Buckle here. I’d like to take this opportunity to say few fings about life aboard The Pollywogg.

Golden beans on ice.

Tuesday December 13, 2005

I save the ship, but don’t get to eat anything.

Ice.

Do have your drinks with ice in them? Before last fortnight I took my grog cold as an arctic codfish. Not no more.

It all started, funny as it might, with Salty miss-reading a tin of beans. See, these beans we get from some ship or other we sacked had a bright colour label on ‘em. “Beanvick’s Golden Kidney Beans” says the tin. But Salty thought they was real gold! So he looks at the part what says where they were put in the can. But that part of the paper was damaged when the barrel the tins were in dropped into the water (not my fault).

So Salty is trying to read this can, see and he can’t quite make out what it says. But word has gotten around about the stash of Golden Beans Salty has been hiding. Sunny Jim is up on deck with what appears to be a very large piece of cutlery trying to convince Salty to reveal the secret cave of Gold Beans (Sunny makes an excellent zesty dip out of real gold beans, by the way. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of this entire caper is that he never got to make it).

Even Filibuster gets in on the action- when the action strays too close to his napping spot in the jolly boat. Filli peeks out of his boat and snatches the tin from Salty’s hand.

“Sauðárkrókur” says Filli.

“Geuzuntiet!” says I.

“No. That’s where it’s canned: Sauðárkrókur. In Iceland.”

So let’s stop here for a moment, shall we. If you are looking for a fun place to go and have, say a pillow fight in your pee jays, I would recommend Pillowland. If you would like a nice bit of cheese try Snackland. If, however it is mid December and you want beans do not, I repeat, do not go to ICE-land!

But go we did. We set our course ever northward, and a bit to the east. Soon it began to get cold. In an attempt to cheer us up and maybe keep us a bit warmer First Mate McGraw made us all sets of jolly nice curtains in a lovely tropical print. But nothing could keep us warm as we sailed into wintery seas.

When the sea turns icy, and the winds begin to blow a vessel takes on an eerie, ghostly appearance. The lines begin to grow frosty, and soon everything above decks is coated in a thick icy rime. Poor Filibuster was caught napping on deck and we had to pour hot soup down his backside to unstuck him from the deck.

Soon the layer of ice became a danger and it fell to me to keep us afloat.

I hear tales of a game played in the Americas called baseball where in a fellow tries to whack a ball thrown by some other fellow. Well I know it exists because I picked up a wooden club used in such a game from a Spanish señor I met in port. (Actually it would appear to be on “extended loan” but that is another story for another time.)

I proceeded to use this club or “bat” to beat the ice from our bow.

As I did this beating, (something at which I am quite well-versed) I couldn’t help but notice how easily the ice could be formed into recognizable shapes. (See Buckle’s Blast #1 for more on my artistic abilities.) So I’s starts to make meself a right nice version of Windsor Castle. Mid way though the garden maze I realize I’m ankle-deep in the ice myself.

That’s when I gets this idea forming in my head that seemed at the time to be pure genius. I figures that since icebergs float so good, maybe I can just make myself some ice-boots and go for a walk in the North Sea.

So I did. I walked clean around the boat. If it hadn’t been for Captain Bogg opening the can of beans and proving they were not, in fact made of gold, but rather over-cooked, I’d have made it to Norway.

We didn’t make it to Iceland, neither, by the way. I hear they eat puffins there. I wonder if they go well with beans? Maybe they have them in ice cubes.

June 2006: 13: Such a mighty racket!
December 2005: 13: Golden beans on ice.
November 2005: 10: Smiley faces