"Short back and sides, and trim the fringe".

When we rang Mr D ahead of today's mission, he asked that we only cut back his hedge ("remove a lot...") and that he had some shears we could use for the task, and with this instruction in our ears Anne and I quickly got to work under the Sunday morning sunshine. We soon discovered that Mr D's shears had seen better days, and fortunately (previous experience always helps), we'd both come armed with secateurs which proved more than up to the task.

After about an hour of fairly vigorous trimming on all sides (and the top which we miraculously got reasonably level), Mr D's hedge was certainly looking a little trimmer, and no longer overgrowing the path to his flat. We found some garden bags, disturbed more than a few wee beasties in the process who'd clearly made the bags their home, and did a sweep up of the branches to leave it all neat and tidy.

At this point Mr D appeared from his flat, commented on how kind we were to do this for him, and that we'd done a nice job.