Dougie Dalglish
Chapter 1
Dougie Dalglish was a big bastard of a seagull, even by Scottish standards. A great black-backed brute hunched and broad through the chest, his wings heavy at his sides like a boxers’ forearms. The black of his back was tarmac black, and his head was a battle-worn white, never quite clean, no matter how hard the rain tried.
He stood taller than the other gulls, not because of his size, but because they had learned to stand back from Dougie.
A pale battle scar cut across his left eye — earned in a brawl with a backstreet fox over a disguarded bag of chips and a deep-fried Mars bar by the bins in Niddrie.
As for the vixen, let’s just say she walks with a permanent limp and runs whenever a seagull flies overhead.
But Dougie’s eye itself still worked. Sharp, yellow, and piercing, it fixed on things with a dark menacing intelligence, measuring distance, weakness, and timing. The right eye did the same, but it was the scarred one — that was Dougie’s trademark.
His beak was chipped, a jagged white notch where it had once lodged deep into the arm bone of a trawler fisherman who’d dared to challenge Dougie to a duel over his catch.
The fisherman in question was a Martie MacGintie, who to this day still tells the story in the pubs of Eyemouth. The locals in The Contented Sole, were well past bored of Martie’s tale of “yon winged fecker” — but the Yank tourists fair lapped it up, eyes wide, phones ready, pints half-drunk. Martie would lean back, oil-scarred hands round his glass, and clear his throat.
“Right then… there I was, finished for the day, aboot mid-afternoon, hawlin’ the last o’ me trawl up ontae the deck. Sea was flat, nay wind tae speak o’, just that quiet ye dinnae trust.
An’ then I sees it. Circlin’.
Big as a wee dragon — like one of them Game of Thrones feckers — I swear tae God. Black-backed brute, hangin’ in the air like it owned it. Eyes yella — no bird’s eyes, mind ye — menacing evil eyes. Hauntin’, like they’d been lookin’ at men dying for centuries.
Then it fixes on me.
The brute lets out a screech louder than a Clatterin’ hen, an’ next thing I ken it’s on me — wham — wings beatin’, beak comin’ in fast. I swing at the wee fecker, catch it a clatter on the head, but… that beak.
Sharper than Rob Roys claymore. Straight through me oilies — good ones an’ all. Ruined. Clean ruined.
Sliced me arm wide open, right tae the bone. Blood everywhere.
An’ then — this is the truth o’ it — it hops back on the rail, cocks its head, looks me straight in the eye like a man would… an’ it says:
‘Martie MacGintie… I’ll let ye live. But cross me again, an’ I’ll send ye to Dùn na Marbh.’
Then of it goes. Just… gone. Doctor says I was lucky to keep me arm.”
At this point in Martie’s tale he would then typically drain his glass, slide the empty glass forward, and sniff at the septic tanks were all now hooked deep inside this fishy tale and he’d whisper as if to himself. “I’ll need a wee Jamieson’s tae help lubricate the rest o’ the story.”
Dougie tells it differently, but all the same he carried the damage from the encounter with Martie like the rest of his scars — as medals of honour.
Chapter 2
Dougie Dalglish swooped down onto a lone crisp packet skittering across the flat roof behind the top floor flat at 15 Cowgatehead. One webbed foot pinned it down as his huge yellow beak inspected the contents. He balked at the taste of the remnants, pickled-onion Monster Munch but he ate them nonetheless, muttering,
“How dae these humans eat this muck?”
Across the roof, through the adjacent window, he could see into the kitchen of the flat, the movement of four humans catching his beady eye. He watched — weighing them with equal parts suspicion and opportunity — then hopped along the roof to the window for a closer look.
Inside, the Piles family — Martin Piles, his ample wife Jessica, and their two children, Shannon and Sebastian — gathered round a small table that, like the rest of the furniture in the flat, had IKEA feng shui written all over it, silently signalling to Dougie: feckin’ Air B and B.
Dougie soured at the thought.
Martin Piles, sole owner of Piles of Tiles, a small chain of retail-park tile discount outlets in the south of England, had whisked his family to Edinburgh for a half-term mini-break.
“English. Sassenachs,” Dougie sqwarked.
You could tell without hearin’ a word of them. The way the colonisers moved, like they’d always owned everything. The way they smiled too easily, like folk who thought history was decorative.
​
Dougie blinked once — the pale membrane sliding across his eye like old glass — a seemingly unblinking stare that never truly stopped looking. He spotted a box of chocolate-crunch granola and toast stacked and forgotten while one of the big humans fumbled with a phone. Aye. The ‘two legs’ were having a wee breakfast ceremony. An invitation.
The sash window was slightly open at the bottom, and he could hear the family chatting.
“Jess, I’ve been looking at estate agents, and you know it’s not beyond us to get a flat like this for only two-fifty,” Martin said. “Plus we’d only need to rent it out for six months and the mortgage is covered.”
Without looking up, his wife muttered, “Hmm. It’s a thought, I guess.”
But Martin wasn’t that easily defeated.
“Apart from the Airbnb trolls using it, it’d be empty — ours to use whenever we liked. We’d come up a few times a year — comedy festival, New Year… without the kids!”
He gave Jessica a cheeky raise of the eyebrows and continued,“Prices are rising. It’d be a good addition to the property portfolio.”
Before Jessica could answer, Shannon used her spoon as an improvised trebuchet and launched a chunk of yoghurt covered granola into her younger brother’s head. He screamed, fake-cried, and the topic of property purchases was lost to the chaos of a typical Piles family breakfast.
Sassenachs, Dougie thought, the word settling in his chest like a pain that had been there a long time.
Eight hundred years of the invaders. Eight hundred years of them marchin’ north — takin’ land, takin’ names, takin’ ownership.
The old Scottish seagulls used to say you could smell the English before you saw them — entitled and imperious, always sure the land would bend out the way.
Dougie’s ancestors had watched them at Stirling, at Bannockburn, at Culloden; watched lines form and break and form again.
Now they came north again — soft southerners. No armour. No banners. Just wheelie cases bouncing on the cobbles of the Old Town, polished accents and booking confirmations, and the idea that payin’ a cleanin’ fee made them aristocracy.
Dougie tilted his head, one piercing yellow eye fixed through the glass as the smallest of the ‘two legs’, a boy poked a jam-covered fork at his sister.
He watched silently at the window, unmoving, his eyes coldly tracking the family as they finished their breakfast and began getting ready to venture out into the light drizzle of the Edinburgh morning.
An unsuspecting feral pigeon fluttered down behind Dougie to inspect the Monster Munch packet. Dougie caught the clump-footed street pigeon in his periphery and let out a low, grinding kraaak from deep in his throat — not a call, not a warning, just a statement of presence.
Startled, the pigeon froze and looked up.
It recognised Edinburgh’s most violent and criminally insane seabird instantly — and understood the consequences of trespass. It was in imminent danger of becoming Dougie’s breakfast.
“Sorry, Dougie,” the pigeon cooed, already edging backwards. “Ah didnae see ye there. Pickled onion — I cannae eat ’em anyway. Play havoc wi’ me digestion. I’ll be aff.”
Dougie didn’t move. The pigeon didn’t wait.
Sebastian, peering through his thick, round glasses that made his eyes look permanently astonished, was the only one of the Piles family who had spotted Dougie watching them through the glass. He stood frozen, staring back at the menacing shape on the roof, Dougie’s head cocked, eye fixed on him.
“Mum,” he said, not laughing. “The monster bird’s watchin’ me.”
“Yes, yes, Sebby, love — just put your shoes on and let’s get going,” Jessica said, already distracted, tugging on a jacket. “Have you been for a wee?” She didn’t look at the window. She didn’t see what he was pointing at.
The door to Flat 5A slammed shut, and the chaotic sound of the Piles family slowly faded down the stairwell leading to the street.
What remained was a sudden, unnatural stillness.
Chapter 3
He looked down at the slightly open window, if a seagull could smile, Dougie Dalglish’s beak curled into something close to one.
He lowered his neck, slow and deliberate, muscles shifting beneath feathers.
He forced the tip of his beak into the narrow gap at the base of the sash window. Like a weightlifter, he tested the weight once. Then lifted.
The frame creaked.
It was heavy — far too heavy for an ordinary gull. But Dougie was not ordinary. He braced one webbed foot against the stone, leaned his full weight forward, and drove upward. The wood groaned against the frame, the window inching open under his naked strength.
Within a minute it was open enough and Dougie hopped through the opening and onto the kitchen work surface on the other side of the window, wings folding neatly at his sides like a winged Napoleon surveying the battlefield.
“Well then,” Dougie thought. “Let’s see aboot wee spot o’ brunch.”
“Granola a healthy start tae the day,” he squawked to himself, as he ripped open the cardboard packaging. With the box clenched in his beak, he shook the contents violently over the worktop, oats and chocolate clusters skittering everywhere.
The granola sugar rush hit him like a head-on collision wi’ a truck on the A90.
Twitching slightly, he launched himself into the air, tearing loops around the studio flat, wings battering the space. Lamps toppled. Ornaments spun. Plants went flying. The flat became, briefly, a whirling tornado of seabird vandalism.
Finally, he paused for a short breather — taken while savaging the bread bin and everything inside it. He took a shit on the worktop, regurgitated a slice of wholemeal sourdough, and, spitting crumbs, turned his attention to the pictures on the walls.
“Warhol,” he screeched. Something in him snapped.
He flew into an art rage. If there was one thing that made Dougie angrier than the English, it was 60’s American pop art!
Dougie swore as he hurled himself beak-first into a framed print of a Campbell’s soup can. Glass shattered. The frame bounced off the wall and shattered as it hit the floor. Within a minute he’d destroyed Marilyn Monroe, the Banana, and even Mao had been reduced the mass-produced art wank to a glittering wreckage.
With a soft, heavy flap of his wings, he came to rest on the glass coffee table and, in a wet finale, laid a large shit directly in the centre of it.
“Thirsty work, this,” he thought, eyeing the fridge.
Dougie hopped over and, with the practised grace of a skilled burglar, slid the sharp tip of his beak into the rubber side seal of the door. He prised gently until the pressure hissed free. Once the seal was broken, he twisted his head and the fridge door popped open —
— bathing him in the cold white glow of its hidden contents.
His beady eyes scanned the fridge’s contents until they came to rest on the treasure he’d been seeking. He hopped up and tugged it free. A can slipped loose, and fell, clattering and rolling on the wooden floor.
Dougie steadied the can with his webbed foot and loomed over it, turning his head awkwardly close to the lettering. With his good eye, he read the label.
Broken Dream IPA.
A unique IPA layering citrus hop notes with subtle coffee undertones, breaking style boundaries without sacrificing aroma or flavour. ABV 8%.
“Feckin’ English craft shite,” he squawked.
He paused. “Eight per cent, though. Aye… she’ll do for a wee daytime dram.”
He reared back and gave the can a Glasgow kiss. His razor-sharp beak punched clean through the aluminum, sending a spray of amber beer arcing into the air and showering him beak to tail. Dougie clamped down and took a lang, greedy swally of the nectar within, then threw his head back and shook himself, droplets flying from his feathers like a shampoo commercial.
When Dougie drank, he tended to become one of two things: an angry drunk, or a very angry drunk.
Today it would be the latter.
Now fully enbibed, he waddled — with a slight, belligerent stumble — towards the bedrooms.
“Now then,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s hay a wee bit o’ fun, shall we, Dougie?”
The flat had two bedrooms. He lurched at the first door and peered inside. Toys everywhere. Clothes strewn about. A teddy bear propped up on the bed. Lego scattered across the floor like a plastic minefield.
“The bairns’ room,” he said quietly.
He paused. Considered it. Then turned away.
“Shant be messin’ wi’ the bairns,” he muttered. “There’s a feckin’ code — even for seagulls.”
He hopped across to the next door and flapped it open with his bulk.
“Bingo,” he squawked.
Dougie hopped onto the bed and, in between taking generous shits on the duvet, he set about the pillows. He pecked and tore and ripped — fast, brutal, the way it was meant to be, beak working fast and brutal, feathers exploding into the air like snowfall. He dragged lumps out of the down duvet, flung stuffing across the room, stamped it flat under his feet.
“Bird feathers,” he screeched, half-drunk and fully furious. “The sick bastards.”
The bedroom filled with drifting down, and the sour stink of IPA mixed with gull shit.
Never a bird to rest on his laurels, Dougie squinted, eyes flicking around the room as he searched for the next target. He spotted it quickly: a pink wheelie case, suspiciously closed, discreetly hidden and sitting on the floor, calling to him.
He lowered his head and charged, beak first, into Jessica’s Samsonite like a clansman at Bannockburn, driving himself straight through the English lines.
The Samsonite gave a metallic cry of surrender as it burst open — a clattering detonation of skimpy black underwear and erotic play. G-strings, crotchless panties, and corsets flew through the room, followed by vibrating love eggs, an extra-large fox-tail butt plug, and an ambitious collection of glow-in-the-dark novelty vibrators, all cartwheeling through the air, bouncing off walls and furniture, and landing on and around Dougie.
Before Dougie had time to enjoy this new treasure, he heard a key fumbling in the front-door lock.
“Feck, they’re back!”
Dougie hop-flapped and stumbled his way back towards the kitchen window and his escape, but just before he slipped out onto the rooftop, something stopped him.
It might have been the drink. It might have been the old itch — the need to let the Sassenachs know who had wrecked their holiday. Either way, instead of fleeing, he stopped on the kitchen worktop and turned to face the return of the auld enemy.
Aye. The Battle of Cowgatehead. Victory for Dougie Dalglish..
Chapter 4
The Piles family returned for lunch, with Martin first through the door — and screaming before his foot was even over the threshold.
“Burglars! Wankers! Thieving Scottish bastards!”
Phone in his hand, he dialled 999 before the rest of his family had fully taken stock of Dougie’s handiwork.
He paced the flat, iPhone jammed to his ear, crunching over glass and broken ornaments, oblivious to the beady yellow eyes tracking his every step from the kitchen worktop.
“Emergency. Which service do you require? Police, ambulance, or fire?” said the calm voice of the emergency operator.
“Police! We’ve been robbed!” Martin’s voice reaching a falsetto squeal at the end.
The line clicked. A brief pause. Then a ring. A new voice answered — flatter, steadier.
“Police. What’s your emergency?”
Martin, grounding his anger and slipping into self-important CEO mode, flicked the phone onto speaker and barked, “We’ve been broken into! The place is trashed! Everything’s smashed! Someone’s been rifling through our things — Flat 5A, 35 Cowgatehead!”
“Right, sir,” the call handler replied, voice smooth and unruffled. “If you could just take a beat for me first…”
A beat later, “…is anyone in danger at this moment?”
“No! I don’t think so.”
As he spoke, Martin spotted Dougie Dalglish staring at him across the kitchen, cold, unafraid eyes meeting Martin’s in an unblinking, evil stare from the worktop.
“Is the intruder who did this still in the property?”
“No — er… yes. Yes, I think it is.”
“Right,” the call handler said, a faint edge creeping into her voice. “Can you describe the intruder for me, sir?”
“It’s white, it’s got a big scar across its left eye, it’s wearing a black thong on its head, and…”
Martin craned forward, squinting in the dim light of the flat to make out what the bird had clamped in its beak.
“…and it's holding some glow-in-the-dark vibrating love eggs in it's beak.”
A pause.
“Sorry, sir,” the call handler said carefully, “did you say a sex toy in its beak?”
As if on cue, Dougie realised what he had clamped in his beak. "A wee glowing fanny-egg."
He dropped it in disgust.
The love eggs bounced once, then landed on the cheap laminate flooring between them. The impact brought it snarling to life, sending it skittering into a frantic, circular buzzing dance across the floor.
Martin didn’t look away.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It’s— it’s got a beak. I think we’ve been… sorry, I think we’re being burgled by a seagull.”
Jessica and the kids were huddled behind Martin using him as a human shield against this gigantic, slightly drunk seabird that was in the process of ruining their family mini-break.
Another pause. A longer one.
“I’m transferring you to the Seabird Control Unit,” the call handler said.
The line clicked. Another brief pause. Then a new voice.
“Hello, sir. SCU here. I understand you’re experiencing an aggravated seagull incident in your flat. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Martin stammered. “A bloody big seagull. It’s still in here. A great big, nasty-looking one.”
“Understood, sir. Based on the description you’ve provided, I believe you may be dealing with a known perpetrator — one Dougie Dalglish. He is a well-documented ASBO seagull in the Edinburgh area. We’ve been after him for years.”
Martin swallowed.
“I must warn you,” the SCU handler continued calmly, “he’s extremely violent and unpredictable — particularly if alcohol is involved. Can you smell his breath, sir?”
“What? Smell his breath? Absolutely not!” Martin snapped.
“Very good sir. But this particular bird has a history of aggressive encounters with humans. If he appears about to strike, it’s vital you show no signs of fear and protect your eyes at all costs. I can’t have another blinding. Not on my watch.”
As if encouraged by the two-legs conversation, Dougie lowered his head and fake-lunged at Martin — just enough to make him flinch.
A feint. Not to strike. Just to watch the fear bloom in the eyes of the 'two legged fecker.'
“Aaaaaaaargh!” Martin screamed, twisting away and throwing his arms over his face.
“Sir? Sir, are you still there?” the handler said. “Remain calm. We’ve dispatched a tactical seabird liquidation team to your address. ETA less than five minutes.”
From behind Martin, Jessica piped up.
“Martin, it’s got my bloody Agent Provocateur thong on its head — that’s nearly two hundred quid’s worth of silk. It’s only a bloody seagull. Can you please be a man and get rid of it? Kill it if you must.”
She nodded her head at a bread knife on the worktop.
“The bread knife, Dad!” Shannon shouted. “Use the bread knife!”
“Kill the monster!” yelled Sebastian as the emotion in the flat began to boil over.
Martin glanced at it.
Dougie met his eyes and gave him a look that clearly said, 'I feckin’ dare ye.'
“Sir,” the SCU handler cut in, “I wouldn’t advise attempting to tackle this bird or making a citizen’s arrest. The last individual who tried that with Dougie Dalglish spent two weeks in intensive care.”
Without warning, Dougie lunged again — wings flaring, letting out a long, drawn-out screech like a banshee calling for the devil.
Martin screamed and panicked and flung himself backwards, colliding with his family. The Piles went down together in a clattering heap — a pile of Piles — hands over his eyes, Martin braced for the pain of Dougies attack.
But it never came — just an eerie silence that settled like a fearful fog in Flat 5A.
Slowly, they looked back to the worktop where Dougie had stood.
He was gone.
Only a few single white feathers drifted lazily in through the open window.
Epilogue
Dougie watched the tactical seabird liquidation team leap from their black Volvo outside 35 Cowgatehead and hurried into the building.
“Wankers,” he thought, as he soared high above Edinburgh Castle, the rock rising beneath him like a clenched fist. From up here the city lay open: the dark spine of the Old Town, the slow green swell of Holyrood Park rolling out toward the sea. Beyond it all, the Forth stretched wide, the Forth Bridge crouching across it like an old red beast at rest.
He rode the warm thermals rising off stone and slate, barely moving his wings.
Up here the air did all the work — lifting him, carrying him, letting him drift and turn with lazy precision.
Dougie tilted one wing and smiled inwardly.
"Who’d want tae be anything but a seagull?" He thought tae himself.
A shadow crossed him, then resolved into feathers. Rabb, another great black-backed brute, dropped in alongside, matching Dougie’s glide with easy familiarity.
“Awright, Dougie,” Rabb squawked. “Ye fancy headin’ doon tae the Shore for a wee bit o’ fun? There’s a coach full o’ auld yins just pulled up at the chippy.”
Dougie banked slightly, angling toward the water.
“Aye?”