Blood is thicker than water...

But then so is brown sauce, so that really proves nothing. What I'm really trying to say is this; if you could, would you?'

I looked at him the way one regards something thats attached to the bottom of your shoe. You're pretty sure its poo, but you still have a small smidgen of hope that it isn't. I decided to humour the old man.

'Ah but could I?'
I hadn't thrown him quite yet. 'Yes you could, but would you?'
'Should I?' I challenged, argumentatively-ish. 'Do I really want to? Is it something I've longed for, hoped for, cried for and prayed for? Is it something I positively can't do with out? Is it...'
I couldn't finish my sentence because it seemed the guy at the other end of the drive-through microphone was no longer there. And there was quite a honking coming from the car behind. I decided to look over my shoulder to see why and saw that it was a car full of geese.

Just habit I reasoned, I guess they couldn't help themselves. That said I was surprised that a goose honking a car horn didn't cause some kind of imbalance in the fabric of time itself and tear us all asunder. That said, being torn asunder is looking less and less likely now that the Large Hanky Consumer didn't asunder us.

If you'd have said I was disappointed by that, you would have been wrong. But I guess you had a 50/50 chance so no hard feelings me old mucka!

Quickly, I must avoid turning cockney on you again, knowwhatImean?

Oh bottoms, looks like I'll have to resort to the only thing that truly stops me from turning cockney:

PIRATES!

Mostly because I ar(rrrrrrrrrrr)e one of course!
It was funny today, no really it was. Really. No, honestly it was funny. Well why don't you just wait and I'll tell you! I was working with our new printer when its screen illuminated and the reason it gave was this:

'Due to an alert, this screen be illuminated'.

Really, try reading that two or three times without the second half of it turning into a Pirate impression. Genuinely, that was the reason it gave, the precise grammar, everything. I was left reeling. Mostly from imagining how a guy with only one eye and a hook for a hand managed to program a printer. I even thought about making an Abu Hamsa joke, but decided that not enough of my target audience would remember him, so let it slide.

As I turned to walk away from the Printer I swear it tried to sidle up to me, take me by surprise. It had even turned broadside on, very strange...

I forgot all about it until later in the day when it beeped a peculiar beep and flashed up on its screen

'Due to an alert, BOARD HER ME HEARTIES!'

You've never seen true fear until you've seen me being chased around a medium sized locked room by a printer with a Pirate complex. The printer, not me, I am one, remember. I only narrowly escaped death when it had advanced so far that it pulled its own plug out of the wall. Phew!

Or so I thought. Actually I then looked and saw my boss holding the plug after having apparently wrenched it out of the wall. Then you would have seen the true meaning of fear. And sheepishness.

Its very hard trying to explain to your boss that the new printer he's just spent a lot of money on has a Pirate complex and is trying to kill you. Especially when he was trying to keep the weight off his wooden leg...

All aboard, ye landlubbers,
for a trip about the cape of 'Oh Crickey'
Upon the good ship 'Disastrous Voyage Mk III'.