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

I knocked at the door of a house with a parceI, but nobody came. While I was waiting, an Asian man in a blue suit walked past in the street. He was talking into a phone “...carry it out within the usual framework...” he said. I knocked at the door again but there was nobody there, 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. I went back to the first house to leave a note and, as I passed the window I glanced up to see whether the woman was still watching the television; she wasn’t, she was stood with her back against the wall in the lee of the chimney breast, her 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. She was saying “Honestly, she’s such a weirdo right; she just phoned me and said ‘I just had to pick up a dead pigeon. What are you up to?’”

I disturbed a woman who was sunbathing topless in her garden. Her music was so loud she couldn’t hear the doorbell so I went to the side gate to try and get her attention; she ran away screaming.

The Most Difficult Thing Ever is now available in book form from victorygarden.bigcartel.com – for those occasions when you can't be arsed to turn on your phone.

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.

When I got to work, a group discussion about sandwich filling preferences was taking place. I suggested to Debbie she might try peanut butter and cucumber but she said she couldn’t because she doesn’t like ‘sweet and sour stuff’.

10am: 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 the door and, once again, the man didn’t move; he was asleep as well. Eventually (another two doors down) somebody answered their door; 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, in head-to-toe beige, her, in head-to-toe pale lavender, both with reactolite glasses 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.

The Most Difficult Thing Ever will soon be available in print...

The Most Difficult Thing Ever will soon be available in print from the Victory Garden website. A 'launch' and reading will form part of the preview of The Most Difficult Thing Ever exhibition at Cow Lane Studios, Salford: 6-9pm May 11th 2012

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 where standing 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 doesn’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 who’s 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-viz jackets on board, the tall man with his brace of labradoodles who never says hello, the woman who’s 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 takeaways. 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 – 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 the rush to be time efficient 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 stood 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 stood in the road where four children of between about six and nine years old were being encouraged to pelt it with sticks and small stones from a distance of about two metres by another man who, with his buck teeth and moustache had a look of Freddie Mercury. 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 curb. 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 curb 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 sort of comb-over hair, he was with his black labrador, John. 

I paused on Fitzwilliam Street to swap a woollen hat for a peaked cap and the man with pointy shoes, short tippy-tappy strides and a Liverpool FC plastic carrier bag overtook me 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 whilst unlocking 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 open 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 fat 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.