The Sitting Cure: What a Month of Bench-Hopping Taught Me About My Town

I have a notebook with 41 addresses in it. Not houses — benches. For four weeks I tried to sit on every public bench in one English town, from the slatted seafront numbers with a view of the pier to the sad grey blocks outside the shopping centre. I can confirm that doing nothing in public turns out to be a surprisingly active hobby.

The Rules, and the First Embarrassment

The rules were simple: ten minutes per bench, no phone, no headphones, flask permitted. I wanted to actually sit, not perch for a photo and move on. By day two I had discovered the flaw in the plan. Sitting alone on a bench in Britain makes you look like either a philosopher or a problem. A dog walker asked if I was waiting for someone. A woman asked if I had lost my bus fare. A man in a high-vis jacket looked at me for slightly too long, as if I were a puddle that might need cones.

By the end of week one I had developed what I can only call a nothing-to-see-here face. It is the expression of a person who is absolutely fine and definitely not conducting an audit of municipal seating. It fooled nobody.

What a Bench Says Before You Sit On It

The seafront benches were generous. They faced the water rather than the road, which sounds obvious until you notice how many town-centre benches face a bin. These had plaques on the back: in memory of someone who loved the view, or someone who walked this promenade every morning for thirty years. A bench plaque is a small, affordable immortality. It also tells you what a town values. People do not tend to sponsor a bench facing a loading bay.

The shopping-centre benches were the opposite. Bolted down, armrests at intervals, angled so you could not comfortably lie down. One had been removed entirely and replaced by a planter. That is the classic modern solution: if people are sitting somewhere you would rather they did not, remove the seat and call it landscaping. The need to rest does not disappear. It just becomes less visible, which is apparently the same thing to whoever signs the purchase order.

The Regulars Know More Than the Council Website

The best part of the month was the regulars. The 7am man with a thermos who reads the same paperback for an hour. The two women who meet after aqua aerobics and review the pool with forensic intensity. The teenager with a speaker who is, frankly, doing everyone a favour by not having it on a bus.

A retired bus driver sat next to me on the promenade and told me about the old route that used to run along the seafront before the one-way system. He remembered the conductor, the fares, the exact corner where the driver would stop for a chat. That is local history you cannot find on a council website, and it arrived free with the seat.

The Cheapest Theatre in Town

A bench is also the cheapest ticket in town. In ten minutes you can watch a proposal that does not quite happen, a seagull commit a premeditated theft, and a man eat an entire pork pie with a pocket knife and the calm of a surgeon. Cinema costs a small fortune. A bench costs nothing and the cast changes daily.

You also learn the etiquette. There is an unwritten spacing rule: one person at each end, a buffer seat in the middle, eye contact kept to a brief nod. The bench is a shared living room with no walls and very strict invisible furniture.

The Ones That Were Missing

Of the 41 on my list, I sat on 38. Two had gone and one turned out to be a planter with delusions. That is not a tragedy in itself, but it is a pattern. The town expects you to keep moving. A bench is a small act of civic permission: permission to stop, to wait, to breathe, to exist without spending money. Remove enough of them and you do not remove the need to sit. You just remove the people who cannot walk far enough to find another one.

The Verdict: Please Remain Seated

Would I do it again? Yes, though perhaps not in February. I now have a favourite bench. It is not the prettiest. It is the one by the bus stop where the light comes through the trees at about four o'clock and nobody asks if you are all right because they are too busy missing their bus. It is free, it is public, and it is one of the last bits of local entertainment that does not require a subscription. If you see me there, nod. But leave a seat between us.