The 199 stops at the lights beside Mole Hill, as we used to call it, opposite Warringah Road. Harbord Road veers off to the left, stretching into the distance, and in that distance a figure is running hard towards us through clusters of freshly-released high school students. The lights hold, the bus waits and the running figure powers closer, resolving into a white-shirted, black-skirted schoolgirl with bouncing backpack and a bottomless reserve of determination.

She crosses the narrow lane with a glance to the right and stands beside us, champing, forced by the very same lights to wait when she needs to run. Then the bus is off again and so is she, running and running, glancing quickly as the bus draws level and pulls away. The stop is only just ahead and the driver must slow down and let her on but he doesn’t. He accelerates. The stop flashes past and we don’t even get a final glimpse of the running girl, or witness her reaction.

What does it mean for her, missing this bus?

Three primary school girls and a smaller, younger schoolboy wait to cross from Many Wharf to the Corso. The middle girl leans forward on a post, as if beginning a ritual. The boy stands on tip-toes to whisper in her left ear, and stands back. A dark-haired girl leans in to whisper in her right ear, and she stands back. The boy starts walking, but returns because the lights haven’t changed.

We’ll never know what was said.

Our Mysterious Planet

The lines on this footpath look like slinkies, but in my day we called them tumblebugs.

How on earth does anyone even get a Panther tank into their basement?

BBC story - German lawyers wrangle over pensioner’s WW2 tank in basement