Pirate Day the Story

Skull 'n Shamrock

The Story

By Steve "Crutchless Jones" Fisher

In these times of economic rationalism, overt sobriety, artificial passion and

insidious corporatism, everyone needs some sort of release. Be it plugging

yourself into a games console and blasting away at digitised opponents or

singing sweetly at a karaoke bar, everyone needs that escape.

For my friends and I this relief comes with the advent of Pirate Day.

For one half-day each year,

we dress up in our gaudiest raiment, endure proudly the stares of the wage

slaves who wish they could join us, drink in a rowdy tavern, play strange games

and talk in funny accents.

By doing this we thumb our noses at the current climate of conservatism - we

drink during lunch-hours! We play the fool! We don't wear a corporate uniform!

We enjoy ourselves! Rather than having a smooth clean-shaven appearance, we have

stubble, blacked-out teeth and scruffy clothes. For us to grow facial hair is a

way of silent subversion, a hirsute rebellion against the air-brushed ideals of beauty.

To be a Pirate on Pirate Day is to answer to no-one, to live life in a shipping

lane! Swashes are buckled, oaths are sworn, livers are plundered! The next day

we may well be back at our desks, clean-shaven, neatly dressed, but in our

hearts we know that we leaped from the mizzenmast of life and pillaged the

parrot of sobriety! And as the daily grind returns to shape us back into the

rut, we know in our minds - there's always next year!