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.
