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.

A laptop baby beats the table and grins. “Hey!” says the dad with a smile. “Hey!” He looks across at his wife and speaks in Spanish.

The cafe’s TV shows a painting of a water mill framed by shrill, poinsettia-red trees. A stream in the foreground tumbles down terraced boulders to a pond.

A man shuffles past in the sunshine, navy blue track-suit and dark, shiny hair. He runs a hand over his head.

The man in front is a structure of flakes and splinters, a bollard with ears. He glances up just once, to the side, with eyes that are wide and startled.

Two blonde girls grab consecutive seats on the bus at Warringah Mall, and B1 spins around with a gimme gesture. B2 hands her a pink box. B1 extracts a mysterious device, which she rolls carefully over her lips. Her lips begin to shine. She rubs them together. “I like it,” she says. And hands the whole thing back to B2.

An open paperback across the aisle. Most of the page is blocked, but stretching my eye muscles to their very limits I read: “He was starting to think June could be …” What? What could June be? Up for it? On to something? MI5? A head-case? The One? My god! The book’s entire genre hinges on June.

A dark-haired, dark-clothed couple, equal in height and rotundity, passes the window. The woman tilts her phone, leaning so that both can see the screen. She opens her mouth to speak and they’re gone.

A girl with hijab and microphone calls the world to Jesus, right there at the bus stop in Dee Why. A gangsta boy stands close behind, holding a speaker to her head.

Collaroy. A small girl who has fallen mid-leap over her towel-poncho and is beset by clucking relatives: (angry) “I don’t need it!”

Morning Glory chokes trees on the Burnt Bridge Creek Bypass, pressing them up against the noise barrier.

At day’s end a man with a backpack trudges past the window. He blinks, and his eyes stay closed.