The man in his sixties with the faded Just Beachin’ T-shirt...

The man in his sixties with the faded Just Beachin’ T-shirt that featured a picture of a kitten on a sun lounger was showing a neighbour, another man in his sixties—who has a half-sized resin statue of a horse ‘tethered’ to his house—around his new car. He pointed out something on the dashboard, “It’s guaranteed for life, that. Mind you, I’ve heard that before” he said, before pausing to greet the two men in green high-vis vests who were walking past. “Hiya lads”, he said with a small wave. “Ayup”, said the tallest of the hi-vis men, a pair of long ladders balanced on his shoulders. The other, slimmer and older with grey hair, just nodded and smiled; he was carrying a plate of cup-cakes decorated with blue butter icing and little silver balls.

Later, I was talking to a woman with very straight hair, glasses and a large canvas shopping bag about the problems she’s been having moderating her body temperature since the hospital put her on Warfarin. She was concerned her fleece jacket might make her too hot on her way to the bus stop, even though she’d taken out the lining. Quite a fat man passed us, he was walking a very small poodle while picking his nose and eating it.

Later again, the woman with the dyed black perm and the wind-cheater was talking to the woman in the large 1980s reactolites. She said  she was all fired up about her fish tank again. “It’s not been the same since my big shark died. I lost all my enthusiasm, but I’ve been busy with it again recently...” She broke off and grabbed the reactolite woman’s arm, “You’ll have to come over when the dark nights come back, it looks magical”.

A dozen or so young women wearing pony tails and predominantly black lycra...

A dozen or so young women wearing pony tails and predominantly black lycra with a single bright accent of either cerise pink, cobalt blue, orange, lime green etc were taking part in an outdoor aerobics session in the park. At the bus stop opposite, an elderly woman in a beige anorak arrived and said to the other elderly woman in a beige anorak, “It’s been a bit of a rush but I’m here now and that’s all that matters”.

In the farm shop car park, a woman in a beige anorak was telling a man in a beige anorak that she couldn’t get anything except Radio 2 on her car stereo. 

“Still?” said the old man, rolling his eyes.

The woman nodded, “I know! After all this time”.

The man waved a walking stick towards the shop entrance and said, “It’s a bit of a walk down there”. 

“I’ll go”, said the woman, “What do you want?”

“A lettuce”, said the man.

A heron flew over Shangri-La, a blackbird picked up a sun-baked slug and bounced it on the driveway at Orchard House and, at Greenside, where the man with the pickaxe said he’d be OK as long as it stayed dry, a Robin was eating some shat-out berries on top of a gate post.

Ernest says his new puppy hasn’t been a bit of bother.

The UPVC door opened and a man wearing a blue fleece jacket and a large rucksack over a black pin-striped suit stepped out...

The UPVC door opened and a man wearing a blue fleece jacket and a large rucksack over a black pin-striped suit stepped out. He stood between the two lilies in plastic terracotta pots to lock up, then turned and walked towards me. “This weather looks a bit naughty!” he said as he passed, looking up at the sky “And they say it’s gonna get worse an’ all”.

Horny by Mousse T was playing over the P.A. in the toyshop. Down the road, the secretary at the recruitment agency said her signature made her look like “a right spaz” and Later, at the chemical plant, the security guard confiscated my lighter before he’d let me on site. He was chewing gum ferociously but his breath still smelt strongly of alcohol.

I followed a large hare for about fifty yards as it bounded along in the middle of the road. It darted off into the field where the magic mushrooms grow in the autumn.

I pulled up on the pavement next to the woman in the beige three-quarter length anorak with all the ties pulled as tight as possible; only her squashed face was visible under her shiny wet hood, giving her the look of a pantomime maggot. I commented on the miserable weather as I climbed out of my van and she agreed it was disappointing for the time of year. “I heard something funny the other day though. She said. “Oh, it did make me laugh!” She stifled a laugh at the very thought, and explained. “My friend’s son said that if the weather carries on like this, we’ll be sunbathing on Christmas day!” She threw her arms up in the air. “Oh, I did laugh!” She cackled.

I was walking past the newsagent’s shop when somebody threw a slimy mango stone...

I was walking past the newsagent’s shop when somebody threw a slimy mango stone out of a window on the first floor. It landed where I was just about to step. I adjusted my stride to the left to avoid it but the stone bounced and my foot came down right on top of it. I slid but managed to retain my balance. 

The driveway was lined with statues: a spaniel with big eyes holding a gas lamp in its mouth, an outsized squirrel with big eyes holding an acorn, a moonying gnome. Also, a folded-in-half wellington boot was pinned under the nearside front wheel of the TVR Chimaera.

The builder with the swagger and the four foot spirit level called me boss and told me his dog doesn’t like postmen. I approached the front door of the house he was working on and the dog started barking threateningly, its hair on end. The builder ignored the situation and climbed some scaffolding singing the Howard Jones song Like To Get To Know You Well. Eventually, the owner of the house had to come out and collected his mail from me.

An old man with no teeth was wheeling a broken swivel chair out to his bins. “Nothing lasts for ever!” he said.

At 6am, my neighbour slammed his front door and shouted “Bastard!”

At 6am, my neighbour slammed his front door and shouted “Bastard!” at the top of his voice.

At 6.30am In Northumberland Street, two young women were lying on their backs in the middle of the road, singing.

At 12.20pm in Church Street I saw a man in a heavy beige anorak – it was 23°C. He also wore two mansize tissues under the arms of his spectacles like large white blinkers.

At 2.30pm at the farm, the barbed wire fence was hung with clumps of snagged wool, the horse that was wearing the blanket kicked the one that wasn’t in the face and the two Border Terriers barked hysterically, almost throttling themselves on their chains. A swallow flew low over a dry stone wall, skilfully avoiding a collision with the giant fat ceramic blue tit which is fastened to the top of the gate post with a big blob of cement, while the farmer told me his neighbour is a lazy cunt.

At 3pm, while I was on my way home, I think the woman with the thick dark hair, glasses and the jumper round her waist heard me talking to myself in a Scouse accent.

I pulled up too far from the control unit for the entry barrier...

I pulled up too far from the control unit for the entry barrier at the entrance to the technical college. There was a queue of traffic behind me so I couldn't manoeuvre the van any closer. I opened my door and stretched out my arm as far as I could but my foot got tangled in the mat in the footwell and I fell out and onto the street.

Today's squashed wildlife: a frog, a shrew, a slug, two snails, a bee, a squirrel, two earthworms, a wasp, half a starling and a moth*

The woman with the new BMW and the tight jeans was telling her neighbour, a man in cargo pants and a white T-shirt, "When you only pay two, three, four grand for a car it's gonna be a heap of shit."

"I know," said the man,"There was no heated seat, no cd player nor nowt!"

The woman at one of the barn conversions on the moor has pressed her old aerobics step into use as a stand to display her houseplants on. She has created a two-tiered tableau in the big picture window at the front that looks out onto her neighbour's Mitsubishi Animal. Next door, where the garden backs onto acres of idyllic rolling countryside as far as the eye can see, Mrs Moorhouse was pedalling determinedly on the exercise bike she's rigged up in her garage.

Two window cleaners were talking as they dripped suds from their Bedford Rascal to the houses on the estate. "They were good sarnies this morning, you know", said the smaller, thinner, younger of the two who was carrying a bucket and some ladders.

"I still would rather have had a breakfast," said the taller, fatter, older one who was carrying the van keys.

"I know what you're saying", said the younger one.

I knocked at a house with a parcel. I was about to give up waiting when I heard some fumbling around with keys behind the door. After a couple of failed attempts to unlock it, all fell silent again for another minute or so until the occupier returned with what I assumed to be another set of keys. This time, after another couple of attempts, the door finally swung open to reveal a man in a blue towelling bathrobe and his hair stuck up on one side. "Sorry, I was in bed," he said, squinting at the sun. It was then that I looked down at the parcel and realised it was for the house next door.

*the moth was inside a packet of Coco-Pops.

At the house with the sign on the gate that says ‘My Doberman lives here’

At the house with the sign on the gate that says ‘My Doberman lives here’ above a picture of a Doberman’s head and a human hand holding a torch, I stand on a snail as a helicopter flies overhead. On the window sill with the dead moths, there is a money tree plant, a single white sock, a dusty snooker trophy and a TDK D90 audio cassette still in its packaging. When I knock at the door, a man with tattoo sleeves answers, “It’s awkward when you can’t see your own writing”, he says as he fills in his signature.

I call at a house with a parcel but nobody is home. I notice people at the house next door so I go to ask whether they’ll take the parcel for their neighbour. A young man in a vest and jogging pants answers. He agrees to take the parcel and asks, “Are they trainers?” I say I don’t know. “I might try them on”, he says. He winks at me and then he puts his hand down the front of his trousers, adjusts his cock and shuts the door.

Two men are talking on the bus: “Have you ever murdered anyone, Carl?” “No, I haven’t, Jim.” “No, me neither.”

A snail crawls up my kitchen window on the morning of the diamond jubilee of HRH Queen Elizabeth ll.

I knocked at the door of a house with a parceI, but nobody came.

I knocked at the door but nobody came. While I was waiting, a man in a blue suit walked past in the street, “Carry it out within the usual framework...” he said into his phone. I knocked at the door again but nobody answered so I went to the next house along where I’d seen a woman in the front-room watching the television. I knocked and rang the bell but the woman didn’t come. I knocked again and she still didn’t come. As I made my way back to the first house to leave a note, I glanced up to see whether the woman was still watching the television. She wasn’t, she was standing with her back against the wall in the lee of the chimney breast, head turned away, trying to be invisible.

A man with a Border terrier, shorts and a Superman T-shirt that was too small for him had stopped to talk to a woman in the street. “Honestly," said the woman, "she’s such a weirdo, she just phoned me and said ‘I just had to pick up a dead pigeon. What are you up to?’”

On the pavement next to the junction box with “Kate is gay” written on it...

  

On the pavement next to the junction box with “Kate is gay” written on it, there was a pair of soiled boxer shorts and two smashed Stella bottles.

At the bus station, a group discussion about sandwich filling preferences was underway. The fat woman in her fifties said she could never eat peanut butter and cucumber because she doesn’t like “sweet and sour stuff”.

10a.m.: I found a pair of glasses in the street, thick old lady ones in a leather case. I knocked at a nearby house to see if somebody might recognise them, but there was no reply. I tried the house next door. There was nobody there either. I crossed to the house opposite and walked up the driveway past the caravan with the punctured leather football stuffed over the tow bar. I could see through the window of the front room and behind the display of beer steins on the window sill, there was a man on a settee with the television on. I knocked on the door but the man didn’t move. I rang the bell and knocked again, harder; he still didn’t move. I went to knock on the window but as I got closer I realised he was asleep. I didn’t wake him up, I went next door, where I could see another man sitting in front of a television. I knocked at his door and, once again, the man didn’t move; he was asleep as well. Eventually (another two doors down) somebody answered: a woman with short grey hair and a beige fleece. She took the glasses from me and said she thought they belonged to a neighbour. “I bet she’ll have dropped them on the way to the bus stop. She’ll have grabbed something out of her bag...” said the woman, twisting round and miming grabbing something from an imaginary bag, “...she’ll have yanked at it and pulled her glasses out by mistake. Thanks love, I’ll bob over with them when she gets back”.

At the school, a boy of about nine years old jumped in front of me and shouted, “Hello, random post guy!”

Just down from the yellow grit bin that’s overgrown with nettles and Mrs Lister’s Clematis—where Dick got a nail in his foot—an elderly couple were waiting for me to pull up in my van. He was wearing head-to-toe beige and she was in head-to-toe pale lavender. Both also wore reactolite glasses which were in full anti-glare bloom. 

“Anything exciting for us!” shouted the lavender lady as I got out.
“No. Next door” I said.
“You want to get a coat” said the man “They’re very good those fleeces but they don’t keep out the rain!”

According to the poster on the lamp-post, the cat with the bit of tinsel around its neck is still missing.

I was walking a few paces behind beard on/beard off man...

I was walking a few paces behind beard-on/beard-off man when he dropped a ten pence piece on the floor. He bent down to pick it up, carefully cradling his dubiously sourced early morning takeaway to his chest as he did so. I overtook him, rounded the corner where the market traders were arguing about the location of their pitches and saw my boss jogging across the road to the office twenty yards ahead. As he reached the pavement by the junction box with the “Oi Ain’t Red” sticker on it, he too dropped some money and then scrabbled around on the floor to pick it up. A few seconds later, when I reached the junction box, I noticed a pound coin he must have missed, so I picked it up.

A man in black-track-suit-bottoms-with-white-bits-on told me to fuck off when he realised I’d seen him talking to himself.

A jogger with an ipod and a lightweight windcheater passed me as I approached the house with the massive Audi on the drive and the plastic snowdrops in three miniature galvanised buckets on the doorstep. I was about to knock at the door when the occupier, a woman wearing a black quilted jacket, pulled onto the drive in a new Mini. “How’s that for timing?” She said as she got out of the car. I suggested she must have some kind of sixth sense that tells her when the post is going to arrive and she said “Yep, I’m psychedelic me”.