“We’re pirates and we’re taking your vessel.  Arrr.”
            “What? I beg your pardon?”
            “We’re pirates aren’t we Mable?”
            “Yes George, we’re pirates.  Yarr.”
            “This is my boat… I paid for the full hour.”
            “We’re pirates, we take what we like.”
            “No.”
            “Throw him over the side George.”
            After a brief tussle George annoyed the man to the point where he stepped over the side of the boat.  He was heard cursing under his breath as he waded away.  History is vague but we must assume he complained to the man in the shed.
            “We’re on our way Mable” smiled George and began filling his pipe.
            “Yes we are George.  Soon we’ll be rich as Croesus” smiled Mable and fished her knitting from her bag.
            George carefully adjusted his comb-over, slicking it back with a few drops of saliva.  His wife, he thought, never looked more radiant than post-battle.  There was something about the way her eyes sparkled that took him back seventy years and to their very first date.

            George and Mable had met when George ran a small butcher’s shop for his father.  She had entered seeking only bacon and yet hat left with her bag filled to the brim with youthful love.  He had cut her bacon so thickly that a single rasher was too much for her to finish. 
            Their first date had been to a Buster Keaton movie and both had agreed it was intensely annoying experience.  A week later they had shared a bottle of sherry on the side of the Thames, the thick, toxic smog shielding them from the outside world and lending a fantastical quality to their first kiss.
            A child had to be dug out with a coathanger a month later.  The experience bound them together.  A week later George proposed to her on Tower Bridge.  Sadly the bridge had to be opened and they became separated.  It took three hours to locate George in the smog so that Mable could give her answer.
            They were married in the local church much to the surprise of their families, who had no idea that the pair had even met.  Despite this the bride’s parents delightedly gave her away and the husband’s parents reluctantly accepted yet another mouth to feed.
            George settled down into trying to make the butcher’s shop a success.  Unfortunately his great breakthrough, Kosher bacon, was soon discovered to be little more than bacon.  However hard he tried he only succeeded in alienating ethnic group after ethnic group. 
            The war came at just the right time for him.  The shop was blown up in the Blitz.  He had no insurance but he used the hole blown in the wall to rob the jewellers next door.  This was both how he and Mable bought a nice house in the suburbs and their first taste of piratical living.  
           
            “It looks like the park-keeper’s rowing towards us George” said Mable calmly, not dropping a stitch.
            “We’ve practiced this in the bath Mable, we can do this” George replied, resting his hand reassuringly on her thigh.
            “I know, I can do this George.  Prepare for boarding.”
            The park-keeper soon pulled alongside.
            “The man over there says you stole this boat from him” grumbled the park-keeper, his interest already fading.
            Mable stabbed him in the heart with a knitting needle.  George leant forward and plucked the man’s wallet from his pocket and the denim pouch full of change from his waist.  He then tapped his pipe into the boat.
           
            “You were marvellous Mable” George smiled as the burning park-keeper’s boat drifted away.
            “How much did we get?” asked Mable.
            “Twenty four pounds and nineteen pence” smiled George.
            “Oh that’s more than enough” replied Mable.
            “Yes, yes it is” agreed George and began slowly rowing towards the shore.

            “Two super-saver returns to Brighton” George told the woman behind the glass window.
            “That’ll be twenty four pounds” replied the bored ticket seller.  “And you can’t take that boat on the train.”
            “Mable…” George gestured.
            Mable plunged the knitting needle through the coin slot and into the ticket inspector.
            “Yarr George, yarr” smiled Mable.
            “Arr Mable, Arr” replied George as he lifted the boat over the ticket barrier.

            “It’s a bit choppy” George remarked as he lowered the boat into the water. 
            “She’s a weatherly ship George” reassured Mable and clambered into the boat.
           
They sat for a while, slowly bobbing up and down in the marina’s waters, regaining their sea-legs and eating crab paste sandwiches. 
           
            “Do you think she’ll like it?” asked Mable, holding up the completed cardigan.
            “Who dear?” asked George.
            “My friend Miriam” replied Mable.
            “She’s dead dear, she died last winter” George reminded her.
            “Oh…” shrugged Mable and tossed the cardigan into the sea.  “For the fallen.”
            “Yes, for the fallen dear.  But we mustn’t brood… the Slaughterer, while a fine vessel, will not survive a storm.  We must be getting going.”
            “How about that one dear?” asked Mable, gesturing at a nearby yacht.
            “Aye, she’ll do.”

            “Hello there… Careful, watch the paintwork…” patronised Nigel, an investment banker from Notting Hill who had no idea how to even untie the knot that moored his yacht.
            “Hoist the flag” snapped George.
            Mable held up a carefully crocheted skull and crossbones on her finest number four needle.
            “Aww” laughed Nigel, reaching into his pocket for his phone. 
            However Nigel never had a chance to call Social Services as Mable then threw the needle and flag into his right eye socket, killing him instantly.
            “Yarr.”

            “Cast off the bow-line” shouted George.
            “Just a minute dear, must tidy” replied Mable as she shoved Nigel’s lifeless body into the water.

            Soon they were underway and George deftly piloted them out of the marina and into open waters.  As Mable took the tiller George busied himself unpacking his cannons and mounting them on the deck.  All those hours in the shed with his lathe transformed The Dow Syndrome from a stately play-thing into a fearsome man-o-war.

            They proceeded under a full spread of canvas for the rich shipping lanes of the English Channel.

            “Sail-ho” shouted Mable excitedly.
            “Where does she bear?” asked George, snatching up his opera glasses.
            “Five points off the starboard bow” shouted Mable.
            George slowly focussed with his good eye and smiled.  The ship was known to him.  It was The Ferry, loaded to the gunnels with Nissan Micras and Ford Transits.  There’d also be a rich store of sherry and cigarettes in her hold and fruit machines bursting with pound coins.
            “Do we have the weather gauge dear?” asked Mable.
            “Yarr Mable.”
            “Load guns with grape, we’ll get in close under an English flag, show our true colours and give the dogs a broadside.”
            “Shall I aim for their quarterdeck dear?” asked George, full well knowing the answer but wanting to hear his wife say those magical words.
            “Aye, we shall sweep away their officers and wheel and then come around on her stern to rake her until she strikes.”
            “Yarr dear.”

            “Hello old chap” shouted The Ferry’s captain from the bridge window.  “Lovely day for it but you should be careful, a lot of big ships around here.  We don’t want that lovely little thing of yours to get swamped do we?”   
            “Avast” yelled George and arthritically dragged the slow-match along the line of cannons, jabbing it quickly into their touch-holes.
            The Ferry’s captain disappeared in a spray of flesh and bone.
            “Is blood gushing from their scuppers yet dear?” asked Mable.
            “Just a little, but we’ll soon get it pouring like grog at a mutiny” chuckled George, stuffing each cannon with bronzed golf balls.
            The Dow Syndrome struck her tiller hard to starboard and crossed the enemy’s wake.  With his first broadside George merely swept the deck clean of interested holidaymakers, but his second shot away her rudder.
            “Has she struck yet dear?” asked Mable, her glasses rendered opaque by drops of seawater and encrusted salt.
             “Not yet dear” lied George, loading anther handful of nails into each cannon.  “We’d better give them one more.”
            This next broadside turned the small group of children into paste even as they were in the process of hoisting a white flag.
            “That did it dear” smiled George.

            “Join us or die” growled George.
            “Are you insane?” asked a fat truck driver.
            “Mable?”
            Mable laughed and pulled a cannon from her knitting bag.
            “I made one extra” smiled George.  “What do you have in there Mable?”
            “Chain-shot dear.”
            “Dismast them at the knees please Mable.”
            Finally blood did gush from The Ferry’s scuppers.
           
            “Get that cannon mounted you scurvy dog” growled George.
            “It would be quicker if you hadn’t blown my legs off below the knee” grumbled the lorry driver, wincing as he balanced on his stumps.
            “Mable, more salt on the deck.”

            After a day’s work under the lukewarm sun The Ferry was converted into a fearsome vessel that carried nine hundred guns and a crew of five hundred stumpers.  They were only just ready in time for the Coast Guard.

            “Hello?” shouted the coast guard captain into the radio, trying to make his voice heard above the screaming of the salted stumpers.
            “Fire” screamed George.
            The Ferry juddered to leeward as, for the next hour, it unleashed its unholy broadside.  By the time it was halfway through nothing remained of the cutter but a thin slick of oil and blood on the surface.
            “Arr” shouted George.
            “Yarr” shouted Mable.

            “Sail-ho” shouted George for the second time that week.
            “Is it her?” asked Mable.
            “Yes dear, this is the one that shall let us retire as wealthy heroes.”
            The Ferry bore down quickly on the oil tanker.

            “Load all guns with grape” screamed George.  “Scour the deck but don’t puncture her hull.”
            “Aye cap’n” yelped the recently-promoted Midshipman Lorry Driver.
            “Same as before Mable, bring us within pistol shot” shouted George.
            “Yes dear” replied Mable from the other end of The Ferry.

            “Steady lads” shouted George nine hours later. 
            The Ferry was finally pulling alongside the oil tanker. 
            “Boarders, you have your axes and cutlasses ready to taste blood?”
            “Aye Sir” came the universal reply.
            “Today,” screamed George, standing in the bow, hand’s outstretched, “today is the day we finally get revenge on England for its failure to pay my pension on time.  We shall fight like pirate poets and pirate short-fiction writers.  That vessel’s heart beats with enough black blood to keep us all in whores for the rest of our lives…  Are you with me?”
            “Aye Sir” came the call.
            “After that can we get our legs out the freezer and get them sewn back on?” asked Midshipman Lorry Driver.
            “Nay Mr Driver, for the rats have been at them.”
            “Who didn’t shut the door?” asked Lorry Driver suspiciously.
            “My memory is not what it used to be” said George proudly.  “Now, hand me my megaphone.”
            Midshipman Driver angrily handed the megaphone over.
            “Avast, we are The Ferry out of New Haven with nine hundred guns.  You cannot defeat us.  Strike now and may let you live” screamed George into the megaphone.
            “No, you Avast, we’re The Condi out of Hull and we carry fifteen thousand guns” replied a familiar voice.
            “Miriam?” said Mable in a stunned voice.
            “I thought you died…” said George in wonder.
            “You were supposed to” came a cackling voice.  “Fire!”
            “I’d only just finished bleaching those scuppers” grumbled Mable as she was cut in half by a round-shot.
            “So this is why she never gave me back my inflatable dinghy” muttered George moments before his head flew off to lodge high in the rigging.

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