Aar! It be international Talk Like A Pirate Day 2008, so it be. And if ye doesn’t talk like I pirate, I’ll run me cutlass through yer innards, ye stinking yellow-bellied scurvy dogs, and ye’ll feel the lash o’ me cat on yer back afore I keel-haul ye.

[Anyone wanting the pirate image for their own purposes is welcome to use it, but please don't hotlink to it - take your own copy and don't leach my bandwidth. It is by J.J. McCullough, who has released it into the public domain. You can find a much larger, better version of the image at file:piratey on Wikipedia.]

As Quartermistress Cate pointed out, there’s a London Pirate Festival on over the whole weekend, so why don’t you board that, if its on yer horizon? I’m sure they will have plenty of grog, it goes on over the weekend, and different events will set you back different amounts of doubloons, and some of which will be suitable for the cabin boys and girls.

If ye be a member of Facebook, why not join the Talk Like A Pirate facebook group?

And, as in the past I have shared with you my pirate name — The Cap’n James The Silver, I thought this year, ’twas maybe time for me to recount one o’ me humorous tales of adventure from the high seas…

I, Cap’n James the Silver was in a tavern talking to an old salty sea-dog I used to know, name o’ Mizzen Muldoon. We called him Mizzen ‘cos he wasn’t the sharpest cutlass in the chest, if ye know what I mean; he was as thick as the mizzen mast. Now, when I’d last seen Muldoon, he’d had all of his body parts, but this time when I saw him, there was a few of the bits mizzen…

“Muldoon!” I says, tossing over a doubloon. “Get yersel’ some grog an tell me what happened! Where’s yer leg, yer hand, and yer eye? Ye’ve been a bit careless, eh?”

“Ah, Cap’n”, says he, “‘Twas terrible. We wuz sailing the high seas in a gale, when I gets blown into the water, and a shark bites off me leg.”

“That’s terrible, Muldoon: but you recovered?”

“Oh aye, Cap’n Silver; but then in the pitched battle where we captured Raven Red’s ship, I had me hand cut off in the fight — but I bought this lovely gleaming hook with the booty.”

“By the Gods, Muldoon, ye’ve been in the wars… but what happened to yer eye?”

“A seagull crapped in me face on night on deck.”

“What??” I put down me tankard and looked at him closely. “You’ve been bit by a shark, you’ve had your hand lopped off … are you seriously trying to tell me you were blinded by seagull shit as well?”

“Well, not exactly Cap’n. You see, that was the day after I’d got the hook, and when I reached up te wipe me face…”