Little Man versus gulls

I treated H.I. by letting her out of the cupboard and taking her on a trip to Aldi the other day. That's two trips to cut-price supermarkets in one week. I spoil her.

We have a little man around, clearing the roof and gutters of all the moss that the gulls bring up. This is now a twice yearly job - once in the Spring and again in the Autumn after they have reared another bunch.

When she was young and I was younger too, she used to spend most of the summer lying up on our roof getting so brown that she could pass for a proper Romany without a painted caravan, but dressed in Armani rather than the big skirts and woven shawls that they all wear these days.

Those days are over, partly because of heightened awareness of the detrimental effects of prolonged  exposure to sunlight, but mainly because of the bloody gulls. Our council did everything they could to rid the city of the charming and entertaining Starlings that gave spectacular impersonations of flying smoke at dusk, but nothing to stop the gulls from completely taking over the centre of town, shitting on everything, but mainly my car.

The gulls played a good trick on councils when getting themselves on the protected species list by vacating rural coastlines and moving into towns and cities where all the kebab joints are. Our roofs are now their cliffs and they are fiercely contested for six months of the year, day and night.

I used to like the little Black-Headed gulls, but they were scared off by the Black-Backed bullies who are now - in turn - being evicted by the stronger Herring variety.

The only thing that comes even close to a redeeming feature is that gulls pair-up and mate for life. So do human neighbours from Hell, who are also protected despite their gull-like anti-social behaviour.

There was talk about feeding them with contraceptives (the gulls, not the neighbours) to at least temporarily halt the rise in population, but this was probably too expensive and might have affected other species which we quite enjoy having around.

Feral pigeons are a nuisance, but nothing compared to aggressive and noisy gulls. I look on the pigeons in the same way that I look on the junkies who find themselves homeless because of their addiction - or vice versa - some become addicted to junk after becoming homeless. It softens the streets.