out and about

Shouts and laughter on the Dee Why Grand’s main drag. A tiny girl sprawls on the floor, flapping in silence like a beached fish. Her mother and a relative look on with grins and chuckles. An old woman, passing by with her husband, leans on a walking stick and smiles. “So cute!” she says.

A doggy disagreement erupts in Dee Why but there’s only one dog - a dachshund, looking furious but satisfied as it moves on with its apologetic human. Left in their wake is a man who’ll know, next time, not to set foot on a sausage dog’s footpath.

A middle-aged man jogs through traffic to the middle of Military Road. His face is calm and full of lies. “I’ve got this,” it says.

A bicycle glides among pedestrians on the footpath in Brookvale. On the front of the bike is a basket, and in the basket is a little grey puppy, resting its paws on the basket’s edge.

Four young women stand talking on the other side of Carrington Street, and when a grey Toyota pulls alongside they all climb in. The car drives away with a face at the window.

Two women sit in front of me on the bus. One has a surprisingly deep, clear voice but rarely uses it. The other, barely audible, says more.

A young Asian couple sits on the B1 bench At Wynyard, and as they converse very quietly the girl discards a thong, swinging her naked right foot with desperate energy.

Two pigeons are cleaning Carrington Street at Wynyard, one peck at a time. It’s Council work, and they really should be wearing high-vis.

On Saturday afternoon a man sits in the bus shelter at Wynyard, waiting for the B1. He wears a blue suit and brown, polished shoes, and has one leg crossed over the other. Beside him stands a suitcase on wheels with its handle extended. The man types on his phone. He brings a hand to his face. Out of nowhere, his suitcase makes a break for it. His hand snaps out like a bolt of lightning and pulls the suitcase back in line. He types on his phone.

Two girls are at a cafe with family. One sits with her legs crossed, eating demurely. The other stands behind her, equal in height for now, and frantically finger-combs her sister’s hair, top to bottom, hand over hand in rapid fire. Just once, the older girl turns in sharp rebuke, and there’s a pause. Then she resumes her meal, and her sister resumes her work.

Loud voices board the train at Redfern. They sound like an argument, but I think it’s just Cantonese.

A girl with glasses and a hijab climbs awkwardly over the ticket barrier at Ashfield Station. She turns and grins at another girl wearing shorts and t-shirt, whose hair is dark and shoulder-length and free. The second girl hangs back but finally, looking irritated, taps her Opal card on the reader and passes through.

An Asian woman in a striped apron stands smoking outside a Nepalese restaurant in Ashfield. She scowls and flicks her ash towards the footpath.

A tall young bloke with a ring through his septum climbs the stairs to Ashfield Station. Curly hair. Navy shorts and t-shirt. Gentle soul.

Shouts and raucous laughter burst from the door of an optometrist’s shop in Ashfield. A middle-aged couple spills onto the footpath, grinning.

On Liverpool Road, Ashfield, a woman shepherds a small boy out of a car. His t-shirt says Vroom! Vroom!

A swarthy man of middle age describes a roller coaster’s ups and downs with a rising, swooping hand. The traffic growls past on Liverpool Road. He says: “What’s got him hesitating is the ground itself. You know? It’s so … undulating.”

A man whose eyes are sad to the point of grief is walking past the shops in Ashfield. He wears a backpack. His shoulders droop. His hands float in front of him, holding paper bags of take-away. Something white is slathered on his face, gathering in sweaty clumps around his jaw, his ears, his hair; it clings to the side of his tan-coloured cap, making a wet spot.

Liverpool Road, Ashfield. A man dressed like a mobster pauses in the heat. Black suit. Black sunglasses. Steel grey hair. He is juggling the cord of his ear buds and a book by Chuck Plahniuk.

A mother bends over a baby’s stroller while her daughter stands complaining.

Mother: What’s that?

Daughter: I said I really need a wee!

Ashfield, Sydney. A magpie limps across a driveway and pauses in the shade.

Two girls are eating on the B1 home. Their jaws work constantly. One holds the point of a skewer near her face, wondering perhaps what an eye would taste like.

A motor scooter clings to the bends in Neutral Bay, its meal delivery bag squashed back and pointing at the sky like a rocket-launcher.

A woman dangles her arm from the window of a ute stopped in traffic at the Burnt Bridge Creek Bypass. It’s late afternoon, the sun is hot, and her arm is a strip of leather.

Concrete tank turrets are appearing on our footpaths. No guns. Just a pole extending from each, vertically, to a tiny solar panel.