Yo Ho Ho

on a dead man’s vest

“I’ll bedevil yer kidneys and serve em on toast so I will”
leered a distressing waitress with a moist saucy smile, a tricorn hat and a scimitar worn in her sash.
A piquant reminder of why we’d run screaming from this restaurant last time we’d tried it.
Called The Ludicrous Monster, it had a reputation for supernatural supper parties
tonight’s theme was broadcast as Mean Blue Blooded Piracy.


“Dead men tell nae tales, will you be wanting to visit Davy Jones locker before I seat yer?”
As none of us did, she took our coats draped over her arm fitted out with a razor sharp hook.
Threw them one by one blithely across the room to where Blind Pew was waiting.
A sharp whistle on the bosun’s pipe alerted him they were coming but due to a slight misjudgment they fell at his feet, where he proceeded to stomp them to the tune of Frigging in the Rigging sung by the Uruguayan cover band, Les Sexy Pistoleiros, who were hot gigging it out on the balcony.
Wallowing in nostalgia…nautically challenged by the look of the state of them.


We sat to a miscellaneous medley of deflating parrot cushion insults, were handed a bottle of Old Grog and five tarred leather jacks to drink out of.
With a “bottoms up me hearties” we did our damned best to get into the spirit of the thing, we’d paid an arm and a wooden leg for the tickets.
The anti pasti arrived comprised of mixed grilled tentacles in pink frothy ink sauce.
A thousand beetles probably committed suicide gladly just to get away from the chef.
Who was stomping round the kitchen, one leg tied up behind him, roaring “oooray up she rises” to a pot of live crabs coming slowly to the boil on the stovetop.
One bolder chap made a bolt for the exit scuttling sideways, ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving.
Chef trapped him under the hostess trolley but he was clinging on like a titanic survivor to a life raft, claws clamped to the wheel grommets, eyeballs on stalks froth bubbling from whatever passed for a nose.
It was troubling but we were just glad that the bloody thing couldn’t talk, we’d enough problems of our own, after all.


The napkins of course were Jolly Roger impregnated, probably a left over bulk buy from Halloween at poundshop.
Cutlery was a dagger stuck point first in the table the plates were pewter with little skulls embossed round the edge, trés authentiques n’est pas…we spoke French buccaneer fluently with a Caribbean accent.


The first act up on stage was a pole dancer called Blackbeard, she wore little else.
They’d replaced her pole with a wooden mast greased like pig lightning she spun silent and deadly with the occasional whimper, walked from the stage bow legged from splinters, calling: Was there a doctor in the house?
The comedian was a dead man walking…literally a zombie…he delivered lines that had seen better days laid out in coffins…lead ones, buried at the crossroads, six feet under, stake through the heart.
The crowd groaned like ships timbers in rough stormy weather as he coughed up rabbit punch after punchline to deafening canned laughter and the one paid shill in the back, clapping and hooting.


The best joke of the night was the main course, an undercover Turbot, they’d left the eyes in to make it look spooky, it watched us malignantly as we passed it around the table, we thought hey cookie’s been at the sherry again.
It was served on a bed of asparagus billed as ‘Jack Sparrow grass’ crass but commercial, played in by a jolly Jack tar earnest on a squeeze box, accompanied by thigh bone and skull percussion section and for some reason a cabin boy on squeezy dead rubber penguin.


The gravy boat was shaped like the Marie Celeste it sailed into the room out of nowhere, surrounded by dry ice.
Through the mist we could see furry faux eyeballs, well we hoped they were faux, bobbling to the surface and then fatefully sinking again without trace, back into legend we guessed.
Faint ghostly green glow worms wrapped around the mast intimated St Almo’s fire.
Ghastly laughter belted from the PA system, the same guy we reckoned who had shilled for the comedian.
Wasn’t quite so impressive however when he broke down at the finale, a hacking smoker’s cough, kind of spoilt the ambience.


For dessert there was a desert island, we checked they’d got the spelling right in this sentence, then we each were given a map, a spade, a set of coordinates and a riddle to solve.
A man dressed only in a loin cloth came to help us, well it was the start of the weekend, Friday in fact. 
We all used our daggers to make our obeisance to the pudding, little crosses abounded we all began to dig up the sand.
It got a bit competitive at one point with several of us resorting to using our fingers, squelching and prodding through the palm trees to get to the trifling treasures hidden within.


Which were to be honest a bit of a damp squib.
A pair of silver plated hooped earrings and a very soggy eyepatch, though the dead men’s fingers were quite realistic, so real in fact we called to the chef to count up to ten.
There was a wee pause then an unearthly scream from the kitchen.
Best joke of the night we agreed, finished up the grog, picked up our coats, paid politely, then left.