Winter morning's walk

This morning I went out earlier than usual and met with the office workers on Harris Street going out for their mid-morning coffees. "It's, like, if you woke up a bit earlier could you leave a bit earlier?" said a woman to her female companion as they walked down the street, passing me on the footpath. I headed down to Darling Harbour and walked southeast toward Chinatown. I passed a woman in a white T-shirt sitting on the wooden seats facing the CBD skyline. She was eating and with her left hand she shooed away a seagull.

I went up the stairs to the pedestrian walkway that feeds into Bathurst Street and walked up the hill into the city. I crossed Elizabeth Street into Hyde Park. At the War Memorial there was something going on. There were men in uniform standing around and someone had set up plastic chairs on the steps leading inside the building. A camera faced the people sitting on these seats and there were people standing near it. A reflective screen had been set up that was tethered to the fence set up around a construction site. I walked around behind the people standing there along the width of the pool and headed up toward East Sydney. I asked a woman standing under the trees who wore fluoro clothes what was going on. "Filming a TV show," she said. A man on a bicycle rode toward me on the path. He turned his head to survey the scene I had just left then started cursing as he rode through the park.

On Oxford Street there were two men in suits with briefcases slung from their shoulders who were bidding each other farewell. The one heading to the CBD said, "Just five minutes later on today, ok?" I turned down into Burton Street and took a photo of the establishment I had been inside the evening before, then turned down Crown Street heading north. I stopped at a cafe on Stanley Street and used the toilet, then paid for a cup of coffee. I sat down at a table before taking my change and the waitress brought it over to me. There was a young man sitting at a table with an older woman and he had "Cronulla" printed on his green sweatshirt.

I left the cafe after finishing my coffee and went down Riley Street to William Street and turned left, back toward the CBD's towers. A young man wearing a bright blue hoodie crossed the street against the lights. At the park I could see the skeleton of the residential tower construction site on Bathurst Street through the trees. Crossing Elizabeth Street a man in a suit with a yarmulke on his head was talking on the phone.

At George Street I hesitated before crossing to the other side, and a man in fluoro gear with a hard hat on his head indicated that I should proceed. I stopped in the middle of the road next to the construction site and talked to him for a few minutes about the new light rail project, then I went to a Japanese restaurant nearby and ordered a plate of sushi and a bottle of beer. After paying for my meal I went back into Darling Harbour and walked northwest with the sun shining in my eyes. Two middle aged women were walking in the crowd and one said to the other in an American accent, "Do you want to see the tall ship?" "Yeah," the other woman, who was also American, answered. "It's just down here at the lighthouse," the first woman continued.

Leaving the entertainment precinct I went up to Harris Street, heading home. Two men were walking on the footpath. One of them had shorts on and bright green trainers. He said to his companion, "It was all, like, dirty with streaks all over it."