We Need to Talk about Seagulls

 

A lovely study of a Seagull caught by my photographer daughter Jacqueline Rackham 

Almost my entire life I have been blessed I feel, to live by the sea. I was conceived by the seaside in Worthing where my Mum and Dad met, fell in love, married and settled down. The beach and sea was just a five minute walk away. I was born in Brighton as was my mother, Brighton is shining example of a seaside resort. Apart from a few years, when my dad had to go into the Army during the war, I have always lived by the sea and have loved the seaside. I was born just three weeks before war broke out in 1939 and my mother beetled of up North for fear of invasion. She took me and my brother Peter to stay with dad’s relatives in Yorkshire, although I would think that if Adolf got as far as Worthing beach he could have found his way to Yorkshire easily enough. The Romans did didn’t they?

 

At the end of the war we came back to live in Worthing in time for me to start School. I had a key put round my neck so that I could let myself in, because both parents had to go out to work and my brother spent a lot of time down in the park at the bottom of our road. There was no law in those days, concerning any idea of folly at leaving children on their own, and I have to say, that I was so well drilled in what I could and could not do, that I did not come to much harm. School finished at 4pm and my brother knew it was best to get home just before our parents got in around 5.30- 6pm since he was supposed to be looking after me. I was also drilled by my brother who was five years older to get the story right.

 

 

During the holidays it was heaven being by the sea and our parents not home to tell us to be careful all the time. I went to the beach with my cousins and or my twin friends Mary and Billy who lived around the corner. We spent all day everyday on the beach and I fortunately learned to swim soon after my cousin John pushed me in the water off the breakwaters that we were playing on at high tide. He said he thought I could swim and just stood and shouted at me to kick my legs and paddle my arms.

 

When my daughter Jacqueline was young I bought the delightful book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and thought how wonderful it was, so motivating for anybody who sees something beyond where their life is at the time. It was a super little bit of stressing of the point that you must try and try again, at anything you thought you could do, that there is nothing to be ashamed of if you try and fail and that only not trying, was the mistake that so many young people, or older for that matter, make. You want to be better, faster, or be a leader in your field, then go for it and keep trying until you reach the position you dream of being in. Good message.

 

 

Johnny and I took bread and jam sandwiches with us to eat when we got hungry and we NEVER fed the seagulls. They could get their own dinner as far as we cared and they did, they fished and picked at crabs and rock pool life at low tide. I don’t remember the Seagulls ever being the pests they are today and I put that down to their change of diet. When we were young we didn’t have enough food anyway and certainly not enough to even think about wasting it feeding seagulls.

 

 

Any visitor to the seaside for their summer holidays in this modern age will have had a sandwich torn out of their hands at some time or another, runners will have had their cap or head pecked, toddler’s will have wondered where the slice of pizza they were eating suddenly disappeared to. Seagulls have developed a taste to all the food that is wasted these days, they have a diet of chips and pizza and any sandwich they can steal from the unwary holiday maker. 

 

When Alfred Hitchcock made his superb film The Birds, he had obviously had a vision of things to come. Seagulls should be working for their food and not taking turns at raiding the waste bins for easy pickings. I am sure that they are growing larger as well and I don’t think that is just the work of an imaginative old lady’s addled mind.

 

An ugly photo here of an ugly Gannet-Git of a creature. When I went to the swimming pool early this morning whilst it was still dark, some of the streets in town on my two mile route to the pool were a ghastly, unsightly mess because it was evidently bin collection day and as it becoming the habit in areas where the refuse collection truck arrives early, for people put the bins our late at night. I would like to politely suggest that if you are not around when you know the bin men are coming, that you do not put plastic bags that contain food outside in the street knowing that the bags will be torn to shreds but the seagulls. I think the most aptly named of them is the Gannet! This is an expression we use to refer to people who have not been taught manners and eat as though they were animals. The Seagull, as far as my opinion goes are all Gannets, or Gits that is another suitable ugly name for them and their antics. My friend over the road had a summer party in the garden and their little girl, of rising two years old, was reduced to tears by a seagull stealing her pizza. 
 

For the most part I do not leave any bags outside at the bottom of the driveway unless I know that the bin men are just coming up the street and making enough commotion to deter the greedy gannets. I double wrap my bags and take them to the tip myself, thus sparing me and my neighbours of the disgusting task of cleaning up after the Gits have done their darndest. It no good complaining that these menaces make such a mess because we have to take responsibility of keeping our street clean and tidy ourselves. We have to stop leaving bags containing food outside where the Git-Gannet Seagull and foxes for that matter make such a mess. If we do not come to terms with this problem ourselves, then RATS will be the next thing taking pizza from our babies. 

My son in law Martin, probably has a woolly scarf that praises the Seagulls but that is because he is a supporter of Brighton and Hove Albion football team bless him! Below Is the Seagulls posh nest.