At work I was involved in a discussion about the provenance of the eighties metal band, Saxon.

At work I was involved in a discussion about the provenance of the 80s metal band, Saxon. John was wondering whether it was legitimate to claim them as a Huddersfield band because he’d heard they were originally from Denby Dale. Another colleague said he thought that although Denby Dale has a Huddersfield postcode, it falls under the administrative jurisdiction of Barnsley*. Another colleague said he was at school in Huddersfield with a member of the band’s nephew.

When I got home, I Googled Saxon and discovered that Biff Byford, the band’s singer, was born in Honley (HD9, not Barnsley) so I emailed John to let him know.

My father-in-law once told me that Puff the Magic Dragon was from Honley and I believed him.

I was driving through the new housing development that now occupies the site of the old mill. The garages are too small to fit cars inside and consequently the streets are double lined with mainly silver Puntos and Astras. I had to brake to avoid a young boy who was staggering from one side of the road to the other whilst balancing an upside-down yard brush on one finger.

I saw Howard in town. He waved an envelope at me and said “Bastards have taken £550 off my pension in interest!” He crossed to my side of the road, “There’ll be none of that when my lot get in: BNP. We’ll string all them bankers up. Bastards. And the bloody unions! They’ve fucked your pension up, haven’t they? Bastards! They’ve gone fucking soft! In my day if anyone had gone within a mile of our pension fund the union would have had us all out, shut the place down completely. I were out for twelve week once, nearly bloody starved to death. Ended up scotching for a pound an hour, never told anyone. I had to do it. The unions now are bastards” He jabbed me in the chest “They’re condemning you to a life of poverty. The bastards!”

I said I needed to get going and Howard said “I hope you’re not rushing round for them bastards. Bastards!”

*It doesn't, it is in Kirklees, as is Huddersfield.

The sun has been shining...

The sun has been shining. People are squinting their eyes and shielding the screens of their phones at bus stops. It's hot, I counted seventy-three discarded drinks containers on my way into work this morning. An average of one every thirty-four meters.

Someone has written “HeRB” on the Church Street post box.

The milkman's two young assistants were talking as they waited on the kerb for the van.

“She asked for nine semi, I put twelve in and now she wants thirteen” said the short chubby white one.

“Why?” asked the short chubby black one.

“Because she’s a greedy bitch” said the white one.

I saw a man with a green Atari T-shirt drop the cardboard packaging from his toy machine gun onto the pavement by the bench at the corner of John William Street—where the woman with the short skirt used to feed the pigeons.

Inside the motorcycle showrooms, a sales assistant was recommending a bike cleaning product to a customer.

"We had a leak from a can of it a while back and when we'd cleaned it up the floor was sparkling—white as snow. Amazing stuff!”

"I think I'd better get some of that then" said the customer.

The man drinking White Star Cider on the bench outside the Shine On Hand Car Wash...

The man drinking White Star cider on the bench just down from the Shine On Hand Car Wash (‘Only One Using Genuine Chamois Leathers’) demands I stroke his bow legged bull terrier. He promises it won't bite. I stroke its head and it jumps up at my knee, wagging its tail affectionately. The man laughs and says "Told you".

There are three bunches of flowers tied to the branches of the small tree behind The Mahal (‘The Only Genuine Charcoal Tandoor (Clay Oven) In Town’). They are still in their cellophane packaging with sachets of flower food attached.

A man with a ginger beard is erecting an authentic looking teepee in unbleached canvas on the grass at the bottom of the flats. Two other men in their thirties are staging a fight with cudgels and large viking shields. A small group of spectators lines the railings: a teenage couple in tracksuits smoking cigarettes and a man in his late twenties in a tracksuit and a bandana who is sipping beer from a can and fondling his genitals.

The woman who answers the door after the third knock struggles to sign for her parcel while holding a veil over her face at the same time. She’s wearing England slippers with a cross of St George motif.

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’.

I saw a young couple in the town centre early this morning

6 a.m.: I pass a striking young couple in the town centre. He has a camp lisp, a tight T-shirt, his arms folded and his jeans turned up above the ankle. She is very tall, very blonde and wears hot pants and cork wedge sandals. I overhear the man say "I've got to take Sammy's rabbit to get its claws clipped". They head off towards the market place where the stalls are being set up and, a half minute or so later, a chorus of lewd shouts comes up from that direction.

I shout to the woman in the pink turtle neck jumper and grey gilet who is valeting her Peugeot 107 but she can’t hear me above Michael Jackson's Bad on the car stereo. When I eventually attract her attention she looks flustered and embarrassed. She apologises and says she's been in a world of her own.

The man in the bobble hat and the plastic rimmed glasses stares as I empty the pillar box. I glance up and let on. He’s picking his nose vigorously. He doesn't acknowledge me but continues staring and picking. I carry on clearing the box but I can still feel him staring. I look up again and this time the man glances down quickly and starts to examine the bogey he’s been rolling between his thumb and forefinger. I slam the box shut and drag the sack of mail across the pavement. As I load it into the van, the man is still staring at me but has now started to excavate the other nostril. He’s prodding around up there, tipping his head on one side to get a good purchase and the only time he took his eyes off me is to inspect the end of his finger. I get into my van just as the man's bus arrives: Stotts ...taking people to places.

The garden wall at No.27 is now a pile of rubble after a bus crashed into it the other day. The bus company have erected a Temporary Bus Stop next to it.

The spare wheel cover of the Suzuki Grand Vitara on the driveway at No.47 is decorated with a psychedelic picture of a native American Indian standing next to a rainbow while a large starburst sun rises behind his head like a halo. The car's owner is in his garden wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off denim shorts to strim around the two small whitewashed boulders in the middle of the lawn.

I pass two men on my way home. The first, a man in his fifties, wears a long heavy overcoat, a woollen scarf and black leather shoes. The second, a young man in his twenties, wears a T-shirt, knee length cotton shorts, no socks and flip flops.

There was a house brick wrapped in silver foil...

Yesterday, There was a house brick wrapped in silver foil and two metal dessert spoons on the bench on Fitzwilliam Street. This morning, the spoons have gone but the house brick is still there.

Julie from the canteen is outside smoking a cigarette. She tells me that two people have ordered poached eggs. She says she hates making poached eggs and the thought of having to go back inside and do it is ruining her cigarette break.

The man in an anorak was leaning on his fence smoking a roll-up. He asked me whether I had any mail for him. I told him I had to do the estate first and he said he'd hang on for me. An hour-and-a-half later I came off the estate and he was still there, leaning on the fence, smoking a roll-up.

The Border collie has been barking, upsetting ornaments and head-butting the window of the front room of the first house on the cul-de-sac ever since I pushed the mail under the shed door (the owner has asked me not to use the letterbox because the dog tears up the mail).
Three doors down, a man in a big quilted coat and aviator shades, winds down the window of his black Honda Prelude with red rims and blacked-out rear windows, winks at me and says "Have you got owt for me mate?" I hand him his mail and he says "Sweet mate. Nice one."

At No.12, the large Polish man with the paintbrush moustache who wears his tracksuit bottoms very high (they go right up his arse crack) has been pruning next door's overhanging hypericum with an electric carving knife. Now, he's talking to another neighbour, the young Asian man in the white hooded top who is walking an aggressive looking boxer dog. When I pass them, the dog sees me and nearly pulls him over, jerking him around 180 degrees. The boxer's barking sends the collie at No.2 into a frenzy and it jumps onto the window sill with all four feet, its fur squashed up against the glass. It falls off again in quite a comical fashion but continues to bark undaunted.

In the office, Adam was telling us about the curries he'd eaten over the weekend

In the office, Adam is telling Nathan about the curries he's eaten over the weekend:

"Balti Friday night, Pathia Saturday night and on Sunday I went round to a mate's house and we had a nice Rogan Josh. Not a bad weekend."

“Blimey, I bet you're back on the fruit now! Mind you, I suppose they're not too bad for you, curries, are they?" Says Nathan.

"Depends what you fire in with ‘em, doesn't it kid?" says Adam without looking up from his work. He’s standing on a box slotting letters into the top row of his frame (he's not particularly short but he says it makes his arm ache otherwise).

A red kite (the bird kind) drifts along the tree line above the road as the woman with the picture of an alien on her sweatshirt approaches with her two boxer dogs. As she gets closer, the dogs snarl and bark at me. Without looking up, the woman shouts "Shut up! It's a man, not a Martian!"

I slip on a flight of greasy green Yorkstone steps. I end up at the bottom, lying on my back with my feet on the patio, slightly winded. I tell the owner about it. "Are they slippy?" he says and hands me a mis-delivered letter from the day before.

At one of the sheltered bungalows on the estate, the old woman with the grey perm, faded blue anorak and american tan tights is putting out her wheelie bin. It’s decorated with a large stripy orange and green sticker that said Pimp My Bin! in a graffiti style font.

On my way down to the farm, I see a freshly killed blue tit in the middle of the lane. On my way back up five minutes later, it has gone.

Someone has written ‘Retard’ in the dirt on the side of old Mr Richardson's new Honda CR-V.

A rabbit runs across my path in the same place as one did yesterday.

On the estate, a boy of about five is playing on a scooter in the street. "Are you going to my house?" He asks. "Yes" I say and he throws down his scooter and runs inside shouting "Wait there!" Moments later, I see him through the window of the front room wrestling an agitated Jack Russell terrier from the back of the settee. A door slams and the boy comes running back outside. "It's our dog" he says, "I had to lock him in, he hates postmans”.

I arrived at work early so I made a cigarette and stood on the pavement to smoke it...

I arrived at work early so I made a cigarette and stood on the pavement to smoke it. After a minute or so, a blue tit flew out from a tree and landed on the wing mirror of the Citroën Picasso parked in front of me. It hopped down onto the bottom lip of the mirror-casing and perched there facing the glass, appearing to admire its reflection. After a few seconds, it flew to the mirror of the next parked car and did the same thing, and then again onto the third car before it disappeared back among the shrubs in the church gardens. I was quite excited to have seen this and asked the man on the corner who was checking the soles of his shoes for dog shit whether he had, but he hadn't.

I was on a doorstep on the new estate filling in a 'Failure to deliver' notice. Above me, a wall-mounted speaker repeatedly announced in a southern accent: "Warning, you are being recorded by a security camera". It only stopped after I'd finished and left.

Yesterday, I said hello to a man in his garden and he completely blanked me. He was there again today, so I said hello again. This time he glanced up briefly to say "Now then" before continuing raking his leaves.

I asked the woman in her early thirties whether she'd take a parcel for her next door neighbour. She refused, saying "I don't really know them and they're just renting so, you know?”.

I commented on the fluffiness of a dog to its owner as she passed me in the street. The woman stopped but the dog started towards me, growling. The woman yanked on the dog's lead and said "They're not right friendly aren't Chows. If he's ever out in the garden, you'd best not go in".

There's been a bouquet of flowers (still in cellophane) on the doorstep of number 67 all week. The man who lives there must know about them because he's been out working in his garden every day.

A window cleaner was up his ladder at number 94. I shouted hello as I walked up the garden path but he didn't respond. When I came back down the path, he'd climbed down, and was walking across the lawn to get his buckets. He didn't look up from under the peak of his woolly cap as we passed but he slapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other several times and said "Seems to be getting fucking colder". I think he was talking to me because there was nobody else around.

I saw an old colleague in the street. He told me a mutual friend I hadn't seen for years had died in an road accident. "I wa' at me dad's, polishing me boots when I heard" he said.

Two young men in hooded tops were fastening some blue flashing lights to the roof of a car. They each had an upturned bucket to stand on so they could reach.

The receptionist was on the phone: “I’ve got James from SL Recruitment on the line ... Do you want anything to do with him? If I tell him you're in a meeting he’ll just keep ringing me and ... Ok ...” Click. “Hello, James. He says he doesn’t need anything at the moment so I should give it a good long while before you ring again ...That’s alright. Bye bye.” Click.

Back in town, a man on crutches with his cap on backwards was repeatedly gobbing on the path in the church gardens while his girlfriend (baby blue tracksuit and ponytail) was doubled over laughing at him. The man swung for her with his crutch and hit a pigeon instead which caused his girlfriend to collapse onto the floor in hysterics.

Mrs Hussain was in her front room on a treadmill watching telly again

Mrs Hussain is in her front room on a treadmill watching tele' again. She answers the door with a water bottle in her hand.

An old man shouts me from the first floor of the flats. He asks how long it will be before he gets his post. "About half an hour" I say. "Hurry up lad, I need to go out! I'm already late, I've been waiting for you!" He is dressed in pyjamas.

A man in his 60s wearing, jeans, slippers, a faded purple jersey vest and an impressive tan says "Hello buddy" as he cuts his finger nails in the street. "She sends us outside to clip these", he explains.

An elderly white man with no teeth and elbow patches on his cardigan shouts me from the house across the street. I cross over to him and he hands me some mail saying "it's my address right enough but there's never been anyone of that name living here. I've lived here since this wa' built". I look at the top envelope. He's underlined the Asian name on it in green ink. "Go see him eight doors down with the BMW and the Juliet window, he's a foreigner, he might know". I take the mail and apologise for the misdelivery but point out that I am obliged to deliver the mail as addressed, "For all I know, someone else could have moved in…” I explain. The old man cuts me off, rolls his eyes and says "You might think I'm a bit simple but if something says I.C.I on it, you don't deliver it to David Brown's do you?" He mimes studying an address. Looking down at the imaginary letter in one hand, he strokes his chin with the other, a cartoon wide-eyed simpleton look on his face. "I would if it was addressed to I.C.I at David Brown’s address, yes” I say. "Well," says the man irritably "All you need to know is that while this sign is on this door it's me who lives here and no-one else!" and he stabs his finger at the engraved brass plaque screwed to the door frame that reads "IF YOU'VE NOT BEEN INVITED, YOU'D BETTER HAVE A DAMN GOOD REASON FOR KNOCKING AT THIS DOOR."

I was waiting to cross the road. The man who wears black polo-neck jumpers and never opens his curtains was also waiting to cross on the other side. Another man whose name is Johno (according to the sign in the windscreen of his wagon) stopped and waved us both across. As we passed one another, the polo-necked man looked up at me and said "Hello, my friend".

AT THE BUS STOP.

At the bus stop:

WOMAN IN HER FORTIES: I’m not gonna be in tomorrow, I’m going to a concert.

MAN IN HIS FIFTIES: What concert are you going to?

WOMAN: Shaky

MAN: Shaky? What’s Shaky?

WOMAN: (exasperated) Shakin’ Stevens! I was that exhausted after Bad Manners I booked the day off this time.

MAN: Shakin' Stevens? I had one of his LPs I think. I think it wa' rubbish. Did he sing Green Door?

WOMAN: Yes.

MAN: It wa' rubbish that.

WOMAN: Well I won’t be in anyway.

Mr Haigh has stuck some large COME ON ENGLAND stickers on his wheelie bins (his normal one and his recycling one).

The builder working on a new porch is singing the Simply Red song, For Your Babies very loudly. He breaks off briefly to say “Alright, pal” without looking up as I walked down the garden path.

A woman stops me in the street to tell me she can smell toast.

I get stuck in the lift at the flats for half an hour until the engineers came to open the door.

There’s been a tangerine in the gutter on Bradford Road all week and yesterday I saw two bananas, one in Cote Lane and one in New Hey Road near the roundabout at Mount. This morning I saw a full bunch of bananas in Cote Lane and twenty or so eggs smashed in the gutter of Heaton Road.

The man who sleeps in his car on Mucky Lane has got a new one, a silver Rover 75.