Seaside Sitting Quotes

Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it. What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course. How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view. All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you.

This is being written in another seaside cottage on another coast. Gin and whiskey have bitten rings in the table where I sit.

When the sky is clear, when the sea is calm and the full moon is rising, whatever you are doing, leave it; go to the seaside; sit and watch it! You will then reach the land where there is no thinking; the land of pure wisdom!

Say you’re sitting in a cubicle and you hate your job. It’s terrible. Everyone around you is an asshole. Your boss is a dick. All of your work is just mind-numbingly soul-sucking. But in five minutes you are about to leave for your first vacation you’ve had in five years. You’re going to be gone for two weeks at this beautiful Bora Bora seaside bungalow. It’s literally the most lavish thing you’ve ever done in your entire life. How would you feel? You would feel great. Now imagine that you are in Bora Bora. You’re on this beautiful beach with amazing people, and you’ve had so much fun. In five minutes, you’re going to have to put down the piña colada with the little umbrella in it. You have to say goodbye to these people. You will go back to your terrible job and won’t take another vacation for another five years. How would you feel? You would feel terrible. Now, think about it. You’re sitting in the cubicle at the job that you hate and you feel awesome. And you’re sitting on the beach with a drink in your hand and you feel terrible. How you feel is entirely in your mind. Your mind has nothing to do with your environment. It has nothing to do with anyone around you. It is entirely your decision. Making a change in your life is as easy as making a decision and acting on it. That’s it.

AW LOOK, THEY FELL asleep!” I nudged Saylor and pointed to the chairs where Demetri and Gabe were still sitting. Demetri’s mouth was hanging open as he leaned to his right, and Gabe leaned to his left, meaning they were like cuddle buddies. Seriously, it was a hot picture. Teen girls’ minds everywhere most likely were exploding right now.

…I notice that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are going anywhere near the water, but that they don’t bathe much when they are there. It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I always determine—when thinking over the matter in London—that I’ll get up early every morning, and go and have a dip before breakfast, and I religiously pack up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathing drawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so. But when I get to the sea I don’t feel somehow that I want that early morning bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town. On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice virtue has triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and have taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But I haven’t enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can’t see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting. One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting posture, as hard as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there for me. And, before I’ve said “Oh! Ugh!” and found out what has gone, the wave comes back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out frantically for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and wish I’d been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and find that I’ve been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.

life is that easy and that complicated. I think I’m sitting in the center of easy and complicated and I don’t know where I’ll end up—but it sure feels like I’m in the right place regardless of if it’s easy or complicated.

... a tiny room, furnished in early MFI, of which every surface was covered in china ornaments and plaster knick-knacks whose only virtue was that they were small, and therefore of limited individual horribleness. Cumulatively, they were like an infestation. Little vases, ashtrays, animals, shepherdesses, tramps, boots, tobys, ruined castles, civic shields of seaside towns, thimbles, bambis, pink goggle-eyed puppies sitting up and begging, scooped-out swans plainly meant to double as soap dishes, donkeys with empry panniers which ought to have held pin-cushions or perhaps bunches of violets -- all jostled together in a sad visual cacophony of bad taste and birthday presents and fading holiday memories, too many to be loved, justifying themselves by their sheer weight of numbers as 'collections' do.

Sea-side!” said my brother-inlaw, pressing the ticket affectionately into his hand; “why, you’ll have enough to last you a lifetime; and as for exercise! why, you’ll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship, than you would turning somersaults on dry land.” He himself — my brother-

That afternoon I say about five thousand cars or probably three thousand passed me not one of them ever dreamed of stopping -- Which didnt bother me anyway because at first seeing that gorgeous long coast up to Monterey I thought "Well I'll just hike right in, it's only fourteen miles, I oughta do that easy" -- And on the way there's all kindsa interesting things to see anyway like the seals barking on rocks below, or quiet old farms made of logs on the hills across the highway, or sudden upstretches that go along dreamy seaside meadows where cows grace and graze in full sight of endless blue Pacific -- But because I'm wearing desert boots with their fairly thin soles, and the sun is beating hot on the tar road, the heat finally gets through the soles and I begin to deliver heat blisters inmy sockiboos -- I'm limping along wondering what's the matter with me when I realize I've got blisters -- I sit by the side of the road and look -- I take out my first aid kit from the pack and apply unguents and put on cornpads and carry on -- But the combination of the heavy pack and the heat of the road increases the pain of the blisters until finally I realize I've got to hitch hike a ride or never make it to Monterey at all. But the tourists bless their hearts after all, they couldnt know, only think I'm having a big happy hike with my rucksack and they drive on, even tho I stick out my thumb