Seascraper

When you're young, you think life is a string of choices. It's either you choose this door or the other door, or jump out of the window. You don't realise that most of what'll happen to you is because of other people's choices. There's a door already opened for you, so you walk straight through it, and you wonder how you wound up on the fire escape. That's life, I'm telling you. Don't bother getting older. Art's the only way I've ever had of making any sense of it.

He wants to wake up every morning with a better purpose.

A lot of the big studio guys are straight from Harvard Business School or Princeton, and they’re quick to let you know about it in a meeting. But they never have a thought worth sharing – their whole lives are built on status. More than that: they want conformity. They’re terrified of what’s original, because it undermines them. So they get behind what’s mediocre, keep on feeding you their trash as though it’s good for you.

most of what’ll happen to you is because of other people’s choices.

He waves back keenly, but it feels inadequate. They've become two strangers pantomiming fondness for each other. Perhaps that's all they ever were.

Habit’s all you can rely on.

The closer they get to Broughton, the more the sand dunes bunch together on the collar of the road. He'd wander out here as a lad, carefree, and tumble down the slopes for hours with kids from other towns he'd never see again. Back then, he wouldn't give much thought to smashed-up bottles that were dumped there, or the damage he could do an ankle treading in a burrow. He's forgotten that simplicity, that joy. It's true what Mr Acheson is saying about the world and all its noise, but mostfolk seem to carry on undaunted, just like children gaily sliding down a sand dune. When did he stop sliding for fear of broken glass and bloody knees?

Edgar backs off with his cases, heading for the front steps while the horse begins its ponderous turn out of the car park; and when he finds that Edgar is still standing there to wave him off, he knows they've passed beyond the territory of strangers, into something more like friendship.

But Pop would often tell him how you had to stay alive to opportunities in life, to never fail to notice when they tap you on the shoulder – and it seems he’s being tapped.

Some people are so righteous in their minds they can’t accept mistakes in others. They would rather cradle condemnation at their breasts than help someone in trouble. He can’t understand that kind of bitterness at all.

He needs to reconcile the things he wants with what he’s able to achieve,

My son has never kept a friend much longer than he’s kept a loaf of bread. You have my admiration.

There’s a door already opened for you, so you walk straight through it, and you wonder how you wound up on the fire escape. That’s life, I’m telling you. Don’t bother getting older.

He's never wasted any thoughts on his appearance. Jut what sort of figure he presents out here in his rank sea-clothes hasn't bothered him before. Now, being drawn, he's too aware of his own body and its failings. How his spine must curve while he sits at the reins, the way his grandpa's used to do. His ingrown nails begin to throb, his shoulders ache.

He didn't know there was another edge to Edgar's temperament: a blunter side that's not so organised or easy-going. There's no doubt that he prefers the other version who arrives with steaks and writes him cheques, but he'll forgive a bloke his flaws if there's no malice in them.

There’s all sorts in the water now that wasn’t there when he was just a lad. Strange chemicals and pesticides and sewage.