On the ridge tiles above the 1:6 scale Laurel and Hardy and the twice life-size rabbit

On the ridge tiles above the 1:6 scale Laurel and Hardy and the twice life-size rabbit, I notice a heron surveying the sleepy bungaloid exension. I point it out to the man with the hosepipe and he tells me it’s been kicking about for days.

It’s the season of sunny pinks and yellows. Dandelions, gorse, grit bins, double yellow lines and cherry blossom lined pavements.

At the house on the corner of the estate, the man in his sixties is admiring his new St George cross wind sock while at the bus stop in the road outside an elderly woman with a pull-along shopping cart pulls down her face mask to have a long drag on her cigarette.

10.30am. I park up next to the dirty Visitor Parking sign at the flats; scuffed brushed steel that still just about reflects the red of the van with a peeling inlayed sans serif in black. It’s come warm now and the bees are sniffing around the white azaleas. A man in a black baseball cap, black t-shirt and black jeans gets into a black Renault Megane. A large woodpigeon alights on the canopy of one of the neat new row of slender galvanised street lamps and a man in a Huddersfield Town shirt leans on a wheelie bin to sing the REM song, Losing My Religion in its entirety at the top of his voice.

“If their car’s not there, they’ll not be in” says the next-door neighbour. “Can I leave it with you?” I ask. “I suppose so” he sighs, not getting up. The cheery “Thanks, pal. You’re doing a great job” comments have dried up in the new normal.

The chemist has been broken into over night, the big display window and both panels of the door have been boarded up. A woman in her fifties is on her phone in the queue outside, “I’m not being horrible but you know what I mean.”

A man wearing a face mask in the queue at the post office waves and shouts a muffled hello. I say hello back. He says something else unintelligible. “Pardon” I say. He muffles into his mask again and I still don’t know what he’s saying so I approximate what I hope is an appropriate response, a slight laugh accompanied by a “Yeah”. His face his covered by his mask but I get the impression that this is a friend rather than a customer. I try, but I can’t make out what he’s saying or who he is so I just do a more open-faced laugh and a more enthusiastic yeah.

I pull up in the road next to two men in their fifties in jeans and rugby shirts. They are standing in the road drinking cans of Foster’s lager.

The man of about sixty in the full Watford football strip picks up his parcel from doorstep using a jumper to protect his hands.

A couple of early swallows whip around the telegraph wires above the house where they have pressed the cockpit canopy of a small aeroplane into use as a greenhouse. Next door, the young woman in leggings and dark glasses is on her phone, “If somebody in my household is ill then they can’t make me go to work. It says THEY CAN’T MAKE ME GO TO WORK”

I’d just passed the single, left footed bowling shoe in the gutter

As I pass the single, left-footed bowling shoe in the gutter, just before the pub chalkboard that’s had ‘Bitchcraft’ written on it for weeks, a young man in a black tracksuit with white trim passes loudly, standing up on an exhausted old scooter. “That’ll be stolen” says the toothless man with the tattoo teardrop from under his threadbare hoodie, “It’s a wonder he’s got a helmet on”.

Mr Mahmood has paved over the paving that he paved over his garden with. He’s laid some new, bright yellow concrete flags over the old cracked ones. He has used no bedding, mortar or fixture of any kind except at the edges where the flags adjoin his crumbling garden wall, just a lumpy smeared trail of cement runs around the perimeter joints.

Out in the sticks now, the wind is thrashing the trees and the sleet is thrashing my face as I slide around on slimy untreated millstone. It’s been wet and windy for weeks. The verges are scarred with deep miry tyre tracks and streams of run-off carry tree litter and even small branches along in the gutter. They are blasting at the quarry and a massive swirling flock of gulls is screeching overhead. Two bald men in black tracksuits with white trim are overseeing the cross country run around the perimeter of the school grounds. Dozens of teenagers straggle through the gap in the wall and splash past, all muddy ankles and too big t-shirts. A small, skinny boy with thick blond hair tells the taller heavier boy alongside him, “I was the fittest person with an inhaler at my old school”.

In the valley bottom, where the moss on the dry stone walls is almost fluorescent, I watch a pair of herons flap by and disappear over the horizon where you can see the tips of the wind turbines on the moor.

At the cottage with the electric gates, a delivery driver rolls his eyes and says, “Twat”, not quite under his breath as he tries to write out a form in a squall.

Two black labradors bark at each other from opposite sides of the street

Two black Labradors bark at each other from opposite sides of the street while their owners conduct a loud conversation about black Labradors above the noise.

On the way up to the manor house, I disturbed a heron. I'd thought it was one of those plastic ones until it flapped around in a panic and took off. As I walked back down the drive, I heard a rustling noise in the trees above me. I looked up in time to avoid a squirrel as it lost its grip and fell, landing with a surprisingly load slap on the tarmac. It looked at me, startled, and set off across the lawn.

At the lodge, the dog has shat in its food bowl.

A man in a white transit van with a sheep’s skull fastened to its radiator and a crude depiction of an ejaculating penis in the dirt across its back doors stops to ask me for directions to the farm. I tell him to turn right just after Redgates, “You can’t miss it”, I say, “it’s got massive green gates”. When I arrive at Redgates myself, a half hour or so later, the distinctive gates have gone, replaced by some temporary safety barriers. I ask the owner what has happened. “They’re in the garage”, he says, “It’s been so wet recently, I took them off for re-painting to give the gardeners something to do. Otherwise, they’ll sit around drinking fucking tea all day”.

On my way home, I called in at the shop. Two young women came in after me, followed by a short man in a shiny old bomber jacket. I took my things to the man at the till—the Asian one with the greying bob and pencil moustache—and, as he checked out my stuff, the bomber jacket man walked behind me and out of the shop without buying anything. The till man glanced up and watched him out of the door, “There’s some odd characters around” he said. “Did he just walk out without paying?” I asked. “No”, said the till man, “I think he just saw those girls and followed them in for a closer look”. “No way!” I said, incredulously. The till man laughed and said, a bit louder than he’d intended, “I know! There’s some fucking sad bastards around here in’t there!” and he slapped his palm across his mouth, looking sideways to check there were no other customers within earshot.

Things people said by way of a greeting today:

A woman in the middle of washing her hair: “Oh dear.”

A man wearing ear defenders and three days of stubble: “Alright?”

A man wearing a football kit to lay a patio: “Hello.”

A thin man with unruly grey hair, an unkempt full beard and very clean new trainers: “Ayups!”

A man in a North Face fleece: “Oh, hiya there!”

A man wearing yellow gloves to push a wheelbarrow: “Morning!”

A slim, grey haired woman restraining a black labrador: “Hellooo! He’s a big softy.”

A man of a similar age to me wearing a hooded top and tartan shorts: “Hi lad.”

A very pale old man in a grey sweatshirt: “I have a lot of things wrong with me, but I’m not deaf.” (After I’d knocked loudly at his door).

A man in a ski jacket and hat said nothing but raised his eyebrows and smiled.

The bald man in the Fair Isle sweater said nothing and made no discernible acknowledgement of my presence, even when I said hello to him and handed him his mail. 
In the road outside his house there was a dead sparrow, only about ten yards from where I saw the dead fox in March.