5.30a.m.: It’s cold. I don’t go through the park because it’s too icy and too dark in there

5.30a.m.: It’s cold. I don’t go through the park because it’s too icy and too dark in there. Instead, I duck under the overhanging holly at the entrance and walk around. I edge along glistening pavements, past frozen crisp packets, polystyrene cups, shimmering vomit, sticking close to the railings so I can grab them when I slip.

An old man who smells of weed stops me in the street to wish me a happy Christmas. He puts his hand on my shoulder and hums a short tune. “What’s that then?” I ask. “Music” he says, and he wanders off over the road.

At the house with the broken satellite dish and an empty Foster’s can in the garden, the front door has been graffitied with a marker pen: inside a wonky love heart it says, “I miss you Mum”.

Two young men in grey tracksuits and snapback baseball caps walk past drinking lager and listening to loud auto-tuned pop on mobile speakers with no bottom end.

Outside the Polish Corner restaurant in town, a chubby man in a tracksuit is pretending to buff-up his bald head while he takes a selfie. His friends can barely contain their mirth.

The woman on the bus recommends the Wills O’ Nats pub, “The staff really look after you”, she says. “Really nice food, really nice atmosphere. It was just nice to get home afterwards”.

At the shop.
Man at self-service checkout: This isn’t working, love. Must be manned by a woman.

Female shop assistant: You’ve put your card in upside down.

I woke up early because every car on our street had been smashed up and broken into...

I woke up early because every car on our street had been smashed up and broken into—ours had been stolen. Luckily, it was only a dream.

I passed three piles of vomit on my way into work.

I was following a man carrying an overloaded Sainsbury’s bag into town. At the bottom of Fitzwilliam Street he wandered into the middle of the road and stooped to inspect a discarded Richmond Superkings packet. When he realised it was empty, he booted it across the road and continued on his way, rounding the corner under the railway bridge. As the Superking man disappeared from view, beard-on-beard-off man appeared, striding purposefully in the opposite direction whilst making a noise like a sheep.

I passed an old classmate in the street. I haven’t seen him for about twenty years. “Hi, how are you doing?” I said, reaching out to shake his hand.

“Not so bad” he said, and he pulled on his cigarette and carried on walking.

In the road by the school, the PE class were on a cross country run. The sturdily built teacher with her hair in a bun and white polo shirt tucked into black tracksuit trousers was berating the half a dozen chubby stragglers: “Power walk, C’mon! Put you arms into it! POWER WALK!

A white Transit van pulled up next me. The driver leant across and wound down the window. “Mate!” he yelled, “Which way is it back to where I just was?”

The man at No.1 has sprayed his letter box gold in honour of the Olympic Games. I posted his mail and, as I turned to walk back up the path, a sparrow flew into the back of my leg.

It’s been a few years since the last one, but I saw another headless pigeon corpse today.