HAUL AWAY, SHIPMATES!
Avast, lubbers! Does 'ee know what day this be, dogs? Nay? Wait while I splice 'ee to the mainbrace and clean yer ears with this cutlass. Now I'll ask again. DOES 'EE KNOW WHAT DAY THIS BE? None of 'ee? All right then me hearties, keelhaul the lot o' 'em!
For today be... Ahem, sorry. For as I write it is the 19th of September. Which is, believe it or believe it nay, international Talk Like A Pirate Day. Don't ask why, it just is. Maybe it's not the biggest annual holiday in the world, maybe it isn't exactly sanctioned by the United Nations, but it is a whole new celebration. Maybe the first new international holiday of the twenty-first century. Remember, you heard it here first.
Lay to, me hearties, and we'll soon have the whole world and its seven seas speakin' like a rough mixture of Dorset yokel and homicidal maniac. Arr, Jim lad. Belay 'em to the yardarm and shiver their timbers. They knows they likes it.
Have you noticed that? Bizarrely, pirate language is basically just an English west country accent, with added violence. Bizarre because that "Oooh Arrr, Oi loikes moi coider" dialect must be about the most pleasant and least threatening of accents in all England. You expect violent loonies to at least sound like they come from London, where the accent itself is a form of assault. But no. The ideal pirate, naturally enough, came from the south-western coasts of Dorset and Cornwall, where there were naval ports, press gangs and smugglers' coves a-plenty. Now a countryside basically famous for the lack of anything happening at all, back then it was the wild west. Like Arizona these days I guess. Shows what happens when you take the guys away from the haystacks and the sheep, and give them cannons and, well, other guys.
Oi boi remoinded o' this... I beg your pardon, this notion came back to me this evening when I fished a handful of change out of my pocket and found, in one fist of specie, coins of the realms of Spain, High Germany and the Lowlands of Holland. Like in the good old days of piracy, when one Spanish doubloon made sixteen pieces of eight, (or whatever), we're doing our dealings now in coins of many kingdoms. Every pocketful a journey across Europe. Cool.
Speaking of which I got my first leaflet today, for the Nice referendum. At least I'm assuming it is the first in a series, it is sort of basic. More or less "Did you know you were in the EU? This is what the EU does!" Barney the dinosaur singing "My EU, Your EC, We're as happy as can be" would not have seemed out of place. But I suppose it is a good idea to go back to basics. The whole European process has been taken for granted long enough. We have a big decision to make here, we really shouldn't approach it without being grounded in the basics. I mean, how many of you knew that the EU was a chair with four legs? We do need to be reminded occasionally that the EU is a chair with four legs. I assume that in subsequent leaflets we'll move on to federalism and weighted majority voting.
But it's good to know that the government is making sure we have access to balanced information without attempting to sway us in any underhand or subliminal way. The text is a model of neutral prose. And the drawing representing the EU as a beautiful mother figure and the accession states as a bunch of lost children longing for her embrace is very pretty.
Let's face it, this government is a complete bunch of idiots.