GULLED

Perhaps I was wrong.

When I was a kid, and looked up to see a v of birds, crossing a wide East Anglian sky, they were geese, or swans.

Now, in the profound, rouged evening skies above Laytham, they are gulls.

When I was a boy, they were called seagulls. Now, they are ubiquitous and are just plain gulls. Ever ingenious, they have copied the geese and their aerodynamic flight tactics. And in they come from shore, ever ready to trawl new inland food sources.

How do they know where to go? The corporation tips which are now their homelands stink, so that is obvious. But there isn't a farmer ploughing anywhere, without a gull entourage.

The skies these last few evenings have been full of v shaped gull commuter trains. The commuters silent, absorbed, well fed.

I look up, hoping for geese. I get gulls.