seagull

A WOMAN has been rushed to hospital with a head wound after she was attacked by a vicious seagull.

Lesley Wright, 70, was left with a bleeding scalp that required medical attention after being attacked by the sea bird.

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She was walking to a neighbour’s house in Moray in Scotland when the gull swooped in unprovoked and hit her in the back of the head.

Lesley was left dazed and in pain by the random attack and went to seek medical attention.

The attack resulted in a nasty scar and a bald patch with Lesley now questioning why seagulls are a protected species.

“I felt an almighty whack on the back of my head,” said Lesley.

“I didn’t know it was a seagull at the time – not until I heard it squawking after it had done it.

“Next thing I knew my head was bleeding.

“It wasn’t a big cut, but it was bleeding a lot with it being a head wound.”

The attack occurred near the home of a lash technician, Selina Ho, who Lesley had been on the way to visit.

Lesley, wanted to avoid bleeding in Selina’s home and attempted to call her.

Thankfully, a bystander intervened and knocked on Selina’s door for Lesley.

Selina brought Lesley water, a chair, and some towels to mop up the blood before the pair rushed to Dr. Gray’s Hospital.

Lesley said: “I didn’t want to go into Selina’s house with my head dripping with blood and get blood everywhere, so I tried to phone her to come out.

“At that point, a lady came out of her car to check I was alright, and she went in and got Selina, who came out with water and a towel and a chair to sit down on.

“We sat there until the bleeding stopped, and then Selina looked at it and said I’d better go to hospital to get it seen to, especially with it being a seagull.

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“She drove us to the accident and emergency department, where they glued it together.

“It was quite a small cut, but with a head wound, they bleed a lot.”

Thankfully, the wound did not require stitches – but Lesley was left with a nasty scar and a bald patch, which she says is now growing back.

Lesley said the attack left her uneasy around gulls, she has begun to question why the species is protected.

“If I’m out, and I see seagulls or a chick around, I tend to start looking up in the air to make sure none are coming near me,” she said.

“I’m very wary around seagulls now.

“I’ve seen quite a few incidents where they’ve been eating sandwiches out of people’s hands on the high street, and my husband says they always go for the dog at the top of the street.

“I do wonder why they’re a protected species – they’re not nice to look at, and all you can hear at three or four o’clock in the morning is them squawking.

“People call them flying rats – so why are they protected?”

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“The Seagull: Malibu” and the seldom-revived “Strife,” two ambitious offerings in Theatricum Botanicum’s outdoor season, are reset in the American past.

Ellen Geer, the director, calls her version of Anton Chekhov’s play, “a retelling.” She relocates “The Seagull,” as a program note specifies and her production flamboyantly conveys, “to the self-centered Me Generation of the ’70s that followed the social upheaval of the ’60s.” Malibu, a California world unto its own, hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Santa Monica Mountains on the other, sets up a groovy, glamorous equivalent to the backwater country setting of Chekhov’s original, in which all of the characters seem to be suffering from terminal ennui.

“Strife,” John Galsworthy’s 1909 social drama about the human cost of a deadlock between management and labor, is transferred from the England-Wales border to Pennsylvania of the 1890s. The play, directed by Ellen Geer and Willow Geer, isn’t adapted in the freehanded way of “The Seagull: Malibu,” and the change of locale doesn’t always seem natural.

The production’s opening scene is slightly disorienting. The directors, called to an emergency meeting at the home of the chairman of the board of the American Steel Corp., have the haughty mien of British aristocrats. Later, at the freezing cold abode of one of the leaders of the strike, the impoverished scene takes on unmistakable Dickensian notes. There are a fair number of Irish accents in the mix, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the actors broke out his best cockney.

“The Seagull: Malibu” isn’t always consistent in setting up the time period, but the production’s larkish approach is infectious. Arkadina (Susan Angelo) plays the self-absorbed actress mother who sold out to Hollywood. Defensive about her age, she’s even more prickly about the condescending attitude of her would-be avant-garde playwright son, Constantine (Christopher Glenn Gilstrap), who basically thinks she’s a B-movie hack.

Gilstrap’s Constantine looks more like a future yacht rock frontman than a theatrical renegade. Angelo’s Arkadina seems destined to have her career resurrected in the next decade by a recurring role on either “Dallas” or “Dynasty.” The charged Oedipal dynamics between them are vividly fleshed out.

Rajiv Shah and Susan Angelo in “The Seagull: Malibu” at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.

(Ian Flanders)

Willow Geer plays Masha, the Chekhov character who insouciantly declares that she’s in mourning for her life. Her Masha is a pothead and sloppy self-dramatizing drunk, hopelessly in love with Constantine, who only has eyes for Nina (Caroline Quigley). Masha confides her discontent to Dr. Dore (Daniel Reichert), a Gestalt therapist who, like Chekhov’s more traditional Dr. Dorn, has an empirical worldview that stands in stark contrast to the romantic dreaminess of everyone else at the estate.

Thad (Tim Halligan), Arkadina’s rechristened brother, suffers from fragile health and a sketchy backstory. Halligan, however, gives the character definition, especially when advocating for his nephew and risking the wrath of his volatile, penny-pinching sister. Trigger (Rajiv Shah) is the new version of Trigorin, the established writer who, as Arkadina’s younger lover, resists becoming her property even as he enjoys the perks of their celebrity relationship.

The boldly amusing and good-natured production makes the most of the fading California hippie era. The final act, unfortunately, is dreadfully acted. Quigley’s Nina is a delight in the play’s early going, all innocence and starry-eyed enthusiasm. But there appears to be no artistic growth when she returns to encounter a still-lovesick Constantine. Quigley’s acting is as melodramatic and artificial as Nina’s was said to be before her travails and losses transformed her talent.

This isn’t the production’s only failure of subtlety, but it’s surely the most consequential. Still, if you can cope with a deflating finale, there’s much to enjoy in this update of “The Seagull,” not least the glorious Topanga summer night backdrop, which translates Chekhov’s setting into a rustic West Coast paradise.

Emily Bridges and Franc Ross in “Strife” at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.

(Ian Flanders)

I can’t remember ever having seen a Galsworthy play, so I was grateful for Theatrium Botanicum’s vision in producing “Strife.” Awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932, Galsworthy is better known for his novels than his plays. (The 1967 BBC television adaptation of his Forsyte family chronicles brought him immense posthumous acclaim.)

“Strife” is an intelligent thesis play, not on the verbal or theatrical level of George Bernard Shaw’s sparkling comedy of ideas but impressive all the same for its complexity of argument and compassionate determination to understand all sides of a problem. The play is especially resonant at this moment when workers are treated like items in a budget that can be erased without regard for human consequences.

There’s a rousing speech about the God of Capital, “a white-faced, stony-hearted monster” that says, “‘I’m very sorry for you, poor fellows — you have a cruel time of it, I know,’ but will not give you one dollar of its dividends to help you have a better time.” These words are spoken by David Roberts (Gerald C. Rivers), a labor hard-liner and rabble-rouser, who is the ideological enemy and (mirror image of) John Anthony (Franc Ross), the chairman of American Steel who refuses to give an inch to the demands of the workers.

In portraying these intractable figures in equivalent moral terms, Galsworthy reveals, if not his privileged background, then his muddled thinking on economic justice. But this large-cast drama (one of the reasons it’s rarely produced today) provides a broad spectrum of human experience, adding depth and nuance to what is undeniably a vigorous debate.

Brian Wallace, left, and Gerald C. Rivers in “Strife” at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.

(Ian Flanders)

Enid Underwood (Emily Bridges), Mr. Anthony’s married daughter, is desperate to help her ailing servant, Annie Roberts (Earnestine Phillips), whose health has been destroyed since her husband, David, has been on strike. Enid’s sympathy is strong, but her class allegiance is stronger, setting up an intriguing character study that takes us into the heart of the societal dilemma Galsworthy diligently dissects.

The acting is often at the level of community theater — broad, strident and overly exuberant. Galsworthy, to judge by this revival, seems to be working far outside the tradition of realism. I wish the directors had reined in some of the hoary excesses of the performers, but I felt fortunate to experience a play that might not be an indelible classic but is too incisive to be forgotten.

A DAREDEVIL TT rider cheated death after slamming into a jumbo-sized seagull at 150mph – and somehow stayed in the saddle.

Mark Parrett, 55, was tearing through the famous Isle of Man course when the feathered missile hit him head on.

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The 3kg bird busted his lower arm, snapping one bone in two, and dislocating his wrist.

Mark, a TT veteran with 98 starts under his belt, miraculously managed to stay in control of his powerful BMW superbike.

The speedster, from Midhurst, West Sussex, was airlifted to hospital after the smash earlier this month.

He told The Sun: “It’s a bit of a miracle I stayed upright.

“It was a huge seagull – they’re all massive on the Isle of Man – and it just shot up out of nowhere.

“I was doing 140 or 150mph so there was no way of avoiding it. I had to just grin and bear it.

“It felt like being hit by a cannonball. If it had hit me in the chest or the helmet, I’d be history.

“I was lucky that I didn’t come off the bike.”

Pictures posted on social media show his racing leathers drenched in bird guts.

Mark, a self-employed electrician by day who now faces surgery to plate and pin the break, later joked: “Parrett one. Seagull nil.

“It does go to show Parrett’s are birds of prey after all.”

He added: “I’ve had enough laps around that place to know the worst thing you can do is panic.

“It’s the nature of the circuit – you can hit all sorts of things.”

Mark is aiming to return to the Isle of Man next year for his 100th start.

He added: “I’m getting too old to be doing this, but it’s like an addiction. I will be back there next year, whatever happens.”

A post on the Facebook page of Mark Parrott Racing read: “A local seagull lay in wait for ‘The Parrett’ on the approach to the 33rd milestone and hit Mark on the left arm.

“He soon realised that it was rather serious when he tried to pull in the clutch and his left hand wasn’t working.”

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