Avast, me hearties! Splice the mainbrace, weigh the anchor, make sure the treasure chest's locked up properly and double-check that the cabin boy's not secretly a girly-girl in disguise, out to avenge her father's brutal death or something, and we're off!

Today is, as you may or may not have realised, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. You scurvy dog, and all that.

Why? Who cares? It's national something or other awareness day practically every single day of the week. And while most of these are for worthy causes - September alone has seen or will see National Organic Week, International Literacy Day, European Mobility Week, British Food Fortnight and, quite wonderfully, British Moth Night, among a raft of others - International Talk Like a Pirate Day is the one annual special day when you don't have to spend any money/feel bad about spending so much money/wish you were spending more money on saving the world, and you can just let your hair down.

There are a couple of people on the interwebnet claiming that they started the whole thing off, but according to the website of the most likely founders, John Bauer and Mark Summers, the event began in 1995. Their explanation is almost as nonsensical as the idea itself, and I won't repeat it all here (what? You want me to do everything for you? Go and do a bit of work yourselves!).

So what do you actually have to do to get full enjoyment out of International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Well, the clue's in the question and it does exactly what it says on the tin, to mix a couple of most-loved TV moments.

Over to the founders themselves: "Talking like a pirate is fun. It's really that simple. It gives your conversation a swagger, an eln, denied to landlocked lubbers. The best explanation came from a guy at a Cleveland radio station who interviewed us on the 2002 Talk Like a Pirate Day. He told us we were going to be buried by people asking for interviews because it was a whimsical alternative' to all the serious things that were making the news so depressing."

So there you have it. If the pressures of modern life are getting to you, then simply spend the rest of the day talking like a pirate. I fully intend to, because I can certainly see the attraction.

Worried about your credit card bills? Arr, me hearties, it's only pieces of eight. Boss getting on your back at work? Just imagine prodding him in his ample backside with your cutlass and shouting: "Walk the plank! Ye'll be sleeping with the fishes tonight, captain!". Concerned at the precarious state of world affairs? Arr, get a bottle of grog down your gullet and forget about it.

Pirates are more in vogue than ever, thanks to Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean, but the non-Hollywood reality of life as a pirate had to include the disease, the ill-treatment, the high risk of being sunk by the British Navy that policed the shark-infested waters, actually having to kill other people, and the likelihood that long months away at sea might mean some big pirate with a beard insisted you called him "Brenda" while visiting indignities on you in the brig.

Makes you wonder why pirates are so popular. The answer, especially today, must just be that they arrrrrr.