The Bird Man of West Pilton

My part-time job finishes at 12:30pm. If I take the bus home, I usually get in around 1 or 1:15pm; if I walk, I get home around 2pm. When I arrive home, I feed the cat and then open the curtains to our patio door and then sit myself on the sofa for my afternoon of leisure. (Or, at the very least, lunch and a chance to catch up on my social networking.)

At roughly 2pm, the Bird Man of West Pilton turns up the street that runs past our patio door. I call him the Bird Man of West Pilton because I only notice him because of the noisy flock of seagulls that follow him, periodically swooping down onto the street to eat something I can't see from the sofa.

He's an older man, with long gray hair, usually wearing a denim jacket, and walks a little hunched over, as if the denim was just a bit too thin for the Scottish winds that blow over the Forth. He usually carries a bag from Lidl or that Frozen Food a few blocks away. It used to be that I could tell the time from hearing the birds.

He doesn't come by so often anymore. I've never spoken to him, so I'm not really sure why the birds follow him. I suppose he feeds them. Not many people would feed the seagulls over here - they're considered rats with wings who aggressively invade rubbish and even shoplift and have raised the anger of the local councils. Yet this fellow seems to be loved by seagulls. I suppose he's just one of the local colour.