The man at the café continues his solo crusade to keep the tables a bird-free zone. It’s almost as if he can see through the furniture to the pigeons lurking beneath. In answer, the pigeons have now so finely tuned their sensitivity to danger, that even a raised arm (if it’s the one holding the long handled brush of fear) is enough for them all to take to the air. Of course as soon as his back is turned, the chip-thieves reappear out of nowhere once more…

And the birds also know it’s only him they need worry about. Martin, another member of the café crew has tried similar tactics but to no avail – the pigeons seem to scoff at his efforts. As Martin says: “I just don’t have the authority”. We’ve both discussed the man’s obsession. Is it really necessary? What drives him? Surely he must know it’s as useless as trying to hold back the tides? (Though we’ve both admitted a certain admiration for the fact he seems to be doing just that).

And, what makes his performance all the more extraordinary, is that we have both seen him round the back of the café, away from the tourists, feeding with great care and tenderness the same birds he terrorises in public. It’s as if he has a Jekyll and Hyde split. Or maybe the back of the café is the gateway to a parallel universe where all of us have opposite personalities to the ones we possess in this universe. Or maybe it’s more mundane; maybe he’s just trying to teach the birds that it’s ok to eat, just not on the café tables, that he has a job to do and the tourists must be left in peace when they are eating. Maybe he is actually a keen ornithologist who, through some cruel quirk of fate has founds himself with a job that demands this behaviour and as a result every night he goes home and weeps silently into his pillow at the horror of what he has to do, and maybe he feeds them out of guilt: a kind of penance to make up for his public despotism.

We just don’t understand. However, we have both also spotted that, despite the fact that he seems to have a very good aim – he’s never once hit a tourist – he’s also never once hit a bird either.