Keeping Up With The Kardashians....

“Kim Kardashian is always flying somewhere exotic,” I had hinted to my husband a month before my birthday.  It worked and last week we flew across the Irish Sea. He had booked a very traditional sort of hotel (one very popular with the elderly) in Eastbourne, on the south coast of England. It may not quite have been Barbados but it was still a night away from it all. We made our way to reception passing seven mobility scooters on the way. “Happy Birthday!” he said, planting a kiss on my cheek, “at least you’ll feel young staying here”. The receptionist greeted us and invited us to join other residents for an afternoon tea dance at four but my husband had one thing on his mind. “Is there live coverage of the match anywhere in the hotel?” It turned out that there was an important game on the same day as my birthday. He went off to the sports bar and I went upstairs.

Our room was beautiful. Crisp white linen on the very low bed, silk curtains, a view over the sea and bright yellow hand rails everywhere. It also had a small balcony. The bathroom was divine with an enormous Jacuzzi bath that was too good to resist. I filled it, adding half a bottle of lavender bubble bath. Lowering myself in using the safety handles and being sure not to accidently pull the red emergency cord, I savoured every moment of this rare time to myself and bubbled away with glee. Afterwards, wrapped in a cozy bathrobe and feeling peckish, I did something quite decadent. In all my years I have never ordered room service for one and this was my special day after all. Only one thing stood out on the menu so I phoning the order through, I waited, passing the time with a magazine about pensions. Twenty minutes later, a young waiter stood at the door and handed me a pretty white porcelain plate of ‘Sesame Prawn Toasts’.

The day was just too good to eat inside.  I put on my new sunglasses, opened the sliding doors and stepped out onto the sunny balcony with my plate of scrumptious looking treats. The sea was calm and not a cloud was in the sky. Preparing myself for a little sunbathing I lay down on a sun-lounger and rested the porcelain plate upon my lap. This was the life. This was summer. This was the perfect birthday and for that moment, I really did felt like Kim Kardashian. 

Just as I was about to put the first Sesame Prawn Toast into my mouth, twenty of the biggest seagulls in the world flew menacingly in the sky above me. I froze. Then suddenly, like vultures on the attack, they nosed dived towards me.  “Aggghhh!” I threw the canapés into the air with fright; birds were landing all around me. I fell to the floor and squeezed myself under the sun lounger. There I hid, stiff with fear, as the flock squawked and bashed against one another to get to the Prawns Toasts. I was trapped under a sun lounger, surrounded by scavenging seagulls pecking at crumbs. Every time I dared to look out from my refuge, a huge wing, a beak or a beady eye was in my face.  

 The only thing to do was to escape before they started pecking at me. With my eyes shut, I rolled out from under the sun-lounger and crawled through the birds, making it back into the bedroom, closing the sliding door behind me. But just as I was about to let out a sigh of relief, the nightmare continued when I heard a flapping sound from above. Two seagulls had flown over my head and beaten me into the room. They began squawking loudly, trying to get out again. The birds with a wingspan of three feet were now flying about, smashing themselves into the glass door. “Aggghhh!” I may be forty something but I have the lungs of a two year old. I screamed, praying that in the hotel bar many floors below, the football fan might hear me above the match.  But he didn’t. To make matters worse, the terrified birds were losing it. They began to let out white sticky bird splats all over the carpet.

I picked up the hotel phone and dialed for reception; “HELP! SEAGULLS ARE GOING CRAZY IN MY ROOM”. The reassuring voice at the end of the line told me that they would send someone up. The noise in the room was deafening, I covered my ears and tried deep breathing relaxation techniques. It didn’t work. The seagulls were banging so violently against the glass door that they were losing feathers. Trying not to cry, feeling hysterical and sick, I made a dash for the bedroom door, escaping to find myself in the hotel corridor. It was silent but for the sound of the stressed birds going berserk in the room. An elderly Englishman in a suit with a rose in his pocket slowly made his way up the corridor pushing a zimmer frame.

I frantically waved my arms about, “HELP ME….” He didn’t stop. Instead he shuffled past me, smiling apologetically and humming to himself. Moments later, a young waiter came running up the corridor. He went into the room telling me to stay exactly where I was. I put my ear to the door and listened to a full ten minutes of squawking from the birds and cursing from the waiter. Then silence. The waiter came out wiping feathers from his lapel. “All clear” he announced. I can’t remember ever being so grateful to a stranger before. In my bathrobe and sunglasses, covered in bird droppings, I fell into his arms just as my husband came running up the corridor. He didn’t notice the waiter, the feathers, the bathrobe or my state of distress.  He had one thing on his mind. “WE WON! WE WON!” 

This never happens to Kim Kardashian.