Jingo (43 page)

^*
Women always do this.

^*
The possibility that they were not guilty of anything was one that he didn’t even think worthy of consideration.

^*
A term invented by the wizard Denephew Boot
†
. who had found that by a system of rewards and punishments he could train a dog, at the ringing of a bell, to immediately eat a strawberry meringue

^†
His parents, who were uncomplicated country people, had wanted a girl. They were expecting to call her Denise.

^*
Plain clothes was the problem. Both the men had been used to uniforms all their lives. Sergeant Colon’s only suit had been bought by a man two stone lighter and ten years younger, so the buttons creaked under tension, and Nobby’s idea of plain clothes was the ribbon-and-bell-bedecked costume he wore as a leading member of the Ankh-Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society. Small children had followed them in the street to see where the show was going to be.

^*
Constable Visit-The-Ungodly-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets was a good copper, Vimes always said, and that was his highest term of praise. He was an Omnian with his countrymen’s almost pathological interest in evangelical religion and spent all his wages on pamphlets; he even had his own printing press. The results were handed out to anyone interested and everyone who wasn’t interested as well. Even Detritus couldn’t clear a crowd faster than Visit, Vimes said. And on his days off he could be seen tramping the streets with his colleague, Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments. So far they hadn’t made a single convert. Vimes thought that Visit was probably a really nice man underneath it all, but somehow he could never face the task of finding out.

^*
And would not, therefore, be officially burgled. Ankh-Morpork had a very direct approach to the idea of insurance. When the middleman was cut out, that wasn’t a figure of speech.

^*
It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.

^*
One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

^*
Thinking up good names was, oddly enough, one area where Leonard of Quirm’s genius tended to give up.

^*
Except in the particular case of Sidney Lopsides, who was paid two dollars a day from City funds to wear a sack over his head. It wasn’t that he was spectacularly deformed, as such, it was merely that anyone who saw him spent the rest of the day with an unnerving feeling that they were upside down.

^*
Sidney Lopsides again.

^*
Jugglers will tell you that juggling with items that are identical is always easier than a mixture of all shapes and sizes. This is even the case with chainsaws, although of course when the juggler misses the first chainsaw it is only the
start
of his problems. Some more will be along very shortly.

^*
Corporal Nobbs’s appearance could best be summarized this way.
    One of the minor laws of the narrative universe is that any homely featured man who has, for some reason, to disguise himself as a woman will apparently become attractive to some otherwise perfectly sane men with, as the ancient scrolls say, hilarious results.
    In this case the laws were fighting against the fact of Corporal Nobby Nobbs, and gave up.

^*
And Mr. Harris of the Blue Cat Club. His admission caused a lot of argument in the Guild, who knew competition when they saw it, but Mrs. Palm overruled opposition on the basis, she said, that unnatural acts were only natural.

^*
Usually because they suspect the joke’s on them.

^*
Although of course wizards aren’t allowed to, because they’re not supposed to have grandchildren.