On a slope beside the Harbour Bridge approach two excavators lurk, one above the other.

A plump woman stands on the footpath, feet together, back straight. She holds out her phone like a certificate she’s been given at assembly.

Neutral Bay. Grind and Dose. Faces at the window.

88 and family decamp at Spit Junction. The girl and two women stand talking. The boy swings his arms.

A building site on the Spit. Sheds at the water’s edge and logos, an architect’s name. Yellow barriers floating round a couple of pylons.

The bridge is up. Three lights flash in a triangle at the bottom of the hill, but we stop half-way down where a wall of vegetation blocks the light. Alien plants. Scrappy invaders. They’ve captured an orange and white lane marker with a printed message taped around its perimeter. It can’t escape, and no one’s looking for it.

‘Wo-o!’ says a smiley girl with red-hair and freckles. She’s barely reached the top and the bus is lurching away. She grabs a pole and follows her friends. ‘Oh my god.’

A girl nearly goes head-first down the stairwell, tripping on her own foot as she crosses the aisle. But her hand grabs the pole and she descends in good order.

A young teen girl leans in to hug her mother at the B1 stop in Dee Why. Her hoody has woolly Autumn stripes and a big blue 88.

Outside Wills and Wishes, hands clasped, a middle-aged woman stands beside a big red wheely suitcase and a thing that’s fallen, like an expeditionary neck pillow. She wears a white three-quarter jacket and an air of formality.

A cabbage moth flies round the distant weeds, but as I approach the window it ducks behind the plastic sheeting.

I can feel it watching me.

A magpie stares at its feet, trying to remember something. With a sigh you can almost feel it turns its head and chooses some floppy thing to shake and drop, to stand on and pull at. Not really feeling it. The magpie pauses. It stares into space, still chasing that elusive thought while something floppy dangles from its beak.

Exasperated, it tosses its head back and swallows.

In the Hawkei, Australia has made
Air defence for a mobile brigade;
The Ukrainians bleed
On their own, but they need
This equipment, this vehicle, this aid.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine #FreeTheHawkei #StandWithUkraine

Prigozhin is mobbed like a star,
As his President trembles afar;
With Russians dividing,
And Putin in hiding,
The door to the Kremlin’s ajar.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

With Wagner all helter and skelter,
Poor Putin was starting to swelter;
So he fled, in his woe,
Only where could he go?
Well, the Hague would have given him shelter.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

Two presidents, Slavic by clan,
Faced a choice when their troubles began;
The man in Ukraine
Chose to fight and remain,
But the sissy in Russia just ran.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

Mr Shoigu, his motives unkind,
Attacks Wagner in force, from behind;
Now Prigozhin is manic,
The boss is in panic,
And Russia is losing its mind.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

With Russia beginning to smoulder,
The wind’s getting up, and it’s colder;
He thought he was clever
But Putin was ever
The devil upon his own shoulder.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

In villages, houses, Khruschyovka,
And yes, in his gilded Rublyovka,
Putin’s name will be slammed,
And eternally damned,
For his malice at Nova Kakhovka.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

Putin doesn’t do ramifications
When acting upon his frustrations;
The dam he exploded
Has duly eroded
And flooded his fortifications.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

As the Dnipro is draining today,
Russian soldiers are running away,
But they still want their fun,
At the point of a gun,
So they’re forcing the victims to stay.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

The dam was just so underhanded,
But Russians downstream are more candid;
As waters are swelling
They’re busily shelling
The rescuers helping the stranded.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

Let Putin be cast in the drink, too,
On video we can all link to,
But call off the boaties
And puncture his floaties
And witness the depths he will sink to.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

Who would blow up a dam in the night?
Well, the Russians - when losing a fight,
They will always distract
With a criminal act
Of explosive aggression and spite.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine

It’s a risk, in the Army Infernal,
To be holding the rank of a Colonel;
All it seems to attract
Is munitions, in fact …
But the rest it affords is eternal.

🇺🇦 #Ukraine