The letter from Detective Sergeant Griffin had invited me to contact his office for more information about my court appearance, but I had something of Ms Madden’s caution about writers of official letters. “Bypass A Bureaucrat Today” is my motto. There ought to be a T-shirt.

I set out to walk to the new police fortress in Goulburn Street, partly for the exercise and partly because I like to see how my law and order tax dollar is being spent. I went down William Street and cut up Yurong to Oxford. It was July but warm and dry after a few weeks of cold and wet, and the lightly dressed and briskly moving people seemed to be relishing the change. These days I feel like closing my eyes when I walk through the city. You can’t rely on a building you visited on Friday afternoon still being there on Monday morning, and most of the new stuff going up looks as if it has been designed by architects who stalled at cubism.

As I turned out of Oxford Street I almost collided with a man who was so wide he almost took up half of the footpath. If the woman standing behind him had been at his side they would have had to erect a detour sign.

“Say, buddy. Can you direct us to your Sydney Harbour Bridge?”

I pointed and tried to use language they would understand. “Walk north,” I said. “It’s a mile or so.”

His mouth dropped open and the fat on his cheeks sagged towards his neck. “Walk? Did you hear that, honey? We have to walk.”