Country diary: the cackling, chip-stealing lords of misrule

Brighton, East Sussex: No sandwich or ice-cream is safe on this beachfront, as herring gulls mob visitors for all they can getGulls, like the people promenading or sitting on the beach here in Brighton, appear more relaxed under an evening sky than at high noon. Earlier today, small factions of herring gulls were in a mugging mood, mobbing a woman and her child so brutally that they dropped their food and fled, stealing a sandwich bite from out of a man's mouth.The anarchy of gulls is impressive. Their direct actions are sudden and intuitively coordinated. They have their own way of living with us that can feel very uncomfortable to those who think nature is benignly self-governing, birds are decorous and the seaside exists for entertainment. When the British population of the European herring gull, Larus argentatus, crashed, to show their appreciation they came to live with us. In his 1958 essay, Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen, Alan Watts quotes the Taoist Chuang-tzu: "Those who would have good government without its correlative misrule ... do not understand the principles of the universe." Gulls are the cackling, car-crapping, collectively scary, chip-stealing spirits of misrule. Continue reading...