Once Upon a Pirate Ship
Aug. 25th, 2006 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeWhat a wonderful piratey month August has been! Arrrrggghhh for everything!
First piratey action was the way D’admiral discovered a treasure at one of his favourite book shops – 'The Pirates Own Book'. As befitting his role as admiral, he forthwith presented said book to his whiffy crew that we may learn from it. It’s a reprint of an 1837 collection that openly admits that it made a whole lot of stuff up, but totally based at least some stories on the reputable research conducted by Captain Johnston. Even though no one really knows whether Johnston was a real person, or just Daniel Defoe in a hat, a whacky bloke who made up some of his pirates, it's, like, totally authentic as! What’s more, the book contains an almost absurd number of woodcuts we used on our School of Swashbuckling site back in the halcyon DipEd days. First Lieutenant Pye practically fell out of her hammock when she beheld this one:
But crivens oh no we got all scared and paranoid when we found THIS:
Later, when we stopped being poltroons and crawled out from under the bed, we discovered D’admiral had been secreting a clandestine nautical hoard! Forsooth! Completely unexpectedly we unearthed a porthole:
We hung it on the wall of the SS Hope and looked at ourselves in its mirror, and pretended that we were looking out of a porthole. Easily amused? Well...yeah. Don’t pretend you’re surprised! And don’t even try to pretend that a porthole of one’s own isn’t absolutely essential to a proper pirate lair.
Speaking of completely practical and necessary household items, we had finally arrived at the conclusion that our $25 K-mart knife-block - despite having been painted a natty shade of blue - exclusively contained crappy knives that didn’t stay sharp. To remedy this fell situation, Stinky popped out and invested in this eminently sensible knife block, full of super-sharp useful knives that cut, rather than mash:
In between pirate goodies and murderous knife-blocks, Pye went to work. For a loooong time. A colleague (who also likes to go canoeing) annually provides senior students with the opportunity to Give Back to their community by participating in the Winter Sleepout, which raises money to benefit homeless people. Each kid had to raise at least $20 to qualify for the honour of sleeping at the school on a Thursday night. Amazingly enough, 30-odd (pun intended) students stepped up to the challenge, which meant more staff were needed. Byron enlisted Julia with the cunning method of asking her to supervise, then refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. It was certainly effective, and it sent Julia off to electrical goods shops to find a suitable ‘home’:
This little piggy built her house of cardboard
The chimney, aerial and natty curtains came about as a result of a combination of Pye’s deep and sincere desire to avoid doing correction, and having stuff lying around her office. Funnily enough, when you walk through a school yard carrying a large cardboard box, students often ask what it’s for – and then they don’t believe you when you tell them it’s your house and you’re going to sleep in it!! Young people these days, no trust in their hearts! So, anyhoo, despite already being a sleepy little bear, Pye spent Thursday night hanging around the school with enthusiastic students. We showed them a couple of movies (Byron set up a screen and projector and Pye was smart enough to bring a chair), but many of them were happy to play basketball from 6 until 2am. Freaks. Most of them had excellent cardboard boxes to sleep in, and we all had our downy sleeping bags, so it’s not really like we were slumming it! Luckily the weather stayed fine and it wasn’t windy. Or raining! The temperature got down to about four degrees at one point, but mostly hovered on a balmy six. We pretty much had to force them into bed at two o’clock, and even then a couple of the buggers decided they would stay up the whole night.
Luckily for them, they didn’t start to make noise until six o’clock, which was a good half-hour after the bread got delivered to the canteen and woke us all up anyway. Even so, they discovered that Morning Bu is surly and impatient with fools who loudly chirp, “Hey, we woke everyone up!” at 6:15 (“Yeah, no shit you little prick! You’ve just won the job of disposing of my house!”)
However, that Friday morning Pye got to feel gratified when, for the first time, she fulfilled her role as female staff-member (i.e., a girl came up and confessed she’d unexpectedly started her that time...you know...and needed supplies! Hah!). Even better, Pye finally felt entitled to sod off and have a nap when she wasn’t up in front of a class. The daily organiser arranged for an emergency teacher to take one of her year eight classes. One poppet was blindingly brilliant and suggested that instead of curling up under her desk, his haggard Bu take herself up to the sick-bay for a nap. Pye tried both the sick bay and the floor of her office, and while the sick bay was more comfy, she got too much attention there (and the ghosts of a thousand skinned elbows haunted her). The floor was much more peaceful.
Having made it through the day, Pye drove herself home, barely getting there before the Belrog, who had removed herself to the SS Hope for the purposes of watching many silly movies with the theme of Lex-Fest 2006. If you don’t know who Lex is, that’s probably good, but we enjoyed ourselves. Rather than falling into a coma, Pye proceeded to drink and make merry and, unlike her sleepout-colleagues, made it past both seven and nine o’clock! In fact, it was midnight before her eyelids became too feeble to support themselves, whereupon Stinky and the 'Rog proceeded to put a pink elephant on her head, poke her, take photos and laugh when she didn’t budge. Two hours later they woke her up and sent her to bed. Pye still maintains Stinky mocked up this photo:
When not being sleep-deprived, other crew-mates were arranging for the repair of major appliances. Our poor little washing machine had been suffering occasional loss of bladder control, and Stinky finally decided it was time to call in the big guns, while the warranty was still good. Upon seeing the name of the warranty repair folk, Stinky realised that it was the same outfit that helped D’admiral’s and Chuckles' dishwasher and washing machine slouch towards retirement. Guessing it would be the same bloke, she even made sure she popped to the shops for milk (she might not be able to remember her 6 times tables, but she remembers that the chap who occasionally fixes our appliances likes his coffee white, with one). When the knock on the door came, Stinky opened the door, to find Her Repair-Mate standing there, saying “Yeah, I was wondering if it was you, but with a different address! Finally moved out, eh?” And so bladder control was restored to the washing machine, the white-with-one coffee was served, and we no longer have to wear Wellingtons to do the washing!
Then it came to pass that Pye went on an excursion with year 9 students to Melbourne Zoo. There actually are a remarkable number of Indonesian animals there, and since they built a new home for the elephants to live in, it also comes complete with ye authenticey southe easte asiane café area. Most of the signs are even in Indonesian, so we could totally justify it as an educational excursion, too! We’re not sure about both the other staff members on the excursion, though – if you don’t find it entirely entertaining when the baboons have a bit of a root, then a bit of a fight, then the big male runs about a while with a stiffy, we’re not sure there’s a whole lot of common-ground there. In addition, they were both terrified of birds, which meant they shrieked every time a sea gull looked at them (the staff, not the baboons. But that would be funny, too!). Notwithstanding the fact the seagull in the lunch areas were huge beastly raptors, Pye came out thoroughly amused.
Later, Stinky caused many of Pye’s colleagues to go to a trivia night. The night was organised by the parents and friends association, and no staff seemed to be planning to come. Our involvement happened thus:
Pye says to Stinky, “Arrg, Cap’n, thar be a trivia night I should be attendin’, but I’ll be tryin’ to git outa it!”
And Stinky spake unto her First Mate, “Har arr! But I mind not ye olde trivia night, for it be makin’ me feel smart yea, right unto me noggin!!”
So Pye returned to her work-mates and bullied others into joining them. Heer! So ten of us flew the flag for the professional educators, and found ourselves coming a comfortable mediocre – just a smidgen above average. We figured out that made us a ‘C’ on the VELS scale – a fact which is hilarious to Victorian teachers (at least at Pye’s school), and completely incomprehensible t’all normal people. Well, stuff the lot of ya! :-)
Then came the time when it was the illustrious Book Week, a time for schools to celebrate the fact that boys don’t read. Wah. Being a year seven homeroom teacher of 16 non-reading boys and 6 Dolly-reading girls, Pye was involved in the celebrations which included a day where students were to come dressed as their favourite character from a book. Pye glanced at Stinky, who (thanks to a wonderful t-shirt sent from Canada by Jenski) had been getting around for weeks dressed thus:
...and concluded she had no choice than to go as a pirate. And so Pye consulted our piratey bookshelf and selected a picture book with the profound title, “The Pirate Who Wouldn’t Wash”, so that she could properly honour her inspiration. She stole D’admiral’s genuine replica duelling pistol and Chuckles’ boots, strapped a rat to her shoulder and was off to work!
Everyone wanted to play with the gun, and to know whether she had coloured in her tooth with a black texta. The short answer to that question was ‘no’ – the long answer being that once upon a time an eight year old Andru had dressed up like Mulga Bill (from Eaglehawk, who caught the cycling craze), and had used a special costume paint specifically designed to blacken teeth. Twenty-two odd years later, we still have it and even though lists no ingredients and quite possibly is made from lead and rats’ blood, we’re still prepared to use it. Or at least Pye is. That’s the sort of length she’s willing to go to, for the love of piracy!
In conclusion, just in case you thought you may see a repeat of the last epistle (wherein Stinky and Pye neglected to add a picture of Jasmine), here’s the cabin girl!
First piratey action was the way D’admiral discovered a treasure at one of his favourite book shops – 'The Pirates Own Book'. As befitting his role as admiral, he forthwith presented said book to his whiffy crew that we may learn from it. It’s a reprint of an 1837 collection that openly admits that it made a whole lot of stuff up, but totally based at least some stories on the reputable research conducted by Captain Johnston. Even though no one really knows whether Johnston was a real person, or just Daniel Defoe in a hat, a whacky bloke who made up some of his pirates, it's, like, totally authentic as! What’s more, the book contains an almost absurd number of woodcuts we used on our School of Swashbuckling site back in the halcyon DipEd days. First Lieutenant Pye practically fell out of her hammock when she beheld this one:
But crivens oh no we got all scared and paranoid when we found THIS:
Later, when we stopped being poltroons and crawled out from under the bed, we discovered D’admiral had been secreting a clandestine nautical hoard! Forsooth! Completely unexpectedly we unearthed a porthole:
We hung it on the wall of the SS Hope and looked at ourselves in its mirror, and pretended that we were looking out of a porthole. Easily amused? Well...yeah. Don’t pretend you’re surprised! And don’t even try to pretend that a porthole of one’s own isn’t absolutely essential to a proper pirate lair.
Speaking of completely practical and necessary household items, we had finally arrived at the conclusion that our $25 K-mart knife-block - despite having been painted a natty shade of blue - exclusively contained crappy knives that didn’t stay sharp. To remedy this fell situation, Stinky popped out and invested in this eminently sensible knife block, full of super-sharp useful knives that cut, rather than mash:
In between pirate goodies and murderous knife-blocks, Pye went to work. For a loooong time. A colleague (who also likes to go canoeing) annually provides senior students with the opportunity to Give Back to their community by participating in the Winter Sleepout, which raises money to benefit homeless people. Each kid had to raise at least $20 to qualify for the honour of sleeping at the school on a Thursday night. Amazingly enough, 30-odd (pun intended) students stepped up to the challenge, which meant more staff were needed. Byron enlisted Julia with the cunning method of asking her to supervise, then refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. It was certainly effective, and it sent Julia off to electrical goods shops to find a suitable ‘home’:
The chimney, aerial and natty curtains came about as a result of a combination of Pye’s deep and sincere desire to avoid doing correction, and having stuff lying around her office. Funnily enough, when you walk through a school yard carrying a large cardboard box, students often ask what it’s for – and then they don’t believe you when you tell them it’s your house and you’re going to sleep in it!! Young people these days, no trust in their hearts! So, anyhoo, despite already being a sleepy little bear, Pye spent Thursday night hanging around the school with enthusiastic students. We showed them a couple of movies (Byron set up a screen and projector and Pye was smart enough to bring a chair), but many of them were happy to play basketball from 6 until 2am. Freaks. Most of them had excellent cardboard boxes to sleep in, and we all had our downy sleeping bags, so it’s not really like we were slumming it! Luckily the weather stayed fine and it wasn’t windy. Or raining! The temperature got down to about four degrees at one point, but mostly hovered on a balmy six. We pretty much had to force them into bed at two o’clock, and even then a couple of the buggers decided they would stay up the whole night.
Luckily for them, they didn’t start to make noise until six o’clock, which was a good half-hour after the bread got delivered to the canteen and woke us all up anyway. Even so, they discovered that Morning Bu is surly and impatient with fools who loudly chirp, “Hey, we woke everyone up!” at 6:15 (“Yeah, no shit you little prick! You’ve just won the job of disposing of my house!”)
However, that Friday morning Pye got to feel gratified when, for the first time, she fulfilled her role as female staff-member (i.e., a girl came up and confessed she’d unexpectedly started her that time...you know...and needed supplies! Hah!). Even better, Pye finally felt entitled to sod off and have a nap when she wasn’t up in front of a class. The daily organiser arranged for an emergency teacher to take one of her year eight classes. One poppet was blindingly brilliant and suggested that instead of curling up under her desk, his haggard Bu take herself up to the sick-bay for a nap. Pye tried both the sick bay and the floor of her office, and while the sick bay was more comfy, she got too much attention there (and the ghosts of a thousand skinned elbows haunted her). The floor was much more peaceful.
Having made it through the day, Pye drove herself home, barely getting there before the Belrog, who had removed herself to the SS Hope for the purposes of watching many silly movies with the theme of Lex-Fest 2006. If you don’t know who Lex is, that’s probably good, but we enjoyed ourselves. Rather than falling into a coma, Pye proceeded to drink and make merry and, unlike her sleepout-colleagues, made it past both seven and nine o’clock! In fact, it was midnight before her eyelids became too feeble to support themselves, whereupon Stinky and the 'Rog proceeded to put a pink elephant on her head, poke her, take photos and laugh when she didn’t budge. Two hours later they woke her up and sent her to bed. Pye still maintains Stinky mocked up this photo:
When not being sleep-deprived, other crew-mates were arranging for the repair of major appliances. Our poor little washing machine had been suffering occasional loss of bladder control, and Stinky finally decided it was time to call in the big guns, while the warranty was still good. Upon seeing the name of the warranty repair folk, Stinky realised that it was the same outfit that helped D’admiral’s and Chuckles' dishwasher and washing machine slouch towards retirement. Guessing it would be the same bloke, she even made sure she popped to the shops for milk (she might not be able to remember her 6 times tables, but she remembers that the chap who occasionally fixes our appliances likes his coffee white, with one). When the knock on the door came, Stinky opened the door, to find Her Repair-Mate standing there, saying “Yeah, I was wondering if it was you, but with a different address! Finally moved out, eh?” And so bladder control was restored to the washing machine, the white-with-one coffee was served, and we no longer have to wear Wellingtons to do the washing!
Then it came to pass that Pye went on an excursion with year 9 students to Melbourne Zoo. There actually are a remarkable number of Indonesian animals there, and since they built a new home for the elephants to live in, it also comes complete with ye authenticey southe easte asiane café area. Most of the signs are even in Indonesian, so we could totally justify it as an educational excursion, too! We’re not sure about both the other staff members on the excursion, though – if you don’t find it entirely entertaining when the baboons have a bit of a root, then a bit of a fight, then the big male runs about a while with a stiffy, we’re not sure there’s a whole lot of common-ground there. In addition, they were both terrified of birds, which meant they shrieked every time a sea gull looked at them (the staff, not the baboons. But that would be funny, too!). Notwithstanding the fact the seagull in the lunch areas were huge beastly raptors, Pye came out thoroughly amused.
Later, Stinky caused many of Pye’s colleagues to go to a trivia night. The night was organised by the parents and friends association, and no staff seemed to be planning to come. Our involvement happened thus:
Pye says to Stinky, “Arrg, Cap’n, thar be a trivia night I should be attendin’, but I’ll be tryin’ to git outa it!”
And Stinky spake unto her First Mate, “Har arr! But I mind not ye olde trivia night, for it be makin’ me feel smart yea, right unto me noggin!!”
So Pye returned to her work-mates and bullied others into joining them. Heer! So ten of us flew the flag for the professional educators, and found ourselves coming a comfortable mediocre – just a smidgen above average. We figured out that made us a ‘C’ on the VELS scale – a fact which is hilarious to Victorian teachers (at least at Pye’s school), and completely incomprehensible t’all normal people. Well, stuff the lot of ya! :-)
Then came the time when it was the illustrious Book Week, a time for schools to celebrate the fact that boys don’t read. Wah. Being a year seven homeroom teacher of 16 non-reading boys and 6 Dolly-reading girls, Pye was involved in the celebrations which included a day where students were to come dressed as their favourite character from a book. Pye glanced at Stinky, who (thanks to a wonderful t-shirt sent from Canada by Jenski) had been getting around for weeks dressed thus:
...and concluded she had no choice than to go as a pirate. And so Pye consulted our piratey bookshelf and selected a picture book with the profound title, “The Pirate Who Wouldn’t Wash”, so that she could properly honour her inspiration. She stole D’admiral’s genuine replica duelling pistol and Chuckles’ boots, strapped a rat to her shoulder and was off to work!
Everyone wanted to play with the gun, and to know whether she had coloured in her tooth with a black texta. The short answer to that question was ‘no’ – the long answer being that once upon a time an eight year old Andru had dressed up like Mulga Bill (from Eaglehawk, who caught the cycling craze), and had used a special costume paint specifically designed to blacken teeth. Twenty-two odd years later, we still have it and even though lists no ingredients and quite possibly is made from lead and rats’ blood, we’re still prepared to use it. Or at least Pye is. That’s the sort of length she’s willing to go to, for the love of piracy!
In conclusion, just in case you thought you may see a repeat of the last epistle (wherein Stinky and Pye neglected to add a picture of Jasmine), here’s the cabin girl!
