What being shat on by a bird taught me about life, or something
Late for an event, I struggle with e-bike rentals, get shat on by a seagull, and host a successful AI ethics roundtable discussion.
The bird shit landed on my outstretched hand, describing a perfect semicircle of recently-airborne faeces around my fingers. At this late stage of the day I actually found myself laughing at, rather than cursing my unseen avian assailant. Shit happens.
It was 6pm this Tuesday and I was late for an event I was supposed to be hosting. Delayed trains and school pickups were my weak excuses, and I walked out of the train station to see my intended tram disappear into the sunset (well, the cloud of noxious fumes surrounding Birmingham New Street). I needed a plan B.
“What about an e-bike?”, I definitely didn’t say out loud. I used to regularly hire one of the green-and-purple cycles dotted around Birmingham when I was doing the nursery dropoff last year. I found a likely-looking bike and held my phone over the contactless docking point.
“Rotate the rear wheel to unlock”, my phone told me. I yanked the–extremely heavy—electric bike away from the stand and tried gamely to force it backwards. No movement. I reached down and manually rotated the wheel, but the bike remained locked. People passing by were looking at me strangely: who’s this guy who doesn’t understand how bikes works? Is he trying to steal one of them?
Every time I tapped the bike with my phone, my bank sent me a notification to say I’ve been charged a £1 holding fee. Seconds later, as the bike lock fails to disengage, I’m refunded £1. Starting to worry that my account might get locked for suspected money laundering, I decide to give up on the bike and walk the mile to my event. But just as I’m abandoning the bike, a man wheels coolly into the docking area and dismounts his electric scooter, which suddenly pings into life on the bike hire app: e-Scooter available.
My mind races with competing visions of me effortlessly cruising up the hill to the Jewellery Quarter, pedestrians clapping in my wake – or alternatively, me getting stuck in the one-way system and being beeped at by lines of cars trying to merge onto the A38. While I try to decide which outcome was more likely, my seagull interlocutor enters the conversation, and rudely interrupts by defecating on me.
With a thousand-yard stare so powerful that I don’t even need to speak to the maître d' who quickly gives up her “Welcome to ASK Italian” spiel, I make my way to the restaurant toilets and wash the bird-effluent from my hands. Have you ever tried to inspect your hair for birdshit in the typical low-lighting aesthetic of a modern Italian chain restaurant? I don’t recommend it.
Back on the street and later than ever, I resolve to go on foot to the event as I should’ve done before unwisely attempting to defy physics and harness electricity to avoid a short walk.
I arrive out of breath and still uncertain about how much animal shit continues to pepper my clothing, but am thrust into hosting a round-table Q&A about the ethics of AI in software development. I tell everyone about the bird, though, and the ice is broken. Maybe that gull did me a favour.
Mini-feels this week
Race Across the Masculinity Crisis
I’ve admittedly arrived late to the BBC reality show Race Across The World, which is now in its fourth season, but I’m hooked. Teams have to travel thousands of kilometres on a shoestring budget and aren’t allowed to take flights. I was initially gripped by the logistical element: laughing smugly at the ill-prepared team who didn’t think to check ferry times before making their way to the coast.
But the real sub-plot of the first season was the relationship between an “estranged” dad and his twenty year-old son. The background details are vague but they haven’t lived together for years and the son has little life experience to lean on. As the trip begins, he’s crying on a roadside in Hungary at the prospect of sleeping outside for a night. By the end of the journey, though, he’s picked up a Chinese girlfriend, haggled for bus tickets in Thailand and convinced his dad to work as a dog trainer.
The show peppers their scenes with the dad telling the son how proud he is of his growth, and apologising for not being the best father. Gradually things between them thaw and they manage a half-hearted handshake, while I’m shouting at the TV “JUST FUCKING HUG EACH OTHER GOD DAMMIT”. By the end of the series they finally manage to show some intimacy, and this payoff was more satisfying to me than finding out who actually won the £20k prize.