bureaucracy or outsourced contracts getting in the way). You can find out how she gets on through her blog, croydonjungle.

Meanwhile, Dr Tomkins has turned his attention towards Hackney…

YOU ARE HUNGRY: MAPPING AN EDIBLE URBAN HACKNEY investigates how much food can be grown on 25 hectares of south Hackney.

Between 05 – 20th September 2010 Mikey will be conducting edible walks around Hackney using the edible map as a guide.

To book a place Visit the SPACE gallery website Booking is FREE but essential!

…which funnily enough is where Andrea, Dan, Justin (and my bad self) have ended up. Funny how these things work out.

A little bit of Croydon - detail taken from Stephen Walter’s ‘The Island’ 2008, which I could look at for hours. And probably have done. Awesome.

If you’ve got some serious time to kill then make sure to visit the interactive version on the British Library site, and expect to emerge about 8 hours later.

Thus sang zakazaka. Although make no mistake, I am definitely of the opinion that:

1. Christmas should be left until… well… Christmas
2. I can’t sing particularly well (or that Dan chose the wrong takes)

Nonetheless, here I am posting me singing a song called Christmas.

In my (slightly unfestive) defence, there isn’t a sleigh bell in sight (or rather earshot), nor is it the kind of “feelgood” fromage-fest that gets put on infinite repeat in a soul-destroying shopping mall near you from the 1st of September - every bloody year.

Also, Jay Z says autotune is dead, so I think that lets me off the hook on the proverbial “singing in tune” coat rack. And that’s my numbered list put to bed.

Anyway, the whole endeavour is actually part of something much bigger: the fifth album from fellow (honorary) Croydoner Dan Bird (aka The Wind Up Bird), fittingly called Two Hits and Ten Pieces of Junk. Departing from his usual thing of writing all the songs, singing on all the tracks, and playing all the instruments, this time he’s merely done everything except sing (and even there he provides most of the backing vocals).

All the front-of-stage duty gets left to his merry band of friends, with a different vocalist on each of eleven tracks, with everyone recombining for a repeat-to-fade, feel-good finale (Track 12) that culminates in the noise Dan’s Washing machine makes when it’s finished its final cycle. Sublime.

The keen mathematicians among you will realise that this means everyone sings on two tracks, which allows each of us to delude ourselves into thinking that the eponymous “pieces of junk” are the other ten fillers. A winning formula!

You can download/stream the below tracks from the rather unsurprisingly named thewindupbird.co.uk right now! Or just get your right click action going on this lot here:

1. Consumption
2. Johnny Held Up the Post Office
3. Hope
4. Pretending
5. If You Believe That
6. I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
7. Christmas
8. Last Train to Croydon
9. Lucy
10. A Perfect Weekend
11. Leave That Girl Alone
12. The Patron Saint of Lost Causes

We’ll be having a wee little launch later on, and videos for all tracks apparently soon come, so this (sadly) may not be the last you hear of my voice just yet. Sorry.

I heart my hometown :)