Every Wednesday you will find me driving to
Barnstaple for an appointment. I leave the
house at 8.15 – 8.30 in the morning to be there for 9.30. Anyone who knows me really well, will realise
that this is not necessarily as easy as it may sound especially when you take
into account that I used to be ‘up with the lark’ every day for countless years
in order to gather up the sleepy daughters from their beds to get them to
school, and then get myself to work for an 8.30 start. However, since moving to
Devon my hours have changed dramatically and I now find myself working quite
often until midnight or 1 or 2 in the morning.
Combine that with my daily medication and problem of not being able to
shut down my brain for the day, bed is not an option until my eyes are literally
shutting before I even attempt to take myself upstairs at night. Hence it means that the lark has been singing
his/her heart out for many hours before I rise from my bed, so basically that
means that a 7.30 am start is more than difficult for me. I usually nap downstairs in the chair on the
evening before my appointment to make sure that I am present and correct for
such an ‘early’ start.
But why am I writing all this? It is actually not pertinent to the point
with regard to the incident that occurred two days ago on my weekly run, but I thought I
would just mention it. I had to stop off
for petrol in Bideford on the way – the easiest option being to divert to the
garage which, although more expensive, is more convenient to get to than
Morrison’s first thing in the morning.
Leaving the main road for habitation, and remembering to keep to the 30
mph speed limit, I found myself approaching a group of birds that had gathered
in the left hand lane and the middle of
the road to dine on something that was laying across the white lines. I have no idea whether it was roadkill, a
sandwich, or something the refuse collectors had left behind, but there was a
group of around 5 crows and a young seagull tucking in. As is often the case these days, the driver
behind me was acting as if they were trying to see what was in my boot and I
was conscious of the fact that if I had to perform an emergency stop for any
reason that they would probably end up actually in the boot of my car, so I found myself in a rather precarious
situation. If these birds did not move –
as their actions seemed to indicate – I would, quite literally, be placed in a life or death
situation.
Then the crows saw sense, and
decided to leave and flew to the sides of the road to await their next
opportunity. The young seagull, however,
decided that it was going to take advantage of this and stayed firmly put to
get a greater helping of the spoils, eyeing my approaching vehicle with disdain
as it continued to tuck in. I could
swear that the crow on the right hand verge was flapping up and down and
calling to the insolent, death-defying youngster to try to get it to move. Anyway, it remained firmly where it was so I
had to slow down without causing tail-gait Charlie to slam into me, and swerved
to the left. I think it was then that the bird flew off – at any rate on my
return journey past the spot after visiting the petrol station, there was no
sign of anything nasty having happened, so I can only presume it had flown to safety. I had always thought that seagulls had better
sense, but this one at least seemed to possess the same lack of intelligence
(or is it just plain ignorance?) in recognising the danger of us humans and our
metal boxes, as do pigeons and pheasants.
I was then treated to the sound of various
seagulls seemingly swearing at me all the time I was at my appointment in
Barnstaple. Or perhaps they were just
thanking me….I would like to think the latter under the circumstances.
