Periodically, from my blissful back-to-sleep I hear dog fracas from the cemetry. The anglicised plural is fracases. There were more than one. Repeated dog fracas. Bark-BARK-BARK-bark-bark-bark-BARK. Then church bells.

Voices don't carry to me here. I can't learn the news of the street from my bed. If I could, though, it would be news of the suburb, not news of the street, such is the volume of the pedestrian parade. I pretend to read the newspaper but I'm distracted by Church Street and its oblivious possibilities.

It turns out we can't do scissorhands, Noonie and I. Some sort of genetic deficiency, and we discover it, of all places, in the bar at the Gazebo hotel. The one with massive red crepe-paper flowers on the wall and a stuffed fox suspended upside-down from the ceiling. Annie says it's Burley Caton Halliday.

The hop continues. Some peel off and I give them the narrow-eye. Eventually, we're the last to leave. We stand on the footpath beside the place that sells the best brownies in Sydney, and the street is quiet - devoid even, and importantly, of taxis. Can it be that the people who would normally be our competition for a cab are in fact at home in bed preparing for the City to Surf? No, the whole bar-going public have simply left the Eastern suburbs early to beat us to Istanbul on King. Even Kuletos is shut. Hence the kebab crowd. No tabouli, thanks.

Today, the city is sunshine and silence. I've mistakenly got the flat sole trainers on. I walk down the very centre of Northwood Street, chasing the sun until the fig trees connect and the canopy is complete.