“ Look over there… it’s a seagull!”
My mother and father allowed me to start dating selected young chaps of their approval when I was about 15. My mother said that if any young lad tried to kiss me, I was to say something like “: look at that seagull over there “ and use distraction to curb his enthusiasm of the moment. I tried it very successfully for some time until one young fellow with very persuasive charm made my mind so cluttered and my body so overcome with hormones that I forgot the seagulls, kissed him and ended up bedridden for 6 weeks with glandular fever – what was then known as “ the kissing disease. “
I was reminded that I should have listened to her and I would not have gotten sick.
It certainly cooled my ardour for some time and I took up seagull watching again. I was too frightened to kiss a boy or get close for a goodly while.
I cannot help but think that we are being asked to “ look at the seagull “ these days.
And it isn’t the seagull my mother envisaged.
We are becoming so frightened of getting ill that we no longer touch, engage or celebrate that life we used to embrace. We are so busy looking at seagulls because that seems preferable to risking a sickness that could be brought about by the joy of living a normal life.
The seagulls of the 1970’s were birds that took our chips, bread or fish when we visited the seaside.
But only with our permission. They never swooped down and stole the food from our hands. We gave that piece of bread or that slice of fried potato to them.
Sometimes, we gave it freely. Other times, their sheer numbers made us feel obliged to surrender our food to them.
starving weak and vulnerable refugees weakened by years of malnutrition
Today, in 2020, we are being told to look at the seagulls and then to feed them. But under no circumstances should we have a hug or a kiss lest we succumb to illness.
I doubt that my mother would approve of these imposters who are more dangerous than the young lad with amorous intent and, in some ways, will have more long lasting impact than 6 weeks of bedrest and an interruption to my education.
So we look to the seagulls and we feed them. All of them. Millions and millions of them. And if we don’t watch the seagulls, we will get sick.
refugee landing at Christmas Island hungry and malnourished
These metaphoric seagulls are changing our world from one that used to hold a trembling hand and take a tentative kiss and feel the heart racing joy of a gentle embrace in to one where the fear of getting “ the kissing disease “ ( now known as the covid-19 or wu flu,) is so great that we dare not touch each other or bask in the pleasure of human emotion.
The seagulls of today are taking the form of economic refugees, leftist hate filled media, Marxist politicians and social media trolls. They take the form of middle management “ experts “who recommend that companies change their logos, advertising campaigns and marketing focus to embrace the indoctrination that sadly has overcome common sense.
When I see these young teenage girls cursing and swearing, burning flags, throwing tantrums and demanding to be heard by people who do not want to hear them, I cannot but cast my mind back to my early years and think about what reception I would have gotten, had I tried that behaviour in my youth or adolescence. I know that it would have been given a history lesson and reminded of my duty to something my parents held dear:
personal dignity and integrity.
Young women have become so twisted and demented by indoctrination that they think that all they have to do is scream and demand and they will be given what they want.
The more I have thought about it, as I watch these young females screech, cry, rage and debase themselves and their families; I have to feel a great deal of pity for them. Where did it all go so wrong for them? Why are they so miserable? How have they become so deranged and devoid of rational thinking? Who did this to them?
They appear to have been brought up in what I call the “ Mall mentality “ where retail therapy is just that: therapy. I didn’t have retail therapy as a young woman. I didn’t have therapy, let alone a mall. Shopping was something that was done out of necessity, not to make me feel good. Shopping was to purchase those things that we needed, not wanted.
I write this today because, in some way, we are watching a movie play out where we are being distracted by the seagulls and being forced down a pathway to depriving ourselves of growth because of the fear of catching a bug.
And young, hormonal teenage girls take charge of what should be an adult world.
Had every young teenager in the 70’s and 80’s stopped flirting because of glandular fever, many of you would not be alive today to protest and stop this dreadful thing called love.
So let us please start living again and stop feeding the seagulls.
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