At the newsagent where the Adele album is played on a loop...

At the newsagent where the Adele album is played on a loop, two men in their fifties were comparing their experiences of school. 

"When the bell rang and we were playing football, we'd just ignore it. Did you do that?" 

"No, not really."

On Bankfoot Lane, a man in a flat cap was clearing debris left by the high winds. He held up a garden gnome, "I just found this," he said "isn't he a little beauty?”

Later, I got hit in the face by a wet clematis when it broke free of its trellis in a strong gust and a woman answered a door wearing a Father Christmas oven glove. Also, the Christmas tree is still up and fully decorated in the pool room at the flats.

I saw an owl at Wheelwrights farm and a man who looked like Boris Yeltsin going into the The Laundry Basket launderette. A young boy of about seven threatened to cut my head off with an (a real) axe and a man in the the park with a chest length beard and Bermuda shorts asked me whether I'd ever been to London.

I saw Marc getting off the bus at Berry Brow. He had a snare drum in one hand, some cymbals in the other and his jacket done up to the top. I pulled over to say hello and he said he'd just got back from London where he'd played at Ronnie Scott's. I said to say hello to his mum, he said he would and then he went because it was raining.

There's a brown lace-up Clarks shoe on the pavement

There’s a brown lace-up Clarks shoe on the pavement outside the house with the ring of miniature standing stones on the lawn. The other of the pair is twenty yards down the road at the bus stop where the chubby goth boy is being chased by a wasp.

Outside Euphoria Fitness, a man and a woman in boxing gloves are sparring in the carpark. He’s holding up his hand and she’s hitting it. He’s shouting “Hit it! Hit it!”. I cross the road to the garage where, coincidentally the mechanic is listening to a song with the lyric “euphoria, take my hand” while he works on an old Vauxhall Corsa.

Someone has written ‘Lynard Skynard’ and ‘The Who’ in the dirt on my van.

The skip lorries are tailing back down the road from the tip. An elderly man in salwar kameez has climbed into the back of one of them and is raiding it for timber.

Two men are playing pool In the communal room at the flats. One of them is unable to take his preferred shot because his cueing action is obstructed by the still fully decorated Christmas tree in the corner. Outside, I can hear a teacher in the schoolyard opposite shouting “Quickly Shakira, I’m waiting!”

I call round at a friend’s house and I notice his neighbour has put up a wobbly, hand-painted sign on his gate that says, ‘If you are preaching or selling do not enter coz the wife bites’.

The man in front of me with the shaved head, the tracksuit bottoms and the shiny blouson jacket...

The man walking in front of me with the shaved head, tracksuit pants and the shiny blouson jacket stops to pick up a packet of sodden cigarettes from the gutter. He opens it but he can’t get at the contents because they’re all stuck together. He tears at the packet, peels away a wet cigarette from the cluster, puts it in his mouth and makes repeated attempts to light it.

A man with a splint on his wrist, wearing glasses and smoking a pipe says “It’s a nice spot round here”. Just around the corner, I see a massive red toadstool and I run over a squirrel. Ten minutes later another man who is wearing glasses and smoking a pipe (but without a splint on his wrist) says “How do?” and asks me for directions to Bradley Farm. A bit later I trip over the wellington boot belonging to the man who is practising the drums with the window open and Mrs Sykes says she’s glad it’s a nice day and that junk mail is a bit of a pain but she supposes it keeps me in work.

I see my first domestic Christmas tree of the year. It has plain white lights.