Saturday 28 January 2017

A scrappy formation of 258 geese honk in the sky above topiary conifers



A scrappy formation of 258 geese honk in the sky above topiary conifers and slimy green millstone. 

At the building site, the foreman with the obvious wig says, “Ooh, my condoms have arrived” as he takes the large parcel from the postman. He looks around the Portakabin for the approval of his hi-vis colleagues but they are all too busy eating their Pot Noodles. The postman smiles politely and leaves. Muttering to himself, he kicks a small hamster of sphagnum down the wooden steps in front of him.

Fieldfares flock in the field behind the cottage with the fake shutters that aren’t big enough for the windows. 

Leylandii hide the double-parked cars and block the winter sun. It’s warm. There are midges. The birds think it’s spring: wood pigeons, sparrows, starlings, a woodpecker, and the big flock of gulls circling above the tree line.

The moors are invisible in the mist and the men in their sixties at the clubhouse stand in groups of grey and navy with their hands in pockets, rocking on their heels. Their conversations about whether Chris or Darren should “look after the technical side when Geoff’s gone” are punctuated with the bleeping of Audi key fobs.

At the new-build fake-sandstone semis where the people carriers have Centre Parcs stickers on their windscreens and the gardens are still littered with firework casings, the builders are loading a heavy duty radio into a van, “Get yourself home, get your lunch and get your leg over and I’ll meet you back here this aft’”

Never Mind The Dog, Beware Of The Owner.

Friday 13 January 2017

It’s dark in the park because they’ve turned out the lights to save some money.



It’s dark in the park because they’ve turned out the lights to save some money. There’s a noisy owl in the wooded bit and the man with the little round glasses says he’s fucking freezing.

It’s 1° and the frost is still hard when I pass the man in the T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops who is struggling to fit a baby seat into an old Ford Focus. Across the street a thin woman is forcing cardboard packaging into her overflowing bin, “Fuck me!” she says to the teenage girls who are listening to speaker-phone hip-hop on the wall, “When are they gonna come and empty the chuffin’ bins, man?”


Down by the No Fly Tipping sign someone has fly tipped a broken wheelie bin. 


At the bottom of the hill between the two derelict fridges, two boys of about eight or nine are playing kerby while another boy throws small stones at them. They pause briefly when the angry old man in the polyester parka poises a tin can across the street. He climbs into a black Skoda Fabia and drives away at high speed and the boys carry on with their game.


Next to the end terrace with NOTE PRIVT PlS DON’T THROW RUBISH HERE painted on its gable end in foot high lettering there are three sodden old settees, two armchairs, a stained king-sized mattress, a wardrobe door, four split open bin liners of children’s clothing in a puddle, a small pile of rubble, a large cardboard box, a bit of an old tent, an empty Pepsi can, an empty Persil box and some snapped off bits of rotten timber.


On the side street of semis, a tall thin man in a black fleece and beanie is trying to look nonchalant while his dog pisses on his next door neighbour’s gate post. He glances casually through the front window to check he hasn’t been spotted. On the other side of the road, outside the house with the plastic-terracotta doorstep plant pots of couch grass and Haribo wrappers, the woman in her 60s is being patient with her Yorkshire terrier as it shits on the pavement. She stands over it anxiously with a little black plastic bag ready in her hand. Further along, there’s a pride of journalists with woollen overcoats and long lenses blocking the road outside the house of the man who was shot dead by the police yesterday.


Back in town, the Sports Direct assistant idly plays with his genitals while he waits for the young girl to try on some trainers.