the balloons following me around in the cool violet dawn, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye, their half-sunlit curves like maverick moons.

- the man rolling on the ground ahead of me. as I passed him (he was by then back in the saddle), I asked if he was OK and I said: "I didn't see you fall, but I saw you roll, eh?"

- the graffiti on the hard-hat sign on the construction site; they'd used Texta to add a droopy Village People gay moustache.

- the river appearing to flow backwards, quite vigorously too, just upstream of the junction with Gardiners creek.

- clouds reflected in the greenish still water around Herring Island: the depth and tone of an X-ray image.