CONSPIRACY OF DELIGHT

It is something of a miracle to me that at the age of fifty, I should take up all-year- round swimming and grow addicted to the Newcastle Ocean Baths. I've learned to know the Baths through limpid blue and the turbulence of king tides. I've learned to differentiate between 19 degrees and 15 degrees and have, like my fellow regulars, become disdainful of the fickle summer crowds and secretly long for the water temperature to drop so that we, the true believers, can have the Baths back to ourselves.