Avast there ye landlubbers for 'tis international Talk like a Pirate Day evidently. Now I personally, am not sure if my brave lads fought two World Wars and several other skirmishes involving an array of enemies ranging from imagined aliens to the far deadlier mosquito, just to dress up as cheap corsairs, but that's the modern way apparently, so let us take a moment to make sure we can identify one of these scoundrels should we come across 'em
Course 'tis unlikely that a real pirate will be presenting a sitting (standing) target like this one, who appears to be performing some sort of sea shanty in front of a captive audience of his victims who he is either torturing to death by singing the wrong lyrics, or entertaining, to distract them from the fact that there is a large plank at the rear of the auditorium which they will be forced to walk, into a crocodile pit once the concert is over.
As for my brave boys, they are still befuddled from attending a lecture on Naval & Military portraits at the National Gallery. Most behaved beautifully, but I had to restrain a couple of the younger recruits from painting moustaches on some of the exhibits apparently on the grounds that someone's grandparents had been victim of a particularly cruel flogging when acting as a Fag at some minor public school or other.
Other than that, it's been rather quiet in the Library...apart from migrating a rather old and creaky catalogue to a nice shiny online version and devising a digitization strategy that is, but, all in a day's work as they say.
And today, as the Library yet again disguises itself as a Dining Room, I am resorting to a few rounds of my favourite sport: firing old rubber stamps and (formerly sticky) labels at passersby in order to distract them from their food and entice them into reading some of my most memorable Military Histories. If that doesn't work I could try Plan B: wandering around with an air of Amazement at the sight of all these wonderful volumes, or Plan C: pretending I have fleas and scratching at the next table.
If all else fails, it's back to the Pirates.
