Cliff The Man with a Seagull on his Head
Gareth Hopkins and Alex Latimer
Happy Yak

Cliff is the keeper at the old lighthouse, a lonely job until the unexpected arrival of a seagull that lands on his head and there it remains. Quite soon it feels normal to have this creature perched on his hat and wherever Cliff goes so does the seagull. All is well until the two pay a visit to the town across the water where everybody considers seagulls a bad idea and make it known in no uncertain terms how they feel.

Back at the lighthouse, the edible contents of Cliff’s cupboards are rapidly depleted (it’s been a case of Cliff’s food in exchange for a head massage from the gull.

That night the seagull decides Cliff would probably be better off without his hat attachment and off it flies. Cliff wakes to feel empty inside and can think of nothing else but his seagull friend. Away he goes to sea in a tiny rowing boat without first checking the weather forecast.. Consequently, Cliff is unprepared for the fierce storm that descends, smashing the little boat into pieces and tossing Cliff into the chilly sea, where he clung to a lump of driftwood fearing the worst. Meanwhile up in the sky the seagull searches when all of a sudden, way, way below it spies something woolly exactly the same shape as Cliff’s head. Off it swoops into the town and before you can say chips, there’s a trail of townsfolk following the gull towards the harbour, onto a boat and guided by clever pooping on the seagull’s part, they reach Cliff just in time to heave him aboard.

With Cliff and the seagull reunited, all feels right once more and hence forth, wherever Cliff’s head went, there too went the seagull, be it at sea or on land. That’s dedication for sure. And now it appears that in town, seagulls have become everybody’s crowning glory.

A warm-hearted, gently humorous tale where Alex Latimer’s comical caricatures of the avian antics show how how a normally dubbed, noisy, chip-stealing nuisance can instead become a faithful friend to a human.