Tuesday, 23 November 2010

Someone has stolen the roof from Bradley Farm...



Someone has stolen the roof from Bradley Farm.

The sign above the door at MPC North Ltd says ‘mpc north: managing people’s choices’. The reception area is staffed by people in military fatigues with laptops on their knees.

At the park homes on the moor, a woman in an old fleece jacket with a picture of a wolf on it tells me I’m a good postman because she’s seen me pick up an elastic band I dropped. She tells me that my colleagues just leave them on her path. The wolf woman’s friend—salmon pink anorak, big set platinum hair and a plastic rain hood—says “Ignore her love, she’s like this,” and the wolf woman says, “No I’m not”.

At Mr Haigh’s, I have to step over a dead calf to get to his front door today.

An old Ford Ka pulls up next to me. In the front is a smartly dressed couple, he in a camel hair coat with suede collars and her with a tidy perm and a large beaded necklace. In the back is another man in a beige anorak. They are all in their seventies, maybe eighties. The driver winds down his window and shouts over in a southern accent, “It’s good to see a good healthy postman!” I kind of nod. The man goes on “I’ve got a man here...” He gestures over his shoulder at the man in the anorak. “... and I’m bringing him to see his childhood, er, all the good people!” I look at the anorak man in the back, he’s pulling faces at the driver like a petulant teenager and mock punching the back of his seat. “Bye bye!” says the driver, and he waves and drives away.

“A load of poofs live there”, the driver of the bin wagon says to me, pointing to number 20. All the bin men laugh and say “See you, mate” as they drive off.