This week’s challenge is to write a story, limerick or poem on the subject of:
Chips/Crisps
Last week’s challenge was to write about the sea. You sent in some great pieces. Here are a few:
Keith Channing has written an amusing and witty limerick:
What makes speaking French hard for me
Is la mer is the word for the sea
Le maire is the mayor
And your mother’s la mère
And they all sound the same, can’t you see?
EDC Writing sent in some romantic messages:
Sam:
You’ll think this a strange thing for me to say, but I feel your presence. Where my thoughts go you go too – us walking bare foot in the grass, our feet anointed by the sea as we stroll along a beach, hands held beneath a sky of blue – I know, I know, too much, too soon – to think of you like this.
Erin:
You know how to give me butterflies, don’t you? I enjoy your thoughts – I have the same sorts of things running through my mind too, though I don’t have the words to capture them as you do.
Kevin has built on an infamous poem:
The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a leaky, cardboard boat.
They had lost all of their money
To a girl called Honey
Along with a five pound note.
The owl looked up to the stars above
And sang to a small guitar
“Oh beautiful Pussy, oh Pussy my love,
I wonder where we are,
We are,
I wonder where we are?”
The pussy sighed
And sadly replied,
“Owl,
You are a stupid old fowl.
Can’t you see
That we are not at sea.
There can be no mistake
That we are on a lake.
Oh what a stupid old fowl you are
You are
Oh what a stupid old fowl you are.”
Now for another entertaining tale from Martin Strike:
Mutiny off the Bounty
Dear Reader. I once looked into the history of Captain Bligh and his difficulty with the crew on the Bounty. He was even more interesting than I thought, so a while ago I wrote this dialogue-only story which uses some of the facts, and much which almost certainly isn’t! Martin.
– Pull! Pull!
– Oi, who are telling to pull? And anyway, it must be your turn to row by now.
– You, sir, should know I am Cap’n Bligh, and think favourably of obeying me orders.
– Oh I should, should I? I can’t row all day you know.
– Crush my cuttlefish and just keep on yer rowin’. As if I haven’t had enough of mincin’ mutineers. Surely a sailor like you doesn’t need reminding that I am the cap’n and you are me crew. Now resume rattlin’ those rusty rollocks.
– Your crew? If it hasn’t escaped your notice, Captain, we’ve just been set adrift from HMS Bounty in the middle of the Pacific and there are only three of us on this rowboat – and one of us is a bloody parrot…
– Pieces of eight! Sqwark!
– …Which hardly qualifies Polly and me to be your ‘crew’?
– Silence you snivellin’ shad. I will NOT have insubordination within the ranks.
– Ranks? To put you right, Captain – I’m just the ships cook and I’m no more a sailor than Polly here…
– Hoist the mainbrace! Sqwark!
– …And as cook, I can no more row this boat in a straight line than hose the plainface, or whatever it was the parrot just said.
– Now lookee ‘ere Mr….
– Tulip, Captain.
– Mr Tulip?
– That’s right, Captain, my name’s Rotterdam Tulip, on account of my being found as a babe by a landing party from HMS Thrip, lying in a bulb field in Holland. 1777 it was when they took me aboard ships and I’ve barely taken a step on dry land since.
– Bless me soul that’s an absurd story, Mr Tulip, and clearly a fishy fabrication as not one moment ago you told me that you are no sailor.
– Oh, but I am no sailor, Captain, on account of my fear of water and lack of sea legs. That’s why they’ve kept me in the galley since I was knee high to a ship’s cat. I can’t so much as look out of a porthole without getting an astringent dose of the flux. You don’t know what havoc drawing these oars is playing with my arthritis.
– Arrrrthritis? Well then, Mr ‘land lubber’ Tulip, answer me this: I know why your cowardly crew mates cast me adrift in this wretched rowboat with that picaroon parrot…
– Walk the plank! Have a yank! Sqwark!
– …But if you really are the ship’s cook, why in the deep blue sea did they abandon you too?
– Well, Captain, if you must know, the crew took a dislike to my cooking. They said they wanted avocado rub for their moisturising routines, and instead of salted mutton for their tea they started demanding cous cous with sprouted beans. And the fuss they made about the ships biscuits.
– Ye gods, Tulip. You were responsible for those calamitous concretions of satanic scree? The ships biscuits that dragged my 215-ton ship down dangerously close to its plimsoll line?
– Pieces of slate, hellova weight! Sqwark!
– I admit they were a bit ‘close’ in texture.
– The ones that had half the crew at Mr Pullit, the ship’s dentist’s door.
– OK, I think you’ve made your point, Captain.
– ….And the other half farting likes blunderbusses and blowin’ holes in the fo’c’s’le sail?
– Yes, that was a little unfortunate.
– Unfortunate? I had to give order to expunge the ship of these stolid stollen with their morale-milking presence by blasting them from the cannons.
– Alright, enough said I think now, Captain.
– Enough said? – When the firing of them inadvertently sank our sister ship, HMS Snickers.
– I get your drift, Captain.
– Drift? Tulip, my only surprise is that those perfidious pirates didn’t cast you off into this rowboat with a freshly-baked batch – a consignment that would have given you, me and Black Beak here a one-way ‘drift’ straight down to Davy Jones’ locker.
– Polly doesn’t want a cracker! Sqwark!
– OK, Captain, so I’m not as good as that young Mary Berry in the baking department, but the fact is, we’re stuck a rowboat together in the middle of the ocean, with one set of oars and no ship or crew.
– Keep calm, Mr Tulip. Me charts show that with our being cast off near Tonga, the island of Tofua is just over the horizon, so if you could kindly see yourself up to some more rowin’ due north, then perhaps it might just save yer life and keep you from a good keel haulin’. In the meantime I’ve got to rest up and think up a good excuse for the Admiralty after the despicable dissension of me crew and their absconding with me ship, the Bounty.
– I’d just tell those stuffed-shirts in the Admiralty that the crew wouldn’t accept ships discipline. You know – the crack of the lash, the deprivation of grog – that whole sort of captainy thing.
– Oh yes, then perhaps I should to mention the discontent resulting from your fairy cakes?
– There’s no need to bring them up, Captain, though admittedly the lads found them hard to deal with. But baking a fluffy fairy is a tricky business when the ship is struggling to negotiate the Cape of Good Hope and all the raising agent had been eaten by weevils before we’d even left the Bay of Biscay. But remember, the Admiralty are all up for harsh and not so fair treatment of the crew – cooks excepted of course – so I reckon they’ll let you off.
– But I was fair to the crew, Tulip. And was certainly not overly harsh – I’ll go down in history with my reputation for scoldin’ when other cap’ns would have whipped, and whippin’ when other cap’ns would have hanged.
– That’s as maybe, but I heard the crew felt left out.
– Left out?
– Well, you know what sailors are like, Captain– they were jealous of the attention you were giving to our cargo. They felt that you didn’t love them anymore.
– They were jealous of our cargo…..breadfruit? But that was our mission, to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and deliver ‘em to the West Indies where they would be potted-on and used to feed the slaves.
– I’m just saying, Captain.
– But the one thousand and fifteen plants we collected were our raison d’etre. I had the deckin’ beneath ‘em lined with lead to retain water to assist irrigation. I even had my cap’ns cabin inconveniently converted into a greenhouse to promote strong, healthy leaf growth on their aaaarduous voyage.
– There you go captain – their voyage. As far as the crew were concerned, with you it was just breadfruit, breadfruit, breadfruit. The men got quite tearful – they thought you preferred the breadfruit to them. Mr Christian said you fawned over those plants night and day.
– Mr Christian, Mr Christian! Sqwark!
– Enough, you loquacious lark! Now, I’ll have no more talk of that magniloquent mutineer whilst I am in command of this vessel. Breadfruit is very demandin’ to grow you know – it favours a gritty ericaceous soil, with plenty a water and a free-draining compost to prevent their roots from drownin’.
– Yes, and so you cut the crew’s water rations in favour of the plants. The men were furious – they said it made their complexions dry and that they struggled to rinse the shampoo out of their hair in the mornings. Mr Christian said the smell of jojoba below decks was becoming overpowering. They couldn’t understand why you showed such devotion to such ugly plants when you could have laden the decks with boughs of beautiful flowers.
– That craven crew and their bloomin’ blooms. For most of the five months it took our two on-boar bot’nists to collect all those breadfruit plants whilst we were harboured in Tahiti, those blubbering barnacles were either out picking nosegays of larkspurs and marguerites or playing rounders on the beach. Then blow the man down, just a few days after settin’ sail again that spoilt sloth of swabs mutiny.
– There’s gratitude! I’ve seen nothing like it since 1781 when I was in the Battle of Dogger Bank and the crew` of HMS Belle Poulle refused to join in until the cannon balls had been polished and the sails washed and ironed.
– Shiver me timbers! Sqwark!
– See – even the parrot is appalled by that meticulous mob of marshmallows. Now row Mr Tulip, as me blood boils at the very thought of ‘em.
– Land ahoy! Land ahoy! Sqwark!
– Well bless my barnacled bilge, that clamorous coot is right, Mr Tulip. Through my spyscope I can see the locals all wading in the surf to cheer us in.
– We’re saved!
– No wait – the indigenous inhabitants are dancin’ and spellin’ out some sort of semaphore motion with their arms. It’s Y….M….C…..A … It’s the Bounty’s crew – they must have got here first. Hard astern Mr Tulip, those buoyant boogalooers are hostile!
– Backwards Captain? – But where shall we go?
– To our destinies, Mr Tulip.
– Our destinies?
– Yes, I fancy we undertake a 3,500 nautical mile voyage to tumultuous Timor, where I predict having subsequently been acquitted by court martial for any personal responsibility in the mutinous behaviour of me cowardly crew, I intend be appointed Gov’nor of New South Wales with instruction to clear up the illicit rum trade. Then I will rise to Rear Admiral, conceive 6 cavorting children with my wife Betsy Betham, and die in London, 1817, where a stone breadfruit will be carved upon me gravestone. Lovely plant, the breadfruit.
– That’s a full and noble destiny, Captain. In whicj case mine appears to be to develop forearms like a futuristic whose sole food is spinach by the time I’ve rowed us to Timor, then after all this kerfuffle, it’s a quiet land-tied life for me and Polly on the island of Krakatoa – nothing ever happens there.
– O –Oh! Sqwark!
– No time to waste then, Mr Tulip. Pull! Pull!
***
Photo credit: http://www.thequotepedia.com
Esther Chilton 
Leave a reply to EDC Writing/Believing Sight Unseen Cancel reply