6am, overcast, light rain.

6am, overcast, light rain.

In the park, the man smoking strong weed is walking his Akita past the temperance fountain. There are the joggers, ornamental lampposts, the shut up ice-cream pergola, the Boer war soldier, and down the steep hill, there's the modern day discount Sisyphus struggling with his 10kg bag of potatoes; every day I pass him here.

Further down, another young man is threatening to jump from the railway bridge on Church Street. The police are turning back the traffic and a woman is shouting.

Lunchtime now, and the jackdaws are pecking at the horse shit in Wakefield Road while a group of old men gather around the modular seating at the Hyundai showroom that smells of rubber.

Clouds clear, it’s 15° and big flies are basking on the white front doors of the terrace. I pass a man in canvas espadrilles and a wide brimmed straw hat down by the junction box with its doors open and wiring exposed. He’s talking to the young Sikh man who is sitting in his expensive black Mercedes with the roof down and his sunglasses on. 

The council are mowing the lawn under the Pampas grass on Lawton Street and on the new estate the developer-planted cherry and viburnum are finally usurping the fake plastic topiary.

“…Betty, its telling me you’ve put the wrong pin number in, love. Will you take it out and try again? No, no, wait for me, Betty. That’s it. Okay, you can put your pin in now, Betty”

A heron flies the length of the road and the woman in the three-quarter length taupe anorak is imperious. She stares Britannia like into the distance as her terrier pisses on the cotoneaster next to the Vauxhall Vectra with the bulldog bumper sticker.

A chunky young man with a regulation hairstyle and a Burberry check coat walks with his head on one side into the Food & Wine shop. He noticeably grimaces as he picks up two cans of Skol Super. “Two pounds please, love” says the avuncular woman in the turtleneck behind the counter.

In the 1970s village populated by the grown up cast of a Children’s Film Foundation movie and Stig of the Dump, most people in the bungaloid extensions share surnames with kids I went to primary school with. The daffodils are out in the churchyard and the jackdaws are squabbling violently as a Radiophonic Workshop soundtrack plays in my head. 

At the Frank Lloyd-Lite gated community on the hill where the dog walkers drive Mercedes vans, the cottage gardens are being torn up and replaced with Driveways of Distinction by young men who listen to hip-hop on site radios.

There’s a chill in the air. There are starlings.

There’s a chill in the air. There are starlings. There is standing traffic because a bus has got stuck. The driver is wearing sunglasses and waving his arms at a woman in a Fiesta—who is also stuck. There’s a navy blue sock in the gutter.

I walk past the dog-eared Vote Remain posters in the window of the railway bookshop and take the desire line across the verge. The yellow carpet of fallen leaves under the now thin canopy of the cherry tree is accented with black: seven empty White Star cider cans and a plastic bag of dog shit. 

I cross the road. The clothing bank is propped up on bricks, there’s a new chipboard fence and the kerbstones have been messily daubed with white paint: No Parking Please. 

Schoolgirls are stealing schoolboys’ hats for fun and the man who jogs in his suit trousers overtakes me in the road, his grey shirt completely buttoned—including the cuffs.

I slalom around on wheelie bin pavements. At number fifty-six, the bin has a brass effect '5' and '6' bolted to it, next door the ’58’ has been applied with lackadaisical Tippex and outside No.60 there’s no wheelie bin at all, just a small five litre brushed steel pedal bin with no number.

A single rubberised red-brown glove with off-white cuffing lies in the gutter. This is by far the most commonly discarded style of glove in the Huddersfield area*. I once saw one fall from the back of a builder's truck as it rounded a corner which perhaps explains the phenomenon.

Further up the hill, the soot-black terraces give way to pebble-dash inter-war semis with neatly trimmed privet. There’s a pile of interior doors in a ginnel and a big ball of hoover fluff on a lawn but no more White Star cans. 

A strong easterly breeze is blowing now and the leaves on the pavement are getting deep. There are parked cars on the right, ivy encroaching from the left and overhanging trees above.

Higher up again and the uniformity of another Victorian terrace is broken with a UPVC porch, a satellite TV dish, or a clump of Pampas grass. Opposite this, behind the collapsed dry stone wall there’s an area of literal edgeland: rough tussock grass, arthritic nettles, fireweed, brambles, a broken pallet, a graffiti-daubed electricity substation, the remains of a galvanised security palisade and a sheer millstone drop to the valley bottom.

* Huddersfield Glovewatch 2002