out and about

A man with short, dark, wiry hair pushes a stroller containing a small red-haired boy. The boy sits with his hands in his lap, looking disconsolate. His hair flutters in the breeze. The man doesn’t once look up from his phone, whose screen he is reading with close attention.

Two old women are swapping war stories. One has a huge, thick plaster cast encasing her entire arm, with just a hole at the end for her fingers to breathe.

A bunch of teenage boys dawdles past, accompanied by two basketballs bouncing in monotonous rhythm. The sound has been heralding their approach for some time.

A thin woman in the distance, just a shadow, mounts the footpath with four little wheels and contemplates the path ahead.

A tiny girl flies past on a bright pink scooter, a riot of colour in rainbow-striped crocs, dark blue shorts and a jumper covered in flowers. Pink sunglasses dangle from her neckline, and her blonde ponytail flies beneath a maroon helmet with air holes and thick black straps.

She glides to a halt, turns back to rendezvous with her mum, and they continue together.

An older woman is crossing Pittwater Road with terrifying slowness, smiling, utterly engaged in a conversation on her phone. The lights change as she reaches the pedestrian island in the middle but she doesn’t stop. She just keeps walking at the same unhurried pace, chatting away, crossing the murderous traffic lanes unchallenged.

A mother abandons her pram in Dee Why and runs, returning with a very small boy attached to a very big, very brown poodle. They set off again, the boy still in charge of the poodle and trailing its lead along the ground. The dog just goes with it.

A woman walks past with a pink lead hanging in the air. Almost certainly there’s something on the other end, but for architectural reasons I can’t see it.

A man is rearranging the fruit shop display, wheeling wooden boxes to the right and lining them up again. He fetches a long black pole to wind the awning down, and blessed shade embraces the pumpkins.

An old woman rolls her walking frame up to the entrance of a block of flats and engages a young man there in conversation. He opens the door and steps aside and she trundles in. I’m struck by the thought that she might not even live there: perhaps she’s a burglar, a hit-woman, a habitual visitor of foyers.

A balding, middle-aged man is walking on the footpath. He wears a white shirt bulging over dark trousers, and his bottom lip curls out so far I can see it from across the road. His head is bent so he’s not really looking where he’s going, but out of habit he turns aside and climbs two flights of stairs in a despondent trudge. He enters the lawyers' office.

A harried young man darts along the footpath and crosses the road, clutching sunglasses in his teeth and fumbling in the pockets of his blue checked suit. He scuttles into the distance, phone to his ear and coat-tails flapping.

An electric scooter flies across Howard Avenue in Dee Why. Its operator doesn’t stand, but rather sits comfortably on two sacks of rice with his feet in the air. His line of sight is just above the handlebars.

A big, craggy old man waits on the B1 bench at Wynyard. He has white hair, a trim grey chin-beard and a huge gold wrist-watch. White shirt, beige slacks, leather shoes. He nurses a paper cup with a straw. From the bench beside him he lifts a McDonalds bag and scrunches it. Then he coughs. He leans precariously, and his chest convulses.

A tall, efficient old woman guides a supermarket trolley with her own red shopping-cart balanced on top.

A man is ordering coffee. He’s bald on top with a fringe of white, and the front of his t-shirt says:

Grandpa Est. 2016

When he turns, there’s something on the back as well:

Dad Est. 1979

He still seems to function, though.

A bald man with hooded eyes sits down close by. His shirt has botanical watercolours on a white background, sleeves rolled to the elbow and a high collar raised but open. His iced coffee arrives and he leans over the table, mouth on straw, black biro in hand, studying the crossword.

A woman with a headscarf ambles past the cafe. She wears a black dress patterned with big, dusty-hued flowers, and pushes a shopping trolley containing a bright blue pool noodle.

A girl stands alone in the people stream, head lowered, tapping a phone with her thumbs and absolutely unmoved by the current. When she finally looks up she seems surprised, as if the downstairs food hall at Warringah Mall is the very last place on earth she’d ever have imagined being. She smiles. Her shoulders lift in a theatrical sigh. She drifts away.

A dark-haired young woman, the very picture of elegance in a long white gown and zippered cream, high-heeled boots, glides through the food hall trailing a plastic bag that is shaped like a sausage and filled with paper recycling.

Something hollow and noisy approaches. A tiny, blonde-headed boy appears, pushing a walking frame in multi-coloured plastic. He wears a white pullover with red sleeves, baggy denim shorts that bunch at the knees, and sandals. An old woman leans down to him and says “Hello-o-o!” and he freezes. Spinning round, walker in the air, he bolts back down the ramp at double volume.

Outside the Collaroy Hotel, a man spreads his arms in a hallelujah moment, a grubby white feather extending his reach on one side. He has sunglasses, greasy black hair, beige shorts, a brown t-shirt (Seattle Stags), and the grin of a man just recently unburdened. He staggers inside.

The water is low in Dee why Lagoon, and the mud flats are broad and dreary.

Writ large on the wall of a Newtown cafe: Trust me. Love me. Salt me.

A woman walks past with the hint of a stoop. She wears a long white dress and a frown of perplexity, and each hand clutches a shopping bag so that her arms are pulled slightly to the sides. Her hair is short, dyed black, and from behind extends in a ridge that might conceal a devil’s horn, perhaps.