Confessions of a Free Range Prolapsed Catholic

9/12/2025

It’s 4.6 kilometres from the West End of Newcastle to the Ocean baths. A 13 minute drive. Once upon a time it probably was and I knew every centimetre of it! I knew the shops, I knew the pubs, I knew the theatres, I knew the bus stops, the traffic lights, the train stations, the grand old buildings, coffee shops, restaurants -I knew it all. There’s a lot of the trip I don’t recognise anymore!

My most recent trip was well and truly after rush hour. It had been a hot and humid day and the stop/start journey took 40 minutes.Bumper to bumper traffic most of the way and Shortland Esplanade was a nightmare! Narrow and winding, made even more narrow by efforts to widen what was just the footpath, now “Bathers Way”, traffic speed inhibitors and an almost impossible to navigate left turn into the ever reducing car park, fingers crossed that we could find a park the only empty spots were the Disable Parking Spaces. THANK GOD FOR KNEE AND HIP REPLACEMENT, PACE MAKER AND OLD AGE! Legally, I can park there, as long as my permission to do so is displayed on the left side of my windscreen to prevent being fined!

My chauffeur , our younger son who works in, lives with and endures caring for “the elderly”, escorted me into the baths and then left to do the walk from the baths to the end of the Nobbys Breakwater and back. I picked a spot, engaged the brakes on my walker, unpacked my knitting, my water bottle and parked myself!

White buoys bobbing – make me think of swimming caps my sister used to wear in the races on a Sunday when she was a member fo the swimming club in the 1950’s. To my left is the ramp into the “Olympic Pool” where I mastered the art of floating on my back. To the right – the ramp that stops me from feeling confident enough to go into the pool because it is steep and has only one side of support for my wobbly gait! It is wide enough for a tractor to drive into the pool on cleaning day but the surface becomes slippery.

But! The smell of the ocean, the sounds of the birds, the conversations, the cuddles under the surface of the water, not quite hiding what they’re really up to, a fully clothed focussed walker on the promenade counting her steps, little kids flipping backward into the pool, the lap doers each one triggering my memories and I smile with happiness and melancholy! Paradox!

One day I’ll get in but not this day. A young fellow disrobes beneath the privacy of his towel. A brilliant technique which reminds me of my Mum making sure we all learned how to do it “in the old days” . I wonder about the appeal of swimmers up the bum crack, buttocks rock hard and peach round. How do they sit with comfort? I suppose the plus side of that question is that the question “Does my bum look big is this?” is now, irrelevant!

Such musings! Such air! Unpretentious beauty!