Thomas, Phil And The Brighton Gay Gull Scene.

Finally managed to get onto a computer. It’s not as easy in Brighton as it used to be in London. Back in the day I’d always find an open window somewhere. Down here, not so much. Weekends are a nightmare, and even days like today can prove a right pain in the arse feathers. Council offices are usually a safe bet, but it looks like they’ve all gone off on their summer holidays. It was like Fort Knox everywhere I went this morning. Totally empty with all windows firmly shut. You’ve got to wonder who’s running the joint. Anyway, struck gold with a flat in Shoreham so it’s all good.

The other thing to say is I’ve been jumping around on keyboards for eight whole years telling it how it is for pigeons everywhere, so sometimes these days the feet just aren’t up to it. Know what I mean? Mart tries to help but as always he’s more of a hindrance spending most of his time hopping up and down on the delete button rather than getting any actual words done. If only voice activation was an option. I even tried touch screen with the beak once, but that didn’t work either. Too much spit came out. So it’s keyboards only for me, whether I like it or not.

Looks like the weather’s finally calmed down, which is good. It all went mental yesterday. Initially I hadn’t given a hurricane with a name like ‘Bertha’ much cred, till I tried to fly. Jesus. It was like the whole of autumn in one hit. Not seen rain like that for ages. Precarious stuff too seeing as we’d decided to spend Saturday night under the pier after a lovely sunny day on the beach, only to get woken up at 6am by gale force winds. Nearly lost Mart to France. Kid you not. He said he’d have been fine as he knows how to nod in French. WTF? Let’s face it, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. He’d also have no clue how to get back and would have ended up either in a casserole or in Norway.

Saturday was a top laugh though. The sun was out, the sky was blue and the beach was buzzing with bar-b-qs. The trick was to get in there for the leftovers before the seagulls. Not always easy considering the size of the greedy fucks, till we managed to get two of them onside. Result. Thomas and Phil. They turned out to be pretty good company too.

They’d come down for the Gay Pride event a week ago. It’s a big one on any gay seagulls festival radar, apparently:

Turns out they like the scene so much down here, they’ve decided to stay a bit longer.

“Brighton is where it’s at, Brian.” Said Phil on the right. “We’re actually thinking of moving down here, like, permanently, aren’t we Thomas? We just absolutely love it! Last weekend was wonderful. Like, the best party ever! We had thought about dressing up, hadn’t we Thomas?” Thomas, clearly the quieter of the two, continued to stare out to sea. “But I’m, like, so glad we didn’t. Carrying the costumes would have been a complete nightmare, especially with Thomas’ tiara!” He squealed.

Not wanting to explore the thought of Thomas in a tiara, I asked him where they’d come from.

“Well…” said Phil, with a sigh. “There’s a sorry tale. Kind of, like, everywhere these days. It’s not easy being a seagull and gay I can tell you. There’s still a lot of prejudice out there, even in this day and age. Even in London. Most of the gay gulls in London have moved out to places like Marlow and Bourne End. Pride aside, we’d also heard Brighton has the largest population of gay gulls in the UK and mmmmm, so far, so good. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

Thomas shifted his position slightly. It was the only answer I needed.

I told them I was surprised as I’d always imagined London would be the place to go for gay seagulls, or gay gulls as I now know they’re called.

“I know. You would have thought so, right? We even got poohed on last time we went to Soho. It was really unpleasant, and all we were doing was keeping ourselves to ourselves under a bush.”

Phil and Thomas keeping themselves to themselves under a bush was another image I didn’t want to dwell on.

Great gulls though, and never thought I’d hear myself say that. Said we’d keep in touch and may even hook up later this week. Phil wants to take me to a new club he’s heard about… Not so sure about that one, but the journalist in me definitely wants to find out more about the Brighton gay gull scene. May even explain what some of the noise is about!

Of course Mart now wants a tiara.

Oh dear.