Michael and I were late for his drama class last weekend. He was very grumpy as we sprinted across town and, on questioning revealed that all he had eaten all day was a bowl of cereal. No wonder he was grumpy as it was then four in the afternoon. I stopped off in a vile take-away pizza place and bought him a slice. Although normally I do not approve of eating on the street, these were desperate times and I said to him, “You can eat it as we jog along through town.” He was about half way through his slice and about to take a bite when it was pulled out of his hand by a daring seagull who flew off with it grasped triumphantly in his jaws. What can I say? Tough town. The moral is, of course, that one shouldn’t eat on the street.
We were in Edinburgh, in Princes’ Gardens, about 7 years ago when a seagull took a cream cheese and smoked salmon sandwich from my younger son who was then about 13. He had had one bite. Seagull-kind have been damned in our house ever since…
Impressive seagull work there. I was very impressed by the restraint of seagulls in Helsinki this summer – their Celtic brethren are clearly a more aggressive lot.