# strimmers as positively victorian a scheme for full employment if there ever was one your drafty drab rented accommodation cube backs onto a small patch of public ground. from the earliest day of spring to the latest days of autumn a mirthless crew of golgafrinchan aesthetes turn up in ir little van to neatly trim the borders - to keep everything in good order politely armed with lawn mowers hedge clippers and grass strimmers they attend to ir conceptually meagre task with dutiful obedient intent in a wild display of profoundly unprofound cosmic pointlessness // image here - strimming: positively victorian last year it was as though they turned up every two weeks to trim the bloody verge - despite the grass not having grown a single inch; one suspects standard inherent bureaucratic inefficiency and waste at play often blank faced blue collar automatons from the shallow depths of the the service sector ir thankless job is to "maintain hard-edged boundary definitions at all costs" as though here inna endland fuzzy thinking porous outlines and all previously lovely crinkly edges must be strimmed away with meek mild condescending prejudice - what writer ian martin calls "landscaping as an expression of municipal stalinism" - echoing ww2 goodthink about unceasing vigilance against invaders there used to be some beautiful bamboo growing wild this side of the neighbour's fence - but the strimmers came and ripped it up; now the nervous black and white cat merely uses the area as ir public toilet it's not that what is loosely considered regular maintenance isn't necessary - but that it somehow harkens backward to victorian era misconceptions of nature - ugly romantic notions regarding the mechanical quantization of a living planet into safe heavily patrolled rectangles of aggressively manicured greenery and idyllic (class) seclusion against all things foreign one good example of this desperate obsession between falsely divided inner and outer words: the lady of shallot.. who allegedly knew ir onions thing is you once found quiet sublime delight in "the victorian kitchen garden" with gardener harry dobson - a true gentle man graced with effortless patience and humility // video here summer update they now come around to strim andor cut almost every other week - one can only imagine the total amount of unnecessary noise and fuel-burning pollution they produce on ir merry travels // republic of bob