A woman answered the door in Towngate...

A woman answered the door in Towngate. "Forty four today!" she exclaimed as I handed over her parcel. "I'm behaving very irresponsibly for a Grandma! Well, I will be later, I'm gonna get hammered!" She glanced up at my hat and her eyes widened as she took in a sharp breath. "Oh my God!" she said, "I don't believe it! Cool hat!" She dropped the parcel and ran back inside the house. "Wait there!" She shouted, "This is such an amazing coincidence, I've got one exactly the same!" I could hear her rummaging around in the front room. "It's here somewhere! Wait there!" I waited on the step for a few seconds until the woman shouted again "Here it is! Here it is!" "Tadah!" She exclaimed as she appeared in the doorway again, jazz hands either side of her face. On her head was a hat that resembled mine in so much as it was a hat but apart from that it couldn't have been more different. Mine is a structured baseball cap in light blue/green check with a large rigid peak and an adjustable band and hers was a floppy beret-style hat in plain brown with a row of five metal studs around the front of the small, soft peak. I feigned amazement, wished her a happy birthday and went back to my van. On the other side of the road, a teenage girl with dyed-red hair and a pair of disintegrating grey Ugg boots was violently shoving a spotty teen boy outside the newsagents shop, "You gave me one pound fucking twenty. Fuck off!" she yelled.

Mr Barton has fixed a hook adjacent to his back door on which he hangs the fully loaded super-soaker he uses to dissuade cats from fouling his borders. He has also been shooting squirrels with an air rifle. I've counted seven dead in his back garden in the last few days. When I asked him about it earlier in the week he claimed they'd all died of old age but yesterday he admitted to having shot them. He said, "They don't understand death like we do" and he made a fist with his right hand and beat his chest above his heart, "We are the only ones who know we're going to die".

I walked into work in the slipstream of a man who...

I walked into work in the slipstream of a man who was smoking strong weed and listening to Chaka Demus and Pliers without headphones. As we walked through the Market Place, a splay footed drunkard wearing the remains of a tuxedo shouted "HELLO!" to us both from the steps of Headrow Furnishers.

Two women in their seventies were discussing custard tart:

"It was lovely; I had the custard tart", said the tallish one with the mid-calf length floral-print pleated skirt and the Summer Wine perm.

"Ooh, I do love custard tart", said the shortish one with the mid-calf length floral-print pleated skirt and the Summer Wine perm.

"My mother used to make the best custard tart—lovely thin pastry." Said the tallish one.

"Lovely. My husband says he doesn't care how thick the pastry is!" Said the shortish one, eyebrows outraged.

"Well, that's it you see: men don't mind so much about the pastry. All they're interested in is the custard. All men love custard."

"That's true. Whenever we go anywhere the men always go for the custard option. It's a schoolboy thing I think."

"You're right."

At the house with the balloons tied to the gate posts, the builders were swearing on the roof. I counted seven fuckings and a bastard in the time it took for the young mum to walk her two toddlers up the driveway to the front door for the birthday party.

A crow was pecking at the basketball sized piece of scrunched up fish and chip paper in the road

A crow was pecking at the basketball-sized piece of scrunched up fish and chip paper in the road. A car approached and the crow picked up the paper in its beak and flew off over the houses with it. Later, on the same street, I saw a woman in a spangly lilac sari and headscarf hoovering the pavement outside her house with big upright Dyson.

I was smoking on the steps at the entrance to the park opposite the post office with Michael. I told him about the woman I'd seen hoovering the pavement and he said he'd once seen a man watering his garden despite the fact he'd paved over it several years earlier. I suggested the man might simply have been cleaning the paving, but Michael said that when he'd asked him what he was doing, the man had said "Watering the flowers". At this point in the conversation, a sparrow flew down and landed in the gap between us on the step, about a foot away from each of us. Michael hadn't noticed it so I caught his eye, said "Ey-up, who's this?" and glanced down at the bird. When Michael caught sight of it, he started with a small yelp of surprise. The sparrow flew off and Michael said: "I fucking hate birds".

A group of school children passed me in the street. They all had their coats over their heads to block the glare of the sun on their phone screens.

Three men were playing on the roundabout in the children's playground at 6am...

Three men were playing on the roundabout in the children's playground at 6am. The one with the black bandana tied around his head was pushing it round as fast as he could and repeatedly shouting "Oh baby! You're gonna die!"

A man in military uniform was carrying a carriage clock across Church Street.

At the newsagent, Christine was on the till. She told me the new owner is applying for an off-license. "I don't want to be in here on my own at 10 o' clock at night with all the skanks coming in. It's a local newsagent for goodness sake. He thinks he's bloody Tescos!"

A man in sportswear was watching me deliver a parcel. He was leaning on a broken fence with a bottle of Ribena in one hand and his bollocks in the other.

A woman was walking past the pink teddy bear in the road on her way up to Dead Man's Hole. She was wearing a pale grey fleece jacket, black ski-pants and was carrying a shopping bag that was so big she had to hold it with her arm bent at he elbow so it didn't drag along the floor. She was talking on a phone: "Joan has been up with some boxes and one looked like it might have been a cat basket."

I found a four leaf clover in Dead Man's Hole.

Adam Ant's tour bus was parked outside Holmfirth Post Office.

Things people said to me today when I handed them their post (not including 'Thankyou' or variations thereof – which is what nearly everyone says):

"Is that it? That's a poor do."

"Ooh lots!"

"That's not too bad."

"That's great."

"Parcel? Oh yes, that's David's tea actually, birdseed."

"You haven't been knocking long have you? I was asleep."

"Oh my God!"

Up the driveway of replica stone setts...

Up the driveway of replica stone setts, past the box trees, the cobbles, the blue slate chippings and the saplings with their nursery tags flapping in the breeze, to the faux timber door. A large cockchafer has turned turtle on the doorstep. I right it gently with the toe end of my boot.

Twice in succession during my parcel delivery, the door is answered by a middle aged woman with a broken arm*. At the next house, the door is answered by a man in his thirties with shaving foam all over his chin. Another full hour into the delivery and somebody else with a broken arm answers a door. This time it's a middle aged man, his sweater bulges over the bad arm, the empty sleeve dangles at his side.

While I deliver the mail to the gym, the man with the regulation haircut and the 4x4 in the carpark  explains how much he hates show muscle. "All the young lads are into it," he says. "They look good but they've got no stamina. I was sparring with a lad twice my size and half my age yesterday and I just hung in there till he wore himself out and then gave him a good smack in the kidneys."

At the BMW garage, a grey wagtail flits around in the dust on the forecourt. I go inside through the big glass doors and, when I hand over the package to the man in the blue overalls, he says "Is it a food parcel from UNICEF?" I laugh but when the overall man looks for a reaction from the man at the desk in the corner—crew neck sweater, shirt collar tucked inside—he doesn't get one.

*This has happened before: see November 2nd 2010

I still pass the man with the tartan Thermos...

I still pass the man with the tartan Thermos and the all-year-round woolly hat on my way into work but I've stopped saying hello since it obviously makes him so uncomfortable. This morning I happened to glance up as he approached and he faked a trip to avoid making eye contact.

I delivered a parcel to a man with a side parting and a plaid shirt. He told me it was a box of chocolates. He suggested that should I ever want to "get round the wife" then I could do worse than to order some myself. "They really are first class" he said, "far more effective than flowers". The man also mentioned that he owned a Volvo V70 which he also recommended very highly, "A beautiful car" he said.

The man whose shirt was perforated with dozens of of tiny hot-rock holes apologised for his signature saying it had "gone a bit funny".

Wildlife of note: Two dead hedgehogs, one dead blackbird, one dead squirrel, one heron (alive), one woodpecker (alive).

At the newsagent where the Adele album is played on a loop...

At the newsagent where the Adele album is played on a loop, two men in their fifties were comparing their experiences of school. 

"When the bell rang and we were playing football, we'd just ignore it. Did you do that?" 

"No, not really."

On Bankfoot Lane, a man in a flat cap was clearing debris left by the high winds. He held up a garden gnome, "I just found this," he said "isn't he a little beauty?”

Later, I got hit in the face by a wet clematis when it broke free of its trellis in a strong gust and a woman answered a door wearing a Father Christmas oven glove. Also, the Christmas tree is still up and fully decorated in the pool room at the flats.

I saw an owl at Wheelwrights farm and a man who looked like Boris Yeltsin going into the The Laundry Basket launderette. A young boy of about seven threatened to cut my head off with an (a real) axe and a man in the the park with a chest length beard and Bermuda shorts asked me whether I'd ever been to London.

I saw Marc getting off the bus at Berry Brow. He had a snare drum in one hand, some cymbals in the other and his jacket done up to the top. I pulled over to say hello and he said he'd just got back from London where he'd played at Ronnie Scott's. I said to say hello to his mum, he said he would and then he went because it was raining.

The man in the black Astra was blocking the street...

The man in the black Astra was blocking the street while he was on the phone. He broke off briefly from his call to wind down his window and shout "You fat fucking bitch!" to the woman in the red Saab at the front of the queue of oncoming traffic. She didn't move because she couldn't; he was blocking the road and she had a queue of traffic behind her. He called the Saab woman a fat bitch a couple more times before he finished his call and then sped off, shouting "You fat bitch!" a final time as he went.

Half an hour later I saw the Astra man again, he was dropping an old man off at the hospital. They were smiling and sharing a joke together. Astra man took the old man's arm and patiently escorted him across the car park and up the steps to the reception area.

At Hill Tree Park, the air was filled with copulating insects, the yelping of lap dogs and the smell of deep fat fryers. A man in jeans was putting a fresh coat of magnolia Wethershield onto his stucco. I said “Good morning" and he made a sort of "mgh" noise without looking up.

Garden statues: Squirrels, many rabbits, birds (mainly owls and woodpeckers), an elderly couple on a bench, hedgehogs, a donkey (with saddle bags), a horse, an angel, a castle, windmills, otters, a fox, tortoises, cats, highly glazed orbs, a 10’ tall giraffe, ducks, gnomes, buddhas, frogs (two that croaked as I walked past), a miniature Chinese terracotta army figure, some miniature Easter Island heads, fairies, a lion, cats, dogs (mainly terriers and collies), naked/semi-naked women, men with golf bags/cricket bats/shotguns/bags with swag written on them, molded resin imitation Jean Arp/Barbara Hepworths...

A plane took off from the airfield. Its engine cut out for about five seconds as it flew overhead.

Mr Ainley asked me why the mail was so late these days. He said he was going to write to his MP and "sort the bugger out".

Mr Briggs intercepted me for his mail...

There’s a copy of The Watchtower magazine pinned to the front door of one of the back-to-backs. Someone has scrawled across Jesus’ face in biro, “NOT INTERESTED, ONE WORD FREE WILL!”

As we watch the police moving the drunks along in the park, Michael tells me he once saw a man staggering down the street with a bottle in his hand and another two in the pockets of his coat. He says he watched the man’s expression turn from horror to relief as the bottle
in his hand had slipped onto the floor but hadn’t broken. But then, as he bent down to pick it up, the bottles from his pockets fell out and smashed all over the pavement and his expression had turned to one of bewildered anguish.

The swallows are swooping after the flies that buzz around the cow shit on the track down to the farm. I make my way up to the house and knock at the door. The air is fetid and still, hung thick with the stench of pig shit. A woman with a grey bob and plastic-rimmed glasses opens the door. She winces and says “Oh! What a foul smell!” Then, with one hand over her nose, she grabs the parcel from me and shuts the door behind her without saying goodbye.

The man who is brewing beer in his garden and doesn’t wear a shirt says hello.

I stand on a dead mouse and, after several minutes of trying, I can’t get the worst of it out from the tread of my shoes.

The tall thin woman with the Highland Terrier under her arm...

The tall thin woman with the Highland Terrier under her arm was saying "Oh super, union jack bun cases!” and, under the buddleja in the park, the police were pouring away litre bottles of White Star Cider.

Three red faced, grey haired men wearing gold, wire rimmed glasses and faded anoraks were smoking on the doorstep of the pub. Next door, at the ice-cream parlour, three swishy haired girls in T-shirts and sweat pants sat at a chrome table on the pavement sipping smoothies and eating sorbet.

A young boy with a pot on his arm was trying to get into my van. I shouted a warning to him and he said he was looking for his parcel. I said I hadn't got his parcel and he called me a dumbo then grabbed hold of my arm to see what I was carrying. The front door of the house opposite opened and a woman called the boy in, he ignored her and reiterated that he thought I was a dumbo. The woman called him again, twice, but he continued to ignore her and she eventually gave up and went back inside. I opened the door of my van and the boy jumped in. I grabbed him and dragged him out. He was muttering about his parcel and me being a dumbo. When I got into the driver’s seat the boy kept opening my door before I could lock it. In the end I drove off with it still open. He chased me down the street shouting "Dumbo!"

When I got to the end of Victoria Road, the way was blocked by a long wheelbase van on its side behind a police cordon. I made a three point turn and, on my way back up the road I past a colleague so I pulled up to tell him about it. He said he'd seen the police chasing the van down the road five minutes earlier.

A couple got off the bus. They were each holding a hand of a little boy of about two or three years old. As they walked down the street with the boy between them they failed to notice his trousers gradually slipping down to his ankles. The boy was struggling to keep up because his movement was restricted. He couldn't adjust his trousers because his mum and dad were holding his hands. He was looking up, trying to make the couple aware of his predicament but they were chatting and didn't notice. Eventually, when they were almost having to drag the boy along, they looked down. They stopped and laughed and the woman adjusted the boy's trousers and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

I caught three teenage boys writing "Paki's Rule" and "Pussy" on my garden gate. I told them that I was a nice man but that I wouldn't be anymore if they kept writing on my stuff.