Everybody was happy when they found the nice little place to look at themselves and decide that prehaps it wasn't such a bad idea to sleep in. Except for Redbeard. With his "ooh"-ing and "aah"-ing it made it almost impossible to get a clear grasp of what he was intending, but with a severe clipping around the ears and a smattering of irregular hugs he soon fell into a slumber that a cyclone couldn't wake. It's usually the way with pirates.

Dinner that night was simple. Large clumps of rusting armour and painted seaweed made our night long and indeed interesting. The dirigible had never seen such cuisine. And neither had I. Soon we found ourselves being inserted into small pockets of casual melancholy, and soon after that we realised our folly. For what is one to do with a head full of dreams and yet a trouser full of fear? Spose it was time to enter the rotunda and touch each others bottoms.

It was soon then that my family somehow dissapeared. I was lucky to have such a small stomach. My family however were ravenous pigs, not content with merely an imaginary three course meal, but instead, as our richness took hold of our feeble minds, would insist on indulging in gin and pork soaked orgy after gin and pork soaked orgy. I would warn them with a high pitched wail and clanging of socks, but no, they would not head my annoying cries. So soon I found them quite gone.

That was when Uncle Redbeard first appeared.

We soon abandoned our whitegoods and entered into what we then considered highclass digs. Oh, how rich we thought we were! We would swan about and laugh out our immense imaginary wealth and dress in clothes so regal that we had no idea how we had acquired them. It was this life we led, where we wore blindness to our intense poverty and all developed rather severe mental illnesses. The one we all shared was the very one that led us to understand we were rich, where our vision was so obscured by our stupidity that a simple heshen sack was a gold clad carraige that would lead us through town for commoners to gawk at us. I can imagine now how interesting it must have looked. My father, Mother, Brother and I all hopping down the local main street in our heshen sacks, spitting on the poor people and waving to the adoring masses that paid us so richly with their taxes.

But we were happy. Sometimes so happy that we would forget the day when that dirigible entered our lives. And sometimes so happy we would forget to eat.

My Father, Mother, Brother and I lived in a large ramshackle dirigible that had plummeted to the earth's silky surface one summer when we had been hoping and praying for some accomodation larger that the clapped out old selection of whitegoods we had been residing in for the last fourteen years. Lo, it was to be.

I remember, rather vaguely mind you, the massive whistley sound I heard one morning and, when I poked my head out of a reasonably sized microwave oven I had been attempting to write in, I looked skyward to see the aforementioned dirigible spining earthward. With a skid, a bump and a rather unimpressive explosion, it landed near us and oh how we laughed. Except for Mother, who wept, but such were her ways and means of expressing the hate she contained so deep within.

As we searched the "wreckage" we discovered not a soul onboard and were soon led to believe that this dirigible had most likely escaped from the nearby dirigible farm due to the imaginable endless years of teasing and taunting from some of the other larger and more menacing dirigibles. Dirigibles, you see, are incredibly crude and selfish creations. They would sooner remove your backbone and sell it at the local backbone festival than ask you nicely if they could have your backbone, anaesthetise you, gently remove it and pay you a pretty penny for the service. This is, I nowadays assume, part and parcel of life, that you should always keep a third eye open when wandering through a dirigible farm and ALWAYS carry a trusty stick with you to poke those undesirable advances.

For fifteen days we sat, armed with only our wit and our underpant gun. It was a strange island, as broad as the Rockies and as high as Stringbean Sally. It was damp, I'll give you that, and sure we had to resort to eating our own kin with blunt spoons and bullet-hole ridden tin fruit cans, but "this is Paradise!", I would yell. "Look at the silky sand and the smooth oscellot that rubs your tired calf muslces! Smell the dripping honey bugs and there - can you hear it? The sound of a thousand gnu's making love to honour you! YOU!"

I should have seen a revolt was on it's way. There's just no pleasing some people, you see. No matter how much you pour candy down their pants and massage their keen exhausted bottom cheeks, there is just no pleasing some people! But you know, it's not all bad. Sure, they burnt down my villa, my piazza, my chalet, my gazebo, my hacianda AND my hammock emporium, but I don't begrudge them none. They were mad from all those salted crakers I'd fed them. That and the lead piping I would make them lick. So, really, I'm as much to blame as them. As I sit here amidst the smell of burning architecture and rancid gnu fat, I count my lucky stars and wonder to myself when all this fun will stop.

And lo it was clear. The walls had fallen and the prophecy had been set in motion. All this I achieved with a stick of margarine and my favourite trusty salt lick. Now long melted, the margarine is a distant memory, like the morning dew, or like those prostitutes who stole my cleaver. Ah, but the salt lick is hard and a stable companion, one that not only can I rest my head upon, but also lick!

I moved on from that village soon enough. I had read the books the prophets had scribed. I knew the ending like a Police Academy installation. I left them and their dusty ways and long, grecian hair, and I moved on to greener pastures, where a farmer would feed me regulalry and squeeze my teats every morn. And how I would moo.

Never a big one for sport, I occasionally force myself to pay attention to the mass adoration of men and women with not only heads of meat, but also bodies . Meat and short shorts. Several times I have been caught running willy-nilly with my flame thrower, torching towering mountains of jockstraps and tennis socks. Why, I cannot say. Maybe because my dear Father forced me to dress up as Evon Goolagong and go slalom whilst projecting dramatic butoh dancing imagery on my forehead. Or maybe it was my sweet, sweet Mother, so sweet was she that she was often suspected of being made entirely of treacle. The fact that she would constantly be found puddlelike in the pantry in a jar marked 'Treacle' did not help her counter-act this rumour. It really inteferred with her Bridge nights. But still, I cannot blame these two simple buffons for my hatred of sport. No. I blame myself and my chronic opium addiction.

The Doctor, though not a real doctor, is thus self-titled to be influential at parties. He never hesitates to give out unfounded medical advice and instruct newly-weds on various marital conundrums. Aside from this, he is an idiot. An idiot, mind you, who has an idea or two about an idea or two. When not brushing wildly through the dust of long lost civilisations in the search for new blood, his academic skills are pushed to the forefront - a prolific ponderer, his teaming with The Professor was and is still often referred to as a 'master literary and scientific stroke of casual genius' amongst the higher circles of scientific ponderfication. Adept at making up new words, he often finds himself leaning pointedly on univesity lecture hall podiums, asking the bewildered crowd: "Dagnammit, what is it all for?", before security are notified and his presence removed. Twice winner of several awards he also made up, he has earnt the tag "No-Quit Doc" from many an establishment, but this has probably more to do with his chronic opium habits… His ideas come from whence they came at all once even before.

It's been a while, I admit. I've been with the circus briefly, where they have asked me to wrangle the midgets. I am not particularly happy with this situation, for the midgets in question are notoriously angry and somewhat drunkards. However, it pays a shiney penny with which I shall save in the deepest pocket of my most forlorn trousers. I swear there is another coin or two in there, but the pocket is so deep that it would take a long weekend indeed for me to peruse each and every corner of its clothey darkness.

I still manage to digest as much food as possible though. I find this keeps me alive, but only as long as it is interspersed with water consumption. And sleep. Yesterday I slept till 5 in the evening. This fact is not a proud one, but it is indeed true. So who am I to complain?

I stare over vast quantities of land now wondering if I shall ever get my giant seagull shaped paraglider up and flying. With a moist finger to the wind I know soon that it is madness to even contemplate. So I wipe my finger dry and put it away for later. Instead, I kick back with a warm bottle of vinegar with which I calm the wicked chemical burns occuring on my legs. It has been a while since I've been in the country and it is only now I am here that I understand why I am never here. Sure, the trumpeting of animals can be heard for miles and the sky is free from the falling debris of the busy metropolis, but my lobe is too full of oxygen in the majesty of this strange open landscape. And, of course, I miss my submersible...

Do you remember the month we spent inside Doctor Weirdo's Freak Machine? I know you've pretty much supressed the memory, but you must recall all the twisting and turning? And the pirate names we had? I don't know if you ever knew this, but I kinda liked it. It reminded me of that time before when we got caught overnight in that themepark and had to improvise recipes out of left over junk food. Remember the buritto icecream hotdog? I kinda liked it. Just like that time when you and I were trapped in that "unsinkable" cruise liner with several hundred panicky idiots. Remember how they wailed? I kinda liked it.

Walking through the city the other evening, I was stopped in my tracks by the overwhelming smell of musk. It was all around me, surrounding me, penetrating my every pore. I quickly located a payphone and rang The Professor. I told him that what I had experienced must have been a recently opened gateway through to the Musk Dimension. This kind of vortex is common, I screamed at him. He told me to calm down and assured me that he had personally seen to the complete and utter destruction of the Musk Dimension, down to the very last musk stick. I took several deep breaths and thanked him.


Continuing home, I wondered to myself if perhaps a musk demon had accidentally remained in this dimension. But I guess I'll find out one of these days...

Ah, my salad days I remember well. Back then I lived high and mighty, aloft in my tree house which I shared with an individual who simply called himself 'The Doctor'. How we would bide our time is all a hazy memory today, though I do remember long sessions of scrounging about in the forest undergrowth to obtain unique items from which we would construct even uniquer musical instruments. With these we would then bide even more time by singing sea shanties about pirate adventures we never actually had, though not from lack of trying.

Today 'The Doctor' resides in a rather cushy and pillow ridden job at the BBC, or so his most recent novella informs me. He never could get past writing anything longer than a novella, and I put this down to his fascinating obsession with smallness. All things small. He would collect these things, some so small that they were not visible to the naked eye. However, back then our eyes were very rarely naked and I still wear this fact as a badge of honour.

"Come hell or highwater!", yelled Margarita as she twirled away from me like a flaming minstrel. That was indeed the last I heard from her for a long time. That was until last winter, the winter where all my furniture had to be burnt just to keep the hatchery functioning, when I recieved a curious memo in a bottle. I was taking a stroll along the quiet isolation of pier 56 when a large flagon washed up on the heaving bosom of the ocean. Uncorking the mammoth bottle in as manly a fashion as I could muster (it was 4am mind you), I found inside a small receipt from a shop I did not know. But the scent was unmistakable. Magarita. She touched this receipt, this much I knew. And it was only then that I realised how much she had touched me.

You see, Magarita could distill fear AND lust into a man like no other Papist I knew. She had a knack for riding bareback and was an absolute nightmare with a chopping board. I can remember the tears of laughter flowing over too many spilt chopping boards. I could always forgive her though. I would slap her mighty thigh and titter and say "Maragrita, you really are a diamond in the rough". She too would titter, but I would ignore her as my mood changed swiftly in the presence of the fiery Maragrita. I guess she never forgave me when she found out that instead of going to anger management classes I was in actual fact just going down to the local boardwalk to draw crude pictures of genitals on the fencing.

Imagine this. You're at a party. You have a mobile phone. It rings and you answer, only to find that the person on the other end is actually at your house. They are wearing ALL your underwear and listening to Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Later, when you get home, you find everything exactly where it should be. That is except your underwear and Frankie Goes To Hollywood 7" Vinyl collection.

Weeks pass and soon you forget about that evening, or rather you file it away like so many similar occurences. Then you find yourself at another party. You have a mobile phone. It rings and upon answering you hear that same high pitched voice, telling you that exactly the same thing is happening. However, when you arrive home you find everything exactly where it should be. Except...

Years pass and you have gone completely insane. You have lost count of how many times this has happened. You have lost contact with your family, all your loved ones. You have lost your job and are on the verge of being evicted. You can only consume liquids. You emit strange odours. It's frustrating, isn't it? Such is my life these days.

Life rumbled all last week. Up AND down. Too many damn peacocks, though I know they're not really to blame. I sheperded them into the foyer in the first place. How was I meant to know you needed a permit?!

Metaphorically, I'm a nice piece of brie on a golden cracker. Though I am a bit old, I yearn for more, always. Like a babe in the woods that I call hmmn. I am tied tightly to time, though waste it like so much cheesecloth. Is this to be my fate? Why does good cologne cost so much? I would first like to meet the perfumer.

Over n out.