Upstairs at the Mall two women stroll, chatting comfortably, while an attendant male struggles under the weight of a shopping bag so big that it has to be a joke. It’s almost as tall as himself and has big, cheerful polkadots.

A woman walks past Jamaica Blue with pram, phone, ear stalks and a shake of the head. A girl frowns over a laptop, the sun shining on her forehead through the skylight. A white haired man blathers with authority, legs crossed and one arm draped on the back of his chair.

In the plastic greenery above, the sparrows twitter.

A line of people sits in the B1 shelter at Wynyard, as two pigeons fossick on the road in front of them. Suddenly a seagull lands on the gutter; it’s the cleanest, whitest, brightest, sharpest-looking seagull I’ve ever seen. It stands there, clear-eyed, upright, regal, a seagull of substance, surveying the humans like an officer inspecting the troops.

But the mood changes. Something intangible shifts in the power balance, and the seagull steps down awkwardly to join the pigeons on the road. It’s as if one of them has whispered: “Not now! You’re not on yet!” And realising its mistake, the seagull is mortified.

A young man with a walking stick climbs the stairs at Spit Junction. His jersey is black and white with a skeleton design, and the back of his collar is divided down the middle, black on one side and white on the other.

Was the front of his collar also divided like this? For the life of me, I can’t remember.

A woman in a long blue dress walks beside Pittwater Road, cradling a small black poodle in her arms. The dog is on its back, head resting on her forearm and turned to see where the woman is looking.

Bare hands pushing hard in rhythm, a woman urges her wheelchair along the pedestrian way in Dee Why. She wears a blue t-shirt, knee-length black pants and dark sunglasses. Her hair is white, and tied behind with elastic.

She looks back with a grin at the fluffy little dog galloping after her, a sheltie wearing a grey face mask. The dog overtakes her on the up ramp and waits with wagging tail in the Music House doorway, but falls in line again as the woman wheels past. Then they vanish, both of them, round a sudden, hidden turn.

Minutes later they reappear, passing the Music House together and starting down the ramp. The little dog drops back so as not to get run over, but presses forward so its mask is almost touching the chair. At the bottom, as soon as they clear the ramp, the sheltie breaks out and races alongside its human.

Pure joy.

A young man in a blue apron, hands in pockets, stands at the highway’s edge.

Loud voices upstairs, at the back of the bus.

Girl: Shutup! You’re not tough. You’re not anything.

Boy: You like goon? I love goon.

Girl: I don’t care.

A girl on a bike rides her perfect shadow in the afternoon light.

Voice in a Newtown cafe: ‘Apparently I heard something to that effect on the radio.’

A man and a woman walk together on King Street, past Chill cafe. He wears a black baseball cap, a black t-shirt and a Country Road shoulder bag with white letters on black. She wears a white dress, no hat, and carries a big bag on her shoulder saying Hype, in black letters on white.

Opposites. Same height. Made for each other.

A young woman bicycles past the Newtown Cafe: red helmet, black top and shorts, don’t-mess-with-me expression. She lifts her phone and consults the screen as she glides across to the station.

A man stands regarding the window-sized logo of Halcyon Records. He wears a white hat with a black band, a long-sleeved, dusty blue jumper, knee-length shorts in deep burgundy, thongs, and a cloth bag on a long cloth strap. Hands on hips, he leans forward from the waist and stares. He rocks from foot to foot. He cups his hands to the glass and tries to see inside.

He moves on.

A brazen man flaunts his t-shirt on King Street, Newtown: This is what a top dad looks like.

The dog has been patient, quiet, considerate, resting its head on its paws, staying out of the way, seeking shade beneath the chair and the table. But now, informed by doggy senses that its human approaches meal’s end, the dog stands and leans against the chair. It presses its nose to the cool of the cafe doorway. It sniffs. It wags its tail. It hopes.

Chill Cafe, Newtown. A young man types on his phone near the counter. He wears a long-billed baseball cap, buttoned shirt and incredibly baggy trousers, cartoon trousers that droop over purple crocs. His hair sticks out in rising waves on either side of his head, like thickets of twigs, and a smiling flower hangs from the base of his shoulder bag.

He orders a flat white.

Every so often, just when you least expect it, the guard calls the roll of every single station where the train will stop. It’s a list that goes on forever, and it blanks the mind.

A young woman at the end of the carriage has her eyes scrunched closed and her mouth open as wide as it can possibly go. Yawning.

A woman and her late-teen daughter sit together on the bus. The mother leans right across, turns her head so that her face fills her daughter’s view, locks their eyes together and speaks. She holds eye contact for a moment, then releases and withdraws.

Good talk.

The young guy in front is tall and broad-shouldered, with a white t-shirt. He rolls his head from side to side. He turns and peers out the window with his eyes invading my space. He flexes his back and twists his shoulders. He leans forward. He pushes back. He flicks and twitches.

There’s too much energy in his spring.

A woman on the bus scrapes fingernails carefully over her hair, all the way round, from the bottom up to the base of her topknot. She presses with a palm. She relaxes.

A man at the lights has one foot on the lead to keep his French Bulldog off the road. It descends the gutter anyway, thumbing its ears at the traffic.

A fox terrier shaped like a whippet pulls his human across the road. Charging the last couple of steps and leaping through the air, it lands nose-down at the base of a pole.

The scent is strong with this one.

On another slender footpath by another major road, another paused electric bike supports another pair of girls. Their bodies are twisted. Their heads are turned.

On the platform at Chatswood station, an elderly woman twirls her bright pink walking stick on a string.