An Explanation of The Background Picture

The Chick

Although my childhood home was nowhere near the sea, seagulls were a common presence growing up.

The penguins in London Zoo live in an open enclosure (or, at least, they did. It's been a few years since I've visited). The seagulls would wait for the penguin's feeding time in my neighbourhood, which was relatively close to London Zoo, and then fly over and steal their fish. 

That was the reasoning for why there were so many seagulls in Belsize Park. I'm not sure if it's true.

When my father lost his banking job in 2008 (He's not evil finance type, I assure you, he sued the bank for wrongful termination and won), we had to sell our home. This was very distressing. Strange people viewed our house, my parents fought violently, and I thought of suicide.

Eventually, after my parents had taken our house off the market, put it back back on again, and bought a dog, some people bought our house. I never met the buyers, whom my parents referred to solely as The Russians.

A short time before we moved to a rented house in Highgate, I noticed what seemed to be a seagull chick sitting on the arial of a house that was opposite to ours. It was dusk, and I became obsessed with the chick (looking at the picture now, the bird looks a lot at like a jay. I assure you, at the time I was certain that it was a gull). It seemed as though it was stuck on the arial, as though it couldn't fly away. I photographed the seagull chick many times that evening, but the pictures never seemed to capture the exact spirit of the bird. It was too dark, and far away.

When I created this blog, which named Slightly Surreal in a fit of inspiration, I decided that I would have a custom background. I chose this image because I liked the colours, because it was so full of my emotions, and because it is Slightly Surreal*.

*Ha ha.