a short length of hose

I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore.  Here the house numbers are clumsily spray-painted onto the houses.  The privet hedges are untamed and are swallowing up the (already fucked) gates, entrances, the lot.  When I finally do find the rusty latch and force my way through the undergrowth, I have to negotiate a path through the piles of children's toys and 'Farmfoods' carrier bags stuffed full of soil (?).  I exit this particular close soaking wet (the privet tends to hold a lot of surface water which brushes easily onto me) and with scratched hands.  Today I encountered Lancaster's only front door that opens outward, a painful experience.  There are also a surprisingly large number of letterboxes installed upside down.   They tend to remove that thin, sensitive layer of skin just below your fingernails.  Mans stupidity to man.

lactose intolerant

The sun has many advantages such as supporting life, creating shadows etc but it can also become tiresome after 4 long hours under it's oppressive glare.  I'm covered in barriers: cheap sun cream; sunglasses; rather fetching hat; clothes, but they tend to make me perspire even more.  It doesn't help that I'm delivering to several, shall we say 'shit', blocks of flats with no lifts and (understandably) sealed windows.  These asbestos filled boxes bake in the morning sun, concentrating heat and any lingering odours on their stairwells for me to discover.  One stairwell in particular was covered in a fruity yogurt last week so the strawberry overtures were particularly intense.  Today I was getting a hoary, putrid stench of rancid milk and overripe vomit.  There were bass notes of funky dog and stale old person but nothing too toxic.

snap fuck

The office radio is broken which means we're forced to hear our own voices. It makes the mornings rather long though, having to listen to the kaleidoscopic sounds of breaking wind, snapping bands (followed by a swift 'FUCK!!!') and extra loud football gumph.
Makes a change from Jam
ie Fucking Theakston informing me of a 'snarl up on the M25'. Yeah, cheers Jimmy lad, I'll avoid it. By 300 miles. The tuning of the rad
io's a bit of a free for all and it usually rests on Theakston and co. for some unknown reason. I liked the brief moment some wag tuned it to 'birdsong FM' and an ethereal calm descended on the office. Production, moral: all rose in those blissful 5 minutes.

dog tired

I may bang on about dogs but I'm truly amazed at the sheer number of dogs I meet, on a daily basis, that see me as dinner. Years ago, pre-this job, I liked dogs. Now I've developed a true fear of any type of dog, no matter how waggy it's tail, no matter how indignant the owner that it's a 'softy really'.
Every day I've felt a cold-mad rush of fear/adrenaline as a dog flies out of nowhere to chew on my bones. My first reaction is to hide behind my bag as this is dispensable (unlike my limbs) and heavy. Then I make for the exit. Sometimes there is no exit.

release me, I'm evil

release me, I'm evil
Originally uploaded by tommy hoskins

Ho ho..NO. It's Spring you evil bastards, no sane person needs a Christmas catalogue just yet, especially such shoulder-crushingly heavy ones. But since when has sanity meant anything? For two days this week (that's MAY) I had to look at Santa's jolly red face (mine was red but not so jolly) as the Spring sunshine burned down on my nerve torn back.

donkey dog

'Let me show what I do with these' my colleague says.
He then rips off the bright red Recorded label and stuffs the, now ordinary, packet through the letterbox.
'But don't let me teach you my bad habits' he cackles.
I'm being trained. i.e. being shown the ropes by a cynical, bitter and twisted old bastard. It's Royal Mail policy.
Trained on a 'rural' (webbed hands) walk as the frame doesn't correspond in any way whatsoever with reality, and the reality is pretty grim. My head is hurting. I've spent the past hour trying to follow my 'trainer' but he's racing ahead, spouting this and that. All the roads are merging into one semi-detached mush and I'm lost.

spring bore

Cameron's chair is still warm from Gordon's arse and already the old Tories are acting as Lords of misrule. Today in WHSmiths I was blatantly queue jumped by two Express reading pensioners who then barged past me...I threw my Beano down in disgust and walked out.
Is this a measure of our brave new world to come? Lib Dems, for shame.
That dark political cloud has hung over me (and most of my colleagues) all day. In the van this morning there was a (much more than usual) defeated air...like a scene from the Fugitive. Then I saw the muddy banks of the Lune being washed over by an incoming wave, the Lune Bore (fuck you Severn).

badgering blues

My ice cold heart has been warmed these past weeks by the very funny amendments made to local Tory billboards. As my mobile still has a dial and a bell I wasn't able to capture these digimally. Only this morning I chuckled out loud in the communal van as we drove past the latest Tory poster/victim...'let's cut benefits for those who refuse war' it states, and sausage face Cam is wielding a huge machine gun.

What's on? Mt Belly that's what.

now fuck off back to your scrat hole and lock the fucking door.
Love Lancaster City Council.

heavy sky

As if the grey cold rain isn't enough: the constant nagging drag of a hefty bag on my right shoulder; sharp twinges shooting through my shoulder blades; the soul sapping monotony of the featureless streets populated by trolley trundling, shuffling old carcasses; the joyless meaningless contents of said bag: thick wodges of slippery Home Shopping catalogues, Readers Disgust (join a fucking library, read a real book!)..

the paper cycle

A recent episode of Wallander (the BBC remake featuring a constantly blubbing star and several dopey sidekicks with frizzy perms, not the excellently dour Swedish version) featured a postman as the murderer..it was signposted early on in the episode by plonking a red post van conspicuously in a scene for Branagh to almost fall over. It's a nice thought, murder. GK Chesterton got there first with his murdering postie carrying his corpse in a mail sack unnoticed: 'the invisible man'. I understand the urge to throttle people.

the aged saga

News reaches us of a postie being hospitalised by a cat. I know this cat, I'm sure of it. The postie in question was so startled by the cat in the letterbox that he stumbled backwards, breaking his back, or something. When I first discovered this feline menace I didn't realise it was a cat at first, my first thought on feeling the intense pain in my fingertips was 'dog'. The wounds were pinprick small (but exceedingly bloody) so I assumed 'small scratty dog', or malicious pins in the letterbox. The next day I investigate.

the splurge of spring

there's no time anymore. Christmas madness has seamlessly morphed into snow and ice sheer fucking terror. I fell at Christmas, not in snow or particularly thick ice, just a thin layer of frost on a smooth stone slab. But boy did I fall, a classic legs in the air whoops a daisy. One minute there, the next 'whoosh!', lying on the gutter under a scattering of mail...flushed and shaken. Buster Keaton would be proud.