The gull watched from afar, the pigeons were swarming towards it, the gull was unimpressed by the pigeons. The humans feed them by leaving food for them like rats chomping at the bit, usually around the bins.

Gulls were classier, they hovered around beaches combing through plastic bags and waiting for people to drop their food. The gulls just got so hungry, sometimes snatching food was the only way to live, humans didn’t understand, they went into buildings and came out with bags of the stuff, gulls can’t do that.

Listening to humans talk was also strange, some fuzzy language or monotonous groan came out of their mouths. They would shoo the gulls away sometimes with their limbs, and almost hurt them, they had to defend themselves, they could claw and flap their wings, but only when needed.

They weren’t sure how but sensing or smelling food on a person was easy, it just wasn’t as easy to get it from them, sometimes staring at them worked, and other times the humans ran away as if scared.

What was there to be scared about, it was one bird, what harm could it do, OK if lots got together they could reek havoc, but just one on it’s own, staring was as good as it got.

This particular gull lived in Tenby where there was always food being thrown for it, it was one of the better places to be, on a warm sunny day there wings would warm in the sun and bounce off their white feathers with ease.

It found that lots of people when it was sunny ate a cold substance with a likeable consistency in a crunchy cone. It was a favourite amongst the gulls. Following someone was easy, but getting them was hard, like today for example. The gull was simply following two people with cone things, one person a lot more relaxed around it than the other, and once they had seen the gull, the humans did everything to avoid it. They even ran away, the gull just couldn’t understand it, it was hungry and they denied it food, would you?.

Nell was excited, She’s never been to university before. She missed that part of her teenage to adult part of life, She had gone straight from school, to college to work, academic she wasn’t.

She had always been told that work and money was better than an academic education, I mean unless you want to teach or go on to higher and better things, what was the point of knowing the difference between a colon and a semi-colon in the real world.

Now she was proud to be a mature student and was looking forward to her creative writing course, making new friends, and learn how to actually do it properly, she had been writing for years, not much of it had been very good, she hadn’t even once won a competition or had anything published, if only, she thought.

The streets were dark. The wind was picking up, and it could have been warmer for February, then you would be walking somewhere exposed and then she wished she’d remembered her thermals and her woolly hat. She was walking between some tall town houses on her way to the main road and she heard a guttural low moan from the darkness, a bit like a washing machine finishing off its cycle. It was loud and felt close by, Nell took a deep breath and ran as fast as she could to the main road, she narrowly missed a cyclist with a broken light, he flashed an angry face in her direction and kept going.

Nell relaxed a little, bloody cyclists she thought. It was bad enough he was on the pavement, but he wasn’t even wearing anything bright or have use of a ringing thing called a bell.

She kept walking, she could no longer hear any weird noises from behind her, putting her headphones in her ears she had noticed they had gone numb with the pain of the biting cold wind.

She picked up the pace just so she could get there sooner and start warming up. Her eyes and nose were streaming in the cold wind and she only had old tissues in her pocket, they would have to do. Just as the dulcet tone of Emelie Sande were fading away she was minutes away from a warm and dry rec room.

She changed the pace of the music as she sat down, scissor sisters blasted through her ear phones as she was trying to stay awake by drinking coke and doing her desired reading. Her course was fun and informative, she could hear the wind howling through the trees outside between concentrating on character development and short story writing.

In the blackness outside she was waiting, she wasn’t bad or a murderer, just hungry, hungry for warm flesh and the taste of fresh hot blood. She would have to get some soon or she would perish, just like her family had, and she still had that detective looking for her, she was running out of options.

Hot sticky and humid, that’s how the day started, the beginnings of a pressure headache in a stifling office, she needed water, and a painkiller.

Rose was having a moment, looking off in the middle distance day dreaming of Colin Firth in a clingy white shirt walking towards her dripping wet.

She was then rudely awakened by a work experience girl who was frantically shaking her by the shoulder, mouthing the words ‘boss’ and ‘he’s back’.

That jolt of shaking and the word boss made Rose wake up and pay attention.

At the end of a row of medium height cubicles of computers and random family photos was him, the boss, he was a funny looking man, with a hairpiece that was in no way the same colour as his sideburns and goatee, he was tall with a lanky frame and a suit that looked like he was a reject from the eighties. Two words, shoulder pads, she often wondered whether they would ever come back into fashion. The tie he wore was just as garish, and flecked blue and red, his grin was a 1000 watts and he used words like fab, awesome and tickety boo. Clearly out of his time, but as bosses go his attitudes were fair, he could have been a dick, which would have fitted the appearance, but as a middle aged man, boss, he was OK, it didn’t matter that he was nice, it was the fact that he was the boss that made everyone sit up and pay attention, including her.

It was just a shame he lived at home with his mum, a social butterfly she knew he loved his choir, the pub, and his eclectic music collection. It was an even bigger shame that one of his unknown hobbies that his mother always encouraged him not to do, no matter how much he wanted to was castration, of mainly animals, their basement didn’t particularly smell nice and the bloody rags on the floor gave away the less than hygienic practices but at least he had stopped curb crawling for rent boys to ‘experiment on’. Some people can put on a wonderful front but behind closed doors, you never know what they are capable of, and he was one of them.

I will take any feedback as to what I could do with The Boss as a character.

Walking through the city at this time of the morning on such a nice day was lovely, Sarah basked in the warm early morning sun, marvelling at the quietness and appreciating the imposing buildings.

She felt like she was on holiday getting up at this time, with the sun shining and the smell of the coffee and croissants wafting from a nearby Starbucks.

This train journey today was going to change her life, for the better she hoped, plus she hadn’t had a decent day out in ages, and this was a blind date, she hadn’t been on one of these for awhile either, she was looking forward to it, and she was going to enjoy it, even if for the weather and getting out of the city.

Her cousin had set this up, he lived in Bath, in a posh area, so he already sounded appealing. She had been told he was handsome, dark hair with funky specks and was an architect, sounded good.

She was also panicking, what if they didn’t like each other, and what had her cousin told him about her, presumably not the skinny dipping from when they were younger, or the incident with the guinea pigs, her cousin could have been kind or honest, but which one?.

Only time will tell. She boarded her Salisbury train and started reading her magazine, one of the articles was how to make a good first impression, that will be useful.

Tony was getting nervous, a friend of his had set him up with her cousin, he was told she was a red head, green eyes, had an infectious laugh and was easy going. From the description he was glad, sounded like his type of girl, gorgeous and funny, perfect.

Although he was still a bundle of nerves, was Jess telling the truth, what if they didn’t like each other, didn’t get on , or looked completely contradictory from her description.

He decided not to worry too much about it, I mean after all, his mates did agree that Tony looked like Clark Kent, just not the perfect superman, but he could live with that, he took a deep breath to clear the cobwebs and got back to his paper.

The train journey was not as bad as she anticipated, not as busy, at the other end she got off and headed for the exit. Good job she’d been here before, normally with friends going to the bath Christmas market, you could smell the mulled cider and hot chestnuts. Not this time, summer was in the air and she could smell cookies from somewhere, it was making her hungry, she definitely needed a cookie before she left.

She was told to meet him outside the cathedral, it was a beautiful square, it was nice to see it clear and less tourists than normal .

Tony was running late, he was always running late, he just didn’t get the concept of being on time, he grabbed his new leather jacket, keys and sun glasses and legged it out the door and down the hill.

She was nervous waiting for him in the square, would he look like he had been described. She then noticed a rather dapper character walking quickly towards her out of breath, he was tall, handsome with posh sunglasses, the Clark Kent look, nice. He saw her, his heart relaxed a little, she was gorgeous as he hoped. After the awkward meet and the small talk had died away it was decided he would walk her back to the station, she was quite happy to let him do that. She had had a nice time and had enjoyed just looking at him.

He was glad that they had met, she had been everything he wanted, and more. It was a nervous goodbye, and as he went to kiss her on the cheek she turned, their lips met and a brief sweet kiss was exchanged between them, they both pulled away and smiled at each other slightly blushing. She walked away slowly to the train in a very good mood, thinking she would like to see him again. He was happy with himself that he had taken the initiative to kiss her, and walked away remembering it, hoping their paths would cross again.