The Last Delivery and the Walk Home

The last one of the day was a quiet little envelope, no fuss to it, and I set it through the letterbox with the sort of care a man shows when nobody is watching and he does it anyway, because that is the difference between a professional and an amateur.

Then the satchel was empty, which is a feeling I have never once got used to. Light on the shoulder. Light in the chest, if I am honest, though I would not say that to just anyone.

I walked home along the front rather than the straight way, because the straight way has never once asked anything interesting of a herring gull and the front has the whole sea laid out doing its evening performance, orange and daft and showing off. The tide was coming in sideways the way it does. A fishing boat somewhere making promises to itself about tomorrow.

I stopped on the railing a while, the way I always do, cap at the correct angle, and considered the day. Letters delivered. Dignity mostly intact. One dog avoided by a margin I shall not specify, for reasons of modesty.

A gull who does not know his own round by heart is no gull at all, and I know mine the way I know the inside of my own beak. Tomorrow it starts again. Tonight, though, was mine, and the sea agreed with me, which is all a working bird can ask.