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.
