Sometimes All You Need Is Something To Say

Sometimes all you need is something to say

And whilst I may be without a thing to say, I’ve got plenty to write about.

I just need to remember.

I’d love to escape from prison; I just need a crime to be sent down for long enough for, preferably in the 1930s.

Naturally I don’t want to hurt anyone, nor take things that don’t belong to me, as I really am quite pleasant upon first impressions (just don’t meet me twice).

Maybe sedition?

Or parking tickets?

Its time like this I wish I was in the USA, able to commit some devastatingly trivial infraction that would escalate to a prison sentence upon crossing state lines.

Smuggling.

I would love to be imprisoned for smuggling, or piracy, so long as I could ensure a positive working environment with equal opportunities for the all (not just the physically impaired – who I presume are the majority on a pirate boat. I’ll be calling it a ‘boat’ rather than a ‘ship’ by the way, as I know this will irk some and I want to give a fair chance to those that don’t get to meet me twice).

I’m a Man of Kent, owing to having been born East of the Medway river in Kent, thus giving me a fair grounding in the history of my county. And it turns out Kent is a county of hop-pickers and smugglers, both historically enjoying one another just fine.

I could pick a hop, and I could pick it well, but I doubt I’d get to enjoy the thrill of being chased along the estuary, whilst the orchards are a place for high-speed fuck-alls. Orchards a are place where even hurrying takes most of the afternoon.

So smuggling it is.

No smuggling of people though, as smuggling people is immoral and dangerous, as well as a crowded market at the moment – the number of Brits looking to make a get-away buoyant on a sturdy enough inheritance of the family turd to float their way through the sewers and away to the continent; is simply silly, as well as intricately silly too.

I’ll have to smuggle something noble, like medical supplies, or knights.

Which knight of the realm would be best to smuggle to the continent?

Sir John Major deserves something nice to happen to him, providing the canoe is broad enough.

Sir Michael Caine and Sir Lenny Henry could do with a voyage to the mainland, though I have to admit I’m struggling to name knights at this point and wouldn’t want to tell these chaps they were only invited because I couldn’t think of more noble folk.

They’d still have to pay-up, of course, I’m not providing free rides here; I am a smuggler after all. But what fee for a canoe ride to Europe?

Some sort of pardon for doing it in the first place seems a worthy price for such a crime. A nice written pardon, quilled onto parchment (not one of those tacky plastic ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ cards), that absolves me of whatever you’re talking to me about. The sort of parchment you can really waggle in a coastguard’s face. I appreciate already that there is peril in this becoming soggy in my working environment, but that makes it all the more of a pleasure to waggle.

I think Sir Major and Sir Henry would keep my pardon safe, not sure about Sir Caine though, and I can imagine him getting all upset about having let me down and worried I’ll ditch him mid-Channel.

To be honest, all three of those knights seem particularly ‘overboardable’, not that to criticise them, I just picture them tipping backwards and hearing the splash – they’d all make a good one, and would be a good way to loose passenger weight for the get-away.

Each of those knights is a notable amount of weight to lose. To be able to say: “I’ve lost almost Sir John Major in weight since January” is good for your health (presuming you were massive to begin with) and good for your smuggling career (presuming you’ve been undergoing a getaway since January).

I could ditch them all, irrelevant as to their clutching of my pardon parchment, particularly considering that my main aim was to be imprisoned in the first place.

Presuming imprisonment, I’ll just need it to the 1930s so I can go about this properly in a grown up fashion.

So, naturally we’re talking about time travel (I say “naturally” as though it’s still fashionable. Isn’t it? Could one travel through time to a time when time travel was still fashionable? If so, why aren’t we all there? Could it be that time travel is simply dorky? I think…yes. Napoleon, Jimi Hendrix, and Joan of Arc in the year 3000 are all dorks.)

And frankly I’d prefer not to, so will save the 1930s prison breakout for another time.

To end, upon checking, I do have something to write about, and you’re just lucky you weren’t reading this, because I went with what I had – you had better options. ‘Moby Dick’ for one.

I’ve written about smuggling knights into Europe in reward for a pardon for that very crime, in the hope of being imprisoned anyway in the 1930s, and all the while you were distinctly not reading Moby Dick and elected to read my words instead.

Pride and Prejudice too – something else you could have read instead of this.

Sir Billy Connolly; there’s another knight.

Nice one.

Sam