Two thin young men in snapbacks and bum fluff are eating eggs...

Two thin young men in baseball caps and bum fluff are eating eggs in the café on Westbourne Road, a copy of The Sun open on the table in front of them. “He paid £106,000 to look like that!” says the one in the white hat, poking his yolky knife at a picture of a semi-naked man with very pronounced abdominal muscles. “Why?” says the man in the blue hat. “Because he’s a fucking knob.”

At the newsagent's on the other side of the road, a young woman in a polka-dot onesie, heavy make-up, drawn-on eyebrows and a big ‘up do’ is waiting outside in the drizzle with two Staffordshire bull terriers. A large truck passes, blowing over the steel Huddersfield Examiner sandwich board with a crash and the dogs yelp in surprise.

Later, out in the sticks, a pair of frogs are in amplexus on the steps of the house that once featured on TV’s Grand Designs and a sparrowhawk kills a woodpigeon on Mr and Mrs Mitchell’s driveway. As I cross the road by the Conservative Club, my hat blows off and a woman under an umbrella walks into me as I bend down to retrieve it.

On the estate, the man who always wears the same baggy tracksuit bottoms and unusual cap-sleeved t-shirt says he’s looking forward to some nicer weather because it puts people in a better mood. Further down, in the car park by the flats, the old man in the tweed suit shouts “We’re getting posh, aren’t we?” to the Rastafarian man who is fitting some new wheel trims to his Vauxhall Astra.

Back in town, the drunk man in the grey suit is emptying his catheter bag into the storm drain by the bedroom furniture shop.

At the bus stop, the man with the grey beard, striped polo-shirt and large silver watch was bent over...

At the bus stop, the man with the grey beard, striped polo-shirt and large silver watch was bent over scratching both his knee and his elbow at the same time. Across the road, another man with a striped shirt and grey beard was painting his gate bright yellow for the second day running. Further up the road, at the next bus stop, a young man in a snapback baseball cap and headphones was dancing enthusiastically by himself. And, around the corner, on Cross Lane, I saw the same man delivering the same flyers to the same houses I saw yesterday.

Six squirrel sightings today: two in trees, one running along the edge of a skip and three dead in the road.

Somebody had lit a bonfire too close to the Costcutter. Even inside the shop, the smoke was acrid. A teenage couple were standing outside. He had a tattoo on his neck and was gobbing on the floor. She was wafting the smoke from her face with her cigarette hand and hoicking her grey marl sweatpants out of her arse crack with the other. A Ford Fiesta went past in too low a gear.

On the estate with the diverse and imaginatively improvised garden furniture, a boy on a BMX stopped me as I was unloading my van:

“Are you Postman Pat?”

“No. Postman Pat’s got a helicopter now. I’ve still got this rusty old van.”

“Postman Pat is ugly anyway” said the boy “He hasn’t got a helicopter. He hasn’t even got a black and white cat. He hasn’t got owt. He’s ugly and he goes on Ebay!”

At the gap in the wall where the stone was stolen, the thin lorry driver with the blue overalls and round glasses was drinking tea from a Thermos mug. “There won’t be any stone left in Huddersfield at this rate!” he said.

Somebody has stolen the top-stones from Mrs Taylor’s garden wall too, and last night somebody unscrewed the hinges of my shed door.

The short but substantial man with the unruly hair, the sun visor...

The short but substantial man with the unruly hair, sun visor, T-shirt, cargo shorts—keys attached to belt—and steel toe-capped boots says “Hello, Kevin” as I pass. He props an old glass panelled front door up against the cellar doorway of the Working Men’s Club. I’ve got no idea how he knows my name. 

On the edge of the moor, at the end-terrace with the imitation stone grotesques on the garden wall, the imitation leaded lights in the windows and the imitation wood front door, Mrs Dyson’s bathrobe has blown from the rotary washing line, over the wall and onto the windscreen of the red Ferrari 348 that is parked in the road.

Around the corner, an indiscrete dope deal is taking place; a young man wearing a snapback baseball cap has double parked his hatchback adjacent to another young man wearing a snapback baseball cap in a different hatchback. They exchange small packages through open windows. After a couple of minutes, the double parked young-man-in-a-baseball-cap pulls up to the kerb, gets out of his hatchback and into the other man’s passenger seat where the two of them share a very strong smelling joint together.

I knock at the door of a house on Kinder Avenue and a large woman with a big grey overgrown bob, old fashioned tortoiseshell glasses, airforce blue overcoat (it's 25ºC), American Tan tights and a brand new pair of electric pink Nike trainers shouts from the garden next door that there's nobody at home. She says “I know they’ll be back around teatime because that’s their cat”, and she points to a ginger and white cat on the other side of the road.

The sun is out and the streets are filled with girls in leggings, texting.

The sun is out and the streets are filled with girls in leggings, texting. 

At the first house I went to, the garden gate fell off in my hand, at the second, the weight of the opened gate pulled its post from its mounting and, at the third, the flap of the letter-box fell off and landed in the cat’s drinking water. 

A military veteran in a blazer and a drunk in a matted fleece jacket were at the bus stop. They both had the same style long grey beard and moustache. At the next bus stop down, a young man in a hooded top was pretending to fight with the metal post that displays the timetable.

An old VW Golf came clanking noisily around the corner. The rear seats were folded down and the load space was packed with rubble and bits of old pallet, the weight of which had lowered the car’s suspension. The car pulled over and a young couple got out. He handed her his on-backwards snapback and she held on to it as he slid himself underneath the car to locate the noise.

I was emptying a post box next to a woman with a striped tracksuit top and a bag-for-life who was discussing the price of travel with a large man in a mac, “It’s free to Haworth on the bus and I enjoy the journey; it’s £20 to Blackburn on the train!” I slammed the door of the box shut and a man in a white Transit van came around the corner and shouted at us all: “Get out my bloody way! Go on!” even though we weren’t in it.

I walked through two spider’s webs today.