Seagulls, Cliffs and the Arbroath Coastguard
I grew up in the norther scottish town of Arbroath and it was great, out all the time my friends and I used to go crab hunting, fishing off the cliffs/harbour and just generally fucking about as kids do.
One summer (i was about 14)it got really warm for the north east of Scotland and we had long lazy days swimming, fishing, crabbing and smoking pot nicked of off big brother. One of our favourite swimming holes was accessed by travelling down a cliff path to a nice secluded pool. Dont know what came over us, the sun, the pot, youthful recklessness, but we decided that it would be a good idea to climb the cliffs and collect the eggs from the seagull nests/perches.
We started off climbing the red sandstone cliffs, at first only going about 10/20 foot. Then the dares started, go that way, go that bit higher untill it happened, I was about 25 foot up and I couldn't move. Fucking stuck rigid, clinging on to the cliff face for dear life. Of course this only made my mates piss themselves with laughter, they thought this was brilliant. Things then went from bad to a hell of a lot worse when this big bastard of a gull that had flown off on my ascent decided to come back. Perched about three feet away staring at me with those evil yellow eyes that gulls have, I was terrified, sobbing and crying my little Hammy heart out. At this point my mates realised that this was no longer a joke and decided to go back into town and raise the alarm. Jimmy, stayed to keep me company and also to occasionally pelt the seagull with pebbles to keep it away from me.
Thinking of what an utter twat I had been and also how much shit I was going to be in, not only off the Coastguard but also my parents, the police etc gave me the courage to haul my arse off the cliff and surprisingly I managed to climb up and not down.
Jimmy grabbed the gear from the bottom, came up the path and we ran like hell to try and stop my mates calling out the coastguard.
Not so lucky, we caught up with them at the cliffs car park. They looked shocked to see me but not as shocked when they realised that they had just told an adult who was now driving to the nearest phone box to phone the coastguard.
We made our way quickly back to our neighbourhood with the sound of helicopter rotors in our ears.
Those seagull eyes stayed with me for a long time. It also took me ages to get over a previously unknown fear of heights!!
(Hammy1801 may have scabies!, Thu 5 Apr 2012, 18:10, Reply)