6am: it’s quiet in the street apart from the man in the black track-suit who is singing

6 a.m.: it’s quiet on the street apart from the man in the black tracksuit who is singing an indefinable song quite loudly outside Ali Barber’s barber shop.

10 a.m.: In town, the old woman in the open-toed sandals is waiting to cross the road outside the supermarket with her Inca inspired bag-for-life. Next to her is a younger man in a pink shirt and a red, yellow, green and black striped Rasta cap. They cross the road together and make their way around the pile of rubble that was, until last week, the old university sports hall. They pass a soberly dressed man at the bus stop—shiny black shoes, grey suit trousers, pale pink shirt—who is drinking a can of extra strength lager.

11.30 a.m.: In the suburbs, the tarmac is melting. The sun is out, the hydrangeas are out, the big men in shorts and flip-flops are out. A swarm of bees has taken up residence in a crack in the wall of the contract weaver’s shed and the man in the leather gauntlets says “All right, mate?” to me outside the shop that sells mainly tinned peas, jars of tuna paste, and extra-strength cider. My old school teacher has moved house and the new owner has paved over the garden and replaced the big old gloss black hardwood door and leaded lights with white UPVC. There has also been a proliferation of CND graffiti around here recently.

12.30 p.m.: The knackered old boat that I sometimes park up behind for cover while I have a quick brew, is gone. I ask the man who is pouring some concrete where it is. He says I've just missed it, ”Some blokes have been to tow it away.” Around the corner, I see it, stationary and listing badly in the middle of the road, one of the wheels has fallen off its trailer.

3 p.m.: At the shop, the man in front of me in the queue asks for an e-cigarette charger. The proprietor ducks behind the counter, rummages around and comes back up with a USB phone charger.

“No’ says the man, “It’s for my e-cigarettes.”

The proprietor disappears into a storeroom and returns with a large plastic box. He sits it on the counter and pulls out three or four different USB phone chargers.

“No” says the man, “It’s for my e-cigarettes; you know, a three pin plug for the mains with a bit that you screw onto the cigarette at the other end.”

The proprietor rummages through the box again and pulls out another USB phone charger.

“I tell you what,” says the man, “Give me twenty Chesterfield Lights.”

The proprietor rolls up the shutter to the tobacco cabinet, takes out a packet of twenty JPS and puts them on the counter with all the phone cables.

“No” says the man, “20 Chesterfield Lights. There, bottom left.”

The proprietor replaces the packet of JPS and returns with a packet of JPS Blue.

“No” says the man, “I tell you what, Give me 20 Rothmans Superkings, right in the middle there.”

The proprietor replaces the JPS Blue, takes out the Rothmans and hands them over.

“Thank you,” says the man.

The black liner of the wire litter bin outside the Costcutter had blown inside-out...

The black liner of the wire litter bin outside the Costcutter had blown inside-out in the wind and was flapping about inflated like a smaller, less cocksure, banana and ketchup-stained version of the promotional ‘air-dancers’ they used to have outside the Fiat garage when it was a Peugeot one.

A delivery van pulled up and the driver got out. While he was unloading fruit and veg’ he explained how he’d earlier mistaken his own reflection in his misaligned nearside wing mirror for another person and, in the resulting confusion had almost hit a wall.

The KIA saloon with the office chair and the postcard display rack strapped to its roof drove past—just as it had the day-before-yesterday.

When the old man who was cleaning his immaculate 12-year-old Ford Mondeo initially engaged me in conversation I’d assumed he was just being friendly to a stranger, but when he asked me a technical question about the tactics employed by the Huddersfield Giants in their last game, I wondered whether he had mistaken me for somebody else. Not being much of a fan of rugby league, I confessed I had no idea what he was talking about. At first, the man looked confused but then he smiled, got up from where he’d been crouching to polish the chrome of his vintage AA radiator grill badge, and persisted with the subject—presumably assuming I was just amusing myself by teasing him. I reasserted my ignorance on the matter and voiced my suspicion that I wasn’t who he thought I was. Once more, the man briefly looked confused, nervously wrapping his duster around his hand, but again he smiled and continued on the subject. As he seemed so convinced I was somebody I wasn’t, I began to doubt myself; perhaps we had met before and I’d forgotten. Maybe he’d brought up the Huddersfield Giants in conversation on that occasion too and I’d somehow given him the impression that I had some interest and knowledge on the subject—It could easily happen during the course of small talk in a queue or on a bus. I decided to go with this scenario and explained that while I do like to keep an eye on the Giants’ results (an outright lie) I don’t consider myself to be much of an expert and have no worthwhile opinion on their tactics. At this, the man smiled, raised his hands to his eyes like blinkers and said conspiratorially, “I know! It’s all claret and gold with some people, isn’t it?”

At this point, we were interrupted by the two builders who were sitting side-by-side on some scaffolding while they chiselled render from the house next door. They had begun singing R Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly at the tops of their voices. The old man looked up and shouted over, “Give it a rest now lads!” but it had no effect.

Further down the road I got talking to the woman with the low maintenance hairstyle and the perhaps inadvisable vest-top-with-no-bra. She was telling me about the house she used to live in when she was younger. 

“Where was that?” I asked. 

She waved an enormous arm in the vague direction of half of Huddersfield and said, “You know, number twenty-three do-dah.”

On, and up past the quarry, the airfield, the firework factory and the caravan park to the cul-de-sac of neat 1960s bungalows where the sound of Woman’s Hour was leaking from open kitchen windows and the air smelled of freshly cut leylandii. There was talk of chimineas: “Good grief, how many of these are we having?”

Round the corner at the doctors’ surgery, which was empty apart from an elderly woman and an elderly man who were staring impassively at different walls at either end of the waiting room while Lessons in Love by Level 42 played through the discreetly mounted speakers at quite a high volume.

The Rookery: rescheduled screening details.

The screening of The Rookery, a film I made for Hebden Bridge Arts festival has been rescheduled for 4.30pm on 5th September at Hebden Bridge Picture House. It is a free event. Trailer below.

On the Estate where Pretend Owls outnumber the Human Population by Two to One, there have been some New Editions.

On the estate where pretend owls outnumber the human population by two to one, there have been some new editions: a tiny little motorbike-and-sidecar with solar powered head-lamps, a concrete kitten, a miniature pretend-stone elephant—curled up asleep, lots of new meerkats and Buddhas and an entire garden stocked exclusively with faded plastic flora and fauna. 

The underlying murmur of people in tight shorts commenting on the warm weather to one another all day long is occasionally punctuated with the noise of power tools and the yelping of small dogs. 

Over by the abandoned Renault Camper, a man in his 70s is showing his new Teddy bear to the woman with pictures of wolves all over her T-shirt.

Further up the valley, outside the High School, the road sweeping man is picking up Maoam wrappers with an extendable litter-picker, soft-toy trophy-lynchings swinging from the handle of his cart.

The fine weather has brought out the clover, the daisies, the bird’s foot trefoil, the mother-die, buttercups, foxgloves, honeysuckle, and the old woman with her specs on a chain who shuffles past a pile of dried dog shit in her open-toed sandals.

Out in the sticks, a hen pheasant flaps out from under the five bar gate at the bottom of the field with the old bath tub in it and a Porsche 4x4 blows past with its windows open, trailing aftershave. 

Outside the village hall there are pots of marigolds around an old church pew with chintz cushions. There’s ivy, there are climbing roses, yew hedges, willow and birch. There are gravel paths with moss edging, potted geraniums and snap-dragons. There are spaniels and Labradors, and pairs of upside-down gardening shoes covered in lawn clippings. There is best bitter, and Radio 4, and Botox, and swallows and martens in the outhouses. Happy golfers wave me past the tee. The stolen top-stones have already been replaced.

It starts to rain summer rain, fat drops that leave big Dalmatian spots on the millstone flags. At the big house with the yellow lichen gables, the old man with the comb-over and frayed grey flannels is frustrated, “I’ve just come out to do a bit in the garden and bugger me if it hasn’t started raining.”

At the modernist house that is being extended using mainly large sheets of chipboard, the builders are discussing an episode of Top Gear in voices that carry.

“Wasn’t it funny when that caravan tried to overtake on the inside—on that bumpy bit?”

“You think we have a good laugh at work, imagine being them!”

A woman walks past with a big Siberian husky, then a jogger who is going barely fast enough to overtake her—he’s wiping the rain from his glasses with the hem of his Scotland football shirt.

The old woman at the farm asks whether I’ve got a mac in my van. I say I have and she gives me a double thumbs up and a big grin, “Well, go and put it on, I can see the blobs all over your shirt.”

Back in town the woman with the long-haired dachshunds is talking to the man taking photographs from the viewing point in the park.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?

“Yes,” says the man

“We don’t appreciate it enough, living round here, do we?”

In the Close Humidity of Snapped off Saplings

In the close humidity of snapped off saplings, broken concrete, takeaway flyers, footballs in trees and trainers on wires, the dirty scrap man with the homemade tattoos is here for the Ikea bedstead. 

Two teens with half-closed eyes smoke weed while their Staffy intimidates the old Asian woman in salwar kameez. 

The shop is stuffy and smells of dog food. A young woman buys four bottles of Fruit Shoot, “I water them down but he still acts like a wild child, It’s a bloody nightmare!”

Further up the valley, in the open breeze and swaying beech trees, the Abel & Cole man buzzes around the laburnum, rhododendron, and the topiary box footballs in his tidy fleece jacket and yellow van.

The council gardener is sitting on the kerb mixing up some two-stroke in a jerry can while his colleague is on his knees lifting out dandelions at the base of the school fence.

A man walking a Cairn terrier passes me, “Are you lost?” he asks.

Litter Survey: Fitzwilliam Street to Church Street, via Greenhead Park, Heaton Road, and Branch Street.

Date: Wednesday, 17th June 2015

Weather: Warm, dry, still

Duration: 24 mins

Costa take-out cup.

Coca-Cola plastic bottle

Mayfair cigarette packet

Greggs take-out plastic cup

Richmond cigarette packet

Greggs take-out paper bag

Benson & Hedges cigarette packet.

Kinder Bueno packaging

Train ticket

7up drink can

Pile of indeterminate cigarette butts

Coca-Cola plastic bottle

Polystyrene takeaway container

Dairy Milk wrapper

Haribo sweet packet

Benson & Hedges cigarette packet

Wheat Crunchies packet

Richmond cigarette packet

Rizla packaging

Kellogs Coco Pops Snack Bar wrapper

Ribena plastic bottle

Benson & Hedges cigarette packet

Benson & Hedges cigarette packet

Expired DVLA tax disc

Capri Sun carton

Till receipt

Pages from The Huddersfield Examiner

Polystyrene cup

Capri Sun carton

Two ’wet wipes’

A child’s seaside fishing net

Mayfair cigarette packet (20)

Mayfair cigarette packet (10)

Pile of indeterminate cigarette butts

Coca Cola can

Costa sugar wrapper

Boost Energy Drink can

Pepsi can

Maoam sweet wrapper

Mr Freeze packaging

Rubicon mango drink can

Walkers Cheese & Onion crisps

Mayfair cigarette packet

Plastic fork

Polystyrene cup

Polystyrene cup

Paper serviette

Plastic water bottle (indeterminate brand)

A hair roller

Snickers wrapper

Lucasade bottle

Wrigley’s Extra chewing gum wrapper

Paracodol packaging
Lambert & Butler cigarette packet

The Postman Leans Against the Bus Shelter and Squints into the Squall

The postman leans against the bus shelter and squints into the squall, “As long as my fags and my phone are dry, I don’t give a shit about anything else,” he says.

Two ducks fly over the swathes of buttercups in the yellow meadow off Moor Lane.

“Are burglars poor?” the young son asks his dad.

“That depends on how successful a burglar they are,” his dad replies.

A pair of crows fly over the Ferrari, the rhododendrons, the brace of Range Rovers. They land on the ridge tiles of Wisteria Cottage with its gravel, its vintage boot jack, the stone pixies climbing over its gate, and its wisteria.

The view, like the cars and the houses around here, is massive.

There’s an angry bee trapped under the plastic envelope housing the planning notice that’s stuck to the lamp post next to the Toyota Previa with the long deliberate looking scratch down its side.

The man from Sunny View has come outside, hood drawstring tight. He tells me to get myself out of the rain.

I wonder if the little ginger dog turd left next to the imprint of a dog’s paw in the cement around the drain cover is a memorial tribute.

The old lady with the piles of books and the oxygen tank has died.

The couple who are always arguing with the windows open are arguing with the windows open. 

“Nice one, mate. See you later, bud,” says the young man through a haze of weed smoke from the passenger seat of the little Suzuki Ignis with the Ferrari air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.

Later, the sun dries the rain and brings out the man who hoovers his pattern imprinted concrete driveway. Then there’s the man in the shorts and the rugby shirt who calls his Jack Russell terrier a knobhead and a tit.

The man in his 70s with the opaque reactolites and the black labrador stops to talk to the other man in his 70s with opaque reactolites and black labrador. They compare experiences of electrocardiography.

The roofers’ expletive ridden conversation is easily loud enough to be heard from the bus stop where the woman with the Sainsbury’s bag-for-life raises an outraged eyebrow.

What I thought was a bee in the pocket of my shirt was just a piece of tree litter.

The estate agent in the tailored grey waistcoat, jeans, light tan brogues and sunglasses climbs out of his black Audi S4. He grabs the large, strappy digital SLR from the passenger seat, takes a couple of snaps of the end-terrace with the pretend wooden front door and drives away again.

Back in town, I get off the bus and the Asian man who is wearing salwar kameez and holding a toilet seat is having a stand up row about parking spaces with a fat bald white man with no shirt on and ketchup around his mouth.

I leave at 6am

I leave at 6am as the low sun is glinting off silver seams of slug trail. At the junction where the double-yellow lines divert around the big sycamore, Jackson Pollock bird shit covers the road and the abandoned pushchair.

A funfair has set up in the park behind the row of big Dolly Mixture holly bushes. I walk past behind two other men in high-vis vests. “Do you know that guy up Deighton with one arm?” “Stumpy?” “Aye, that’s him, Stumpy...”

In town, I pass a noisy lock-in at the bar under the railway arches: "Setting the new standard of late night drinking culture."

I drive out into the country, where nightclub moguls and ex-football professionals have built big houses as high up the panoramic ridge as possible. They compete for the stripiest lawns, the most striking life-sized Buddhas, the shiniest black 4x4s, the most unorthodox use of decorative gravels and spars etc.

Mr Briggs pulls up in an old Toyota Yaris. “I’ve just taxed this: £60. Just insured it: £250.” That’s all he says. And then he drives away again.

In the village, this year’s flying ant day is underway and the builders are listening to heavy metal from the 1980s on a paint-spattered radio.

Back in town, a man with a chin-strap beard pops up from behind the fence of the residential care home. “Hello, mate. Do you know me?” he asks. “No,” I say. “Well, this is a residential home and I’m Wayne. I’m a bit autistic. I’m always thinking people are going to knife me. That’s no way to carry on, is it?” “No”, I say, and then add, “You should be all right at the moment, there’s nobody around”, and I set off walking again. Wayne shouts after me, “But I look all right though, don’t I?” I shout back, “Yes, you look fine!”

It’s one of those dry, still days.

A still day: petrol, cigarette smoke, lawnmowers, paper litter, traffic noises from a quarter-mile away, daisies, dandelions and daffodils, a peacock butterfly on white UPVC …

Out on the estate that hasn’t changed for forty years, an elderly couple are having a small tiff about which bag to put all those jam jars in while a sparrowhawk disembowels a small rodent on the ridge of their dormer bungalow.

Rockeries, cracked flag driveways, scuffed casey footballs, bikes on their sides, tiny weed bound ponds, bird feeders, overweight builders with broad accents, 8’x8’ lawns, cotoneasters, hebes, leylandii, a willow or a silver birch in the corner—planted by the developer in the seventies—low double-skinned fake-sandstone walls infilled with soil and alpines, brutal pruning, and a David Brown tractor spreading muck on the field behind.

There are women in their fifties and sixties: grown out bobs, Reactolite glasses, floral shirts, pastel vest tops, knee length shorts—also pastel. They sip gin and slim outside the pub waiting for Probably the Best Fish Supper in Town

The chickens in the field full of mangold wurzels are excited, they are singing Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance. There are lapwings, buzzards, and the nearly naked man walking the Border terrier who is singing at the top of his voice.

At the Back of the Bus:

At the Back of the Bus.

Woman in three-quarter length quilted anorak: You should have seen us roller skating the other night!

Other woman in three-quarter length quilted anorak: You weren’t kaylied as you were going round, were you? 

Woman in three-quarter length quilted anorak: Aye, the drunker we got, the braver we got.

Crisp shadows, blue sky, a starting of blossom with the shreds of newspaper in the trees, a weathered, grey wooden fence with the greenest cotoneaster leaking through the cracks, the second bullfinch in a week on Newsome Road South, rotten gates that fall apart in your hand, a moulded ‘stone’ tortoise with a solar panel shell and a night-light face, massive cars parked too close together, a woven willow reindeer which is still kicking around from Christmas…

Mr Briggs pulled over in his Suzuki Carry, he took his pipe out of his mouth and pinned it between the ball of his thumb and the steering wheel while he leant across and shouted to me through the window: 

“I’m off to t’bins; I’ve got a load of bloody rubbish in!”

That’s all. Then he went.

I saw Mr Booth outside the newsagent’s. He told me again about the time he went to see The Rolling Stones in 1980:

“Mick Jagger was from me to where that Renault’s parked... Margaret was on my shoulders... The car broke down on the way home...”

On the estate where people in bath robes often shout loudly at barking dogs

On the estate where people in bath robes often shout loudly at barking dogs above the noise of high-energy auto-tuned pop, they were shouting particularly loudly today. The wind whistled through the streets, slamming knackered garden gates, flapping and cracking at the polythene in the broken trees, and inducing that weird clanging sound from the inside of metal street lamps.  A man of about sixty years old, in a tracksuit and an old Suzuki Swift pulled over to ask me whether I knew where he’d been born. I said I didn’t.

“Sorry… I mean… the thing is, my wife asked me where I was born the other day and I realised I don’t know. My mum’s dead, so I can’t ask her. I sent off for my birth certificate and it says Storths Road but I don’t know where that is."

Later on, I heard a woodpecker — in the tree above the owl that’s made of hundreds of tiny shells.

The elderly man in the stained anorak was sitting on an upturned bucket to paint his garden fence. He told me he used to work for the GPO, “…on the engineering side, like. I’ve got a good pension — it’s seen me right! I’ve been retired for twenty-eight years. I bet it’s not like that anymore though, is it? I couldn’t believe it when they privatised the Royal Mail — Nobody wanted it! It was all just to line the pockets of the big boys. Greedy buggers.”

He dipped his brush into the paint,
“It’s water based, this” he pointed out.

I commented on the unpredictable weather we’ve been having.

“Aye, but isn’t it grand working outside. I love it. I always have. I think it’s why I’m so fit… apart from me knees… and me back. I’ve always worked outside. It can be the worst job in the world but as long as you’re outside and you’ve got some good work-mates it doesn’t matter."

I agreed with him, and told him about my back and knee problems. He sympathised and then parked his brush. 

“I’m going to call it a do for today,” he said, groping for a dry bit of fence to pull himself upright. “I’ve enjoyed our chat. It makes the world go round, doesn’t it? Talking to folk? But there’re some right miseries around these days, aren’t there? My bus driver says he hates his job because everybody’s so miserable now.”

Three doors down, a tall man in a black anorak and sandals was looking directly ahead and holding his hands behind his back as he paced slowly round and round the perimeter of the small concreted-over garden of his terraced house.