The Pirates Next Door

Saturday. A party asked me today what they should do after the Nautilus. I suggested lunch. They suggested pirates.

There is a pirate galleon in the same building as my submarine in Perth. There is one in Sydney too, beside the hunt, and another in Melbourne. They are everywhere I am. I have lodged a complaint through Barnacle, and he has lodged it nowhere, which is his usual practice.

I am not against pirates. They sail on top of the water and I sail underneath it. We do not compete; we merely disapprove of each other from a distance, as ships should. And I concede that a party who has spent an hour at the bottom of the sea might like an hour on top of it, for balance.

So, the Perth arrangement, for the record: down the stairs from Hay Street Mall into The Basement, my Nautilus one way and the galleon another. An afternoon at sea without a single wet sock.