North Cyprus Free Press | Tales from Pirate Island

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Many of you may not realise that North Cyprus Free Press started in August 2009 BPR (Before Pauline Read)

Pirate Island Tales

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

“Granddad, please tell me a bedtime story. Tell me about your adventures on Pirate Island.”

“Well me lad, that all happened a long time ago; so long ago that sometimes I think it might have been a dream.”

“Yes Granddad, I know that, please just get on with the story.”

“Well, Nanny and I were having a lot of trouble with vagabonds and tax men back in the Old Kingdom so we decided to sell up the farm and the family house and leave the Kingdom of Blur and seek our fortune way across the Melty Motion Sea in the land of Yew Rope.

We packed up all our worldly goods and watched as Finn the Carter drove them to a four mast galleon anchored in the harbour. As soon as they were stowed away we cast off and sailed into the sunset, bound for a new land and a new life. For 40 days and 40 nights we made our way through dark stormy clouds, lashed by rain, until at last, bathed in warm sunshine, we sailed into Pecan Port.

It was not exactly as we had expected. A Customs Man took one look at our furniture and pots and pans and decided that we must pay something called Import Tax. Oh no, a tax man! We thought we had left such things behind us in the Blurdom.

“30 doubloons,” the Customs Man demanded.

We only had old money; golden sovereigns, silver shillings and copper pennies. “How much is that in old money”, I asked, frightened what he was going to say. The Customs Man looked puzzled and had to talk to a friend. “Five copper pennies”, he said at last. We were amazed. Five pennies was nothing. We paid the man and gave him a one penny tip. For one penny more we had all our things taken to the Galleon Inn. We were shown to a wonderful room overlooking the sea, and at only two pennies a day including a hearty breakfast. Everything was going to be wonderful, or so we thought, because we didn’t know then, but found out later, that we had landed on Pirate Island.

We woke up feeling refreshed, amazed that for two days in a row the skies were blue and it was sunny; and it was only May! What an amazing island. We decided that today would be the day that we used some of our golden sovereigns to buy ourselves a new cottage. The Inn Keeper told us that we should go and see his friend who would take us for a ride to see only the best cottages which were up for sale. He would charge us nothing and would be happy to drive us in his carriage all day if we wanted.

Ester Gent, introduced herself and we found out that what the Inn Keeper had said was true. She wanted no money from us and she was happy to show us all the cottages we wanted to look at. We told her we wanted to live in the hills far away from people in an unspoilt quiet part of the land. She said she knew exactly the place we were looking for. An hour later we were standing outside the house of our dreams; amazingly it was even called ‘Dream Cottage’. There was a lovely pool in the garden which Ester informed us was filled by a magical mountain stream. She also told us that all the forests around us were blessed by fairies and no one would ever dare build a cottage there in case they upset them.

We looked down the valley at the sea and then we looked at each other and we knew that this was the place. “How much?” I asked, and waited for the answer. “Two hundred.” Ester replied. “Two hundred golden sovereigns?” I said as I turned to Nanny, who was nodding with excitement. Ester was about to say something but I interrupted her; “we’ll take it!” Ester’s eyes opened wide and she was jumping up and down even more than we were as I dipped into my purse to see how many gold sovereign pieces we had.

“But Granddad…” little Timmy said interrupting the story. “Yes my dear,” I asked. “Ester did not say the home cost 200 gold sovereigns, she might have meant doubloons.” I smiled at Timmy, who would go far in the business world. “You are right, Timmy, she was. She meant 200 doubloons and that does not even equal one gold sovereign. We had paid enough money to buy a small town!”

I knew a lot about the rules of buying a cottage so when Ester excitedly put her hand out for the gold sovereigns I put my hand over my purse and told her how it was done in the Old Kingdom. “I need a piece of paper showing that you own this home otherwise you’re not getting even one copper penny.” Nanny looked at me proudly; no one cheats Granddad.

“But you had been, Granddad!” Chirped in Timmy. I looked at him sternly, “I know that, you know that, but Nanny didn’t. Shall I get on with the story?”

Anyway, Ester looked at me in a strange way. “We don’t do it that way here,” She explained, “but I can give you a piece of paper if you like. Here…” she said, scribbling on a piece of paper “…what do you want me to write?”

I shook my head. “Don’t you have an office here which lists who owns what?”

“Aaah,” Ester said as she realised what I was asking, “of course. I’ll have to take you to my friend Solly Store, he deals with these things.” With this she dragged us both back onto her carriage and we sped back to town as quick as the rough roads would allow. We would have liked to have looked more closely at the cottage but Ester seemed in a rush to get things done.

Solly Store was a fat jolly man. Ester and Solly talked in private for a long time and by the way they were smiling I knew that they were very happy for us to have the cottage.

“Well, what can I do for you Granddad?” He finally asked.

“I’d like to buy Dream Cottage.”

“You have lots of gold sovereigns I hear.”

“Yes,” I said, puzzled at why this was important.

“Well, you give me one of those and I’ll sort everything out for you.”

I gave him one.

“Plus, if you want to make sure that nobody else buys Dream Cottage you’ll have to give me 20 gold sovereigns as a deposit.”

Solly could see that I was a bit worried about this.

“I am the leader of a very important group of men and we take a vow never to lie and always do good. Your money will be safe with me. I will give you a receipt.”

I could tell that Solly was the right man for this business, he knew all the clever words like ‘deposit’ and ‘receipt’. He also had a big smiley face, so I gave him 21 gold sovereigns.

“Good, if you come back tomorrow I’ll have all the papers ready for you and Ester Gent to sign.”

With this he showed us to the door and still a little bit puzzled about the way they did things here we wandered back to the Galleon Inn. We were hungry and thirsty after our adventure and were excited that we would soon be the owners of Dream Cottage. Once we had wine and beer in our bellies, we forgot all about Solly and Ester and only talked about how wonderful Dream Cottage was going to be.

To Be Continued…

This, as far as I am aware was the first article and seems to be the start of an adventure for yet another poor sucker. Judge for yourselves.

I can see you are a rich man… diddle diddle… fiddle fiddle… empty your bank account for me then urinate off. Nothing changes.

Power to the people

Citizen Smith

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Comments are closed.