Pieces of Eight

“Suffering sharpens the wits and misfortune makes one resourceful,” read Albert. ‘Ah, Ovid, he does one good at a time like this.’
Steve: if what he said was anyway true, we would all be in possession of razor wits, and resources – as you call them – the size of Africa. (S. opens the fridge door and takes out a cheese sandwich, whose sides are already crimping upwards.)
Me: Ovid must have known what he was talking about, having been pitched from genteel Rome into semi-savage Scythia.
Steve: then why are we all sitting around here, without the heating on and eating the leftovers from your (Steve looks at me) restaurant?
Marcia: you’re terribly grumpy tonight, Steve.
Albert: he would be, Mars: he’s just been turned down by another animation studio.
Steve: (his mouth still full of sandwich) Really!
Albert: (to Marcia) Yes, really: he was to work upon the animation for a short about seventeenth-century pirates. (Steve doesn’t reply.) And that gives me an idea: how about it, you three?
Me: how about what?
Albert: To become pirates, silly.
(here, I’ll add that ever since his success with the rain dance, yet failure to get on television, Albert has been insufferable, spinning out one daft idea after another.)
“I can’t swim.”
“I’ll lose my DBS.”
“I get seasick easily.”
“Nah! I mean, for us all to become professional pirates and perform at parties. Halloween is forthcoming, is it not? I’ll be the great Long John Silver – aye, me hearties! Steve, you be Jim Hawkins. Marcia takes on the role of the great Ann Bonny and you (he points at me) can put on your skeleton suit and be Jolly Roger.’
“Er, the skeleton suit belongs to Marcia.”
“And Ann Bonny was a real person, not to be confused with fiction.”
“We don’t have equity cards.”
Albert throws up his hands. ‘Does no one besides me want to get out of this life?’ he asks, looking about at the cottage?
And do we? Friend, that is an episode for another day.