After I had returned home from that errand I decided eventually to go and find some lunch, so I took another of the grey singlet bags with me when I left home. I also carried a flat, black plastic bag with my external drive in it, to take to the retailer so that they could back up my PC's data. I went there the quick way past the Fish Market but I still had to juggle the singlet bag from hand to hand because it was soon cutting into my fingers. Sometimes I cradled it on my bent arm. At other times I held it like a sack. I made it to the shopping centre without dropping the heavy thing and found that it contained over $100 worth of coins.
When I had finished up there I headed up across Broadway into Victoria Park. Outside Sydney University on the bus shelter on City Road there was an advertising poster showing a young woman holding out a bowl full of ice cream in the direction of the viewer. "Start saying yes," said the Colgate poster. I passed by St Paul's and into Newtown, heading down King Street toward Enmore. A man wearing a fluoro-yellow-and-blue shirt with the word "Rescom" on it walked past me in the opposite direction. At the bridge over the railway tracks was a poster saying "Snap me" and showing a picture of the Snapchat logo. I made it to the Egyptian place and had a mixed meat plate and a bottle of beer.
After lunch I headed home the way I had come. There was a fire truck on Enmore Road facing in the direction I was walking. A firie stood on the pavement talking to a woman who stood in the door of a shop. Another fire truck pulled up on the opposite side of the road and a firie wearing sunglasses got out and started to walk toward his colleague. Pasted to the fence near the railway cutting were three Greens' posters, with the middle one saying "The system is rigged". The shingle outside the Coopers Hotel said "Taco Tuesday".
A large black dog walked down the footpath toward me. After it had gone past a woman wearing a blue top sitting on the ground looked at me and said "The dog!" "Sorry?" I said to her. "It's so intelligent," she said to me. "It looked behind to see where the master was." As I crossed one of the narrow side streets there was a huge line of school children, all aged about 10, standing on the footpath. I went past the hardware store with its piles of boxes containing heaters of different kinds stacked in front of the doors.
Across the other side of Missenden Road there was a sign outside an eatery saying "Nutella Pizza". I had seen the same sign at this restaurant before. I walked down past the university. There was a smiling woman standing at the kerb waiting for the traffic lights to change while talking on her phone. She held two paper shopping bags with "Peter Alexander" printed on them in grey letters. At the traffic lights at Bay Street a young man walked across against the signal. He had a rucksack on his back with "96" printed on it in red and he carried a skateboard with red wheels.
At Railway Square there was a magazine sitting on the footpath near where a rough sleeper was staying with the words "Postcard perfection" printed on the cover. The cover image showed a sandstone cliff with the sea visible at the bottom. At the top of the cliff stood houses and apartment buildings. I went down George Street and turned left into Hay Street at Haymarket, then right into Dixon Street. At Liverpool Street I crossed into Darling Harbour on the pedestrian bridge and walked up toward Pyrmont with the sun shining in my eyes. At Union Square a chugger turned to me as I walked along and said "Hi sir, how are you today?"
On Harris Street there were people coming out of the offices and walking along the street. One man was saying to his companion "Which way did I go?" as he looked down the street. I got to my street and there was a middle aged woman standing in front of the metering machine for the street parking. She turned to me as I walked along and said "That's quite expensive isn't it?" "Oh well," I said, in a way to suggest that I had more to say but would restrain myself. "It's better than a ticket," she said. "At least you got one," I said. "Yep," she answered. I entered the building and came upstairs to my apartment in the elevator.
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