Death (Almost) By Seagull

I always thought that I’d handle a family emergency with some degree of poise, a modicum of grace. Cool, calm, collected - looking for all the world like a proper adult who had their shit together.

I’d be there like Sarah Connor in Terminator (my lifelong role model for anything physically badass), walking towards the camera with a kid slung over each shoulder and a grenade launcher clenched between my teeth. Huge fireball in the background and the sound of sirens filling the air.

If, say, there was some unforeseen natural disaster or an alien ship started firing lasers down then I had always liked to think that I’d be the one thinking on my feet, ushering my children into a disused sewer to hide from the swarm of giant hornets/pack of zombies/fast-growing carnivorous grapevines.

So when the kids and I were attacked by seagulls in Dorset last week nobody was more surprised and ashamed than I was that the adult in charge (me) completely lost the plot. And I mean I was barely able to function. My ability to think or act rationally totally disappeared. Never mind poise and grace and Sarah Connor in Terminator, I seemingly had the same in-built peril protocol as an overstrung rabbit.

In my defence, the bastard birds were quite literally dive-bombing us and trying to rip ice cream cones straight from our hands, but still. I was useless. The idea I’d always had that I’d wrestle an alligator “if it was really required” suddenly became less of a solid promise to myself and more of a ‘meh, it would depend on a number of circumstances’ kind of deal. One of the circumstances being: is there not anyone else here who would be suited to the job? Someone who would be…less likely to die?

I now know that if a situation arose in which I needed to wrestle an alligator I would panic to such an extent that I’d probably have a fatal heart attack. On the spot. Seagulls are enough of a trauma. Actually, maybe seagulls are worse. In they come, swooping down violently from behind you like huge prehistoric flying monsters, so rapid, so beaky, so determined. Catching you completely off guard. Because who expects danger to come from above? You’re at the beach, for crying out loud! It’s not as though you’re trekking the rainforest or visiting a butterfly farm. (The latter being mildly horrifying for other reasons.)

There’s something about wingèd pests and predators that freaks me out more than anything that gallops, slithers or scuttles across land. It’s the fact that they operate in an entirely different dimension - a dimension that is almost infinite in comparison to the single plane we’re stuck to as humans. Winged creatures can come at you with virtually no warning and from endless angles. Pigeons - the bane of my London Life - are bad enough, the way they spring up from the ground just as you’re about to step onto them rather than clearing the way in good time, but seagulls. Crikey. Vicious.

Anyway, I did not respond to this sudden air raid in a sophisticated way: I screamed and looked wildly around me hoping that there would be somebody with more authority who might intervene. Surely the holidaying crowds would see that a crisis was unfolding before their eyes? The sound of the wings was deafening, the white and grey feathers were flashing constantly and rapidly in front of my eyes, it felt as though the entire sky had darkened and time had stood still. Surely somebody would come to our rescue?

Nobody moved in or got involved. Just my husband, a man who has no tolerance whatsoever for people (like me) who panic in situations he might deem to be non-life-threatening.

‘Just keep on moving and head for the car!’ he bellowed across the picnic area. ‘Stop circling your arms about!’

But it was OK for him, because a) he wasn’t holding an ice cream and so wasn’t being repeatedly and violently attacked by seagulls b) he didn’t have assumed responsibility of the children. I had taken them to the ice cream hut, I had walked them back across the road to the picnic area and so to all intents and purposes the children were solely my charge. The husband had the completely non-challenging, totally danger-free task of "looking after the dog”.

There are few things more infuriating than someone shouting unhelpful instructions at you from a place of relative safety and comfort.

‘We can’t keep on moving though can we?’ I screeched as a new gull came in to take a stab at my nine year-old’s double scoop of mango sorbet. ‘GUARD YOUR CONES!’ I screamed at my kids, ‘hunch over and GUARD! Hunch and guard! Hunch and guard!’

We tried to run-walk along the road, bent double, the gulls still flying at us with claws outstretched.

‘You need your backs to a wall,’ mansplained a man, casually, as we reached the other end of the picnic area. He was a different man to my husband but no less astute. ‘The gulls fly in from behind so if you have a wall behind you…’

‘Well there isn’t a bloody wall is there?’ I said. But then suddenly there was a wall.

‘Stand with your backs to the wall!’ I wailed at the kids, ‘hurry! Backs to the wall!’

‘‘What are you doing?’ said my husband, striding over. ‘Don’t just stand there, let’s get to the carpark!’

‘They can’t swoop us if we have our backs to the wall!’ I said, as two more seagulls did indeed swoop at us, just from the front instead of the back. One of them snatched the top scoop of sorbet from the nine-year old’s ice cream cone.

‘My sorbet!’ she screamed.

‘THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL US!’ I cried.

‘Just get to the car park, for God’s sake,’ said Mr There’s No Apparent Danger, taking the ice cream cone I had thrust towards him (the culinary experience had been sullied for me by this point), ‘walk fast and all of you stop screaming.’

God, the stress. It’s amazing I’m still with you, if I’m quite honest. Anyway the point of this post was to ask at what age you’re supposed to turn into an actual functioning adult. You know, the type of adult that manages to open the door of a train they’re disembarking without first pressing the button that opens the sliding door to the toilet and looking shocked and confused when the stinking lavatory facilities slowly reveal themselves. The type of adult that don’t get stuck in items of clothing in shop fitting rooms, necessitating full intervention from the store assistants and, sometimes, the use of scissors. When do things change?

I’m forty-four in November: tell me I’ll be grown-up by then…

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(Seagull Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash)