The gull and the magpie were deep in conversation
Magpie: Well, there is a song about Magpies.
Gull: indeed. Someone once wrote a book with a gull as the title character.
Magpie: And there is another song about Magpies.
Gull: Two songs! Wow! But… every song there is, that ever was, that has ‘girl’ in the title can be sung using the word ‘gull’ instead. Lots of songs.
Magpie: Really. I think most birds have a song or two written about them: Nightingales, Robins, Eagles, Albatrosses (or Albatrossi), Blackbirds, Magpies, so, it’s nothing special.
Gull. True. But the numbers do favour gulls: ‘Gulls just want to have fun’, ‘It’s different for gulls’, ‘Some gulls’, ‘Gulls, gulls, gulls’, and so on.
Magpie: But Magpies are ‘pies’ and everybody loves pies.
Gull: Maggoty Pie? I think not. Everybody loves gulls.
Magpie: I don’t think that ‘everybody’ does love gulls – have you seen all the signs at the seasides and the quaysides? ‘Don’t feed the Seagulls – they are vicious!’
Gull: No such thing as a seagull. We are all just gulls of the sea. Anyway, we’ve just had a bad press. It’s not as if ‘we’ can put up signs saying, ‘Watch out for the people – they are liable to be vicious if you take their ice-creams or pasties!’
They are holding those things aloft for us, and then they get all upset when we accept their offerings. People are so very stupid.
Magpie: You are very persuasive, gull; and, yet, I do believe that Magpies have had (and do have) more poems written about them: ‘Magpie in a Rainbow’, ‘Magpie up a tree’, ‘The Magpie’, and hundreds more!
Gull; Maybe even a dozen.
Magpie: ‘A gull a day keeps the tourist away’:
Gull: You made that up!
Magpie: some of it. But, I dare say there are many more in that vein.
Gull: Probably. I must say that I do ike you, Magpie.
Magpie: Magpies are very likeable birds, once you get to know them.
Gull: As are gulls.
Magpies: unless you’ve ever lost your ice-cream or pasty to one.
Gull: True, very true.
Graeme Sandford 