Off to sea we go

This is it. I don’t know how long we’ll be. I only hope we reach land before eat each other.

Adieu.

The gentleman (boat) outfitter

Within half an hour of bootcamp, the rabble had shaved their heads, donned their all-white gym kits, and were ‘yes’, ‘please’ and ‘thank-you marm’-ing like a pack of pampered poodles - that is, the sort that talk and dress in sportswear - anything to avoid upsetting the precarious temper of their sadistic instructor, who at this point was yet to break a sweat.

So far so good - the human resources would be shipshape and Bristol fashion - but what about the hardware? Given that our compass came from a Kinder Egg, I was not convinced that a life at sea would be excessively generous in length. Consulting my Yellow Pages I thus found my solution in a man as honest as the day is long - that day being the Alaskan winter solstice.

Having sufficiently procrastinated round the gentle shores of Albion, however, I was in a vein to throw caution to the wind. It was time for climes more briny. I let him take me for my ducats, taking him captive in return; the brig would make an ideal server room and, thanks to my boundless generosity, he would be free to move wherever he liked therein.

VP, Solutions
Honest John Silver
Likes: misadventure
Dislikes: Miss Selfridge

The drill bit

It took a few seconds for the grizzly oaf to notice the burning sensation on his tongue, a few seconds more to process the pain, and a further few seconds to register his disapproval. This gave us a full quarter-minute to drop everything and dash pell-mell dockward before the mini Etna erupted, wreaking all wreakable havoc from here to the horizon. For neither the first nor surely the last time we cut and run, leaving some of the slower mates to swim a full two leagues through the ebbing tide in order to repatriate themselves.

Looking at the haggard, bedraggled and otherwise sorry-looking crewmen, it dawned on me that we were, as a unit, out of shape. This was insupportable. I therefore pulled rank and informed this bunch of one-eyed chancers that pillaging privileges were postponed till they could all bench-press a hogshead o’rum and play keep-ups with the cannonballs. To this end they would be checking in with Cast-Iron Carys, locally known as the Driller Killer on account of the number of people she had extinguished through circuit training. Rumour had it that she once had a man trampolined to death - whatever that may have entailed.


Drill Instructor
Cast-Iron Carys
Likes: Sitting on the dock of the bay
Dislikes: Watching the ships roll in

The Italian Job

Following her usual liquid breakfast, the haberdasher tended to make a virtue out of necessity by stealing a power nap whenever her legs put their support on hold. Locating her under the calamity of fabric was the easy part: the sound of brass bands brawling was a constant emanation from her rear end. Her B-flat was enough to choke a swineherd.

The application of coffee seemed apposite, and after liberally coating her chops with three pitchers of the hot stuff we were rewarded with enthusiastic hugs and warm belches. Addressing our great indoors, she avowed, would be her pleasure, not least because it would get her loutish partner out from under her feet – quite literally in fact, as the lumpy rug on which we stood was concurrently serving as the sot’s duvet.

Though easier to rouse, Vincenzo was much harder to control, being as he was unable to articulate anything more complex than hunger, cold turkey or the irrepressible urge to roister. Fortunately we were prepared, and at the first sign of life filled his mitts with grog and his gob with snouts. Unfortunately, not all of said gaspers were inserted correctly, and the burning baccy inside his mouth failed to deliver the desired palliation.

Demolition Man
Vincenzo “The Choker” Croaker
Likes: nights on the tiles
Dislikes: knights in white satin

The sum of all fears

That the mates’ quarters were cramped, briny and dank, I would never deny - although for preference I would describe them as charmingly bijou, and oozing with character and atmospheric lighting (indeed, sans dank, what is a pirate ship but a boutique ferry?) This opinion, however, was not universally held, and the crewmen were increasingly clamouring for doilies, horse brasses and crocheted toilet-roll cosies. In short, the first mate informed me, if we didn’t get our mitts on some homely fabrics and sympathetic soft furnishings toot suite, the ensuing squall would down us faster than a signal-flare duel in the gunpowder room.

While I am ever-keen to respond to my crew’s needs and, aye, whims, I have to confess that from time to time, getting their collective head around the, shall we say, big picture issues, is no trivial endeavour. Nevertheless, I am not an ogre, and knowing how to react appropriately to such bottom-up rumblings is naturally a matter of professional pride. Thus, after having all hands soundly flogged for their impudence, I led the bridge crew to Windy Miller’s Boudoir of the Great Inside, where the eponymous master craftsmadam and haberdasher (by appointment) plied her trade.

Apron-maker to the Queen (pearly)
Windy Miller
Likes: nylon
Dislikes: lambs

A night in the museum

Already bilious and impatient by nature, Mrs Kray optimised her ill humour and indigestion through an indelicate balance of blood sausage and bloody marys. Never happier than when she was miserable, she huffed and grunted a path through the museum, vexating oaths at both children and the elderly.

At the behest of her boss she had been loitering around the Elgin Marbles for the past few months, vainly attempting to calculate how many wheelbarrows she would need to relocate said artefacts but losing count at each spicy belch or whenever she ran out of fingers.

Keeping a watchful eye was her self-appointed superior – Mrs Patrician – a grim-faced doom-bringer with a yen for shooting animals outside kindergartens and basking in the infants’ trauma. By way of encouragement, she chivvied her servant with steel-capped kicks up the backside and the odd swat of birch when less inclined to exert herself.

On behalf of the double-act, Mrs Patrician impolitely declined to join our crew, suggesting that while terra firma remained home to so much loot in need of repatriation, the prospect of sharing cramped, briny and dank quarters with several dozen stinking brigands, though exceedingly appealing on paper, simply made no business sense.

Marksma’am
Mrs Patrician
Likes: Jimmy Nail

Dislikes: Jimmy Carter

West End Girls

Oh, London Town's a fine town, and London sights are rare, and London’s scum is busy scum, and festers everywhere.

For the truly wicked, of course, there’s no peace, and while the mates indulged themselves with golf sales and penny operettas, it was business as usual for Captain Yours Truly – after all, bands of merrie mariners don’t just grow themselves.

But London crooks are cunning crooks with gallant plans to hatch, and bonnily clink your pockets there, with all that gold to snatch.

Indeed, with such rich pickings on dry land, would these vice-mongers even consider a life on the ocean waves?

Busily goes the London world, and craftily grows the mind, and at every turn in London Town, vile brigands one will find.

But chance favours the prepared: using elementary physics can improve the odds of locating likely seadogs yet further, for as mass dictates gravitational pull, so buccanerial clustering depends on booty magnitude.

For London’s swag is rare swag, and property of our Queen, and London’s plunder is out on show and waiting to be seen.

Ah yes, where greater a loot-yard than the British Museum, and who better to start with than Ronnie Kray (Mrs; no relation)?

Qualified Member of the Engine Department

Ronnie Kray
Likes: hanging, drawing and quartering
Dislikes: Magic FM