The Captive Reader

Years ago, when my wife and I were just dating, she took me on a day trip to the seaside at Brighton.  It was my first exposure to the British at play in a marine environment.  It was a fairly warm day – I remember the sun came out for whole moments at a time – and large numbers of people were in the sea.  They were shrieking with what I took to be pleasure, but now realise was agony.  Naively, I pulled off my T-shirt and sprinted into the water.  It was like running into liquid nitrogen.  It was the only time in my life in which I have moved like someone does when a piece of film is reversed.  I dived into the water and then straight back out again, backwards, and have never gone into an English sea since.

-Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling