7am, overcast, light rain: a flock of crows flies over the post office and lands in St Peter’s Gardens

7am, overcast, light rain: a flock of crows sweeps in over the post office and lands in St Peter’s Gardens. They wander around for a bit before flying away again, one pair at a time.

The thin man with filthy hands blags a cig off me outside work. He twitches and mumbles while he rolls it, “If it wasn’t for the postmen, I’d be lost” he says three times. “You guys are really switched on” he says. He pops his cigarette between his lips to light it. He keeps talking but I can’t understand what he’s saying because he has a cigarette in his mouth. He pulls on it, takes it out and tells me “I’ve got system…” and he goes on to explain how he likes to put grapes into cheap wine to improve the flavour. “It’s a good system but it’s nowhere near as good as yours” he says, and he takes a long drag while he gazes at the entrance to the post office as the vans go in and out. “That,” he says, leaving his cig between his lips again as he points at the busy yard, “that is SO switched on. That is SO switched on”.

Later, on the estate, I see a girl of about two or three years old sticking £10 notes to the condensation on the window of her front room. A few doors down, the Toyota Yaris decorated decals of flowers is surrounded on all sides by piles of the most enormous dog turds I think I’ve ever seen. Some are trodden into the asphalt and one in particular has a child’s doll embedded in it.

In the park, the trees glisten bright autumn yellow. The short chubby woman in the pink anorak and chullo hat strolls confidently past the leaf covered stone lion. She stops to pet the black Labrador accompanied by the woman in the gilet and jeans. “Well, you’re the boss, aren’t you darling?” The sun’s brought out lots of gilet dog walkers with their tennis ball launchers and leg warmers.

The bin man is wearing a kilt.

I knock at a door with a parcel. I wait for a while and am about to leave when a woman finally answers, “Sorry, love. I was on the loo.”

Half-a-Dozen Crows, Definitely Crows, Pick at the Very Last Remains of a Dead Squirrel

Half a dozen crows, definitely crows, pick at the very last remains of a dead squirrel in a squall that knocks me sideways on the bridge over the ring road. 

Outside the closed down brothel, a young woman wearing only a long T-shirt and heels is in hushed discussion with a tall man in a big parka. 200 yards further along, the man with the tattooed neck stops suddenly, throws up on the pavement, wipes his mouth and continues on his way. I catch his eye as I pass him. It’s 3.30pm.

Earlier, the weather was calmer, a big feather duvet cloud was slumped over the valley head but the sky directly above was blue and still. In the leaf litter at the bottom of Mrs Brook’s drive a sparrowhawk was opening up a steaming kill and, in the field behind the road sign with the buddleja growing from it, a kestrel was hovering above the half blown away barn.

The Most Difficult Thing Ever on Facebook

2014 has been a great year for holding a digestive biscuit between your teeth.

2014 Highlights:

Holding a digestive biscuit between your teeth while you watch a flock of geese

Laying some new, yellow concrete flags directly over the old cracked ones

Having a bit of cake on your face

Selling the stone flags from your yard and replacing them with dog shit

Poking a yolky knife at a picture of a semi-naked man

Amplexus on the steps of the house that once featured on TV’s Grand Designs programme

Emptying your catheter bag into the storm drain by the bedroom furniture shop

Adjusting your vest top and putting out your cigarette (as a mark of respect)

Asserting that steam railways make life worth living

Watching two ducks eat some chips

Being a goth, then normal, then a muslim

Spraying an old push-bike yellow in the rain

Mending a Transit Connect

Sleeping in a shopping basket attached to a walking frame

Cycling

Referring to your Mercedes using the pronouns She and Her
Returning to the crew cut and rat tail in your 60s

Asking Robert: Have you any food on?

Calling Robert a robbing bastard

Gobbing out of the window of a Fiat 500

Having your tits grabbed by Kyle

Recommending a cut of pork loin

Selling a pebble for a pound

Being inside a Range Rover

Swallowing a mouse in just three gulps

Being important enough in Fair-Isle and corduroy

Watching the jackdaws while you piss against a tree

Nightclothes in the daytime

Polishing your alloys and smoking weed

Soiled nappies and an enraged goose

Jokes and cigarettes outside the strip club

Wearing your hard hat over your hood

Talking to the lonely pig on the moor

Bemoaning all this rigmarole

It had been a windy night; beech nuts were popping under my feet

It’s been a windy night and the beech nuts are popping under my feet. The street lights are out again and it would be pitch black were it not been for the faint glow of the light that illuminates the green lichen triangle on a pole that used to be a street sign.

Lunchtime: still only half light. And cold. Paths are lined with thick puddles of leaves, black arthritic nettles, and frantically suckering brambles. The wind hisses through yellow horse chestnut, and telegraph wires strain at their poles. Brown fields are dotted white with gulls and the farm cat swallows a mouse whole in just three gulps.

At the pub in the village where ‘2 Dine for £12.99 on selected main courses and afternoon tea’, the landlord is being important enough in Fair Isle and corduroy. “Hello there!” he enthuses to customers disgorged crease free from mainly Range Rovers.

I watch some squabbling jackdaws while I piss against a tree. Half a dozen of them are fighting over the topmost perch of the church steeple. They circle scrappily for a while until one suddenly tips its wing and attempts a landing. Usually, its move is pre-empted by

the others and the breakaway bird is knocked off course and forced to abort. Occasionally, one succeeds in making the perch only for the rest to rush it en masse and dislodge it after only a few seconds.

It was windy and the sky was littered with crows, swept up like a thousand bin bags.

It was windy and the sky was littered with crows, swept up like a thousand bin bags. Deep inside the bus shelter, a large woman wearing a done-up-to-the-top anorak pulled a cellophane wrapped greetings card from a large pretend-leather bag. Inspecting it, she smoothed the corner between her finger and thumb; “Is that bent, or is it me?” she asked. 

Also waiting for the bus was a very large man in a black tracksuit top with white trim. He was standing outside the shelter, in the middle of the pavement, feet a metre apart, squared-up against the gale. He wore his hood up, a scarf across the bottom half of his face, his hands deep in his pockets and his shoulders back; rock solid in the teeth of the squall that blew his enormous grey marl sweat pants tight around him, clearly outlining his quite small cock and balls.

“Don’t worry, they’re worse than they seem”, the woman reassured me as she restrained her snarling dogs. 

At the house with the statuette of a meerkat holding a sign that says “Welcomes” on it, the old woman behind the glass front door got up and walked away when I rang the bell. Her neighbour, a man who was chewing gum and wearing protective goggles came out and told me he thought it was a crap day but that technology is brilliant.