Bin bags

Originally published 26 July 2010

Around this time I was commuting to work by train. Hastings early in the morning is not a pretty sight - those first few hours before the clean-up squads get to work belong to the seagulls, and there’s nothing they enjoy more than tearing apart a bin bag to get at the tasty morsels inside.

The dustbins are a bit of shorthand scene setting - they’re based on the ones Top Cat and his gang used to live in. There are no real dustbins in Hastings, everyone has been forced to use Wheelybins instead, something which explains the preponderance of bin bags and the resulting very fat seagulls in the town.

Back to the storyline

Originally published May 7, 2010

This firmly establishes the gulls as being at the top of the pecking order in this strip, mainly because of their ability to peck.

Blee!

Originally published: Feb 19, 2010

Never anger a seagull. Never. You can tell the cars of the people in our street who have made that mistake. They're now completely white. Including the windows.

Predate predate

Originally published: Feb 17, 2010

I like the sound effects I've used here: "sneak sneak" and "predate predate", a trick I borrowed from Frank Dickens Bristow. More about that in this post.

This strip has clouds in it. I now tend to keep my skies cloudless because I want to have backgrounds that bring the mainly uncoloured characters into relief, rather than blend in with them.

This is my first gull. Living on the coast, I tend to treat gulls as feathery thugs, the kind that will nick your chips and then shit them all over your car, just because they can. If seagulls ever develop talons, mankind is doomed.

For a more positive cartoon strip about a gull, take a look at Piers bakers delightful Ollie and Quentin.

A flock of seagulls

No, not the band that were 60% hair lacquer and 40% wheezy synth music. This is the real thing.

Yesterday I decided to get some sausages and chips from the chip shop (the Blue Dolphin in the Old Town - one of Hastings' many fabulous chippies) and eat them on the beach. On the way over there I dropped a sausage, so I put it to one side - I'd throw it away as soon as I came across a waste bin.

Then the seagulls saw me. Maybe it was the white newsprint the chips were wrapped in that attracted them. It started off with one hovering beside me. Then another, and another. By the time I'd reached the waves there were about 20 malevolent white birds following me, riding the breezee and waiting for their moment.

I sat on the beach and ate. The birds settled in a flock in front of me and watched. Finally there was just the dropped sausage left. I decided to break one of the big rules of seaside living - the one that goes DO NOT FEED THE GULLS.

I tore off a bit of sausage and threw it into the air. All the gulls were suddenly aloft and one of them caught the sausage in mid air. On the second bit of sausage I made a discovery. It is possible to chuck a bit of sausage into the melée, bounce it off one gull's head, and still have another catch it and eat it. I discovered I was able to set up a chain reaction - by the time I ran out of sausage I managed set a record of getting the sausage to ricochet off three separate gulls before the fourth caught it and ate it.

Most amazing of all. As soon as I ran out of sausage, the gulls settled down onto the beach and ignored me. I was allowed off the beach without being mobbed.

Maybe it was my attitude towards the gulls that saved me. They knew I wasn't afraid of them, and I gave them their tribute in the end. I've seen gulls mob terrified tourists for their chips - I won't be doing it again.

This entire run of strips was based on a pair of seagulls I saw on Rock-a-Nore, the road that runs in the strip between the cliffs and the fishing beach, fighting over a fish head and totally oblivious to the traffic that was backed up on either side of them trying to get past without flattening them.

The vanishing gull

If this was inspired by anything it would be those moments in Tom and Jerry Cartoons where Tom would think something was behind him, but could never look behind him quick enough to see Jerry with a baseball bat/frying pan/grandfather clock ready to bash him. Imagine music between each frame going diddle diddle dee, as Smudge changes position.