The Writers' Circle

When the tiny principality of Liechtenstein suddenly became the richest country on earth due to a junior clerk at the world bank accidentally putting Germany's GDP into Liechtenstein's bank account. The Grand Duke of Liechtenstein did what anyone else who has suddenly come into more money than they could possibly ever spend, and drew up a list of everyone who had hacked him off over the years.

It was not a very long list. The obvious reason being that it is unusual for people to be unpleasant to minor royalty.
After he had thought about it for a week, the only people he could think of to hate were the English, as the year before they had knocked Liechtenstein out of the world cup due to a dubious penalty decision.

The duke bought himself a very large expensive yacht. On the large expensive yacht he installed a large expensive loudspeaker system, and when all was ready he sailed it up the English channel and anchored just off the coast of Newhaven, where he settled down to shout rude things at the English people he could see walking their dogs along the cliff-tops.
This was somewhat upsetting to the dog walkers. They would be quietly ambling along admiring the large expensive yacht off-shore, when all of a sudden, a heavily accented voice would boom across the waves: "Ve Vere robbed" or "It vas nedder a penalty".
This became somewhat of an irritation to the local people, and they not unreasonably began to complain to the council.

The council held a meeting to discuss the problem, and to see if they could find a way to resolve it.
They looked in the large book of things that the council owned, and were dismayed to find that they owned neither a battleship or a submarine with which they could sink the duke's yacht. In fact the only maritime craft that they owned was a small pleasure boat called the saucy sue that took holidaymakers for trips around the harbour. It was also pointed out by the municipal treasurer that not only was it a dubious penalty decision in the first place, but should the council be seen to use force, it could be construed as an act of war. The cost of which was something that had not been allowed for within the current budget. A way had to be found to get rid of the duke without it appearing that the council had a hand in doing so. They would have to find an outside agency to help them.

So it was that the town secretary trawled through the files to see if there was an independent navy or some professional assassins listed within the local area. Unfortunately there were none. But what she did find was the phone number of Britain's last pirate.
His name was Colin Loppy, and he worked for the local bank. When he had first joined straight from school, there had been no indication of his pirate leanings. He had appeared to be just another junior bank worker. But as the years passed, he began to slowly change his appearance. It started by the wearing of frilly shirts, and then progressed to ear-rings, sea-boots, tri-cornered hats, a moustache and an eye-patch. When he arrived at work one day with a parrot stapled to his shoulder, the bank felt the need to move him away from the front desk away from the public, and assigned him to the strongroom instead. Unfortunately, Colin had a tendency to remove the treasures from the safe deposit boxes and try to bury them in the floor, and so the bank finally put him in a back office away from everyone else and assigned him to house insurance, where he had spent the last twenty years indexing files.

When the council approached Colin with the idea of surreptitiously employing him to remove the duke from their coastline, he was delighted to assist. He had been waiting all of his life for a moment such as this. They explained to him that the council could not be seen to be involved, but they would leave the doors of the saucy sue open and the keys in the ignition, and they would make sure that everyone was looking the other way when Colin "borrowed" it. All he had to do was remove the duke and his yacht from the council boundary s.

Colin decided that he would sail out on Saturday to board the duke's yacht. The bank was closed at the weekend and he would not have to use up any of his annual holiday that way. He spent the time before the weekend sharpening his cutlass, and practising pirate phrases and fierce looks in the mirror.
On Saturday morning he packed some sandwiches and a flask of tea and went down to the harbour to steal the saucy sue. A large number of people had heard of his coming exploit, and had gathered on the quayside to watch him leave. A policeman had to be called to tell them to look the other way while Colin was taking the boat. Thus it was, that Colin and the saucy sue chugged out of the harbour to the rousing cheers of a crowd of well-wishers who could not be absolutely sure that he had left.

Despite being a pirate, Colin had never actually sailed a small boat before. There hadn't been much need for it at the house insurance section of the bank, and he was unpleasantly surprised how much the little boat went up and down and side to side once he was in the open sea.

The reason pirates are called pirates is because they Arghhhhhh.
And Arghhhhhh was very similar to the noise that Colin was making as he hung over the side of the boat watching his breakfast leave his body much faster than it had entered it. The constant crawling to the side of the boat made navigating the thing a more difficult task than it would normally have been, and it took nearly an hour before the saucy sue crashed inelegantly into the side of the duke's yacht.
The duke meanwhile had been watching Colin's erratic approach with some interest, and had concluded that his fellow seafarer was in trouble. So when Colin weakly attempted to board the yacht the duke helpfully assisted him on-board. Colin returned the favour by being violently sick on the poop deck.
He had intended to wave his cutlass about and shout "Avast you scurvy dog" at the duke in order to frighten him away, but he had accidentally dropped the cutlass in the sea as he was being hauled onto the yacht, and he didn't feel well enough to do more than utter a few groans.
The duke noticing that Colin's frilly shirt had traces of vomit on it, showed his uninvited guest down to the bathroom. Colin gratefully un-stapled the parrot from his shoulder, removed his jacket and shirt, and began to clean himself up. After about twenty minutes he felt a bit better and went topside to thank the duke for his help.
"Not at all" said the duke. "In many ways you were lucky to crash into me when you did".
It transpired that Germany had realised that all of their money had been given to Liechtenstein, and had taken it all back again. The duke told Colin that he was due to weigh anchor within the hour and sail up to Hamburg in order to shout abuse at the Germans instead.

Thus it was that the scourge of Newhaven was removed from the English coast, and Colin Loppy, Britain's last pirate returned to a hero's welcome, and a desk in the insurance department of the local bank.