Jo asked:

How on earth do you get those crisp sharp edges on your garden beds at the country house? Hmmm? I can never do it here. Never.

To be frank, Jo: it's a mystery to me as well. As lawn-mowing and edge-trimming is strictly a job for grown-ups, I leave that sort of thing to K. Besides which, maintaining the perfect lawn - along with making the perfect cup of coffee - is one his great passions in life. It would be churlish indeed to encroach upon his territory.

However, the question is an important one, and deserves a full answer from a proven expert in the field. So, for Jo, and for everyone else who has asked over the last year (cuz lemmetellya, us edges are LEGENDARY), I shall hand you over to K.

The next voice that you hear will be K's.

---

Life on the Edge.

Try the combination of:

• Nail scissors (straight blades only).
• Set square and ruler
• Advanced yoga techniques such as this:

For special occasions, eg. Gardens Open Day, a magnifying glass is also recommended.

As an alternative, and slightly more practical approach try:

• Cheating. I can recommend the combination of an internationally renowned garden designer with a penchant for strong perpendicular lines, plus an expert ground force team to lay the perfect lawn with immaculate edges. From this starting point pure fear is an excellent motivator to maintain perfection.
• An obsessive, compulsive nature which places the pursuit of precision over personal happiness.

Once you have lawn and lunatic in harmony, the following maintenance techniques should be applied on a weekly basis.

• The edge of the lawn must be totally vertical and no less than 5 cm deep – beds have a tendency to encroach, so push the soil back with the back of a hoe.
• Edging shears must be razor sharp and held at precisely 90° to the lawn edge. They should only remove the grass, under no circumstances should they cut into the soil at the lawn edge.
• For the ultimate finish, I cut the edges first one way and then cut again in the opposite direction – sometimes directional tufts remain from the first cut which are removed by the second.
• Remove all the grass cuttings by hand after finishing with the edging shears.

Enjoy, and please send me the photos!

Three questions from Lyle:

13. What do you want to be when you grow up?

AAAUUURRRGGHH NO DON'T ASK ME THAT QUESTION YOU MUST NEVER ASK ME THAT QUESTION ANY QUESTION BUT THAT MY PILLS MY PILLS I CAN'T FIND MY PILLS...

...and calm.

Shall we indulge in a little dream scenario? Oh, I see no harm in that.So, you know, realistic goals and all that.

14. PDMG - a thing of wonder, or more bloody hassle than it's worth?

This might sound horribly haughty, but what the heck.

Since our decision to have a garden was freely entered into of our own volition, tending the PDMG rarely feels like a hassle. One particular motivating factor: since both the design and the construction are of such an exceptional quality, we feel a certain sense of duty to the original creative vision, and to the people that were responsible for implementing it. To let the garden slide into an unkempt, weed-strewn wilderness would be a wanton act of vandalism that we could never countenance.

(Besides, since almost all the garden is visible from one point or other in the surrounding streets, the disapproving clucks at Gardens Open Day would be too much to bear. We are an essentially self-regulating community.)

Furthermore: the exercise and fresh air are good for effete drawing-room fops such as ourselves; the regular tasks have a certain therapeutic quality; the learning curve forms a pleasant ascent (give or take the odd bump); and regular physical contact with the constituent parts of the garden allows us to acquire a deeper knowledge, and thus to forge a deeper bond.

(Observe, if you will, how hearty son-of-the-soil words like "forge" and "bond" start creeping into my prose at times like these.)

In fact, so enamoured of the PDMG are we that we have just commissioned PDMG #2: The Nottingham Version. With the building plans already completed, that familiar anticpatory tingle has already started to kick in.

15. Will we ever see Mike TD entering Eurovision for the UK?

One of these days, I'll record and post an MP3 of me wheezing and croaking along to the instrumental version of "Ooh Aah... Just A Little Bit". Then you'll have all the answer you need, matey.

From 1977 to 1978 (The Boarding School Year Zero Maoist Punk Rocker Walking Oxymoron Years), I kept a series of diaries in small hardback notebooks, written in a light-hearted, semi-public manner. Proto-blogs, if you will. These I referred to, in an early flash of the faux-pompousness that would in later years become my defining global hallmark, as my "memoirs".

Since, like so many other of the Chaps in the Dorm, I was still BIG on clever-clever Python-esque surrealism, the fourth volume of the memoirs bore the Deeply Satirical title The Exciting World Of Accountancy.

(Yeah! People with jobs = brainwashed sheep! Of course, I didn't know then that I would end up working for 13 years in local government IT. Ah, how the heady idealism of youth is dashed upon the rocks of the pragmatism of adulthood. Or something.)

Round about this time, the British army was running a series of recruitment advertisements with the slogan: The Professionals. If you've got it, we'll bring it out. This provided all the inspiration I needed for the back cover art of The Exciting World Of Accountancy.

Despite being thrown into the garbage by my wicked stepmother in the Great Cultural Purge Of The Early 1980s, the memory of this back cover has for some reason remained with me ever since. Having recently reconstructed it for Demian's Guild Of Guestbloggers Fortnight, I am surprised - and somewhat disconcerted - at the accuracy of the resulting image. Like looking at an apparition from a bygone age.

This is FAR too long a build-up for a piddling little doodle. But then, to my eyes, it's a rather poignant little doodle.

Clair asked:
If you could play any film character, who would you be and why?

I'd like to have a bash at playing Gustav von Aschenbach in Death In Venice, please.

Although the cross-generational aspect of his unrequited, hopeless desire is not something to which I personally relate, Aschenbach's doomed plight struck a major chord with me many years ago, when I was still in the grips of my own similar obsession. Now that I am approaching the appropriate age for the role, I find that I rather fancy the idea of slowly rotting away in a deck chair, hair dye oozing down my forehead, to the strains of Mahler. Elegant, ridiculous decay, at once sublime and absurd: there's something really rather delicious about it.

(The fact that Bjørn Andresen's Tadzio bears a disquieting resemblance to the object of my own desire, and that Dirk Bogarde's von Aschenbach bears an equally disquieting resemblance to my first boyfriend, only serves to heighten the perversity.)

(via Clear Blue Skies)

Copy the list on to your blog, put in bold the ones you have listened to (completely from begining to end) and then add three more albums that you think people should have heard before they turn into their parents - remember, it isn't necessarily your most favourite albums but the ones you think people should listen to... and when we say listen we mean from track one through to the end...

If you put a link to your follow-on post in the comments of the site where you found it, the chain will be trackable.

Mike adds: From now on, you are also allowed to DELETE up to THREE albums on the existing list, if you feel a) that this is an album which should not reasonably be foisted upon anybody, or b) that one Steve Earle album is quite enough for one lifetime, thank you.

Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
London Calling - The Clash
Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Think Tank - Blur
This is Hardcore - Pulp
Moon Safari - Air
Elastica - Elastica
Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols - Sex Pistols
OK Computer - Radiohead
The Kiss of Morning - Graham Coxon
Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars - David Bowie
The Wall - Pink Floyd
Setting Sons - The Jam
America Beauty - The Grateful Dead
Toxicity - System of a Down
Train a Comin' - Steve Earle
Folksinger - Phranc
Come From the Shadows - Joan Baez
The River - Bruce Springsteen
The Very Best of Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Outside - David Bowie
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
Metal Box - Public Image Ltd
Orbital #2 (The Brown Album) - Orbital

Deleted:
Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits
Bat out of Hell - Meat Loaf
Copperhead Road - Steve Earle

Update: The thread continues at Assistant Blog Cllr Andrew Brown Dearie Me.