out and about

Brookvale. Three teens on scooters glide across Pittwater Road in single file, straight into a shop on the corner called Golden Chicken.

Two girls in Collaroy pool are half-encased in mermaid tails. Their dolphin kick needs work.

A wide vehicle ascends the hill with four legs sticking out the front. Stretched to arms' length, a mother leans into the load.

Even the bus is feeling the heat: it’s dripping condensation on my arm.

A toddler makes it all the way to the path with grown-up thongs as footwear. She sits, takes off the thongs, turns them around and climbs aboard again. Shuffling back towards her smiling family she topples forward, landing on her hands with her nappy pointing at the sky. She stands. Laughter and applause. She grins.

Blokes my age crossing the road: we lead with our stomachs.

A smiling girl curves down the Spit Bends on a shiny red motor scooter.

Two old men at the car wash, with an angle-grinder and drill: they’re patching a hole in the blackboard.

A woman in Neutral Bay, hand on hip, stares sceptically at her phone.

At Wynyard Park a young woman is lying on her front. Raised on one elbow, she speaks on the phone amid wandering ibis and seagulls.

A woman in black lace at Wynyard Park: stooped, shuffling, tapping her way with a four-footed walking stick.

A girl crosses Spit Road in Mosman, shading her face with a gigantic lollipop.

A skinny Asian man in skinny black pants and a bright yellow top stumbles onto the footpath from a cliffside garage, and looks down the hill: heat, asphalt, fading lines, cars, trucks, noise. At the bottom is the deep blue mystery of Middle Harbour: irrelevant.

Sunday morning in the city. A woman walks briskly towards George Street with her supermarket bags and two big bottles: orange juice and milk.

A man and a woman emerge from the Strand Arcade and stand there, looking around.

Man: Where’s the iMac store?

A man at a bus stop in Mosman morphs into a plant, his face concealed by tendrils from the elaborate bouquet in his hand.

A high school student leans on a pole at Spit Junction, talking to the traffic.

A red car races past with an urgent bicycle on its roof.

Two people on the bus have big chunky discs in their ears. The blonde girl has black discs, and the man with the linen-white suit has silver. Each disc tapers out from the ear, just barely, ending in a surface that is broad and flat.

I’ve never seen these before.

A tumble-down mansion of a woman leans on the table, filling herself with food.

Two Chinese men wrestle a sheet of plywood onto a driveway. Both men are bald and scrubbed-looking, both neatly dressed in high visibility clothing. One bends to measure the plywood, marking it three times and joining the marks with a ruler and pencil. The other man watches.

A man stands comfortably in Cremorne, resting his arms on a backpack that he wears in front.

Two Chinese kids roll past in a two-seat stroller. The boy in front says Yeah-Yeah-YEAH! Yeah-Yeah-YEAH! over and over again. His eyes are full of laughter.

A delicious blast of cold air draws me back to the Mid City entrance, where a hole-in-the-wall cafe is playing music; it drives me out again.

A man walks on George Street with a look of unease on his face (his biggest feature) and a phone. His shoulders are narrow, his blue suit as trim as his neat brown beard. He’s a garden gnome, reimagined.