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.

The brownie girls are in sync, each with a pointer finger held vertical, encircled with gold, etching a circle in the air. Not together, though; one merely confirms the other.

In Frenchs Forest, half-turned lattice squares form diamonds on a paling fence.

Close to the Roseville Bridge a pipe crosses the river. It has stanchions of its own, and big concrete footings shaped like boats.

Two girls, living proof of the hours they’ve spent getting ready, share a packaged brownie on the bus. One has long blonde hair flowing free, and a perfect set of fingers raised symbolically to hide her mouth as she chews. The other has dark hair pinned aloft and three graduated, golden earrings tapered to the lobe; she brazenly waves a corner of the brownie as she speaks.

At a church behind a garage and a fence, a girl steps out of a mural and examines the ground.

A tiny black stroller stands on a side street, precisely at the footpath’s end. Something colourful is balanced on the roof, and behind, a dad is delving into a plastic bag.

A paused, wobbling, electric bike takes off and zips across Pittwater Road. It turns into the park and glides parallel to the road, in silhouette. Two thin girls, two fat tyres, and a milk crate tied to the back.

A small cocker spaniel cringes away in its harness, pulling, leaning, filled with dread and chained to a gossiping human. They never listen. Why do humans never listen?

In a cafe on the concourse at Ashfield Station, an old string bean of a man bends comfortably backwards.