An Asian woman in a striped apron stands smoking outside a Nepalese restaurant in Ashfield. She scowls and flicks her ash towards the footpath.

A tall young bloke with a ring through his septum climbs the stairs to Ashfield Station. Curly hair. Navy shorts and t-shirt. Gentle soul.

Shouts and raucous laughter burst from the door of an optometrist’s shop in Ashfield. A middle-aged couple spills onto the footpath, grinning.

On Liverpool Road, Ashfield, a woman shepherds a small boy out of a car. His t-shirt says Vroom! Vroom!

A swarthy man of middle age describes a roller coaster’s ups and downs with a rising, swooping hand. The traffic growls past on Liverpool Road. He says: “What’s got him hesitating is the ground itself. You know? It’s so … undulating.”

A man whose eyes are sad to the point of grief is walking past the shops in Ashfield. He wears a backpack. His shoulders droop. His hands float in front of him, holding paper bags of take-away. Something white is slathered on his face, gathering in sweaty clumps around his jaw, his ears, his hair; it clings to the side of his tan-coloured cap, making a wet spot.

Liverpool Road, Ashfield. A man dressed like a mobster pauses in the heat. Black suit. Black sunglasses. Steel grey hair. He is juggling the cord of his ear buds and a book by Chuck Plahniuk.

A mother bends over a baby’s stroller while her daughter stands complaining.

Mother: What’s that?

Daughter: I said I really need a wee!

Ashfield, Sydney. A magpie limps across a driveway and pauses in the shade.

Two girls are eating on the B1 home. Their jaws work constantly. One holds the point of a skewer near her face, wondering perhaps what an eye would taste like.

A motor scooter clings to the bends in Neutral Bay, its meal delivery bag squashed back and pointing at the sky like a rocket-launcher.

A woman dangles her arm from the window of a ute stopped in traffic at the Burnt Bridge Creek Bypass. It’s late afternoon, the sun is hot, and her arm is a strip of leather.

Concrete tank turrets are appearing on our footpaths. No guns. Just a pole extending from each, vertically, to a tiny solar panel.

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

Two ravens take flight the instant I move the slats of my blinds apart. They are so attuned to their environment, so aware of the slightest hint of movement. The leader climbs the broken hostel wall in stages, short hops of flight from level to level, and pauses on the very top. When I return with my camera they’re gone.

Entropy

For the first time ever, in all the days and weeks he’s been on-site, Foreman is wearing a high-viz vest - a bright yellow one that looks new.

He still won’t wear a hard hat.

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.