Read The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics Online
Authors: Gideon Defoe
The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics
To Peter Lord,
Who has his own film studio. You can’t
compete with that, can you, Sophie?
Contents
Unit One: Pronunciation – Meet Boris and Anna
A trip to the bank – No joy for the Pirate Captain – Schemes – An opportunity!
Unit Two: Basic Grammar – Boris and Anna take the Subway together
The Villa Diodati – A pretty girl – Stormy moods – A deal is struck
Unit Three: Making Small Talk – Boris asks Anna to come on a picnic
An actual feast! – Not a competition – Waiting for adventure
Unit Four: Expressing Possibilities – Boris and Anna look for jobs
Discussing the guests – Aloof – Funny – Deep
Unit Five: Socialising – Boris and Anna throw a party
An unconvincing plan – Eskimo attack! – The Captain’s tattoo – Adventure at last
Unit Six: In the Workplace – Anna tells Boris about her new colleague Sergei
To London! – A grumpy sort of man – The code deciphered?
Unit Seven: Asking for Directions – Sergei invites Anna to see his band
The Captain is out of sorts – Advice from Jennifer – Arrival in Oxford
Unit Eight: Dining Out – Boris eats dinner alone
Visiting the library – A secret shared – An unexpected incident!
Unit Nine: Advanced Grammar – Boris and Anna have a disagreement
Success? – Surely it’s just a legend! – Percy’s plan
Unit Ten: Booking Accommodation – Boris stays at the YMCA
Shelley’s Account – A terrible warning
Unit Eleven: Shopping Made Easy – Boris purchases a kitchen knife
Collected Ephemera
Unit Twelve: Out on the Town – Boris meets Sergei by a canal
Advice is sought – Subtext in the tavern – A shocking leaflet
Unit Thirteen: Handling Emergencies – Sergei has an unfortunate accident
The castle – Looking for clues – The great switcheroo
Unit Fourteen: Verb Tables – Boris spends a night in the woods
An awful discovery – An uncomfortable breakfast – The Captain takes charge – Disappointment – A ghost!
Unit Fifteen: All About Pronouns – The police find Anna
Shelley has a plan – Contacting the dead – The villain unmasked!
Unit Sixteen: Difficult Questions – Boris appears on television!
A moral dilemma – Vanished! – Things hot up – To the crypt!
Unit Seventeen: 10 Things to Avoid – Boris is cornered in the parking lot
A very long explanation – Another code – The prize is found!
Unit Eighteen: The Past Tense – Boris refuses to go quietly
A tug of war – A difficult choice – A noble speech – Whoops
Unit Nineteen: A Visit to the Hospital – Boris finds some peace at last
Saying goodbye – New plans – A comforting thought
‘Everybody gasped as Ruth squeezed the tenth ping pong ball into her mouth. The community centre was saved!’
‘Valerie narrowed her eyes. “That’s no turtle,” she whispered, giving the strange creature a prod with her toothbrush.’
‘Jim had never met a talking bookcase before. He sighed – it seemed like today was just going to be one annoying thing after another.’
‘The stocky man with the scar was back – and this time, Dave was relieved to see, he had the biscuits.’
‘All the children clapped and laughed with delight – it was the best pie-chart any of them had ever seen!’
‘Fig 1: The Bering Land Bridge at the last glacial maximum, as reconstructed from the latest research. Fig 2: Vin Diesel in “The Pacifier”.’
‘Sparklechops leapt over the fence. “Go Pony, go!” shouted Putin.’
‘Eliza burst into tears. The world’s biggest parsnip – and it was ruined!’
‘If the President’s button phobia ever got out, Brigid knew she could kiss goodbye to that promotion. She squeezed the trigger.’
‘Meringue!’ said Illiana.
One
‘The most exciting way to start an adventure,’ said the albino pirate, ‘would be to open in the sinister lair of the International Crime League, eavesdropping as they plotted their most audacious crime yet – the theft of the Queen’s brain!’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said the pirate with gout. ‘The most exciting way to start an adventure would be to wake up inside a room, next to a dead body, two pieces of coal, and an unexplained carrot – but there’s apparently
no way in or out of the room
!’
‘How about finding yourself in a regular-looking café . . . but then, when you open the door – it turns out you’re
in space
!’
‘What if, overnight, plants started walking
backwards
.’
Soon all the pirate crew joined in the argument about what the most exciting way to start an adventure might be. Usually this would escalate from polite to heated to vociferous before you could say ‘guts everywhere’, ‘arterial spray’ or ‘horrific splatter pattern’, but today, because the pirates were sitting in the vestibule of a fusty Swiss bank and one of the bank clerks was giving them a stern look, they decided it was probably best to keep the noise down. The albino pirate stopped waggling his cutlass at the pirate with bedroom eyes and stared at a pot plant instead. The pirate with gout picked up a magazine and went back to reading an article about dividends. The pirate with a scarf gazed out of the window to where the pirate boat lay parked on the rain-drenched, achingly dull shore of Lake Geneva, thought a bit about the nature of irony, and yawned.
Inside the bank manager’s office the Pirate Captain tipped back in his chair, swung his boots onto the big mahogany desk and did his most winning smile, which involved showing off all of his teeth, even the molars.
1
His
years
at
sea
had
left
him
tanned
and
weathered
–
but
weathered
in
a
good
way
,
like
an
antique
globe
or
a
vintage
fireplace
,
not
in
a
bad
way
,
like
Val
Kilmer
or
a
mouldy
coffee
cup
–
and
if
you
were
to
compare
him
to
a
type
of
gastropod
,
which
was
the
latest
thing
his
crew
tended
to
compare
him
to
,
he
’
d
probably
be
a
luxuriantly
bearded
conch
,
or
maybe
a
whelk
with
a
pleasant
,
open
face
.
The
Captain
wasn
’
t
keen
on
being
compared
to
types
of
gastropod
,
so
he
’
d
been
trying
to
persuade
them
to
compare
him
to
other
things
instead
: