It was getting light as I walked through the park...

It was getting light as I walked through the park. Two Border collies were rounding up the ducks while a woman in a sky blue anorak and bleached hair shouted at them to stop.

The man who has the look of a comedy vicar from the 1970s: bald head, buck teeth, glasses, was repairing a dry stone wall. He tried to wave as I drove past but couldn’t lift his arm because he was holding a large piece of stone.

The big woman with the grey regulation buzz-cut and the unusually large black plastic rimmed spectacles said “Oh no! No way! I don’t talk to her!” when I asked her whether she’d mind taking in a parcel for her neighbour. She let out her black labradors to bark at me through the wire fence that divided the gardens—rough lawns, rockeries and garden centre ornamentation. Eventually, a huge man of girth and height dressed for sport in brown boots, moleskins and a shooting vest, came out and loaded the dogs into an old metallic grey 4x4 and drove them away in the direction of the moor.

The crisp packet in the road wasn’t a pheasant as I’d thought, it was a crisp packet.

On the moor, I watched a crow seeing off a kestrel while Mr Anderson buzzed around his topiary armchair with a noisy hedge trimmer. On the edge of the wood I saw a jay and a bullfinch.

On the doorstep of the Old Manor House someone has arranged a small display of smooth grey pebbles with white stripes. Later, back in town I noticed Mrs Haigh has a large canvas print of some smooth grey pebbles with white stripes above the coal effect fire place and wood effect laminate floor.

The Man Opposite Me on the Bus Kept Gesturing Towards Me

The man opposite me on the bus keeps gesturing towards me and saying "This postman, he is lost" in a fake eastern European accent. After a while his companion joins in too: "These sex toys are not for me, the brothel is not open yet" he says, also in a fake eastern European accent. They both find this amusing.

On the pavement below the pub chalkboard advertising a concert by a band called Rockweiler, there is a pillow in a clean white case. 

At the houses where they have removed the Yorkstone flags from the paths and replaced them with old Nurishment drink cans, empty Space Raiders/Jelly-Tots/Tesco bags, extrusions of expanding foam, splinters of 4x2 timber, fake patent snakeskin handbags with broken handles, pairs of black-tracksuit-bottoms-with-white-bits-on, faded-plastic children's ride-on cars with broken wheels, milk cartons, dog shit, old carpet grip-rods and empty lager cans, I disturbed a would-be burglar. He ran away up the cobbles wearing black tracksuit bottoms with white trim and his hood up.

The Polish man at No.131 who gets all the parcels has got some new BMW slippers.

I count seventeen piles of dog shit in the six square metres of concreted over yard at No.87 then I round the corner to find the man with the shaved head who lives at No.81 pissing in the middle of the street outside his house while his partner struggles to get their toddler down the front steps in a pushchair.

As I lift open the broken gate of the house with PRIVT NO PARKING PLS written on it in foot high white letters, the front door opens suddenly and someone hurls two fully loaded nappy bags roughly in the direction of the overflowing wheely bins on the pavement. They miss me and the bins by about a metre.

On a rural delivery among the suggestive trees...

Out on a rural delivery among the suggestive trees where the glass re-cyclers are full of wine bottles rather than greasy pasta sauce jars, a woman with large spectacles and red lipstick said to me “Isn’t it a glorious day” as she wiped her hands on her pinny. I saw lapwings, fieldfares, a moorhen, a buzzard, three plastic herons and two dozen bottles of Budweiser chilling in the snow by the back door. A receptionist lifted her half-rimmed specs and confided that the security officer is “a right twat” and later, in the bright midday sun, a man with a switched-on light attached to his headband pulled up in a Ford Focus to tell me “Those vans are breeding, there’s another one down there”. 

Back at the yard, Robbo was singing again; a medley of his improvised lyrics to classic tunes. To the tune of Panic by The Smiths, “Panic on the streets of Sheepridge. Where’s me Giro? Where’s me Giro? Where’s me Giro?” To the theme of Last of the Summer Wine, “I love my job, I need to see a psychiatrist” and to the tune of No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley, “No money, no beer”.

There was a dead long-tailed tit...

There was a dead long-tailed tit on the step of the house where the lady said she wasn’t quite dressed yet.

The two women in fleece jackets and black-tracksuit-bottoms-with-bits-of-white-on were jogging in opposite directions along Station Road. They didn’t acknowledge one another as they passed.

The woman at the bus stop said her oven had blown up. She said she had glass in her hair and was having to use her grill instead which was doing her head in.

Outside the flats, two men in their late sixties, wearing fleeces and woolly hats were discussing RSJ’s...

Outside the flats, two men in their late 60s—fleece jackets, woolly hats—were discussing RSJs, purlins and caustic soda. They were with a woman of a similar age. She was wearing large spectacles, red lipstick, and a well-padded, snug-fitting gilet.

A tall man with a shaved head stopped me in the street and said, ‘Have you noticed them?’ He freed up his right hand by consolidating all his Argos bags into his left and pointed at the sky.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Them,’ said the man, and pointed again.

‘The vapour trails?’ I said.

‘Yes. They’re not normal,’ he said. ‘Look at them. Look at the crisscrossing and the angle. They shouldn’t be at that angle.’ The man lined up his hand with one of the plumy trails, squinting across it with one eye closed to get a more accurate gauge. ‘They shouldn’t dissipate like that either. I’ve been doing some research; these aren’t civilian planes doing this, they are military. I’ve got software that tells me where all your British Airways, Virgin, Ryanair… all the Manchester airport stuff should be, but these planes never show up. I’ve noticed them a lot over Huddersfield recently.’

‘What are they doing?’ I asked.

‘Spraying chemicals,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. If I told you what I think they’re doing it for, you’d think I was some kind of nutter.’ He smiled and re-distributed his Argos bags. He told me he couldn’t say any more because he had to go, and he legged it across the street shouting, ‘Just look up “Chemtrails” on Google. See you, mate!’ 

At the farm, Howard held up a letter to show me. Printed on the envelope it said: Give Blood – Donor Survey. Howard lowered his brow and growled ‘Survey, my arse! I’ll give ’em a bloody survey through the sights of my bloody rifle!’ On the way out of the yard I slipped on a pool of frozen dog piss.

Birds: Jay, Buzzard, Treecreeper, heron, pheasants.

The Most Difficult Thing Ever (The Movie)

One year abridged into half an hour. Reading from The Most Difficult Thing Ever: Recorded on location in Huddersfield, UK, between August 2010 and August 2011 by Kevin Boniface.
Website: ​victorygarden.co.uk

6.00 a.m.: As I walk down Fitzwilliam Street, a gust of wind blows an empty Tennent’s Super can from the gutter

6.00 a.m.: As I walk down Fitzwilliam Street, a gust of wind blows an empty Tennent’s Super can from the gutter and it begins to roll noisily across the street. When It reaches the middle of the road, it changes course and starts a descent down the hill at quite a speed. I watch as it overtakes me. About twenty yards further down, a rat appears from the opposite pavement and begins to scuttle across the road on a collision course with the can at the intersection of their paths. I wait for the crash, which seems inevitable, but the rat puts on an impressive turn of speed at the last second and disappears into Marco's Hand Car Wash unimpeded.

I apologise to the man at the County Court for the temperamental nature of my PDA when it shuts down as he’s about to sign for the mail. "It reminds me of a woman" he says. Outside, in the car park, two women in tears console each other next to a Vauxhall Corsa.

The university is busy with graduates in mortar boards and gowns. I queue to get into the car park behind a red Ferrari with the number plate G1RLS.

There are two identical settee cushions—brown with a bit of white stuffing poking out—in the road at either end of Newsome Avenue.

In St Peter's Street someone has stuck a penny to the side of a bin with a blob of gob and a bit further down there are three short blue pencils fastened to the back of the pay and display machine with masking tape.

A woman in a maxi dress is painting a shed while listening to Take That in the gardens next to the art gallery.

5.30am: A man who couldn't walk straight passed me in the street

5.30am: A man who couldn't walk straight passed me in the street. He was wearing plastic rimmed glasses and carrying a copy of The Guardian under his arm. He staggered slightly, bounced off the wall with his shoulder and spilled Pepsi Max down his top.

In the park, a dozen or so people were playing loud music in the bandstand. They waved and shouted “Morning mate!” as I walked past. When I replied they all collapsed in fits of laughter.

I was emptying a post box when the man in the garden behind it threw a large snail over his shoulder without looking. It bounced off the side of my head and set off across the road with half its shell missing.

On Hayfield Avenue, a woman opened the window of her front room and asked me to help her and her husband to climb out. She said they'd locked themselves in.

Out of the five people Inside the motorcycle showroom, I was the only one without grey hair, a moustache and no beard. I went over to the counter where a grey haired man with a moustache and no beard broke off briefly from his conversation ("She makes a lovely sound, especially when you open her up a bit…”) to tell me that I was "looking for parts" (which I wasn't) He pointed to an adjoining door and said "Through there mate. They'll look after you".

The signs to the car-park at the enormous new church say "Customer Parking".

On my way into work at 5.30am, I passed a house from which the theme tune from the TV show Countdown...

5.30am: I pass a house from which the theme tune from the TV show Countdown is blaring. A police helicopter hovers directly overhead.

A colleague tells me he’d been embarrassed the other day while delivering a package to a sex shop on his round; he tripped up a step and knocked over a display of dildos.

At the house with the decorative Father Christmas and snowman figurine in the window, I hand the owner a parcel. He’s an elderly man dressed almost entirely in a single hue of beige (he would probably appear to be naked from a distance). He shouts to me above the noise of his dog barking from behind the gate, “Don’t worry!” he says, “She’s all this” and he makes a C-shaped gesture with his right hand, opening and closing his thumb and fingers to signify talking. “Just like all women”, he adds with a wink.

I knock at the door of the house in Manor Street where the owner always jokes that his parcels are consignments

of heroin. Littering his short garden path are twenty-nine cigarette butts, fifty-seven KFC salt sachets (some opened and some unopened), a KFC vinegar sachet (unopened), a drinking straw and an empty litre and a half bottle of Fanta. There are also a lot of white feathers—far too many to count.

While using the urinal in the toilets on the first floor of the post office, I glance out of the open window and notice a shoe on top of the security hut at the main entrance. It’s one of those chisel-toe slip-ons with a three-quarter inch heel.

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".