At the entrance to the park, the shaggy Border collie called Chicken was being restrained by its owner…

At the entrance to the park, a shaggy Border collie called Chicken is being restrained by its owner: “No, Chicken! Leave it! Chicken! No!” 

Around the corner at the house with the new pattern imprinted concrete driveway, I eventually realise that the large polished red and white streaked calcite sphere on the window sill isn’t the back of the head of an elderly man with a ruddy complexion and a wispy white comb-over, and I stop trying to attract its attention. 

Back in town, an enormous man driving a Mini passes me as I walk under the stalactites that hang from the arch of the railway bridge. He clatters noisily over the steel road plates that cover the pothole at the entrance to Tesco’s car park, parks across two spaces and hoists himself out by grabbing the door frame with both hands.

The golf pro’ with the Hoxton fin cranes his neck to watch the small yellow aeroplane from the nearby airfield as it flies low overhead. 
At one of the houses that backs onto the green, a thin bald man in a fleece jacket and faded jeans is carefully stencilling the names Brian and Susan onto the back rest of a wooden bench in a swirly gold font. I pass him as he’s admiring his work. He glances up and waves briefly before walking up the gravel path, past the little tableau on the lawn: a stone tortoise apparently engaged in combat with a tiny plastic second world war infantryman that has been painted white. At the entrance to the conservatory, the man places his unlit roll-up on the window sill, kicks off his boots and disappears inside behind a bookcase of faded hardback autobiography spines: Botham, Clough, Greavsie …

There was a house brick wrapped in silver foil...

Yesterday, There was a house brick wrapped in silver foil and two metal dessert spoons on the bench on Fitzwilliam Street. This morning, the spoons have gone but the house brick is still there.

Julie from the canteen is outside smoking a cigarette. She tells me that two people have ordered poached eggs. She says she hates making poached eggs and the thought of having to go back inside and do it is ruining her cigarette break.

The man in an anorak was leaning on his fence smoking a roll-up. He asked me whether I had any mail for him. I told him I had to do the estate first and he said he'd hang on for me. An hour-and-a-half later I came off the estate and he was still there, leaning on the fence, smoking a roll-up.

The Border collie has been barking, upsetting ornaments and head-butting the window of the front room of the first house on the cul-de-sac ever since I pushed the mail under the shed door (the owner has asked me not to use the letterbox because the dog tears up the mail).
Three doors down, a man in a big quilted coat and aviator shades, winds down the window of his black Honda Prelude with red rims and blacked-out rear windows, winks at me and says "Have you got owt for me mate?" I hand him his mail and he says "Sweet mate. Nice one."

At No.12, the large Polish man with the paintbrush moustache who wears his tracksuit bottoms very high (they go right up his arse crack) has been pruning next door's overhanging hypericum with an electric carving knife. Now, he's talking to another neighbour, the young Asian man in the white hooded top who is walking an aggressive looking boxer dog. When I pass them, the dog sees me and nearly pulls him over, jerking him around 180 degrees. The boxer's barking sends the collie at No.2 into a frenzy and it jumps onto the window sill with all four feet, its fur squashed up against the glass. It falls off again in quite a comical fashion but continues to bark undaunted.