One More Bloody Street

Date: 7/17/2026

I used to love my four-day week. Honestly, I was living the dream. Four days on. Three blissful days off. The perfect work-life balance: just enough work to feel productive, and just enough freedom to remember I had a life beyond a garish red polo shirt and a never-ending stream of parcels. There was always that extra day to stay on top of everything. No laundry pile slowly mutating into a small mountain range in the bedroom corner. Carpets that didn’t look as though a family of fluffy socks had exploded over them in a fit of rage. A house that actually sparkled. An extra day to catch my breath. Time to exist as something other than Royal Mail’s poorly underpaid packhorse. Naturally, BIG Boss arrived with a metaphorical bulldozer and flattened that dream without so much as a warning beep. “I’m giving you your own round,” he announces one morning, wearing the sort of Cheshire Cat grin that immediately makes me suspicious. “Oh, great,” I think. No more being bounced around different duties every day. Then he delivers the sting in the tail. “Five days a week.” Oh. Well… there’s the catch. Of course, he dresses it up like he’s handing me the keys to paradise rather than stealthily stealing another day off my life. “You’ll be back in time for the school run.” Right. “And your round is…” He pauses for maximum dramatic effect. “…Bushy.” Bushy. Even saying the name irritates me now. It sounds quaint. Peaceful. Leafy. Somewhere full of birdsong, country lanes and people who still say good morning to strangers. It is none of those things. Bushy is a sprawling new-build estate squatting on the edge of what used to be beautiful countryside, creeping steadily across the landscape like mould on forgotten bread. Someone has essentially spilled Lego bricks over farmland and decided they’ve created a community. At first, it’s perfectly manageable. I remember strolling around at what could only be described as pensioner pace because there simply weren’t enough doors to justify hurrying. Then… Bushy starts breeding. I blink. There’s another street. Blink again. Another twenty-seven houses. Blink a third time and someone’s laid foundations for a retail park. It’s like the developers work at night, sneaking out under cover of darkness to quietly bolt another estate onto the side of the old one while the rest of us sleep. Every morning I arrive convinced the estate has reproduced by mitosis. Meanwhile, I imagine BIG Boss sitting somewhere with binoculars and a clipboard. “Excellent,” he murmurs with a satisfied grin. “She’s almost finishing on time. Better build another cul-de-sac.” These days, it’s a two-person round wearing a one-person disguise. Which brings me neatly to my dream. Because apparently eight hours of work isn’t sufficient. Now my subconscious decides I’d quite like to do another shift after I’ve gone to bed. I’m standing at my frame, staring at the towering wall of letters and parcels waiting for me. Calling it a workload feels generous. Somewhere beneath that mountain of mail lies my will to live, assuming it hasn’t already been misdelivered. Outside, the heatwave presses against the depot door like it’s trying to force its way inside. A brutal, suffocating heat that melts patience, motivation and whatever tiny scrap of dignity I have left. Bushy is unbearable at the best of times. During a red weather warning, it’s essentially an air fryer with pavements. Management, naturally, remain completely unfazed. “Sun cream. Hat. Plenty of water.” That’s the entire safety briefing. “Off you bloody well go.” There are a few new starters in the office. Fresh meat. They’re still smiling. Still carrying the hopeless optimism that every new postie arrives with. Still under the adorable illusion that this is a sensible career choice. I almost don’t have the heart to watch. One of them nods towards my frame. “What’s Bushy like?” I don’t even hesitate. “Fucking awful.” She blinks. “I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.” “Oh.” She grimaces. “I was going to choose it in the repick.” Oh, brilliant. Well done, Amanda. You absolute idiot. I’d practically gift-wrapped my round and handed it to someone else. “It’s…” I backpedal. “It’s not that bad.” Too late. She’s already crossed Bushy off her list forever. Bollocks. A strange sound cuts through the depot. Not the usual sighing, swearing or general soundtrack of postie misery. Proper sobbing. I peer around the frame beside mine. Rachel has disappeared beneath an avalanche of mail sacks and parcels. I can only see her face. Everything else has been swallowed by cardboard. “Rachel?” She sniffles. “You alright, love?” She looks up at me with the haunted expression of someone who’s been told the world is going to end. “They’ve changed the fucking hand soap.” I wait. Surely that’s not the whole story. “The ladies’ toilets,” she adds, as though this should explain everything. I nod slowly. “The old one smelled like lavender.” Her face crumples. “This one’s fucking citrus.” “…Right.” “It attracts the cats.” I stare at her. “The… soap is attracting cats?” “No!” she snaps, looking genuinely offended. “The fucking smell.” “Oh.” “I walk home and they all fucking follow me.” “The cats?” “Yes, the fucking cats.” “How many?” She wipes her nose. “Yesterday?” She pauses, thinking. “Thirty-four.” “Thirty-four?” “I’m basically human fucking catnip.” I stifle a laugh. “And I’m allergic to the fuckers!” She says it with the solemnity of someone delivering genuinely devastating news. “I’m walking home every night like some sort of fucking feline Pied Piper.” I nod. Slowly. “…fair enough.” I search my brain for something comforting to say. This is the best I can come up with. “I suppose it’s better than rats.” She gives a miserable little nod before disappearing back beneath Parcel Mountain. The depot carries on as though none of this is remotely unusual. Which, somehow… It isn’t. The rest of the day is exactly as miserable as I’d expected. I sweat through every layer of clothing I own. I push my trolley across roads clearly designed by people who’ve clearly never once actually had to walk on them. Customers complain. Dogs bark. The sun spends the entire afternoon doing its absolute best to cook me alive. By the end of the round, I’m standing on the kerb waiting for my lift that may or may not arrive, slowly roasting beneath Bushy’s only excuse for shade. Calling it a tree is generous. Some people might call it a sapling. I’d call it an optimistic twig. Its shadow covers approximately my left foot. Still… It’s all I’ve got. I stand there, inching around it every few minutes as the sun moves, desperately trying to keep at least one part of myself in the shade. Eventually, my lift comes. Eventually, I get home. Except… Home isn’t home anymore. It’s a mansion. An actual mansion. The sort with sweeping staircases, glittering chandeliers and enough rooms that you’d need Google Maps to find the kitchen. Because apparently this is what a modest postie wage gets you in dream world. As I step inside, I hear it. A baby crying. The sound slices through every corridor. Anyone who’s ever had children knows that cry. You don’t just hear it. You feel it. It heads straight past my ears and grabs me by the nipples. They immediately stand to attention Like a compass finding north, they slowly swivel towards the opposite end of the house. Rather helpfully… They seem to know exactly where they are going. They point. I follow. Library. Nothing. The country kitchen. Nothing. One bathroom. Two bathrooms. A room containing nothing but an enormous grand piano for reasons my dream-self doesn’t question. With every room I search, the sound grows louder, sharper, more desperate. My nipples are going nuts. By the time I reach another bedroom, it’s almost unbearable. I kneel down beside the bed. Slowly lift the bedspread. There, tucked underneath as though someone had hidden it away and forgotten to come back, is a tiny baby. Its face is crimson. Little fists punching furiously at the air. Its whole body trembles with the effort of crying. “Oh…” I scoop it gently into my arms. “Shhh… shhh… it’s alright.” Almost instantly, the crying begins to fade. The baby melts against my chest. The room is immaculate. Beautiful. Silent. Empty. “Where on earth have you come from?” Nobody answers. I glance down. The umbilical cord is still attached. “Oh…” I hadn’t even noticed. It trails away from the baby, disappearing across the polished wooden floor and out through the bedroom door. I blink. For reasons dream-me doesn’t question, I simply follow it. It winds its way through the mansion like a length of pale rope. Along endless corridors. Around impossible corners. Across rooms I’ve no memory of walking into. Past the grand piano. Through a ballroom that definitely wasn’t there five minutes ago. Up another staircase. Down another. The further I follow it, the more ridiculous it becomes. It doesn’t seem remotely interested in anatomy. It has ambitions. It winds through the mansion with the confidence of something that knows exactly where it’s going. Eventually, it slips beneath the door of yet another bedroom. I push the door open. Phoebe is sitting on the floor with her back to me. I know it’s her instantly. There are some people you could recognise from the shape of their shoulders alone. The cord disappears beneath her jumper. Attached. She glances over her shoulder. Looks at me. Looks at the baby. Then back at me again. “Oh.” She shrugs. “Congratulations.” I stare at her. She smiles faintly. “You’re a grandma now.” Grandma. The word hangs in the air. It feels strange. Impossible. A word meant for someone else. My brain simply refuses to process the information it has just been handed. “No.” Phoebe raises an eyebrow. “No?” “No.” I shake my head. “Absolutely bloody not.” “Mum…” “No.” “If you’d been around for the last nine months…” She finally meets my eyes. “…perhaps you’d have noticed.” The words land with astonishing force. Not because she’s angry. Not because she’s trying to hurt me. But because somewhere beneath the absurdity… …is something that feels painfully real. I look down at the tiny baby sleeping peacefully against my chest. Thirty-nine. A grandma. Hell, no. I’m still trying to come to terms with a five-day working week. I wake with that strange dream feeling still clinging to me. The kind that fades from your memory far quicker than it fades from your chest. For a while, I lie there thinking about Bushy. About the fifth working day I never wanted. The round I never chose. The estate that keeps growing whether I want it to or not. Then my thoughts drift to Phoebe. To the hidden secret growing beneath the bed while life carried on around it. Dreams have a funny way of taking one quiet feeling and dressing it up in ridiculous costumes. One minute you’re worrying about work. The next you’re wandering around a mansion with your own nipple compass while discovering you’ve somehow become a grandma. And somehow… it all makes perfect sense. Maybe this dream was never really about Bushy. Or babies. Or Rachel’s citrus-scented feline fan club. Maybe it was about how little control we really have over the shape of our lives. Sometimes it quietly steals a day from your week. Sometimes you blink and there’s another bloody street. Sometimes it hands you something so enormous it changes everything before you’ve even had a chance to catch your breath. None of it asks permission. None of it waits until you’re ready. It just… Arrives. Perhaps that’s the hardest part. Not the wrinkles. Not the aching knees. Not even the red weather warning or the endless waiting for lifts beneath optimistic twigs. It’s realising that some of life’s biggest deliveries don’t require your signature. They simply arrive. And whether you’re ready or not… You’re the one expected to carry them.