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”.

My neighbour keeps free range rabbits, chickens and guinea fowl.

My neighbour keeps free range rabbits, chickens and guinea fowl. She lives in a terraced house on a busy road with a small, paved yard. She often leaves the gate open so the animals can roam up and down the street. The first time I saw this, I assumed the animals had escaped and I knocked at her door to tell her. She waved me away and said it didn’t matter. This morning a fox was chasing one of her rabbits round and round the house opposite.

I thought I’d left for work about ten minutes late but I saw all the regulars in their usual places: The black VW Golf with the Polish plates, the silver Punto whose driver sits talking on the phone with the engine running next to the wall where all the pointing fell out in one piece after the bad frost, the 302 bus with the men in hi-vis jackets on board, the tall man with his brace of labradoodles who never says hello, the woman whose collies round up the ducks in the park, the former postman and his wife who say they couldn’t wish for a better lifestyle now he’s retired, the brazen blackbird that hops along at my feet for several yards at the entrance to the park, the disheveled starey-eyed beard-on/beard-off man with the jittery gait and his dubiously sourced early morning takeaway. Five Canada geese also flew low over my head in formation on their way to the pond.

At work, I almost hit a lorry driver who was wearing braces as he descended from his cab. I was distracted by the car park attendant who has taken to wearing a stab vest.

At the reception of the University halls of residence, the Mike Posner song You Think You’re Cooler Than Me was on the radio and, at the precise moment I asked Mr Hewitson for his name for the third time this week, I heard the lyric “and you never say hey, or remember my name. It's probably cuz, you think you're cooler than me.” If Mr Hewitson noticed, he never let on.

At the junior school office, I queued behind a woman with a budgerigar in her handbag (it had hurt its wing and she was only calling in on the way to the vets) and a man who was dropping his daughter off whilst wearing a Keep Calm and Eat Pussy T shirt.

On my way home, I stopped at the supermarket where a big fat man in a Spanish football shirt farted loudly by the turnips.

There was nobody around apart from three men in hi-visibility clothing...

There was nobody around apart from three men in hi-visibility clothing (myself being one of them. I was in orange, the others in green). We were each walking down different streets towards their confluence which we reached simultaneously.

Twice today, I saw the man who wears the all-year-round head-to-toe waterproofs and runs everywhere. The first time he was running up Heaton Road with his waterproof hood up, The second, he wasn’t running and he had his hood down; he was giving directions to somebody in a Kia Rio on Outcote Bank.

In a rush, I erroneously entered Mr Stead’s name into my PDA as ‘Steadi’. I handed it over for him to sign and apologised if he thought I was being over familiar. He said he didn’t mind at all because he’d been known as ‘Steadi’ throughout his school days which he remembered with particular fondness.

A man in his thirties was standing in the road talking to an elderly woman. She was wearing beige salwaar kameez, headscarf, thick plastic rimmed glasses and a pair of black canvas pumps decorated with a white skull and crossbones motif. The man had a dog, a huge akita, which was also in the road. Also in the road was another man who, with his buck teeth and moustache had a look of Freddie Mercury about him. He was encouraging four children of between about six and nine years to pelt the dog with sticks and small stones from a distance of about two metres. The dog’s owner and the woman were both aware of what was happening but did nothing to discourage the children as missiles began to pile up around their feet. The dog was placid, only ducking between its owner and the old woman for shelter when the barrage became particularly intense. The children continued to throw stuff while Freddie Mercury sourced ammunition for them. Eventually I got into my van and pulled out from the kerb. None of the children, the two men, the woman or the dog attempted to get out of my way and I sat waiting for about thirty seconds. Eventually the man pulled his dog onto the kerb and out of range of the children who then retreated to the other side so I could pass, crushing piles of sticks and pebbles under the wheels as I went.

On my way into work I passed a man I often see around...

On my way into work I passed a man I often see around. He never speaks to me but he once held open the door at the Co-op and he’ll sometimes nod stiffly in my direction. On this occasion though, he ignored me completely. 

In the park I saw the chubby man with the comb-over, he was with his black labrador, John. 

I paused on Fitzwilliam Street to swap a woollen hat for a peaked cap and a man with pointy shoes, short tippy-tappy strides and a Liverpool FC plastic carrier bag overtook me just as a Suzuki Swift killed a pigeon at the traffic lights.

On the estate of barely detached houses with the mainly new, mainly black, mainly German cars. I went to number three where the mini with ‘Maureen’ written on it was parked in the driveway. I waited on the front step next to a scale model of a baby rabbit and the doormat which has NICE TO SEE YOU, TO SEE YOU NICE written on it. Next door, a man in a suit and dark glasses paused while he unlocked the door of his BMW. He glanced over to me across his plastic lawn and said “Anything for numero uno before I head off?” I said there wasn’t. Eventually the door of number three opened and a thin man in his sixties with a dressing gown undone to the waist smiled and said “Good morning sir!” I smiled back and handed him his package “Yes. Thank you! Thanks a lot. Ta. Thank you. Thank you” he said.

Also today, I heard some men playing the bagpipes on the ring-road and an owl.

Mr Simpson gave me a lift to work in his new car...

Mr Simpson gave me a lift to work in his new car with the de-mister that comes on when he literally tells it too. I told Julie about it at work and she said Mr Simpson has five sugars in his tea. 

This week’s wildlife of note:

A woodpecker, a jay, some lapwings, a lark, rabbits, deer, a dead fox, some chickens, up to two dozen black labradors, numerous koi carp and two plastic heron (one stood up and one lying down on its side)

The chickens at the farm were pecking at the dog's bone while the builders listened to People Are People by Depeche Mode on their heavy duty radio.

I couldn’t get up Hill Top because of the two rival dog walker’s vans that had parked to collect their charges from houses on opposite sides of the street.

Mr Briggs pulled up to tell me he’d just heard on the news that the cheapest petrol station in town is the Jet garage at Lockwood.

The woman in the trench coat asked “Is it going to make a nice day, do you think?”

“I’m not sure but it’s looking good at the minute” I replied.

“I know, but will it last?” said the woman.

No Surprises by Radiohead has been going round my head all week. Today I think I worked out why; several of the door bell chimes on my delivery sound like the song’s opening two notes.

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.