Dead vines on brickwork by the tracks: a sooty place mat glued to the wall; a grubby wicker curtail left hanging.

The wind tears through Collaroy. A woman dressed in black stands calmly with her umbrella, waiting for the lights to change, but she is all whipping, snapping trouser legs and jacket.

At Central Station, a woman reverses out with a baby carriage, in which a child with golden curls sits upright and alert. A walking preschooler follows, holding on, then a man with a toddler wrapped around his head: he leans back in through the doorway, helping a slow old woman onto the platform and, at last, a slower old man.

Each grown-up has charge of a suitcase on wheels.

At the back of the carriage, a loud Slavic conversation lapses into English: You don’t talk. I am with you if I know what you do. A burst of Eastern European and then, softly: Okay.

A mother and grown-up daughter go through the barriers at Wynyard and stop, uncertain where to go. Each points in a different direction and follows her own finger.

A girl on the B1 peers round a man across the aisle, to a second girl who meets her gaze and giggles. Her eyes sparkle. She has headphones, and a highlighted printout on her lap.

A miniature white poodle drops to its bottom on command and gazes up adoringly at its human, but all she pulls from her pocket is a phone.

Manly Markets: a girl of twelve looks on with a smile as her little sister claims all the attention.

A young man with beard, backpack, t-shirt and jeans walks with a young woman dressed to the nines for work. One of them is playing a role.

A Miniature Fox Terrier turns hard left and launches itself at a pigeon. They become airborne together, the pigeon naturally, the dog far less so as the lead jerks tight in the middle of his leap. He whirls above the footpath, touches down, and his human sweeps him up in a consoling embrace.

A magpie crosses the footpath and stands very still, its head on one side. It stares, steps forward, stares again. A man powers towards him, rust red jumper flapping on his shoulder, but the bird stands firm.

The wind propels a middle-aged woman towards me. She is a riot of colour whipped into fantastical shapes but her face shows only the strain of being alive. Her hair alone is proof against the wind, and blue.

Across Pittwater Road, a bus queue stretches all along the face of the Collaroy Hotel. It’s visible only through gaps in the never-ceasing traffic, in snatched impressions the mind must stitch together in the background, under the surface, using all the magic it commands.

Early morning. Windswept morning. In the grey light a woman in tracksuit pants and a big striped jumper is blown past the door with a take-away coffee cup glued to her mouth.

Hungarian Puli visits Collaroy cafe

🐶

Cross-section of a dead tree fern

An old man and a tiny schoolgirl step off the bus at Spit Junction. He leans down and lifts an admonishing finger, which she ignores.

A small girl with a big pink backpack climbs to the top of the bus. She squeaks as her small mother hauls her close. The girl turns round, both hands clutching the seat-back, and smiles through her lashes at the woman behind.

Her eyes wander, her tongue pokes out the side, she closes her mouth and uses her tongue to stretch and distort the curve beneath her mouth.

There’s so much you can do with a face.

An older woman strides past the cafe window, and with every step her white hair jumps for joy.