Multiple-choice reading

Last autumn, after a year of working from my kitchen table, I decided to take my laptop somewhere that wasn’t within reach of my own washing-up. The plan was simple: spend two weeks in a small coastal town, rent a room with reliable Wi‑Fi, and finally finish a project that had been dragging on for months. I told friends I was going “for the sea air”, but the truth was less poetic. I needed a change of scene because my usual one had started to feel like a loop I couldn’t break.

The town I chose is the kind that appears on postcards: a curved bay, a line of cafés, a pier that looks cheerful even when it’s closed. In the mornings, the beach was almost empty except for dog walkers and a few swimmers who seemed to enjoy proving how brave they were. By midday, the promenade filled with families and people taking photos of their lunch as if it were a rare animal. It would have been easy to dismiss the place as a tourist stage set, but I quickly noticed the parts that weren’t designed for visitors: the hardware shop where everyone knew each other’s names, the bus stop with a handwritten sign explaining the new timetable, the community noticeboard covered in messages about missing cats and yoga classes.

I had booked a room in a guesthouse run by a couple who had moved down from the city. They were friendly in the way that feels natural rather than practiced, and they didn’t pretend the town was perfect. Over breakfast, the owner told me that in winter many businesses close and the streets can seem deserted. “People imagine it’s like summer all year,” she said, “but you have to like the quiet, and you have to plan for it.” She also mentioned that their rent had doubled in five years. A few locals, she said, now lived further inland because they couldn’t compete with holiday lets.

That was my first reminder that my “work trip” wasn’t a neutral choice. I had arrived with my portable lifestyle, ready to enjoy the scenery and spend money in cafés, but I was also part of a bigger trend. Remote work, once a rare perk, has become normal for many office jobs. In theory, it spreads opportunity: if you can work from anywhere, you’re no longer tied to expensive cities. In practice, it can push city prices into places that were previously affordable, especially when short-term rentals become more profitable than long-term homes.

During my first week, I tried different places to work: the guesthouse dining room, a café with excellent coffee, and a small co-working space above a bookshop. The co-working space was bright and quiet, with plants that looked surprisingly healthy. On the wall, a poster advertised “networking Fridays” and “skills swaps”, and it made me smile because it sounded both modern and slightly desperate, like an attempt to create a community on a schedule.

One afternoon, I spoke to the manager, a woman in her thirties who had grown up in the town. She said she liked the new energy that remote workers brought. “In summer we’re busy anyway,” she explained, “but in the shoulder seasons it’s different. If people stay longer, they keep cafés open, they join clubs, they volunteer.” She paused before adding, “But it only works if they’re not just consuming the place. If they treat it like a backdrop, locals feel it.”

Her words stayed with me. I realised I had been using the town as a tool: a pleasant environment to improve my concentration. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to work well, of course, but it’s easy to forget that other people are trying to live full lives in the same space. The next day I went to a talk at the library about coastal erosion. It wasn’t exactly my idea of a relaxing evening, yet the room was full. A retired engineer explained how storms were changing the shape of the beach, while a council worker described the cost of protecting the seafront. The discussion wasn’t dramatic, but it was serious, and I could hear frustration beneath the polite language. Everyone loved the coastline, but loving it didn’t automatically pay for repairing it.

By the second week, my routine had settled. I worked in the mornings, walked along the cliffs in the late afternoon, and cooked simple dinners in the shared kitchen. I finished the project earlier than expected, which should have made me feel proud. Instead, I felt oddly unsettled, as if the trip had given me answers to a question I hadn’t asked. I had come for productivity and found myself thinking about housing, seasons, and the way technology changes places without asking permission.

On my last day, I watched the sun go down from the pier. A group of teenagers were jumping between the wooden beams, laughing as if the whole town belonged to them. A man nearby was collecting litter into a bag, not because anyone had told him to, but because he seemed to believe it mattered. I thought about what the co-working manager had said: don’t just consume the place. It sounded like advice for travellers, but also for anyone who moves through life with options.

I still believe remote work can be a gift. It can give people time back, reduce commuting, and allow smaller towns to thrive beyond the summer rush. But it isn’t automatically fair, and it isn’t automatically sustainable. The sea air helped, yes, but what helped more was being reminded that every convenient choice has a footprint—sometimes on a beach, sometimes in a rent contract, and sometimes in the quiet feeling that you owe a place more than your presence.