Research into outdoor chores carried out in the last week of September:

Research into outdoor chores carried out in the last week of September: 

Gender / Approx’ age / Attire. 

16°C - 20°C (mild weather for the time of year)

Sunny with very occasional light drizzle.

1. Male, 40s. Watering potted annuals. T-shirt, jeans, sandals.

2. Male, 70s. Scrubbing hose reel with stiff brush. T-shirt, trousers, sandals.

3. Male, 60s. Clipping fingernails. T-shirt, jeans, sandals.

4. Female, 60s. Digging out couch grass. Fleece jacket, jogging pants, walking boots.

5. Female, 70s. Taking seedlings round to a neighbour. Blouse, trousers, sandals.

6. Female, 40s. Walking Labrador. T-shirt, jeans, trainers.

7. Female, 70s. Weeding between driveway setts with special long-handled tool. Fleece jacket, trousers, sandals.

8. Male, 60s. Loading garden cuttings into Fiat Punto. Fleece jacket, jeans, black shoes.

9. Female, 40s. Re-pointing garage wall. Fleece jacket, tracksuit pants, slippers.

10. Female, 70s. Walking Highland terrier. Fleece jacket, knee-length plaid pleated skirt, flat black shoes.

11. Male, 60s. Re-pointing wall. Polo-shirt, jeans, black shirt.

12. Female, 30s. Putting out bins. large knitted striped jumper, jogging pants, one slipper, one bare foot.

13. Female, 70s. 'Popping to the shop to get some bits'. knee-length skirt, knitted cardigan, flat black shoes.

14. Male, 60s. Sweeping yard. Fleece jacket, trousers, welly shoes.

15. Male, 60s. Washing Fiat Punto. Navy-blue overalls, black shoes.

16. Male, 60s. Clearing guttering. Shirt with collar, V-neck sweater, suit trousers, slippers.

17. Female, 60s. Sweeping pavement outside house. Cardigan, trousers, slippers.

18. Male, 80s. Polishing KIA Picanto. Shirt with collar, V-neck sweater, suit trousers, black shoes.

19. Female, 70s. Sweeping driveway with brand new yard brush. Sweatshirt embroidered with floral display, trousers, welly shoes.

20. Male, 70s. Re-applying window putty. Knitted cardigan, jeans, slippers.

21. Male, 50s. Shouting abuse at a neighbour in the street, “Don’t fuck with me!” T-shirt, jeans, socks.

22. Male, 70s. Telling the postman that a neighbour has died, “Yep, they’ve buried her and everything”. Baseball cap, cardigan, jogging pants, trainers.

23. Male, 20s. Hiding door key under mat, “You never saw that, did you? There’s nowt worth nicking anyway, it’s a right shit-hole”. Motorcycle helmet, tracksuit, trainers.        

I walked a long way today, through eight spiders’ webs

I’ve walked a long way today; through eight spiders’ webs. I’ve got dead flies webbed to my shirt and face.

There’s tree litter, there are bagged nappies and there are BMWs on the slippery Driveways of Distinction.

On the main road, a builder is loading a heavy-duty site radio back into his van. He slams the doors shut as I stride across his freshly laid concrete path leaving three deep footprints. I apologise and made a weak joke about the current vogue for pattern imprinted concrete. The builder says nothing, just turns around, opened the van doors, and unloads his radio and tools again. I disappear around a corner and wash my shoes in a puddle.

A small boy of about four or five years old runs out into the road. His dad comes after him, picks him up and drags him back to the pavement. “I’ve told you not to do that, It’s dangerous!” He yells. “I know,” says the boy. “So why did you do it then?” “Because it was a secret ninja job.”

Out in the sticks where 50% of women are inside Range Rovers.

Out in the sticks where fifty percent of women are inside a Range Rover, I follow the deer down the gravel driveway to the barn conversion where the new faux-modernist chrome-plated garden sculpture is something a bit different and absolutely beautiful to look at according to the woman with the glass of something lovely in her hand. I lost a fiver around here yesterday, I retrace my steps for about ten minutes but there’s no sign of it.

In the village, the grown-up paper-girl in distressed denim passes me in the street. She tucks her phone under her chin and folds a copy of The Sun for her next drop without pausing her conversation. “They're having another baby. Royal twats!” she says as she pushes open the gate with her hip, “...Yes, well, if I had a decent job I wouldn’t be doing a paper round, would I?”

I park my van at the end of another long driveway, in the same place I have every day this week. I open the door and there, screwed up on the pavement, is my fiver.

Kyle’s Always Grabbing My Tits.

“Kyle’s always grabbing my tits” says the young woman in the tight fitting playsuit whose toddler son has just grabbed her tits. “I know! Mine too, it really hurts” says the older woman in the noteworthy trainers as she gathers her low-maintenance hair into a scrunchie. “And it’s embarrassing” adds the younger one, as she pushes her unfashionable specs up the bridge of her nose.

The butcher is recommending a cut of pork loin to the thin-lipped elderly woman with the big black canvas shopping bag and frown. He waves a large knife over it in the display counter, “That’ll be lovely, tender as a woman’s heart!” he says. “I’ll have the sausages” says the woman.

A boy of about six or seven years old stops me in the street. “Do you want to buy this for a pound?” he says, opening his palm to reveal the pebble I’ve just seen him pick up from Mr Beever’s driveway. “What is it?” I ask. “A pebble” says the boy, rubbing it on his sleeve, “It’s shiny”. “A pound for a pebble?” I say. “It’s magic”, says the boy.

I was watching a nuthatch in Hangingstone Road when a thin man in washed-out black passed at dangerously high speed. He was riding a pushbike and trailer with GAY written across the back of it in large plastic letters. He looked up at me as he shot through the narrow gap between the double parked cars. “Hiya!” he yelled at the top of his voice. The nuthatch flew away.

I Chase Cloud Shadows Up Over the Moor...

I chase the cloud shadows up over the moor and onto the estate where the men still drive Rovers and wear their hair in elaborate combovers that flip up in the wind like busy, beige peddle-bin lids. Wind-assisted lapwings flock in the field behind the abandoned Renault camper, the pretend duck by the bin store ‘quacks’ as I pass, and a replica of a basset hound peers out from the large stone handbag in Mrs Hinchliffe’s Alpine rockery, its head bobbing on a spring. People in comfy shoes restrain small terriers, fry liver and onions, smoke cigarettes, and scrape fluvial sediment from a storm drain with a butter knife. A man with a bit of dinner on his face sits on a collapsible chair outside his conservatory door. He is surrounded by marigolds, begonias, gladioli, Sport For All stickers, a faded Basil Ede print of some ducks, a pile of VHS video cassettes, a dozen or so pretend meerkats, and a miniature wooden wheelbarrow stuffed with pansies and snapdragons. Next door, a ten-year-old dusty-pink Kia Picanto pulls up and a grey-haired man with thick, plastic-rimmed Reactolite glasses and a three-quarter length beige anorak climbs out. He slams the door, opens the boot, and unloads three heavy looking Lidl bags-for-life. He pulls out a small packet of dog biscuits and holds it up high to show the man with the dinner on his face who shouts, “Thanks, Derek!” and points towards the open door of his green plastic shed, “Wob us it in there, can you?”

The Most Difficult Thing Ever (Book/CD)

Under the Overgrown Brambles, Through the Spiders' Webs...

Under the overgrown brambles, through the spiders’ webs, past the tethered cat asleep on the lawn at the limit of its chain, to Mr Briggs’ front door. “Good weekend?” he asks. “Not so bad, thanks. You?” “It were all right. We went down The Railway. I said to Robert, ‘Have

you any food on?’ He said ‘Yes, we’re doing bacon sandwiches for a pound.’ I said, ‘I’ll have two.’ So we had a bacon sandwich each.” “Very nice”, I say. “Aye, but when I got up to go for a piss, they had a bloke on the toilet door trying to charge me 50p because of the Tour de France! The robbing bastards! I said to Robert ‘You’re not charging me 50p for a piss, I’ve been coming in here thirty-five year.’” “Did he charge you?” I asked. “Did he fuck. Robbing bastard!”

The roofers are listening to Tracey Chapman on their bright yellow, heavy-duty site radio while they discuss their nights out in Brighouse. “Aye, I went out there last weekend. It wasn’t a bad night but I didn’t go out to get rat-arsed” says the younger one, rolling a cigarette. “Fuck me!” says the older one “I did! I got absolutely fucking bladdered.”

The occupants of the little Fiat 500 ahead of me at the lights are engaged in some kind of gobbing-out-of-the-window contest. The big man with the moustache in the near-side passenger seat appears to be winning; he’s landed a large greeny halfway across the pavement outside the doctor’s surgery. Two of the beige pensioners in the long line of mainly-beige-with-accents-of-navy pensioners at the bus stop look on disapprovingly. They begin to remonstrate with the Fiat men but the wind blows something heavy by Yves St Laurent into my van so I wind up my window and miss what they say.

The Most Difficult Thing Ever audio extract / new stockists

Two new Manchester stockists of The Most Difficult Thing Ever book/CD:

Magma
22 Oldham Street
Manchester 
M1 1JN

Trouble at Mill
50 Beech Road
Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Manchester
M21 9EG

Just Down From The Sun Pub Where Elvis Performed Last Night...

Just down from the Sun pub where ‘Elvis’ performed last night, the man who still has his Christmas decorations up is singing Everly Brothers songs at the top of his voice while he does his ironing with the window open.

Two fifteen-year-old Vauxhall coupés driven by young snapback wearers speed past. The silver metallic one in front hits the speed-bump by the bus stop too quickly and its wide-arch body kit comes off in one piece. The following coupé, a red one, hits the body kit and drags it up the road for about fifty yards, smashing it to pieces. The elderly man with the Scottish accent and the spaniel asleep in the basket attached to his walking-frame says, “There’re some right fucking idiots about, aren’t there?”

On the terrace of houses with more plants in the guttering than in the gardens, a man of about sixty, wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, and slippers sits on his front step listening to The Eurythmics at very high volume. He occasionally joins in with the chorus between drags on his roll-up.

Out in the sticks, builders of all ages listen to eighties chart hits all day long and chubby young white men with no socks, beards, tattoos and flat caps say “Thanks, boss” to the Asian shopkeeper or do some cycling. In front of the market cross, the man of about sixty with the grey crew-cut and rat-tail discusses his Mercedes with another younger Mercedes owner. They both refer to their cars using the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’.

I was talking to Mrs Kaur in the shop...

“You know her from number 14?” says Mrs Kaur in the shop, “Well, every time she comes in here she’s different, one day she’s a goth, one day she’s like, normal, like, white, normal, and then yesterday she came in and she was a bloody Muslim!”

On Union Street, Mr Coldwell is in his yard trying to spray an old push-bike yellow in the rain. He says it’s for the window display of the florist’s shop on the route of the Tour de France. He’s well into his second can of paint but the rain is washing it off as fast as he can spray it on. “I should have waited for a finer day, it looks crap”, he explains. At the house next door, they have finished laying their new plastic lawn and have now embellished it: in one corner stands a plastic statuette of mole wearing a miner’s helmet and in another, a shiny fake plastic dog turd.

On the new estate, a magpie is squawking hysterically and dive-bombing the fat black cat which eventually hides underneath a Suzuki Vitara for cover.

A bit further down, the young mum is struggling to load baby equipment around the large custom built speaker system in the boot of the new VW Polo. A bit further down again, next

to the children’s playground that the children never play on, a man with a good two-thirds of his arse showing is mending his old Transit Connect. “Can I borrow your drill, Trevor?” he shouts to the man drinking beer in his front garden, “You cheeky bastard!” the man shouts back.