Superheated concrete on Pittwater Road displays the grubby marks of tyres.

A passing sign says CROLL in large letters. Mr Croll was our high school counsellor, feared by all for his readiness with the cane. He would chain-smoke Craven-A’s at assembly.

“Oh, beautiful green eyes,” says unmarried daughter to twisted mother’s photo of a grandchild painted blue.

Twisted mother shows endless grandchild photos to unmarried daughter.

A cerulean super-hero walks his son into MacDonalds, shouldered pullover flapping like a cape.

Mysterious forces have snatched Makeup-Woman from the bus. Her seat is empty. Did anyone see it happen?

An old woman pushes her walking frame to its limits, pursued by two others with a walking stick.

A woman crosses Pittwater Road in Dee Why. Her evening gown is lifeless in the heat, but the wind whips it into a frenzy.

Makeup-woman’s mother, still reversed in her seat, is interrogating her daughter’s intended, who answers in a voice that penetrates all the other bus sounds: “Yaah. Yaah … Yaah.” Now and then, for variety, he says “Yeah.”

A baby girl stands on her father’s lap at the front of the bus. She has a dummy in her mouth, blonde curls and a hot, red face, and holds a little pointer up as if to say: “One moment, Father.”

A woman is turned right round on the bus, talking to her daughter in the seat behind. She doesn’t even blink as the daughter hands her a phone and leans in to do her makeup in the selfie cam.

Six dormer windows gaze down upon the Warringah Freeway.

A hoist stands elevated beside the Cahill Expressway, with nobody in it and no one about. A Cherry-Picker to Heaven.

I’m some seats behind a man whose tall, narrow head is covered in salt and pepper hair. He wears sunglasses on the back of his neck, and calls to mind a Grenadier Guard with non-regulation eyewear.

The bus stop facing Warringah Mall: a young man leans on the rail above a seated girl, with a curtain of brown noodles falling from his mouth.

The demolishers haven’t come to work again. Yesterday was a public holiday. Today they’re just being nice.

Conversation continues at the cafe: “They’re not musicians and they don’t understand. If it lasts 25 years they think that’s good enough. Why not get something that will last two hundred and fifty years?”

An old man boards the escalator with a look of deep concern, phone pressed to his ear and a black bag hanging from the wrist. His other hand looks for support.

The man who does serve people opens the cafe door and stands there, talking to a woman leaning in from the footpath; her clothes are all shades of orange, and her shopping trolley is red.