A Caesar salad

After visiting the post office to buy a stamp and mail a postcard I headed down into Darling Harbour, aiming for the eastern suburbs where there is a restaurant I had seen on another day and had wanted to try out. Near the shadow of the bridge two women were sitting on the wooden benches lining the foreshore a few metres apart and taking selfies of themselves. I passed by the temporary ice skating rink and saw dozens of children on skates there. Some of the children were pushing big plastic penguins for balance as they moved along on the slippery surface of the ice. The side of the motorway further along was dappled with the reflection of the water where the bright sunlight shone.

Heading along the pedestrian walkway into Bathurst Street I saw a truck towing a trailer speed into the Cross City Tunnel. Both the truck and the trailer had the word "Boral" painted on the side. As I walked up the hill past a record store there were two men loading blue plastic milk crates into a white van that was parked there. "So, thirty," said one man to the other as I went past.

There was a busker singing a Leonard Cohen song on George Street and I emptied the change out of my pocket and put it on the bag he had placed on the footpath. "Any requests?" he asked me as I walked off. "It's all good, " I told him and continued on my way. Further up next to Castlereagh Street a jogger wearing a green T-shirt with "Forever Faster" printed on it went past. I crossed at the lights into Hyde Park and walked up Oxford Street.

A man with a dark beard and a beanie on his head had the word "Boy" printed on his shirt. He was smoking as he walked along the street. I kept going and in Paddington passed a veterinarian's just before County Avenue. There were two AFP cars parked outside Victoria Barracks. I stopped at Micky's, the restaurant I had earmarked to try today and went inside, where I ordered a bottle of craft beer and a Caesar salad. After eating I paid and left the building, turning right back the way I had come. I saw that one of the AFP cars had gone from outside Victoria Barracks. Near the petrol station I passed three uniformed Army personnel, whom I had seen on the way up the hill as well. "Unbox your phone," said an advertisement on the bus shelter outside the courthouse at Taylor Square.

On Pitt Street I met the owner of a poodle named Tanner I had met on an earlier occasion and we chatted briefly as we stood on the street in the sun. When I had said goodbye to man and dog I headed across to the QVB and used the toilet in the basement then headed down Market Street toward home. There were lots of people on Pyrmont Bridge. "It's not far to the city, guys," said a woman to her three companions as they headed into town. "Hey Chris, what's in here?" piped a boy to his friend as they ran on the bridge near the shopping centre. Two men were walking down Union Street in the direction of the harbour and one said to the other, "I can well imagine." "So it's not fast, I don't run fast," said a woman to the other women in the group she was walking along with.

Nearer to home I saw my downstairs neighbour on the street walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the road, and I saluted her. "It's a nice day," I said without stopping. "It's very good walking weather," she agreed.