Multiple-choice reading

Last winter, I spent a week in a small coastal town that doesn’t appear in glossy travel brochures. I went because a friend had moved there for work and kept sending messages about “the kind of quiet you can actually hear”. After a year of crowded trains, constant notifications and the feeling that my days were being chopped into tiny pieces, I was ready to see whether a different rhythm was possible. I also wanted to test a fashionable idea I’d been hearing from colleagues: that you can now do almost any job from anywhere, so the old link between career and location has finally broken.

The town looked simple at first glance: a short main street, a harbour, a few cafés, and rows of houses facing the sea as if they were watching it for news. But it didn’t take long to notice the pressure beneath the calm surface. On my first morning, I overheard two shop owners talking about rent increases. “It’s not the tourists,” one of them said, “it’s the people who stay.” She meant the new arrivals—remote workers who could afford city prices while earning city salaries. They didn’t come for one weekend; they came for months, sometimes permanently, bringing laptops and expectations with them. The conversation wasn’t angry, exactly. It sounded more like tiredness, the kind you hear when someone has explained the same problem too many times.

My friend, Leo, lived in a flat above a bakery. He worked for a design company based in another country, and his day began with video calls at 7 a.m. because of time zones. “It’s flexible,” he said, making coffee while checking his calendar, “as long as you’re available all the time.” He didn’t complain, but the joke was clear. When we walked along the sea wall later, he pointed out the places that had changed since he arrived: a new co-working space in an old fish restaurant; a “wellness studio” that offered breathwork sessions; and a row of houses that used to be rented to local families but were now holiday lets with key boxes. “This street is darker at night,” he added. “More empty homes.”

It’s tempting to tell a simple story here: rich outsiders arrive, locals suffer, community disappears. Reality, however, is less tidy. Several people I met were grateful for the new customers. A woman who ran a small bookshop said winter used to be “a long hold of your breath” because business dropped so sharply. Now, she sold notebooks and coffee-table books to remote workers who liked the idea of working near the sea. A young man at the harbour told me he’d found a job fixing Wi-Fi in rented properties—work that didn’t exist five years ago. “I’m not saying it’s perfect,” he said, “but it’s work.”

Still, even those who benefited seemed uneasy. One evening in a pub, an older resident described how the town’s identity was being edited. “They love the view,” she said, “but not the mess.” By “mess” she meant the parts of local life that aren’t designed for visitors: teenagers hanging around the bus stop, fishing gear piled on the quay, arguments in the street on a Saturday night. Some newcomers wanted the town to remain charming and quiet, but only in a carefully controlled way. It reminded me of people who move next to a railway line because they like the character of old trains, then complain about the noise.

I also noticed how quickly the language of the place was changing. In cafés, menus offered “work-friendly tables” and “meeting corners”, and there were posters advertising networking events. None of this is terrible on its own, yet it suggested a shift in who the town was being shaped for. When a place starts speaking mainly to one group, other people begin to feel like guests in their own home.

On my last day, I sat on a bench above the beach and watched a storm roll in. The sea turned the colour of metal, and the wind pushed sand across the path like smoke. A couple nearby were discussing whether to buy a house. “It’s an investment,” one of them said. The word landed heavily. I thought about the shop owners, the bookshop, Leo’s early-morning calls, and the empty homes at night. Remote work, I realised, isn’t just a personal lifestyle choice; it’s a force that can reshape streets, rents, friendships and even the hours a town feels alive.

I left with mixed feelings. I admired the town’s beauty and the way strangers still greeted each other on the pavement. I understood why people wanted to come, including me. But I also felt that if we treat every attractive place as a backdrop for our productivity, we risk turning real communities into convenient scenery. The quiet I heard there was lovely, yes—yet it also contained questions about who gets to stay, who gets pushed out, and what we lose when “anywhere” starts to mean “everywhere the same.”