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

Storm Drains Are Overflowing

Storm drains are overflowing. An empty packet of Lambert & Butler and an energy drink can overtake me in the swollen run-off channel at the side of the road.

In the big yellow cherry tree, starlings make noises like excited children on a coach trip.

A Jack Russell terrier escapes from the woman with the mid-calf length floral print pleated skirt and the summer wine perm, and chases the Land Rover as it reverses into the driveway. “Stupid bloody dog!” says the woman, “It’s his boss that’s come back. That’s what’s done it!” she explains.

The flats with the pretentious name smell like a swimming pool today.

The man in the long overcoat is reading a book and drinking White Star cider inside the phone box.

The man in the white 7.5-ton truck blows his horn at the man in the bright orange fleece jacket.

The boy of about eight in the passenger seat of a Ford Focus shouts “You fat bastard!” to the fat man at the cash machine.

The teenage boy with lots of tattoos and no shirt in late October scowls and sticks out his tongue at the little girl in the back seat of the brand new Audi.

Two young girls are in conversation. Girl on a pink Barbie bike with snot in her hair: “I’m going to my nan’s and granddad’s and me dad’s tekkin me”. Slightly older girl with bed head and pyjamas at one in the afternoon: “No you’re not cos he’s going scrap yard”.

Two women are in conversation. Woman with dyed black crop and striped jumper: “You off up to t’church?” Slouching woman with cigarette: “Not yet.” Woman with dyed black crop and striped jumper: “I thought you were off up now, I were getting stressed!”

The woman with the yellow teeth who wears her anorak indoors is shouting at her children. She doesn’t get on with the man next door who sits chain-smoking in his garden all day.