As he left the house where the pointing has been patched with expanding foam...

As he left the house where the pointing has been patched with expanding foam, the man in the black tracksuit top with white trim stumbled over the soiled nappies on the doorstep. He kicked at them in frustration and then stuck two fingers up at the twelve-month-old baby girl who was dribbling over the shoulder of the young woman with the home-dyed ponytail as she made her way down the steps in front of him.

Out on the main road, two other young women with home-dyed ponytails had braved the sub-zero weather conditions to have a fist fight in the middle of the street. They both successfully landed several punches to each other's heads while screaming abuse and tearing at one another's vest tops. Two men in bare feet and flip-flops gingerly picked their way around them—and the ice—on their way to the bus stop.

In the rec' behind the house with seven cars on the drive and nobody ever at home, another man in a black tracksuit top with white trim had pulled down the tyre from the swing and was throwing it at his Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

I saw the flock of waxwings in the church gardens again; the fourth day running.

The Most Difficult Thing Ever 2012 (the movie)

2012 in brief.

2012 in brief: 

Frozen dog piss.

Topiary armchairs. 

Holding a large piece of stone. 

Consolidating your Argos bags.

Suggestive trees.  

Killing a pigeon at the traffic lights. 

Black-tracksuit-bottoms-with-white-bits-on.  

A scale model of a baby rabbit. 

BMW slippers.    

All-year-round head-to-toe-waterproof running man. 

Farting loudly by the turnips. 

Carrying things out within the usual framework. 

Stuffing a punctured leather football over your tow-bar. 

Bobbing over when she gets back. 

Avoiding the giant fat ceramic blue tit. 

Talking to yourself in a scouse accent. 

Lapwings, fieldfares, a moorhen, a buzzard, three plastic herons and two dozen bottles of Budweiser.

A half-sized resin statue of a horse.

Girls in leggings, texting.

A big picture window at the front that looks out onto your neighbour's Mitsubishi Animal. 

A lettuce.

Adjusting your cock. 

Predominantly black lycra. 

Eating some shat-out berries on top of a gate post. 

Following a large hare for about fifty yards. 

A pantomime maggot. 

Like To Get To Know You Well by Howard Jones. 

Wheeling a broken swivel chair out to your bins. 

Making a noise like a sheep. 

Power walking: C’mon! Put you arms into it! POWER WALK! 

Another headless pigeon corpse. 

Having a fucking word with yourself. 

Disembodied hands. 

The Most Luxurious Club In The North. 

Shouting into the phone in Urdu. 

The severed head of a stone tortoise.  

Zumba, Yoga for Pregnancy and a Craft Workshop. 

Distracting a rat. 

'Value' pregnancy testing. 

Bootses. 

Wearing a green dressing gown in lieu of a coat. 

Wearing a stab vest.

Jamie’s Italy. 

At 5.30am, I distracted a rat as it sped across Church Lane.

At 5.30am, I distracted a rat as it sped across Church Lane. It ran headlong into the kerb, bounced off and landed on its back. Very briefly supine, it thrashed about inexpertly, righting itself in a shower of street-lit puddle water before diving for cover under the leggy budleia on the verge. 

I saw a rat yesterday too. This one was also flat on its back. Dead. All bedraggled fur and gaping incisors. It was on the pavement outside the newsagent's shop where they display their 'value' pregnancy testing kits on the counter next to the fizzy love hearts and candy foam bananas.

The front door was surrounded by overflowing wheelie bins, a collapsed stack of breeze-blocks, a roll of sodden carpet, an empty hanging basket, a discarded moulded fairy garden water feature with a crack in it, a plastic elbow pipe fitting, an empty children's bubble mixture bottle and an unruly jasmine litter trap—incorporating empty energy drink cans. It was was opened by "Beautiful Sajida". "Oh God! What a weirdo!" she said, contemplating the hand written label on her parcel, "But I suppose it could have been worse". Next door, the man whose garden is covered with slippery ginger dog turds was shouting "Shut the Fuck up!" and next door to that, through the glowing window, I could see them there, laughing in their Santa hats, preparing a Christmas feast on a large wall-mounted television.

“OH, IT’S YOU”, shouted the tall man in the cardigan and trouser braces...

“OH, IT’S YOU!”, shouted the tall man in the cardigan and trouser braces. “I WAS EXPECTING A PARCEL FROM BOOTS'!" (pronounced Bootses). I’VE BEEN EXPECTING IT FOR ABOUT FIVE DAYS NOW! I DON’T KNOW WHERE THEIR WAREHOUSE IS—OUTER MONGOLIA, I RECKON! THANKS ANYWAY LAD!”

The apostrophe and capital letters in Mrs O’Neil’s name were missing, which led me to mis-pronounce it “Mrs One-ill”. She found this so amusing that she had to put her hand on my shoulder to steady herself. 

I caught the woman wearing a green dressing gown in lieu of a coat just as she was leaving the house. “Ooh, that was lucky” she said, slipping the parcel into her enormous shoulder-mounted handbag and lighting herself a cigarette.

At the house with the Audi A6 on the drive and Jamie’s Italy in the window, the man in the golfing sweater told me his neighbours were unlikely to be at home because they are coppers and would be out nicking someone.

I saw three different people wearing flip-flops outside in sub-zero temperatures today.

At work, the lift was condemned and then, a bit later on, the safety barrier came down on Martin’s head.

At work, the lift was condemned and then, a bit later on, the safety barrier came down on Martin’s head. He said it hadn’t hurt though because he’d been wearing his new trapper's hat and it had cushioned the impact. We got talking about his hat and he told me he found it almost too warm and that when he went for a walk in the Dales, there was steam coming off it.

Chris told me his coffee was the best he’d ever had from the vending machine. He said it “actually tastes like coffee”. After a few minutes, six or seven people had gathered around him, attracted by the news. 

Later, in the supermarket, when the elderly woman with the grey Summer Wine perm said she’d been drinking a lot of tea recently, the younger woman in the quilted jacket told her it didn’t matter.

At the house on the moor, the door was ajar and I could hear people talking behind it. I knocked. The conversation stopped for a second, then I heard a woman say “Who’s that gonna be?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you open it and find out?” said a man.

The door opened and a young woman with a long fringe, a quarter length fur coat and skinny jeans stood in the doorway smoking. An older man in a grey sweatshirt with some paint on it stood behind her. Before I had chance to speak, two Cairn terriers rushed snapping and yelping out from between their feet and began nipping my ankles. “They’re biting him!” said the woman, surprised.

“Well, stop them then!” said the man with some urgency, “Grab them!” She didn’t move, conceding only to hold her cigarette out of harms way. I danced around a bit and eventually stepped backwards over the low gate to safety, kicking off the dogs from my trouser legs as I went.

At the house with the geraniums in I heart Playboy pots on the window sill, a large woman in her sixties with short cropped hair and a faded jersey outfit pulled back the curtain when I knocked at the door. I held up her parcel and mouthed “Parcel” to her. She frowned and waved me away. I assumed she’d somehow misunderstood, so this time I mouthed “Postman”, and pointed first to the parcel and then to her. She waved me away again and shouted at me quite loudly, “GO AWAY! I DON’T WANT ANYTHING!” I persisted, holding the parcel up higher and shouting “POSTMAN!” Finally, she let go of the curtain and came to the door, “Sorry love,” she said, “I thought you were trying to sell me stuff.”

I set off against the weather...

I set off against the weather. The wind was thrashing the trees and, in Linfit Lane, choppy little puddles were breaching their potholes. In the road outside the house with the plastic holly wreath on the front door, the polar bears wearing Santa hats in the window and the pair of pink wellington boots with Wannabe Wag written on them on the front step, two men wearing filthy frayed jeans were in a skip, scavenging scrap. 

At the school, the headmistress came to the door to let me in. She usually buzzes me in through the intercom. “Sorry, I couldn’t see who you were; Miss Brown’s not here” she explained.

I walked around the miry puddles to the house down the track by the swollen stream. I had a shoe box sized parcel for the man with the impressive sideburns. He’d hung a new front door which didn’t have a letterbox. I assumed he must have relocated it so I asked him where it was. “It’s in your hand,” he said “in that parcel.”

I joined the queue in the shop behind the skinny white man in his twenties with the snap-back and the black tracksuit top with white trim. He was talking to the man behind the till (the Asian man with the greying bob and the pencil moustache) in a strong Jafaican accent. “Them that ring you up about PPI innit. There’s nuff jobs there! You get paid by the call. You get a headset. Even if nobody answers or they hang up, it still counts. It’s done by computer”

The illuminated bollard in the middle of St James Road has been runover again

The illuminated bollard in the middle of Fitzwilliam Street has been run over again. And, at the junction by the gay bar, where the upside-down shopping trolley has been on the pavement all week, the traffic lights were stuck on red.

On the bus, I sat next to the old woman who was on her way to the cemetery. She was holding a single red rose. Behind us, a group school girls were discussing which they preferred, “Eating or drinking”. They unanimously agreed that drinking was definitely the best.

At the house that should be No.13 but is No.11a instead, the man with the big overcoat that restricts his movement was reversing his new car into a gate post. I judged he might not be in the mood to deal with my enquiry, so I pressed the doorbell and waited as it made a protracted series of notes of seemingly random tone, length and volume. Eventually a woman with a tea towel slung over her shoulder answered. She apologised, “Sorry about the bell, love. I washed it last night and it’s not been right since.”

Outside the Post Office, a man of about twenty, wearing a black-tracksuit-with-white-bits-on and a bum-fluff moustache...

Outside the Post Office, a man of about twenty, wearing a black tracksuit with white trim and a bum-fluff moustache, slammed the door of his new silver Mercedes and swaggered over with his hands in his pockets. Without averting his eyes from the pavement, he mumbled “Move your van, boss. There’s markings innit. D’ya get me?”

The man in the T-shirt, shorts and espadrilles signed for his parcel. He nodded at my hand held PDA, “Them’s weird these, aren’t they?” he said.

On the notice board at the new delicatessen, there are posters advertising classes for Zumba, Yoga for Pregnancy and a Craft Workshop. At the pub a few doors down the chalk board outside is advertising a Smokie tribute band.

I leant on a freshly painted door frame and got some Weathershield on my sleeve, “That’s all you need in’t it” said Mrs McHenry.

It was windy and the sky was littered with crows, swept up like a thousand bin bags.

It was windy and the sky was littered with crows, swept up like a thousand bin bags. Deep inside the bus shelter, a large woman wearing a done-up-to-the-top anorak pulled a cellophane wrapped greetings card from a large pretend-leather bag. Inspecting it, she smoothed the corner between her finger and thumb; “Is that bent, or is it me?” she asked. 

Also waiting for the bus was a very large man in a black tracksuit top with white trim. He was standing outside the shelter, in the middle of the pavement, feet a metre apart, squared-up against the gale. He wore his hood up, a scarf across the bottom half of his face, his hands deep in his pockets and his shoulders back; rock solid in the teeth of the squall that blew his enormous grey marl sweat pants tight around him, clearly outlining his quite small cock and balls.

“Don’t worry, they’re worse than they seem”, the woman reassured me as she restrained her snarling dogs. 

At the house with the statuette of a meerkat holding a sign that says “Welcomes” on it, the old woman behind the glass front door got up and walked away when I rang the bell. Her neighbour, a man who was chewing gum and wearing protective goggles came out and told me he thought it was a crap day but that technology is brilliant.