“Hi, I don’t want to sound petty, but please could people not take posters for plays and other events down? Posters can cost quite a lot of money to make in mass and whatever the event, people have put a lot of effort into it and it is very disheartening to come back from putting posters around Oxford and find they have been taken down.”

That was the note I wanted to put on my college’s Facebook page after coming back late at night from an intense technical rehearsal to find posters for the play I’d put round college taken down from notice boards. I stress the word ‘wanted’, as I didn’t end up posting the comment as I’m too scared; instead I sent a request to my JCR president asking him to put a note about it in the next JCR email. Oh dear, I am cringeing as I am typing this – what a prude I have become!

This week has only just started but it definitely doesn’t feel like it. Saturday involved an afternoon rehearsal of the kidnap scenes with a staff writer from the Oxford Student sitting in, so no pressure. Sunday started early in the morning with me dragging a trolley suitcase full of pancakes for an all day rehearsal to the Simpkins Lee Theatre. Early this morning a few cast members and I ( along with the lovely Philippa Baines from the film society to do the filming) filmed the protest scene, getting some confused looks from passers-by as we shouted, “No Blankers in our schools” and the lovely expression, “Blankers are Wankers!”.  Tonight consisted of a tiring technical rehearsal where I became an angry despot ranting and grunting at the actors from the lighting box: it’s most likely that the actors either hate me or are slightly afraid – either way it gets the job done.

A few weeks ago I went on a National Express coach that stopped in the middle of the dual-carriageway due to a petrol leakage, resulting in all the passengers (including me) waiting for taxis to come and drive us to the next nearest station. Nevertheless I managed to reach my destination and I guess it’s easy to draw a parallel between a toilsome journey on public transport and putting on a show. Despite the strong possibility of encountering delays, traffic jams, breakdowns- you get all the whole obstacle thread – the ultimate goal makes it all worth the bother. Well, let’s hope so anyway.

In January 1975 Keith Jarrett sat down at the Cologne Opera House’s Bösendorfer piano and spontaneously improvised a seamless stream of music that seemed to absorb everything from French impressionism to gospel. The recording, The Köln Concert, has gone on to sell 3.5 million copies, marks a classic milestone in 70s jazz and indeed has been responsible for many years for providing an accessible path for curious listeners towards more adventurous free music. Köln was the first jazz recording that I listened to, and through its production via the excellent ECM label, opened up a wealth of strange and wonderful listening for me. Whether or not they’re to your taste, most of Jarrett’s improvised solo concerts since the 70s have been landmark events within contemporary music. So where do we find Jarrett in 2011?

Bearing in mind the neutral, minimalist ECM-art covers that have adorned Jarrett recordings since Köln, the raw splashes of colour on the sleeve-art of this year’s Rio presented something of a surprise when it landed on my desk. And of course musically Rio and Köln couldn’t be further apart. Recorded live in Rio earlier in the year, this recording marks further solo concert experimentation within a particular path adopted by Jarrett over the last few years. Stemming from 2005’s Radiance, Jarrett has rejected the hour-long marathons that so distinguished his recordings since the 70s, in favour of a more compact, episodic approach.

Rio is stretched over 15 improvisational sketches, springing out in ‘Part I’ with loose, uncertain lines set over stuttering chords, before settling in ‘Part II’ into typically glowing textures, all underpinned by a kaleidoscopic harmonic sense. It is an experience that runs the full gamut of Jarrett’s sound world, from bursts of free jazz through to extended passages of impressionistic, textural play. It owes as much to the ill-documented free playing scene that Jarrett was involved in throughout clubs in Paris and New York in the 60s, as it does to his early solo concerts. Interestingly Jarrett has always named saxophonists, rather than pianists, as his inspiration. And indeed his cascading runs of notes, never once percussive, are all on display here. Moments of pure glory come with the beautiful points of emergence that Jarrett sets up, shifting from twisted melody and nervously pulsating chords in ‘Part V’ into unabashed lyricism.

Jarrett has described the unpremeditated solo performance process in the past as being a fusion of ‘spontaneous composition’ and ‘free improvisation’. It’s an approach that clearly explains much of the knowing classical references that litter his recordings from the 70s through to the 90s. And I must confess that I have not maintained complete affection for that body of work – with 1988’s Paris Concert’s descent into half an hour of crossover remaining a memorably excruciating moment. The taut variations he has worked to since 2005 has conversely allowed for freer playing – ‘letting go’ musically while also maintaining a stronger sense of structure over the whole concert. Of course I still find the idea of listening to and reviewing recordings of pure improvisation slightly problematic, given that so much of the beauty comes in the elusive music of the moment. Nevertheless, Rio is one of Jarrett’s most coherent recordings and is highly recommended listening. 

The art world’s most prestigious award, The Turner Prize, is also, to many people’s minds, the most powerful symbol of its lunacy and pointlessness. Founded in 1984 to celebrate new developments in contemporary art, the way it works is that nominations for artists are invited each year, four are picked by a crack-team of art nuts to be exhibited before a winner is chosen to take home a cash prize which today stretches to £40,000.

Since the very beginning the Prize has polarised a nation. There are those who think it represents an increasingly rare forum for the most relevant and powerful stuff that the human imagination is capable of, and there are those who think that the whole thing is generally more arsey than the Rokeby Venus. The Prize temporarily disappeared in 1990 whilst people in white drainpipes and massive jumpers squabbled over the rules, the prize money, and whether the whole affair was just a waste of time. The debate has not stopped since.

What is all the fuss about then? In 2007, exhibition-goers would have seen a winning two hour film of artist Mark Wallinger dressed in a bear suit wandering around the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin at night. In 2008 Mark Leckey give a winning lecture on cats. In 2002, Fiona Banner exhibited her magnum opus, a piece entitled Arsewoman in Wonderland: a wall-sized blow-by-proverbial-blow account of a porn film in massive pink type. Sadly Miss Banner missed out on the prize that particular year, though evidently undeterred, she crashed into the press again last year by exhibiting an upside down aeroplane at the Tate. 

This year, we have two painters shortlisted, George Shaw and Karla Black. But before you traditionalists breathe a sigh of relief, know that one works in airfix paint, the other in lipstick, bath bombs and bronzer. Also featured at the exhibition, this year at the Baltic gallery in Gateshead, is the work of Martin Boyce, who creates installations based on urban landmarks, and Hilary Lloyd, whose display consists of video screens and projectors showing scenes including construction sites.

If on paper much of the material may strike the sceptical reader as justifying that perennial wail of ‘I could’ve done that!’, remember that all that can ever really be said in reply is, ‘Yeah, but you didn’t.’ Both perspectives are valuable.

The furore is as important to the identity of the Turner Prize as the unmade beds and transvestistism. The art world is more sophisticated today than in the days when all you had to worry about was not getting Monet and Manet mixed up.

In a society increasingly characterised by a mania for all things monetary, modern art is not contaminated by, but thrives from, its interaction with the marketplace, asking important questions about the value of creativity, the nature of investment, and, most problematically, what makes art art.

Divorced from an environment in which these questions are asked, two cheap plastic blow-up sex dolls with a dildo placed in the 69 position would amount only to the coffee break creativity of a bored Ann Summers employee, rather than the 2003 prize-winning entry. The consternation, the media din, the bookies’ bets, the Stuckist protests, the hefty price-tags: these are what make the Turner Prize valuably baffling and unique.

This year’s Turner exhibition is at the BALTIC centre and runs until the 8th of January.

Here’s a depressing thought – you know that novel you’ve been working on, the one you’ve invested so much time and energy in, the semi-autobiographical one that lays bare your troubled relationship with your father, that one? Well, when you finally send said document to a publishing house, before it can be placed in the expert hands of a revered, bearded editor, it must get past a bored, unqualified, speccy intern.

Like an unpaid Cerberus, the intern will block your passage to the house of fame. I should know – I spent my whole summer putting people’s hopes and dreams in the No pile.

On my first day interning at a publishing house in Soho, my boss defined my job thus: “You must ensure,” said he, gesturing to the pile of manuscripts on my desk, “That none of these people ever contact me again.” Each day I read at least 20 submissions and usually filled out 20 rejection letters. These rejection forms were brutal – a standardised two-line ‘thanks, but no thanks’, with the author’s name written in biro at the top.

To ease my guilt at having dashed so many dreams I want to give first time authors a few tips to make sure their novel gets past The Intern. Firstly, if you’re writing a tale of “ill-fated lovers set in the Second World War as recounted by a dying grandma”, stop. It’s been done. Secondly, if you’re writing “a thriller about biological warfare in a modern city”, that’s been done too. There’s nothing wrong with retelling a classic story, but remember: the intern is bored, the intern wants to go to lunch, the intern can guess what is going to happen to Mabel and Hauptleute Hans – and to Agent Mathias and the feisty-but-vulnerable-gorgeous-red-haired-pencil-skirted detective.

Thirdly, if your synopsis is long-winded and aimless and repetitive and confusing and seems to trail off without reaching a climax… this worries the intern. Finally, the title is the first opportunity you have to grab our attention – do not let this opportunity pass you by. Calling your book In the Quiet Shadow of the Rambling Man, or The Streets of Warwick, or Never Say Goodbye, is bad. Calling your book Sex Naked Boob is good.

You have had a gardening column in the Financial Times since 1970. How does the writing process behind these articles play out?

My garden writing always arises out of what I’m doing or reading. New College Garden and the nine outlying gardens are run with no retained full-time gardener. Instead we use valiant teams of contractors, and I buy and place everything they plant and am in regular contact about what to do. On top of that I have a garden of 2 acres myself which is in varying states of glory and decay. There is plenty going on to write about.

I try to vary the range of what I write about but it’s changed so much. When I began writing a Wednesday column for the Financial Times it sold about 130,000 copies, mainly in Britain. I was told to think of Virginia Water when I wrote in the 70s, which I’d been to once and hated. Now my Saturday column in the Financial Times has a circulation of 480,000, of which 350,000 are abroad.

I like to give the feeling that the reader will never be quite sure what angle of gardening they will confront. So I vary between ‘how to’ columns – particularly flower gardening and what to choose. I am inspired by things I’ve seen, sometimes paintings, which are very popular. Sometimes gardens I’ve been to when travelling for ancient history abroad can form the basis for an article. Persistent complaints about the doublethink of eco-gardeners fill my columns. I am an inorganic gardener and I do not believe that rabbits, badgers and deer are a privilege with which I am lucky to share my garden. I think at all costs they are to be removed!

Are you influenced by literature and art when you encounter a garden?

If I travel to a historic garden of a particular period, I try to think sideways to the novels and poetry of that era, if I know them. And quite often there is a mismatch. Many authors, then as now, are horticulturally blind. I used to advise Iris Murdoch on her rose garden but I wouldn’t expect Martin Amis to have the slightest idea about the subtle depths of any garden he mentions.

And equally there are scenes from painting that live in my mind and either nudge my taste in a particular direction or cause me to look on what I’ve planted in a particular way. I was in the Met in June and fastened on a painting by Degas called September. There was a large bowl of flowers – Michaelmas daisies and so forth. It caught my eye and mind. And it’s an effect that I try to work to in autumn in the New College borders.

But it is important to respect garden-doing rather than garden-watching. I admire anyone who can grow things and there are far too many designers who can’t. I think we are seeing a resurgence of gardening. I look to this generation as the great hope to repair the clueless vacuity of those I taught from 1973 to 2003, not one of whom knew what a primrose looked like. Unless the coalition decides to tarmac two thirds of the surrounding countryside, perhaps we might actually learn to participate in one of the supreme strengths of British culture.

What makes your personal gardening ‘style’?

Sustainability is sloppy thinking. I admire the classical Japanese who admired a flower even more if its beauty was transitory. Gardens with a natural look or trying to use natural methods are just as much of a pretence and an illusion as my borders full of Delphiniums on beautifully staked bamboo canes. I don’t want a garden that looks like the banks of a motorway.

As for gardening within the effects of climate change, I feel about the global greenhouse what Mao felt about the French Revolution – it’s too early to say. At the moment the warmer summers and dry years are very patchy in parts of the world, but they were in the 18^th century too. We haven’t yet, I think, crossed a barrier where a completely new range of plants is now possible outdoors in Britain. The effects, if any so far, have not changed the art of gardening.

I am not saving the planet nor creating a haven for wildlife. I am creating a garden of really beautiful flowers which is an illusion. We do not all need to have a garden full of rabbits. Despite the remorseless logic of Derek Parfitt and his book Reasons and Persons, I cannot live my life as if every tiny decision should be multiplied by a million and assessed for its overall difference to the world. Eco-freaks in camouflage trousers and pigtails soften when they see the beauty of my garden in June or September. That’s my style and I admire it.

Robin Lane Fox’s latest book is Thoughtful Gardening, published by Penguin

Tom Gauld’s work is perhaps most familiar to us in the form of the Guardian’s weekly cartoon; usually a little two or three frame story, at times a single image, the simplicity and geometric linearity of his drawing always striking. His cartoons have both a light fragility and a clean, bold firmness: a result of his unique method which combines hand-drawing in pencil and ink followed by digital manipulation. ‘I like the control that the computer gives me over my work, but if I made my work entirely on the computer I think it would look too clean and sterile. I think the tiny variations and mistakes of hand drawn images are very appealing.’

Gauld mentions he could never ‘sit in front of the computer’ and come up with an idea, and I remark that many of his cartoons deal with the complexities and difficulties of the creative process itself. ‘The first two times The Guardian asked me to make comics for them I was rather overwhelmed… I couldn’t decide what to do and I think this leaked into the work as both times I made stories about blocked artists. I suppose that those cartoons would be a bit boring if they were just about great people being great at doing great things. I like to look at the other side of things or people we might imagine to be magnificent, I’m pretty sure that we are all idiots most of the time.’

His forthcoming graphic novel, Goliath, certainly fits this theme. It retells David and Goliath from the perspective of the rather timid and awkward giant, moving the focus onto the overlooked. ‘I do like the contrast (in visual scale and ideas) between big/grand/important things and small/ordinary/everyday. In Goliath I wanted to tell his story, and make it unexpected… In my version I haven’t made David a bad guy, it’s just that seen from Goliath’s perspective he’s not good news.’

Gauld himself comes across as quite an understated character, and gives the impression that complementing his talent is a lot of quiet hard work. His intricate cross-hatching technique takes ‘quite a while, but I guess probably not quite as long as most people imagine’, he got to his position not by a wild stroke of luck, but by ‘calling up all the magazines, publishers and ad agencies whose work I liked’, and he is clearly drawn to the ‘immediacy’ and ‘intimacy’ of self-publishing.

The polar opposite of any David-like hero, he is far more the retiring Goliath. ‘I always just try to make the sort of thing I’d like to see and, since I think I’m not a terribly unusual sort of person, I assume that it’ll work for other people. I think of my work in terms of ‘communicating’ (i.e. thinking about the audience) rather than ‘self-expression’, which I think sometimes leads to what may be meaningful and interesting to the creator but baffling to anyone else.’

The momentum of Gauld’s softly spoken humour is a natural partner to the simplicity of his visual aesthetic, and together they form the accessible language which makes Gauld’s drawings so innately likeable.

www.tomgauld.com