ABSTRACT
In the kitchen of our house in London we have a print, given to us by friends on our departure from Australia, which shows some crumpled-up newspaper (the Sydney Morning Herald in fact) on a green background, with a broad band of yellow colour behind it, and dark blue with dashes of thinnish white lines behind that, to the top of the frame. Several seagulls are hovering above the newspaper, and one has landed on it. The print is titled Fish andChips Seagulls. The title makes perfect sense to us; it codes a (now nostalgic) memory of going in the early evening to Bondi Beach, buying fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, and eating them on the lawn sloping down to the beach, with the overly insistent presence of flocks of seagulls in attendance on any bits of batter, chip, or fish that might be thrown to them. At breakfast one morning our then 3-year-old daughter looked up at the print and said The seagulls are reading the newspaper.’
