If you stop looking down

Just now, I didn't see the saxophone player who was practising four-note riffs into the pendulous roots of the Moreton Bay Fig when they were mowing the lawns of the park last week, or at least supposed to be mowing the lawns, as there are still those thicker islands of more luxuriant growth, which make walking tricky if you stop looking down.

Envying the circle of dog youth

When he came back from the park, he said he he'd never realised how many young people lived in Newtown, and primarily clean young people, as he called them, with very small dogs -- all Brazilian terriers, long-haired chihuahuas, whippets and pugs. There had been a large circle of these people on the top section of the grass. One of them had a black and white pug on a leash which was leaping in the middle of them, and the others were watching with those forced, sunny smiles that he remembered from when I was young and he'd taken me to the zoo with his sister and her friend -- all these overly, uncomfortably positive people, who seemed to assume by the way they were exclaiming that he, with his patched corduroy coat, must have been envying the youth that they were inordinately proud of -- and as well: that he had grandfatherly feelings for their dogs.

He also said that in the fenced off play area nearby, a young woman was sitting on the ground in front of a baby that had been clipped into a swing but was not swinging, and he could tell as he watched her (while he was waiting for me to return to let him in), that she was the one envying the circle of dog youth -- unless she was just staring at something else beyond them, say at the Moreton Bay fig trees at the edge of the grass.

A woman cogently arguing with no one

Just to list them: first a woman cogently arguing with no one, unless it was the toddler, who wasn't answering; second, a woman in a long-sleeved glittering top in the heat pulling along a young child who pulled along with him a flowering plant that was soon pulled out of the soil; third, an elderly golden retriever trailing a long black udder in the lawn.

Finally: when crossing the park, is it better to walk in the grey rut that everyone has worn in the grass or to walk, as I do for no clear reason, about a metre parallel?