Bay Bitch: After the deluge

I realised recently that the most enjoyable aspect of doing the Bay Walk is looking forward to the impending aftermath of it.

Most of my head space during the walk is filled with conjuring up my options: cappuccino, thick Italian hot chocolate – more like chocolate custard – pancakes, pane chocolate, long hot bath, and, if I’m feeling really special, a visit to the Korean bath house for the rest of the day with a massage.

I start to get excited on the home run when I know my reward is truly within reach. I feel so deserving and not like a total layabout as I do when I indulge without having prefaced it with a hard workout. It is so much more enjoyable when I know I have worked for it, despite my reluctant work ethic.

I don’t remember this in my younger days though – I often look back fondly on the day I ate a whole packet of Tim Tams after smoking a bit of weed with not a tinge of guilt. I also laugh at the time when during another ‘got the munchies’ night I consumed a loaf of white bread covered in thick butter and strawberry jam and then woke the next morning to find most of my apartment’s surfaces dotted with white crusts smothered with strawberry jam. We both didn’t eat our crusts!

Never was there a thought to overeating, only to the hilarity of the leftovers and the confirmation that not eating your crusts will leave you with straight hair! We loved our straight hair anyway and in spite of our indoctrination of Catholic guilt, it never hit our palate.

The long soaks in Japanese hot springs with a hot sake in hand while the snow fell like icing sugar from the sky in the Eighties didn’t need a seven kilometre walk to make it wonderful. It was what it was! So as my time gets less, I find it ironic that some of my pursuits are plagued with unpleasantness and self-condemnation whereas when time was seemingly endless indulging was always paramount!

Words by Lianna Taranto