Friday, June the 25th, 2004

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Extract From a Pirate's Diary

We had been awake for eleven nights. Cloth had been wound around the jugs, and a fresh coat of varnish applied to the trapdoors. The hooks were blue. Their blue was the blue of farmyards, oilrigs, malfeasance. I broke the engineer's pencil in half. He was furious. His fists met mine. There was something gruesome stuck underneath the lantern. I hurled it over the gunwale, to the cheers of my crewmates. Then they turned on me, one by one: Blubb with his yellow tooth; Slubb with his bottle of vinegar; Flubb with the rhinoceros mask & hideous trousers. I fled. Later that night, the Carpathians in my sight, a small shard of bitumen became embedded in the rafters of my cabin. The time had come to throw the ledgers into the sea. With irrational joy, I glared up at the stacks of sailcloth, and my eyes ran with tears. Would I taste potatoes again?