Ali and the gulls

This is a story about Ali the Hat, an ecologist. It's set in the Spring.

Ali catches the same train as me some nights. On these occasions we go for beer. He hates the word but he's what you and I would call a bit of a twitcher. Always ecstatic about a buzzard or some flight of jackdaws.

Bath Spa is fine old Brunel, with iron pillars on the two platforms supporting peaked glass roofs. Looking up you can't say you see the sky - more a guano brightness. I never paid this glass roof any attention until Ali pointed out the strange view of seagulls' bottoms one gets through it. Directly against the glass their yellow feet are crisp, then the legs disappear into a shadow wiggling its provocative tail.

So Ali and I were in the habit of calmly regarding seagulls' blurry bums while awaiting our train. No more. Over the last month all the Platform 2 seagulls - our gulls - have transfered to Platform 1 across the tracks. We could see them there, strutting the roof in the sun. Just not from the right angle.

Ali can't let it alone. Why have they abandoned him? Before we'd trundle back through the gorgeous countryside, smugly griping about work and pointing out natural phenomena through the window - newly shorn sheep, maggots of the field - until we'd settled on a dominant theme for the evening's drinking.

Not any more. Ali just gets stuck straight into the seagulls. They've gone to Platform 1 and there's no explaining it. I suggest they get more evening sun over there. Ali shakes his head. I suggest they're tired of him gazing at their bottoms. Ali doesn't even crack a smile. The man spends his days ticking biodiversity checkboxes for corporates. I think he's reached a tipping point. I think he's seeing an ecological significance where there are only gulls.

This evening Ali wasn't on the platform. I wandered up to the end where the construction is going on. Once a parking lot, soon to be the six restaurants that will make up Bath's New Dining Quarter. A re-paved paradise. Two teenage girls on a bench are excited to be going somewhere better, but express it by frowning and out-texting each other. Stupid kids.

I examine the scaffolding. My brother needs a two meter length of aluminium tubing for the windmill on his boat. Is scaffolding actually aluminium these days? This lot looks it.

My train is announced just as the squawking starts above Platform 1. Seagull sex. The male gull is inept: he keeps falling off. The female scurries forward a few steps raising a racket, then stops to let him on again. He tries his balance, angry concentration writ across his bill. And falls off. The girls have stopped texting. The fat one is filming it on her phone. They're laughing. Everyone on Platform 2 is.

Ali's in the pub when I get off the train. I tell him about it. Those people over on Platform 1 must've had quite a view from underneath, I conclude. He's not interested, not keenly anyway. But I think at last his mind is settled. Still bereft, yes, but content with a good, Darwinian explanation.