Lords and Ladies

1

Probably at the first pawn.

2

Gods like a joke as much as anyone else.

3

Which is another country.^{*}

This might refer to Hamlet, where the future is described as “The undiscover’d country from whose bourn / No traveller returns”, or perhaps Terry has read The Go-between, a 1950 book by L. P. Hartley, which opens with the words: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”, which has become a familiar quotation in England.

4

Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles.

5

This happens all the time, everywhere in the multiverse, even on cold planets awash with liquid methane. No-one knows why it is, but in any group of employed individuals the only naturally early riser is always the office manager, who will always leave reproachful little notes (or, as it might be, engraved helium crystals) on the desks of their subordinates. In fact the only place this does not happen very often is the world Zyrix, and this is only because Zyrix has eighteen suns and it is only possible to be an early riser there once every 1,789.6 years, but even then, once every 1,789.6 years, resonating to some strange universal signal, smallminded employers slither down to the office with a tentacle full of small reproachful etched frimpt shells at the ready.

6

He lived on his nerves.

7

The study of invisible writings was a new discipline made available by the discovery of the bi-directional nature of Library-Space. The thaumic mathematics are complex, but boil down to the fact that all books, everywhere, affect all other books. This is obvious: books inspire other books written in the future, and cite books written in the past. But the General Theory^[*] of L-Space suggests that, in that case, the contents of books as yet unwritten can be deduced from books now in existence.

^* There’s a Special Theory as well, but no-one bothers with it much because it’s self-evidently a load of marsh gas.

8

It was largely dark.

9

Three times outright, once after eleven hours extra time, and twice when the other finalists ran away.

10

Who was also general poacher, cess-pit cleaner and approximate carpenter.^[*]

^* ‘With a couple of nails it’ll stay up all right.’

11

The thing about iron is that you generally don’t have to think fast in dealing with it.

12

Well, it’s like this … The Carter parents were a quiet and respectable Lancre family who got into a bit of a mix-up when it came to naming their children. First, they had four daughters, who were christened Hope, Chastity, Prudence and Charity, because naming girls after virtues is an ancient and unremarkable tradition. Then their first son was born and out of some misplaced idea about how this naming business was done he was called Anger Carter, followed later by Jealousy Carter, Bestiality Carter and Covetousness Carter. Life being what it is, Hope turned out to be a depressive, Chastity was enjoying life as a lady of negotiable affection in Ankh-Morpork, Prudence had thirteen children, and Charity expected to get a dollar’s change out of seventy-five pence — whereas the boys had grown into amiable, well-tempered men, and Bestiality Carter was, for example, very kind to animals.

13

Ponder was one hundred per cent wrong about this.

14

Verence and Magrat had a lot in common, really.

15

If it wasn’t a big stick.

16

It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to be made up of resons^[*] or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five ‘flavours’, known as ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘sideways’, ‘sex appeal’ and ‘peppermint’.^{**}

^* Lit: ‘Thing-ies’. (In Latin ‘res’ does indeed mean ‘thing’.)

** The flavours of resons are a satire of the somewhat odd naming scheme modern physicists have chosen for the different known quarks, namely: ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘strange’, ‘charm’, and ‘beauty’ (in order of discovery and increasing mass).

Since theoretical physicists don’t like odd numbers they have postulated the existence of a sixth quark — ‘truth’, which was only recently created at FermiLab in the USA.

The beauty and truth quarks are often called ‘bottom’ and ‘top’ respectively. In earlier times (and sometimes even now), the strange quark was indeed called ‘sideways’.

17

Except for Nanny Ogg, who did it all the time, although not on purpose.

18

As has been pointed out earlier in the Discworld chronicles, entire agricultural economies have been based on the lifting power of little old ladies in black dresses.

19

i. e., having a lot of bosk.

20

Really true. That’s why people stand aside when kings go past.

21

The Lancrastians did not consider geography to be a very original science.

22

Trolls, a lifeform based on silicon rather than carbon, can’t in fact digest people. But there’s always someone ready to give it a try.

23

Insert the usual ‘red-hot curried marbles’ description here, if you like.

24

In the case of the α-Ω Street Mappe of Ankh-Morpork, this would be The Sunshine Home for Sick Dragons in Morphic Street, Please Leave Donations of Coal by Side Door. Remember, A Dragon is For Life, Not Just for Hogswatchnight.

25

Shawn Ogg.^[*]

^* Except when he was lying down.

26

But not huge, by wig standards. There have, in the course of decadent history, been many large wigs, often with built-in gewgaws to stop people having to look at boring hair all the time. There had been ones big enough to contain pet mice or clockwork ornaments. Mme Cupidor, mistress of Mad King Soup II, had one with a bird cage in it, but on special state occasions wore one containing a perpetual calendar, a floral clock and a take-away linguini shop.

27

i. e., far enough so’s not to look like you’re intruding on the conversation, but close enough to get a pretty good idea of what is going on.

28

Carrots so you can see in the dark, she’d explain, and oysters so’s you’ve got something to look at.

29

The Librarian, an ape of simple but firmly-held tastes, considered an episode with custard pies, buckets of whitewash and especially that bit when someone takes someone else’s hat off, fills it with something oozy, and replaces it on the deadpan head while the orchestra plays ‘WHAH … Whah … whah … whaaaa …’ to be an absolutely essential part of any theatrical performance. Since a roasted peanut is a dangerous and painful item when hurled with pinpoint accuracy, directors in Ankh-Morpork had long ago taken the hint. This made some of the grand guignol melodramas a little unusual,^{*} but it was considered that plays like The Blood-Soaked Tragedy of the Mad Monk of Quirm (with Custard-pie scene)’ were far better than being deaf in one ear for five days.

* Grand guignol, after the Montmartre, Paris theatre Le Grand Guignol, is the name given to a form of gory and macabre drama so laboriously horrific as to fall into absurdity.

30

Made it up.

31

Had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

32

‘He’s just an old soppy really’ — from the Nanny Ogg Book of Cat Sayings.

33

He knew this because the previous month’s issue of Popular Armour had run a feature entitled ‘We Test The Top Twenty Sub-$50 Helmets’. It had also run a second feature called ‘Battleaxes: We Put The Ten Best Through Their Paces’ and had advertised for half a dozen new testers.

34

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

35

Although this is a phallusy.

36

There are many recipes for the flat round loaves of Lancre dwarf bread, but the common aim of all of them is to make a field ration that is long-lasting, easily packed and can disembowel the enemy if skimmed through the air hard enough. Edibility is a kind of optional extra. Most recipes are a closely guarded secret, apart from the gravel.

37

Hence the term ‘wholesale destruction’.

38

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo,^[*] my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

^* Cool, but not necessarily up to date.

39

Nanny Ogg was also a great picker-up of unconsidered trifles.

40

When Hwel the playwright turned up with the rest of the troupe next day they told him all about it, and he wrote it down. But he left out all the bits that wouldn’t fit on a stage, or were too expensive, or which he didn’t believe. In any case, he called it The Taming of the Vole, because no-one would be interested in a play called Things that Happened on A Midsummer Night.