Peter the Pirate and the Christmas Ship

This is the first of the three St. Nicholas Day stories that I wrote to my Children. I wrote the first two stories many years ago and would read them on the eve of St. Nicholas day. Last year I posted the third story because it was the last of the three and my children had never heard it before, so I wanted to share it with them from my residence in Abu Dhabi and thus try to keep something of our St. Nicholas Day tradition alive.

So this is now my third Christmas here in this land of sand and palm trees, where the snow never falls and there’s never a hope of a real pine tree. This year, I’m backing up to create this Audio story of “Peter the Pirate and the Christmas Ship” the first of the three. There are several more Peter the Pirate stories other than the Christmas stories. I started writing them long before Johnny Depp appeared on the screen in Pirates of the Caribbean as I said last year. If anything serves as an inspiration for the Peter the Pirate stories it is not the present love of pirates from my favorite movies, but from the Playmobile Pirates that belonged to my son Peter when he was a little boy and the time when we played with them together in the basement of an old house behind Van Weiren Hardware on the North Side of Lake Macatawa in Holland, Michigan. We had a great time doing that and these fantasy stories, as we played them, developed into night-time stories and later into the ballads/stories in verse that they became.

Thanksgiving 2009 Pictures by Chris Jolliffe

Thanksgiving was not exactly the evening gather around the table event this year that it was the last year. I invited everyone I could think of in the villas to come and was afraid I would have way too many people. That and it is the beginning of Eid here and everyone is going to have to rush off to the airports and vacation to all parts of the world. I was busy all day and didn't have time to put on a nicer shirt and slacks like I prefer for thanksgiving but having done it rather last minute and during the day like this it seemed more appropriate anyway. I'm really not able to exactly recreate the American family Thanksgiving completely anyway. Sand, fair weather and sunshine, palm trees instead of dead trees and a chill in the air, smoke coming from chimneys. I was pretty much the only American there and so I'm the only one who really knows what it is to celebrate Thanksgiving. I had to tell several people about Pilgrims, Indians and the hard first year that they faced at Plymouth. There was one other American who came to Thanksgiving and she had to come late after everyone left to get some food and leave.



I did manage Turkey, but I searched everywhere for pumpkin pulp. But it seems to be almost completely unknown here. To top it off most of the hundreds of boys who stock the shelves in the supermarkets here speak very poor English:

"Do you have pumpkin pulp?"


Blank look. Okay, I think, pulp might be a stretch.


"You know Libby's canned pumpkin?" Libby's is known to them and they ought to know canned. Still I get a blank look."

I simply repeat. "Pumpkin. Pumpkin pulp. In a can."

"Pumpkin? Yes, yes, pumpkin" he smiles and says as if finally recalling the word. I follow him and get hopeful until he leads me down to the snack isle and starts to point at something. I finally get close to see what it is.

"No, no, not pumpkin seeds, pumpkin pulp, in a can."

He looks puzzled and a little frustrated, perhaps even disappointed. A lot of the Indian workers here have taken on a role of subservience that has always bothered me. They address you as "sir" not like American workers do, but in a way that is obligatory to rich noblemen. I swear you could ask one on a street to shine your shoes for you and they would be likely to do it for you. I didn't grow up with a cast system. I grew up with the idea that all men are created equal. He takes me to someone in the store who is slightly better at English and he, in turn, leads me to the canned pie filling which is neither near the canned fruit, nor the canned vegetables. There is canned blueberry filling, canned peach filling, canned apple filling, canned everything except pumpkin pulp.

I thanked him politely and settled on pecan pie.

The pecans were expensive A cupful or so was about twenty-Dirhams and they weren't easy to find either.

Then there is the problem of my two temperature oven. The two temperatures are off and hotter-than-hell. I have to light the oven because the pilot doesn't work and then I have to visually turn it down to the lowest possible point before it goes out and leave it there. Still it burned the outside of my pecan pie and left the inside like fluid. I wrapped it up again and managed to get the insides to cook to an acceptable solid.



The stuffing worked out and was pretty good. I had a turkey and two butterball turkey breast packets. The packets were great, but the turkey meat was chewier than I would have liked. Still it was all pretty good. People brought wine, chocolates, deserts, salads, and Maureen, bless her heart, brought a sweet potato dish which was perfect for Thanksgiving.

The Ghost in the Cloud Chapters 12 & 13

I'm running behind on my usual installments of the Ghost in the Cloud series. Chapter 12 goes back to the original character Randall who created the Ghost in the Cloud when he attempted to up load the consciousness of his friend and partner Dr. Jack Rickerts. The Ghost, Jack, has begun to have inexplicable emotions which he knows full well is not possible given that he has no biological brain or adrenal gland, no limbic system, and no body chemistry at all. How can an entity that has no body feel anything? I have in mind Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein monster whose monster nature was not born out of an attempt to play God by Victor Frankenstein as many misunderstand it, but out of his abandonment of his creature. The Frankenstein story is really a tragic father and son story. Jack the ghost, finds himself wanting something from Randall and is full of feelings he doesn’t understand and cannot account for but possessing an insatiable curiosity, he is compelled to understand them. Chapter 13 continues Angelina's quest to find her father. At the moment she is seeking help from an ancient Druid with Jerry Garcia glasses and a love of Rock 'n Roll.

The Gracile Knight

It is said that three knights obtained the Holy Grail, Sir Galahad, Sir Percival, and Sir Bors, all being perfect in virtue (Sir Lancelot having almost achieved it but failed because he could never let go of his desire for Guinevere the King’s wife). But then there is also the tale of the Gracile Knight who, as he quested for the Holy Grail, became lost forever in an enchanted forest of no return. When asked of his fate, people would say, “It pleaseth God,” meaning that they did not know what became of him and that his loss had been the will of God. So no one ever knew what became of the Gracile Knight until I dreamed of him. And this was my dream:

The Gracile Knight was sitting in his armor with sweat dripping from his curls. He had cuts and bruises on his cheek and brows from his many adventures. He was not alone as he sat before the fire in that modest hall. The lady of that castle sat near him and listened patiently to his tale of failure as he spoke of his adventures and misfortunes. She was passing fair, but he did not notice this, being absorbed in his woes. She listened for the longest time. At last he finished by asking the air, what was the meaning of it all, as if he no longer wished to live, having failed to either find the Holy Grail or his way home.
She looked him a long time and finally said, “Wait and I will return in but a moment’s time.”

When she returned she had a purple violet in her hands. He saw it, but such was his foul frame of mind that he only thought it a shame that she had plucked it because now it would die all the sooner.

“What is the meaning of this flower?” She asked.

“It pleaseth God, my lady.” He shrugged because he didn’t know and was in a dejected state of mind.

“Aye, in truth it pleaseth God. And so do I; and so do you. It grows, it blossoms, it is beautiful, and then it is gone. And so shall I, and so shall you.

She said no more for the Holy Grail had found him.

Tall Ships in the Bathtub

There are tall ships in the bathtub
And pirates on the soap
There are yellow rubber duckies
Attacking without stop.

The pirates dive down quickly
Beneath the bubble foam
The Duckies cannot find them
In the thickness of the loam

And to the ships the pirates,
Their advantage they resume,
And on those yellow duckies
They fire their canons—boom!

Those monstrous rubber duckies
Are forced to make retreat
And waddle on the porcelain tub
Though they haven’t any feet.