Mirth and Woe: Seagulls

Mirth and Woe: Seagulls

In 1942 and the early part of 1943, Barnes Wallis came down to Weymouth. There, he and his airborne chums tested the revolutionary bouncing bomb in the Fleet Lagoon behind the village of Wyke Regis, not 400 yards away from where I would, one day, send my children to school.

Aside from the tremendously tenuous coincidence that I was taught maths - quite badly, as it turned out - by Barnes Wallis's flawed genius of a son, it appears that the local wildlife watched and learned from the great man's experiments in targeting. For sixty years later, on the very same spot, came woe.

Allow me to hand over control of this tale of mirth and woe to Number One Son, who is excellent:

Hello. I am Scaryduck Jr, and I am still excellent.

Yesterday was my last ever day in Junior School, and I am now free of that dump until I start at an even bigger dump in September. Now that I am no longer there, it is safe to tell you this story.

It was a sunny afternoon less than a week ago. We were in our last term at school, and virtually every day was an outing to our new schools, primary college week at Weymouth College and a chance to play on what my Dad insists on calling the hallowed turf of Weymouth Football Club, whatever that means.

Don't listen to him. He is very mad.

One afternoon, we arrived back in school from an outing to find that the Year Five pupils were in our classrooms meeting their new teachers for next term. Some lucky people are getting Mr Payne-in-the-bum, who is a part-time magician and boy band singer, who is hoping to win the X Factor.

Our headmaster came out and made us sit in lines in the playground, and we had to wait quietly until the Year Fives were finished. He is a terrible Spurs supporter, just like my best friend Jim. My Dad says this is a life choice he made at an early age, which doesn't make him a bad person. Dad says he would still wee on him if he was on fire, because he's nice like that.

Anyway, as we sat waiting, a load of seagulls that live on the school roof flew down and started pecking at our school lunches. We have special trolleys where we put our lunches in the mornings, and these are wheeled out at lunchtimes and at the end of the day.

Our terrible seagulls know there's food on the trolleys, and as soon as our backs are turned will come along and try to steal what they can. Before we knew it, there were at least six birds pecking at Jim's half-open Tottenham lunchbox, doubling its value.

The Head heard the squawking with his incredible teacher's ears that can hear a whisper at the back of a classroom, and turned to shoo the seagulls away.

"Shoo!" he said to them, waving his arms in the air, "Shooo-oo-ooo!"

It was a pair of shoos.

The birds knew they were in trouble, and with a flap off their wings, they were away. All except one, stupidly brave seagull. Instead of making for its nest on the school roof, it took off like a rocket, and flew straight at the Head's head.

"Squaaaaaaawk!" it said, before peeling away at the last moment.

People who live in Weymouth keep telling me that it is good luck to get pooped on by a seagull. They must be complete mentals because until I saw what happened next, I couldn't think of anything worse.

The seagull swooped right over the Head, and let go with the biggest spurt of poop I had ever seen in my life. The Head was looking up, and he got it right in the face.

No. I am wrong. He got it right in the mouth.

"Mwaaaaaargh!" he said, wavng his arms about like a big, bald windmill.

"MWAAAAAAAAAAARGARGLE!"

We did a great big LOL. Some of us also did a ROFL, too, which just made him worse.

"MWAAAAAARGH! I suppose you think that's funny!" he shouted, spitting white bits all over the playground.

Yes. Yes we did.

Then he ran away to be sick in a hedge.

Now back to my awful Dad to tell you what he saw of this most excellent spectacle.

So. There I was sitting on a low wall in the Boy's school playground, waiting for the Head to usher the kids into their classroom and then let them finish for the day. Utter waste of time. The kids are there. Their coats and bags are in the cloakroom, and their lunchboxes are all sitting on the seagull-infested lunch trolley.

My mind is elsewhere, however.

Although I am a happily married man, and am above such behaviour, I find myself distracted by the sight of one of the other parents. Not exactly what I'd call a Yummy Mummy (the only Yummy Mummy I know being, of course, the fragrant Mrs Duck, who is the Yummiest Mummy, ever), the Sigourney Weaver lookalike was parading around the school playground in a mini-skirt that can only be described as a particularly wide belt.

Directly in front of me, and in the full sight of several other parents - both male and female - she bent over to pick up a carelessly discarded sweet wrapper in a display of public spirit that cannot go unrewarded in these environmentally conscious times. She bent over, revealing a pair of utterly bare, peachy - yet slightly sagging - buttocks. It would be a full moon that night, dear reader, for S. Weaver-a-like was going commando.

On the Scaryduckworth-Lewis Scale of Rating Things for Excellence, I would have given them an average score of 11: Susie Dent in shiny black rubber mini-dress, looking up swears in the dictionary while Carol Vorderman rubs herself against a bollard for 'one easy, monthly payment' , for there was a spot on the right one. This cost dearly in the points department, for 16: Kate Humble in a wet T-shirt competition clearly beckoned.

"Meep!" I said.

"Jesus!" said a shocked female voice.

"Meep!" I said again, noting a couple of spider's legs appearing between her legs.

"Jesus! It's an arse!"

"Farp!"

"Oh, you smelly moo."

Meanwhile, not far away, all hell was breaking loose. The Headmaster appeared to be flailing about in his apparent death-throes, while the best part of fifty kids were screaming with laughter.

Couldn't have been that interesting.

For I saw a lady's back bottom. And it spoke to me.