out and about

Two gangly young blokes walk through the food hall, with all their hair focused at the middle and the front. They grin at someone ahead and join two others near the wall. One is just like them, but the other is not; his width is almost as great as his height, and his height is far less than that of his friends. He wears a white t-shirt and black pants, and tapers from the waist in both directions, up and down.

Bro-hugs all round, and they stand together as equals.

A small boy strides along the top of a wall that surrounds the play area. His mother shadows him but doesn’t interfere.

It shows.

A woman leans to murmur in the man’s ear next to her. His lack of interest is solid.

An elderly man pushes a shopping trolley with a small girl teetering inside on the brink of disaster. Her feet are on the seat and her hands grip the frame in front, as she seeks a way to get her legs into the holes.

Dee Why Lagoon is a Wildlife Nature Reserve: its fence crumbles along Pittwater Road, and Morning Glory chokes the trees.

At Long Reef, the dog park has no dogs. Grass fades in the morning heat.

The mother has an Akubra hat, a nose ring and sunburnt shoulders. Her hair is dark, with a small fan of semi-permanent red at the back. Her nose is long and pointy. She wears big glasses, with frames that glow like rubies in the sun.

At Dee Why a woman boards the bus with a stroller. Inside the stroller, a child of eighteen months holds an iPad Pro with practised ease, and gravely contemplates the screen.

A tiny girls sits on the food hall floor, dismantling disposable nappies while her mother gulps down a meal.

Two people board the bus together at Manly Wharf. The girls sits and the boy stands, hovering near. He’s tall and skinny, with black jeans, a t-shirt saying Calexico Tucson Arizona, bleached blonde hair, and sunglasses too big for his face. In one ear he wears a silver dagger on a chain, but he hangs his head in a way that seems apologetic, and pockets his free hand. His shoulders droop. He doesn’t smile.

The girl is out of place and owning it: Bollywood Noir in the sunshine.

A girl with green hair and a nose ring sits with one knee up, texting. As the bus approaches Manly Wharf, she lifts the phone to her ear.

Sunday, Manly, 7.35am. Three teenage girls are crossing from the Corso to the Wharf. One speaks animatedly the whole way, leaving a lone audible remark as she passes: “My dog is, like, fat and bossy.”

A middle-aged couple walks past me at the bus stop. He’s paddling, she’s … I’m not sure what, really. Mustering as much dignity as she can, perhaps. Their mouths are a matching pair of disapproving pouts.

He’s dark and swarthy, grizzled and gnarled, pock-marked and battered as a pocket Danny Trejo. Ponytail, big moustache. Large as life and here at Warringah Mall.

Cool.

A young bloke ambles past with a skateboard horizontal in his hands. He flips it over. And over. And over. His head is shaved at the front and sides but a blanket of down covers the back like a fallen blonde toupee.

A woman walks through the food hall, wearing a long navy blue dress with matching handbag. The bag is a rectangle. Her arm is a right-angle. Her forearm traces the top of the bag to a hand that clutches the strap. She wears black high heeled shoes and moves with a kind of stiffness, like a robot inspired by catwalk models. All around her are the noise and daggy Summer outfits of a Northern Beaches shopping centre, a gauntlet that she navigates only out of grim necessity, and with the utmost disdain.

Inside a shop, a woman leans back in a chair with her arms folded and her legs crossed. If she could see she’d be looking at the ceiling, but she can’t see because someone’s put tape on her eyes and drawn big black eyelashes there.

A young bloke with a ponytail and red shirt stands with a black and white ceramic coffee mug half raised to his mouth, waiting to cross at Neutral Bay. His elbow rests in a hand crossed over his chest and the body language is total dandy. I can imagine him sighing impatiently in some line.

Passing Seaforth. No longer part of our lives. The house-boat is still there that we could see from our front room. It has solar panels on the roof now.

We’re held up at the Spit, waiting for the bridge to go down. A girl across the aisle takes out her phone and lines up the traffic queue on her screen. A finger carefully touches a point near the bottom of the hill and she snaps it, then leans in to type a message that will speed it on its way.

A very old man prepares to leave. He pastes a mask carefully onto his face and pulls his shopping trolley closer, settling his coffee cup in the child seat. Pushing to his feet he turns, makes a slow circuit through the cafe seating area, crosses the aisle and passes out of sight behind the flower stall. He wears a loose black t-shirt and dark baggy trousers, and uses his trolley as a walking frame. His hair style changes completely at the back, from neatly combed to windswept, wild and rakish.

He’s left his paper behind on the table.

A tall girl is with her family at Cafe Piccolo Bar. She didn’t want anything from the counter and has been creeping around behind the flower stall like she’s waiting to spring an ambush. I lose track but find her again, back with the family. She stoops to give the biggest, longest hug you could ever imagine to a much smaller girl of maybe 8 or 10 who’s magically appeared. The small girl has a brother and tall girl gives him a moment as well, running a hand over what is probably a fresh-cut mullet as she turns away. The boy replaces his hat.

Puss ‘n Boots. They can’t even get the name right.

At the top of the Spit Bends, a woman in a white dress blows leaves into the late afternoon traffic.

Green, gigantic leaves erupt at the edge of Military Road in Mosman, like a Jurassic explosion.