On the estate where pretend owls outnumber the human population by two to one...

On the estate where pretend owls outnumber the human population by two to one, a woman tends her plastic window boxes. She wears gold-rimmed Reactolites, pink marigold gloves, flip-flops and a grey fleece jacket and trouser combination. Her patio of pink stone flags with electric cabling running through the joints, is decorated with an assortment of garden ornamentation: a gnome riding on a snail’s shell, a pair of disembodied hands holding a small bird with a solar panel in its back and a lamp in its chest, a hedgehog riding a tractor. A poodle startles the sparrows from the beech hedge. it makes me jump and I nearly trip over the statue of the top half of a woman with no arms.

11.45am: A man with mashed potato and lamb mince down the front of his shirt opens his window to offer me directions but I’m not lost. Next door, a woman with a Summer Wine perm and a grey cardigan answers her door. Her mouth is full and there’s quite a large piece of flaky pastry stuck to her cheek, “Hankfs Flhuff”, she says, as I hand her her parcel.

At the house that always smells of dog piss and stale cigarettes, an old man opens the window to take his mail. “You’re looking very smart in your uniform today, sir”, he says, “Good for you, sir. Good for you.”

I cross the rec’, adding another trail of footprints in the dew. A woman in a pink fleece jacket throws a blue ball with an orange launcher for her Jack Russell terrier, Muff, to fetch.

“More rubbish!” says the man at number 14 when he sees me coming, “I’m gonna put a letterbox on my dustbin so you can post it straight in”. “Oh, leave him alone, he gets paid for that”, says his wife from her plastic patio chair. She’s thumbing through a magazine and smoking a cigarette. “Aye”, says the man, “and the bin men get paid to take it away; the postman giveth and the bin man taketh away”. “Aye, it keeps the world going round though dun’t it, love”, says the woman, winking at me.

The weather turns and the short, rotund woman with the russet dyed almost grown out perm, grey roots and purple anorak is sheltering under her blown inside-out umbrella at the bus-stop. “In’t it awful weather!” she shouts across the road. I agree.

In the office, Adam was telling us about the curries he'd eaten over the weekend

In the office, Adam is telling Nathan about the curries he's eaten over the weekend:

"Balti Friday night, Pathia Saturday night and on Sunday I went round to a mate's house and we had a nice Rogan Josh. Not a bad weekend."

“Blimey, I bet you're back on the fruit now! Mind you, I suppose they're not too bad for you, curries, are they?" Says Nathan.

"Depends what you fire in with ‘em, doesn't it kid?" says Adam without looking up from his work. He’s standing on a box slotting letters into the top row of his frame (he's not particularly short but he says it makes his arm ache otherwise).

A red kite (the bird kind) drifts along the tree line above the road as the woman with the picture of an alien on her sweatshirt approaches with her two boxer dogs. As she gets closer, the dogs snarl and bark at me. Without looking up, the woman shouts "Shut up! It's a man, not a Martian!"

I slip on a flight of greasy green Yorkstone steps. I end up at the bottom, lying on my back with my feet on the patio, slightly winded. I tell the owner about it. "Are they slippy?" he says and hands me a mis-delivered letter from the day before.

At one of the sheltered bungalows on the estate, the old woman with the grey perm, faded blue anorak and american tan tights is putting out her wheelie bin. It’s decorated with a large stripy orange and green sticker that said Pimp My Bin! in a graffiti style font.

On my way down to the farm, I see a freshly killed blue tit in the middle of the lane. On my way back up five minutes later, it has gone.

Someone has written ‘Retard’ in the dirt on the side of old Mr Richardson's new Honda CR-V.

A rabbit runs across my path in the same place as one did yesterday.

On the estate, a boy of about five is playing on a scooter in the street. "Are you going to my house?" He asks. "Yes" I say and he throws down his scooter and runs inside shouting "Wait there!" Moments later, I see him through the window of the front room wrestling an agitated Jack Russell terrier from the back of the settee. A door slams and the boy comes running back outside. "It's our dog" he says, "I had to lock him in, he hates postmans”.