Most mornings I wake up just after lunch, or just before. Feed the cats and have avocado on toast, disappointingly unhealthy thanks to an aioli and dill mayonnaise fetish. I then put on swimmers and grab a towel, and leisurely linger my way up Hunter Street Mall.

I cross Kings Street, if its Thursday they are swapping out kegs at Finnegan’s. Up Crown and then right on Hunter, where the ghost of the Jolly Roger remains. The flamboyant graffiti a contradictory remnant of what used to be one of Newcastle’s seedier pubs. Past the pasty kids in Games Workshop, with freckles faded, skin mourning the loss of Vitamin D.

I habitually look for the bald Breakaway Surf Manager who unbelievably told NBN news “it will be good to see cars going past again” when asked whether he agreed with the Mall being reopened to traffic. I suppress my need to confront him about this.

Then I make my way up to the Newsagents, not the first but the fourth, second last on the south side. The one run by Jim, not the one closest to the beach with the miserable owner and anorexic Dalmatian. Apparently canine skin and bones are acceptable if the canine in question is undergoing chemotherapy. I browse the magazines and purchase a couple of scratchies, if its Saturday Ill buy the lotto and three papers.Two broadsheets and the Herald.

And then across the park to Newcastle Beach. 98% of the time it will be perfect offshore conditions. 2% of the time there will be an easterly or worst still, I will arrive at the Ocean Baths and they will have been emptied for cleaning. Timing has never been my forte.

I always walk the extra 20 or so metres to the main entrance of the baths, not just to take in the magnificent art deco facade but to check the blackboard with the day’s sea temperature… which is typically 21 degrees. The kiosk lady will inform me later that it was 22 that morning, unsuccessfully tempting me to rise from bed that little bit earlier.

Then there I sit not so patiently waiting for my special lane to be vacated. Sometimes it’s empty when I get there. It’s the furthest one to the south, lane 1. It’s the one adjacent to the wooden platform, which is my marker to keep me on the straight and narrow.  Without it Ill swim blind and probably diagonally cross the baths, colliding with other swimmers and looking like a dick in the process.

I am, however, a little too comfortable with that wall and have been known at times to have left the baths oblivious to my leg bright with red, a trail of blood dotting the path behind me. My calf having intimately interacted with some overly friendly oysters. The pain, from fraternising with some unknown barnacle type creature that resides on the side wall, will not be felt until later at home.

I swim ten laps, no more, no less, and then head to the stand to sun myself. If I am lucky I won’t fall on my face as I exit the water via the rampantly slimy ramp. I sun myself with the sole intention of becoming dry and therefore reduce the risk of bitterly painful chaffing on the walk home. Oh what I wouldn’t give for thighs that don’t touch. I could stop eating chips and dip, sweet white wine perhaps, any food the colour white. But Id sooner give my right leg… which would solve more than one problem but in particular the chaffing.

And there I relax, not normally reading as if its a lucky day Ill perv at Andrew Johns or some other buff footballer type. They often appear in the early afternoon, running through the water at a particularly pleasurable and suitably very viewable water depth… waste height. On an unlucky day there’s usually four or five old ladies doing the same thing. Running in the water that is… but also wishing they could be perving at Andrew Johns or some other buff footballer type.

The waters all dry and I am coated in a salty (chaff-inducing) crust, I walk past the canteen pining for a Pluto Pup. The positive self-talk helps “Shit Wendy, you’re not hungry, you’re not at a show, you don’t need a bloody Pluto Pup”. Or is it negative self-talk? I know that the one time I gave into the craving I sat there with sauce head to toe, feeling five again at the Singleton Show.

I mosey back down Hunter Street to home and attempt to ignore the grating of my inner sandpaper thighs. I have a long languid (soothing) bath when I arrive, the smoke from vanilla incense willows to the roof in a feeble attempt at masking the stink of recently emptied cat litter trays. And Ill partake in some one-way chit chat with the cats as I bathe. Maybe Ill write this afternoon, maybe I wont.

But… it hasn’t always been this way. So if you are hating me right now you better log on again next week to find out about the unbelievable “perpendicular universe” I lived in 12 to six months previous to now… as a “Cloncurry Slave”.