Boo I was walking down the road with my friends at lunchtime, like any other lunchtime. I don’t know what the conversation was about, probably something daft like sillybilly names for our children, and I noticed one of my friends turn his head round so he could look backwards. He looked forward straight away again, with indifference, and my heart stopped… I knew what the indifference would have been about. When I looked back myself, I saw a seagull lying on the pavement, right next to the road. I was so scared it had broken something. He was shivering, and I tiptoed right up to him after giving my friends my bag, but he was in complete shock, and could not even bring together the strength to try and defend itself against me. I picked it up gently, but my head was too full of sorrow to think straight. I didn’t know what I was going to do with him; I couldn’t take him back to school, but my heart was breaking in the thought of leaving him to try and fend for himself, when he could barely move. My friend came up to me and told me I couldn’t do anything about it. I still had him in my hands, and I was trying to give it as much warmth as I could in a sort of cuddle, but I couldn’t do it forever. I walked slowly across the pavement, past the grass, and into the unused field. I padded a bit of the long grass down, tried to dry it, and gently placed the poor gull down. By then he seemed to trust me, because he tried to make him easy for me to do whatever I had to do for him, yet I had to leave him. I walked away, without looking back, and continued up to my school sombrely. I couldn’t do more for him. I couldn’t go down the same road again for a long while, because I would have broken down if he was still there shivering, or lying there dead, or he could have flown away. Of course the latter is what I wanted, but the chances of it happening were very small, especially since it was very very cold. Things that you have no control over, and will have a sad ending really break my heart. Maybe I take the likely death of a seagull far too close to my heart, but there are other things that will end in tears that I know I have a say in though. I decided just the other night that I will definitely be leaving home after the summer to uni, if I have the chance to, and against the will of some of my family. My mother has been using every trick she can to try and convince me to stay, with emotional blackmail being the main weapon. Just a wee while ago though, she said my sister will even be crying. That really hit hard, because my mother – or my sister – don’t know how much I missed my sister when she moved out, even if only a few miles away. I used to get the impression my sister was indifferent about living away from her wee brother, and wow, my sister will miss me. I think I’m homesick already. johnjohn xx _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+