THIS SPORTING LIFE

SPORTING LIFE…

England’s painful loss of the World T20 final to the West Indies, from a seemingly impregnable position, was extraordinary. Fascinating, though, that the great onslaught of four sixes to win the game came from one Carlos Brathwaite. That’s not a misprint, but a well-known Caribbean surname, at least in Barbados. Pleasingly, Carlos is indeed a Bajan, and no doubt there are people in West London who will claim him as kin. Last year I buried a dear old member of St.Peter’s called Joyce Braithwaite, but when she had been on the sick list, I had found my colleague Fr.Frank correcting her surname to “Brathwaite”; when challenged, he had told me, “She’s from Barbados, the surname is Brathwaite!” So, one day when I was taking her communion, I asked Joyce about it. Which was it? I asked. So she told me, “Back in Barbados, I was Brathwaite, but when I came to England they wrote it down as Braithwaite, so that’s what I’ve been. I don’t care!” I suspect she was less bothered because there had once been a Mr Brathwaite (long gone). This is a reminder of the time before surnames settled down, when spellings were much more free. The only Brathwaite in the Dictionary of National Biography is a seventeenth century poet, one Richard Brathwaite (apparently the author of the bit of verse which historians cite about the Puritan in Banbury who hanged his cat on Monday for killing a mouse on Sunday). I suspect that historians of Barbados would be able to tell us that some Brathwaite was a plantation owner in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, because of course that is where so many Caribbean surnames came from. Slaves were given the surname of their owner. Slave-names they're sometimes called. I’ve never met a Caribbean Everett, and I rather hope I don’t.

THE GRAND NATIONAL

One of the more irritating features of the lead-up to this year’s Grand National was the repeated assertion from seemingly intelligent people that this was the best field ever in the race. No. It. Wasn’t. I suppose you can say it was the field with the narrowest range of weights, and therefore was composed of 39 horses of a closer standard than ever before, and that the top weights were good horses, so the race was generally of quite a high standard. But the best? No. Certainly not. For one thing, that narrow range of quality is partly the result of restricting the number of runners to forty (sixty-six is the record) and also of lowering the top weight to 11 stone 10 pounds. I agree there were two good horses at the top of the handicap, in Many Clouds (past National winner, and Hennessy Gold Cup) and Silviniaco Conti (twice King George winner), and fair enough, Pineau de Re, past winner, didn’t get a run. But Pineau de Re didn’t get in because he’s no good; he never was. And frankly, a race won by a maiden, with a thirteen-year old in third, doesn’t actually look like the best ever (even if Rule The World was a very high-class maiden). Not the best ever, definitely. Not even the best in my lifetime: in that category I think I’d vote for 1973 or 1975.

Obviously 1973 was Crisp (won a Queen Mother Champion Chase, placed in a Gold Cup) and Red Rum (not yet a triple National winner), but the field also included a dual Gold Cup winner in L’Escargot (who finished third), and Gold Cup-placed and Hennessy-winning Spanish Steps (fourth) and a Whitbread winner in Grey Sombrero. Red Rum won in record time, as well. Arguably, though, 1975 was better, when L’Escargot beat Red Rum (by now a dual National winner, and winner of a Scottish National) with Spanish Steps third, and another former Gold Cup (and King George) winner The Dikler fifth. Also in the field that day were Royal Relief (Queen Mother Champion Chase) and April Seventh (Hennessy Gold Cup), not to mention future National and Scottish National winners in Rag Trade and Barona. So I think that’s a bit thicker in quality than last Saturday.

But in truth the best ever has to have been 1934, the year that Golden Miller won. Golden Miller won five Cheltenham Gold Cups, but hated Aintree. In 1934 he came to Aintree having already won three Gold Cups, the last a fortnight earlier, and he wasn’t even top weight! That was Gregalach, the winner in 1929 and second in 1931, who carried 12 stone 7 pounds. Also giving Golden Miller weight was the magnificent Thomond II, with whom he had regular duels, who had been second in the 1933 Gold Cup. Nor was Golden Miller favourite, that was the previous year’s runner-up, Really True. Also in the field were the 1932 winner Forbra, and Delaneige, fourth in 1933 after running third in the Gold Cup. Back in the thirties the jumping calendar was very different, and the National was so much more valuable than any other race that the best horses did tend to compete in a way they haven’t done in modern times. It’s hard to compare achievements, but that field looks very strong, and the best horses came home in front, in record time. It’s worth pointing out that the fences were a lot harder back then, tougher than in the 1970s, and a world away from today.

My particular beef about the Grand National is that the race has been fundamentally altered by making the course easier, in the interest of safety. Ironically more horses were killed after the safety modifications, because making the fences easier meant that the horses went faster, and as so often, speed kills. There have also been more collisions, because there is no longer a clear easy way and a difficult way to approach the fences. The spectacle remains the same, forty horses jumping slightly outlandish obstacles, but because jumping is no longer the most important factor, the race has become much more open, and much more ordinary. Prior to the modifications of the last few years you could normally narrow down the possible winners to a short list of good jumpers who were genuine stayers.

What am I to say about the Grand National and animal cruelty? Well, I am sickened by the sight of a horse being killed, but it doesn’t only happen there. And the fact is that the horses race and jump because it is in their nature; inasmuch as it isn’t anthropomorphising, it is plain that (at least some) horses jump because they enjoy it. You only had to watch Hadrian’s Approach on Saturday, who had decanted his jockey at the first fence but carried on, having a whale of a time, jumping the fences when he could have run round them, to see the truth of that. So banning horse racing is not so obviously good for horses’ welfare, when they enjoy it. And if it didn’t exist, would the horses exist? No, plainly not. Is existence better than non-existence? Yes, manifestly. But, obviously, humans have a grave responsibility for the way we treat other sentient creatures which are under our control. I don’t think though, that we need say that it’s immoral to use animals for something as trivial as sport. Not least because those animals have a good life as their object, unlike those farm animals whose death is their object. We don’t have to eat meat, we choose to, and so I don’t think we can be too pious about animals in sport.      

FIXING A HOLE

FIXING A HOLE  (WHERE THERE ISN’T ONE)

Astonishingly, Elgin Avenue is being resurfaced, which is causing vast congestion. I suppose we should have spotted the parking suspension notices which would have informed us, but we didn’t, so it came as a surprise this morning. No-one seems to have had any notice; certainly we didn’t. I should have felt pretty foolish (and very angry) if I’d organised a funeral for any time in the next three days. The thing that causes me real bafflement is that Elgin Avenue is very far from being the worst-surfaced road in the neighbourhood; that accolade belongs to Kilburn Park Road, in my view. There were a couple of potholes on that stretch of Elgin Avenue, but they were easily avoided, and shallow, so I don’t really see the problem. Given that builders are putting up speculative flats on the old sorting office site in Lanhill Road it wasn’t brilliant timing, as they now have to reverse their concrete mixers and long flatbed trucks out onto Chippenham Road, as Elgin Avenue is shut to them. Result: chaos.

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

One of the things that struck me when Helen died was how kind people were to me; not so much members of the congregations, of whom it might have been reasonably expected, but people I hardly knew. I had occasion to go to Maida Hill Market a few days after it happened and was stopped by several people saying how sorry they were. Two of the classes at St.Peter’s School all made me cards and sent them over, and then when I went back into school, two months later, I was astonished to be greeted by a nine-year old who said, “Hello, Father Henry. I’m sorry for your loss.” He wasn’t the only one. And now, six months on, I had a local chancer come to the door, asking for help (which I rather ungraciously gave) who, as we parted said, “I was really sorry to hear of what happened to you.” It had never occurred to me that someone like that (terrible phrase) would have even heard about Helen’s death, let alone paid any attention. A humbling moment.

HANDS FREE

Spotted at the bus stop the other day: a young woman in hijab, whose neon-pink headscarf was pulled really tight, and into which was tucked her phone. She was chatting away animatedly while busy with both hands. Very smart. 

LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES

The present government wants to “free” schools from local authority “bureaucracy and interference”. Observe the story from Edinburgh, where schools built under a private finance initiative are found to be structurally unsafe. Who is acting? The local authority. Who else would act? Who else could possibly sort out such a situation? Nevertheless, the government thinks that is unhelpful interference. We might observe that the authority should never have been seduced by the PFI model in the first place, but that is where we are. The response will obviously be that of course the Department for Education would sort out anything like that, but do we really think that a Whitehall civil servant will necessarily do that job more efficiently or expeditiously than a civil servant closer to the action (who may actually have a personal stake in the outcome, and will certainly have a personal stake in the community)?

GOODWILL TO ALL  PEOPLE

On Good Friday the local churches get together, just after noon, to have a service on the piazza at Maida Hill Market. The service lasts half an hour or so, and has never in my experience involved more than about a hundred people. We have been doing it all the time I’ve been here, and I’m told it has been going for twenty years or more, certainly long before the junction became a piazza. Anyway, this year it went off rather well, despite using a really manky little keyboard of ours. We plugged in our microphone to the Italian lunch stall, and a decent atmosphere was generated. We were packing up when a local authority noise officer turned up, because someone had complained. I was rather bemused, and so, to be frank, was the noise officer when he saw our equipment. I concede that the weather was nice enough to have your windows open, but I doubt whether we were particularly audible over the traffic. The stallholders seemed perfectly relaxed about our being there, but I gather that there are liable to be complaints about all sorts of activity on the piazza. Very odd. What may one do on a public space? How much do people have the right to not be irritated, disturbed or offended? And how far does that right override the right of others to free expression and peaceful enjoyment of the public realm? The principle of live and let live seems to me to be essential for urban life, but others don’t seem to agree. Anyway, we forgive you for trying to disrupt our worship, and are sorry we disturbed you. We don’t promise not to do it again!   

BICYCLE RACE

BICYCLE RACE

The path through Kensington Gardens on which you are allowed to cycle from west to east (from the Broad Walk to the Serpentine Gallery) was closed for months. I kept on forgetting, and having to go down to Kensington Road and brave the traffic. Now it has re-opened, and I used it last week. I had supposed that major works had taken place, perhaps connected to the Mayor’s East-West Cycle Superhighway, which the Royal Parks resisted so strongly; but no. The changes were minor but annoying. Strips of cobbles had been inserted into the tarmac at intervals to make it uncomfortable for cyclists (not to mention people with buggies or wheelchairs). There are very few paths through the Park that cyclists are allowed to use, and it seems simply malicious to make that one actively uncongenial. I suppose someone perceives a conflict between cyclists and pedestrians and thinks therefore cyclists should be slowed down, but that is simply unjust, because the pedestrians can walk anywhere (including on the grass) whereas we cyclists are confined to one path. And frankly it’s likely not to work, because if there are people who cycle dangerously (which I have never seen there) then they are quite likely to use other paths with no cobbles, which will actually be worse for pedestrians.

BLAME BORIS

It’s amusing that everyone calls the “Santander Cycles” “Boris bikes”, because although they weren’t his idea (but Ken’s) his name has stuck, and now they are gradually moving from being regarded as a helpful asset to being a bloody nuisance. Not necessarily what the great self-promoter wants to be associated with. The trouble is that there are now so many that they are causing congestion, and in west London at any rate they are mostly ridden by tourists, who are a menace. Last week in the Park I encountered a group of 12 visitors trying to ride all together, some barely able to ride at all. Almost all tourists are used to being on the wrong side of the road, and so are inherently at risk on UK streets, and many of the ones I see seem not to have ridden in years. They almost never go singly, and rarely with any sense of purpose, so if you do actually have to get somewhere (or just want to go at your own speed) they are a major frustration. Of course they’re a Good Thing, but don’t pretend they’re anything to do with lessening congestion, because they are now causing it.

LOCAL CELEBRITY

 

It was an unpleasant shock to see one of our primary schools on the television news last year, because Mohammed Emwazi, “Jehadi John”, was a former pupil of St.Mary Magdalene’s. Now each time there is a follow-up article they use his school photo. The Sunday Times Magazine recently did a big feature, with a second school photo as well as a picture of the school gates, and a general theme of trying to say how this pleasant little boy turned into a monster. For locals (most of whom don’t read the Sunday Times, to be fair) it’s not quite so bad, because of course the family never actually lived here, on the Estate, so it wasn’t actually us. This is one of the things you learn gradually about London, that there are very local loyalties, and the sense of belonging is often restricted to a very narrow area. So, given that the Emwazi family lived on the Mozart Estate (oh, two parishes away) it’s all rather foreign to us. As an illustration, one of my churchwardens has just moved back to her childhood home in what she calls Ladbroke Grove, and been welcomed back like the returning prodigal by people to whom she has clearly been effectively dead through years of living in Harrow Road. Perhaps they’re a mile apart. So, although it’s a source of discomfort for the school, the connection doesn’t seem to ring many bells locally. It was, after all, a long time ago, and there’s practically no-one left at the school who was connected with it at the time (maybe one of my fellow-governors), and in any case the population of the area has changed enormously. That’s the other thing we have to learn, that the “churn” of population in central London is vast and very rapid.  

Thank You For The Days

Thank you for the days…

And so Helen died.

I’m sorry these blogs were interrupted six months ago, but I was a bit preoccupied. I was determined that this wasn’t going to be another “living with cancer” blog, but it turned out that there wasn’t time for that anyway. Four months after diagnosis (on general election day, of all days) Helen died, rather to the shock of everyone looking after her. It had been concluded four days earlier that there was no more that the Charing Cross Hospital could do, and so they arranged for her to go to the excellent hospice in St.John’s Wood. I was expecting to meet her there on 4^th September, but instead found myself called to the Charing Cross where she was fading away.

I was very sorry that she had to die in hospital, as she really wanted to be home, or in the hospice. She wanted to say goodbye to Casimir, our cat, who is still a bit confused. You could see that he was expecting someone else to come through the door whenever I came home. But apart from that I can say with confidence that she made a good death. In the last few days Helen was in a better place psychologically and spiritually than I can ever remember, which was very good. She had made her peace with her mother, and explained to her brother how their mother had blighted her life. She forgave me for everything. She had found a real sense of the presence of God, and really said her prayers. A week or so before she died she, the most sceptical of people, had a vision. This wasn’t morphine (she wasn’t on much and didn’t see anything else) nor was it a dream. She saw Jesus, standing in front of a tree, accompanied by the Blessed Virgin Mary and Blessed Mother Teresa; she knelt in front of him and he put his hands on her shoulders and asked if she wanted life. She said, “Yes” in reply. That was it. She was entirely at peace after that.

“I don’t want anyone at my funeral,” she had always said, and repeated in the last weeks, but finally she explained that she meant that she didn’t want people coming to the crematorium; she accepted that some people might want to come to the requiem in church. Indeed they did, some three hundred or so of them. The fact that she had received a hundred and fifty get well cards had actually got through to her the fact that people cared about her, she finally accepted that people meant their good wishes and weren’t just doing it out of a sense of duty, which was what she’d been taught to think. I think we gave her a good send-off; she had asked that Fr Bill Jacob, the recently retired Archdeacon of Charing Cross, should take the service and preach, which he very kindly did, and our old friend Jonathan Baker, now Bishop of Fulham, presided in the old fashioned way. Our excellent organist, James, got in a soloist to sing the pieces Helen wanted, and we sang the hymns she asked for. It was a High Mass in white and went beautifully. As a piece of liturgy, it worked.

So now, I thank God for the days we had together, and especially for the fun we had in the last months. There were simple pleasures, but there were also a couple of outings, when she allowed herself time off, because of course she kept working up until the end. We went to Birmingham to see BRB dance “The King Dances” which was a brilliant spectacle and which she thought was a very successful new ballet. Then a week before she went into hospital the last time we went to stay for a night at a hotel in Hertfordshire and went to Paradise Wildlife Park where she so enjoyed seeing the big cats, especially of course the wonderful snow leopards.

There’s a poem by Pablo Neruda, which translates as “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” but actually I still find writing these words very hard. That’s a poem about a lover who left, and the Kinks’ “Days” (in my title) is the same; I find them curiously suitable for the loss of a beloved to untimely death.  

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

There’s a chap who lives on the estate who has for years been nagging me about our war memorial. The war memorial is technically a wayside Calvary, that is a statue of Christ on the cross (under a little canopy) standing beside the street outside the church; it was erected in the 1920s to the designs of Martin Travers, who was the leading furnisher of Anglo-Catholic churches at that time. It’s a fine example of Travers’s semi-baroque style and a noble monument, but at the moment it's undeniably scruffy. 

The trouble is that Travers was neither an architect nor an engineer (though he did actually build a couple of churches) and in constructing our Calvary he committed a significant error. The figure of Christ is in cast iron (and was originally gilded) and hangs from a heavy oak cross, which emerges from a plinth on a stone bench, constructed  against the low brick retaining wall. Now if this was all happening in a churchyard it would be simple, because the foot of the cross would be buried in the ground, presumably sheathed in lead and sunk in concrete, but that’s not how it is here. The retaining wall, which is part of the church’s structure, closes an area which serves as a light well for the sacristy, which is below street level, so there is no ground in which to bury the cross; there is a sheer ten-foot drop immediately behind the retaining wall. Travers’s solution to this problem was to take down the retaining wall and rebuild it with a large cast iron beam at its base, into which he fixed the foot of the cross. That is all the fixing that the Calvary has.

Travers’s error was really twofold: the figure of Christ was so heavy that it would gradually pull the wooden cross forwards, and the cast iron beam would eventually rust. If he had provided another fixing point, anchoring the upper part of the crucifix to the wall of the church, then the whole structure would have been given much more stability, albeit at the expense of beauty, but he did not. Some fifteen years ago the Calvary was observed to be leaning forwards over the pavement and it was discovered that the cast iron beam had rusted badly, causing cracks in the brickwork of the retaining wall and the stone of the bench. The temporary solution was to erect a cradle of scaffolding to hold the Calvary up. That lime green painted scaffold has remained, a constant reproach to those of us who in the meantime have had to raise money to give the church a new roof, new electrical installation and new drains (all of which were felt to be more pressing than a war memorial). It looks really scruffy and gives quite the wrong message, and I don’t blame the chap who gives me grief about “not looking after Jesus”. Now, though, we are in the middle of securing the funding, not merely to make the war memorial secure, but hopefully to restore it to its former glory. I’ve tried to tell the chap this, but he sees no action taking place.

A few weeks ago I was pushing Helen across the Green in her wheelchair, on our way back from a pleasant outing in the Park, and I spotted the chap, who started haranguing me. He shouted to me that he commanded me to make Jesus look nice again, and that I shouldn’t paint Jesus gold, but black, because my house was full of gold, which was a bit of a surprise. He angrily denounced me for “profiting from a prophet” and yelled that he would pray that someone in my family should get cancer. Helen replied, “You’re too late! I’ve already got it!” but he didn’t pay any attention to that. He stalked off, still shouting abuse. Clearly he hadn’t been taking his medication, or something had upset him, and he was particularly unwell that morning, but the encounter was unsettling, and of course very upsetting to Helen.

A couple of weeks later, when Helen was in hospital, as I cycled off to get the morning paper I thought I saw something odd about the war memorial, and made a mental note to check it out when I got back. As I crossed Bourne Terrace my attention was struck by what seemed to be a tall, tanned lady with long black hair and bare feet, wearing an asymmetric black dress, and I thought, “Never seen her before.” When I came back with my paper I saw that the scaffolding around the war memorial seemed to be hung with washing, which seemed odd but harmless, so I didn’t investigate further. As I passed by later I spotted someone sleeping on the pavement in front of the war memorial, and assumed that explained the clothes. It was a sunny morning, and I thought it was hardly necessary to wake them up. At lunchtime I saw the clothes were still there and thought I really ought to investigate later, but my lunch was interrupted; the chap came hammering on my door and shouting, “There’s somebody has hung up his washing all over Jesus, and it’s a disgrace! You’ve got to do something! It’s disrespectful! It’s terrible! I’ll tell him he can’t do that!” To which I replied that I was busy just now, but he had my permission to say that to whoever it was, so he went off to do just that. A few minutes later came another knock on the door, this time from the owner of the clothes.

He turned out to be from Tenerife, very tanned, and with attractive, wavy, shoulder-length black hair, and his name was Luis. He told me that he had been cycling along the canal towpath the previous night when he had fallen into the canal. Obviously all his clothes were soaked, and he had looked for a suitable place to bed down for the night, and had (somewhat unwisely) chosen the bench in front of the war memorial. The police had found him there, and finding him neither drunk nor stoned had given him a blanket. Clearly it was him I had seen, presumably draped in the blanket, on Bourne Terrace. I said his clothes were not a problem, but asked him to be very careful and not to climb up on the scaffolding because it wasn’t safe. I apologised that the chap had given him a hard time, and he said it didn’t matter, as Jesus Christ had given him the grace to accept people as they were. “And I think he is … mentally ill,” he said, touching the side of his head in the international gesture. I concurred and silently gave thanks for charity and gentleness. He assured me he would be moving on when his clothes were dry, and sure enough he was gone by teatime.

I do hope the engineer comes soon to secure the war memorial, though.

I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE

I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE

Years ago (back in the early 80s) there used to be a bike racing team sponsored by DAF trucks; the great Roger de Vlaeminck rode for them in the latter stages of his career. I thought it an incongruous sponsorship at the time, because unlike Renault (who owned Gitane bikes) and Peugeot (who had always made bikes) there seemed no connection to the world of cycling, and indeed, some inherent conflict of interest. I was reminded of them the other day as I drove through Notting Hill (where I would normally be cycling) with a DAF truck filling my rear-view mirror. Now, of course, in London we are sharply aware of the mismatch between bikes and trucks.

Acute Irony

One of the ironies of being a cyclist in London is seeing the tipper trucks advertising Cycle Training UK, which is an organisation delivering safety training around cycling. The irony is that the lorries concerned belong to G.F.Gordon Plant Hire, who, working for CrossRail, have been involved in more cycling fatalities than any other operator. This feels like a very egregious case of victim-blaming. I know Gordons have some “tips for drivers” stickers on their lorries, as well as “tips for cyclists”, and are sending their drivers on courses with Cycle Training UK, but it does feel a bit odd to be lectured from the side of a lorry as it threatens you. The message seems to be that if only cyclists behaved better then they would be safe.

Acute Injury

The fact is, though, that while some London cyclists have died recently after making unwise manoeuvres, others have simply been mown down by lorries while cycling perfectly normally. Gordons are, I am sure, one of the better operators, and are perfectly sincere about this, but others in their industry seem less keen to face up to their responsibilities. It is scandalous that drivers with driving convictions are employed to drive HGVs, but it seems to be regarded as unreasonable to point this out. Drivers still omit to signal when turning left (or have non-functioning indicators), and I’m afraid I had an example of that just here the other day, from a Gordons truck! Too often drivers will sit in a queue at lights and only turn on their indicator when the lights change, which is not much help to the cyclist on the inside of a vehicle she thought was going straight on. Yes, perhaps we shouldn’t creep up through lines of stationary traffic, but drivers get very vexed if we occupy a car’s-worth of road space and then don’t instantly move out of their way. And sometimes, to be honest, cyclists are trying to get to the cycle refuge in front of the queue, which is meant to be safe.

Why Exactly?

The point which the haulage industry doesn’t seem to want to address is that the design of European trucks is simply unsafe, for pedestrians as well as cyclists. It would be interesting to learn why exactly our trucks are designed with such poor visibility, because it surely doesn’t have to be that way. How is it, for instance, that American trucks have quite differently-designed cabs from ours?

Sympathy for the (old) devil

Extraordinary sight the other day: a large plain, blue lorry, bearing the name “Ronnie Wood Ltd”. It turned out to be delivering new chiller cabinets to Waitrose in Bayswater (which is being rebuilt). Ronnie Wood, I thought? Chiller cabinets seem a very prosaic trade for a Rolling Stone to get into, a long way from rhythm guitar. Perhaps he’s fallen on hard times? Should we organise a whip-round? Somehow I imagine not.   

Jonathan Livingston...

JONATHAN LIVINGSTON…

You could tell it was midsummer when a series of “killer seagull” stories appeared in the news, because it seems to have happened pretty much every year recently. There is a widespread belief (in British cities) that gulls have recently invaded cities and are becoming much more common here. Every summer there are new reports of people having sandwiches and ice creams snatched from their hands by marauding gulls, and now those are emerging from city centres. Now the contention that gulls are invading our urban areas might be true, though the evidence is not clear, because whatever the RSPB may say, the statistics around bird populations over time are pretty shaky, but I cannot help thinking that there’s something else going on here. If I were to remark that seagulls were swarming into London it might make the connection clear.

The rooftops of Paddington

From Helen’s room on the eighth floor of St.Mary’s Hospital I was intrigued to see what was evidently a gulls’ nest. Two gulls kept returning to the same bit of roof, high up on top of the Cambridge Wing, and after a while I caught sight of their baby; well, I called it a baby, but more properly a juvenile, as its body was nearly as large as its parents, but it lacked a tail (so it looked like those odd birds you see in Egyptian hieroglyphics). Baby would stomp around his little roof and do a frenetic nodding routine when his parents were returning, presumably prompting them to feed him, which they did, regurgitating stuff dutifully. The thought occurred as to what on earth the parents were regurgitating for the baby; when you see them beside the sea, it’s fish, that’s obvious, but in Paddington? The only fish was likely to be the battered variety, with chips.

Scavengers with a social purpose

The thought of regurgitated chicken nuggets was a rather scary one, but of course gulls are scavengers. Herring gulls (which these were) are opportunist feeders, so not true scavengers (like kites or vultures) but liable to eat anything that presents itself. You can well imagine that in the tourist territory of central London there is actually plenty of potential food that presents itself, and see that they may very well be performing a useful social function by consuming rubbish (because if they don’t do it, the chances are that the rats will). So why do we get so agitated about them? Perhaps because we don’t like their manners; they’re noisy and rather pushy, aggressive even, and so they frighten us. But watching the pair of herring gulls and their solitary baby, I found myself sympathizing far more with them. In the abstract I can go along with those who write about invading seagulls, but when I actually saw a herring gull family unit I found my allegiance shifting.

Back in the day

That classic 1970s text “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” was just going out of fashion when I was a student, but you still saw it on people’s shelves, and I fear I heard lots of the soundtrack album, because it was everywhere at one time. The book is a fable, with gulls standing for people, and it’s basically a sort of sub-Sufi self-improvement manual, but with all the faith and discipline removed (so very much of its time). I think our commentators are using gulls in a similar way, but for a very different end, in the contemporary discourse around the “seagull invasion”.

Birds and words

Those interested in birds will be aware that “seagulls” are not actually a species, but a generalising term, a bit like “migrants”. What I watched from that hospital window were not marauding seagulls, but a family group of herring gulls. Just so, when you actually get to meet a “migrant” you will find that they are an individual human being, with an individual story. It’s easy to demonize both birds and people, if you don’t understand their way of life very well, and make them live on rubbish dumps (for what else is “The Jungle” outside Calais?) and keep on regarding them as aggressive aliens. Actually, there have always been herring gulls in British cities, just as we have always had migrants. Yes, absolute numbers may be a problem just now, but do we really have more herring gulls than Germany, or migrants?