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Smeems handled this quite well in the circumstances, which included being so deeply at sea with that sentence that barnacles would be attracted to his underwear.
Recondite
Juliet didn’t exactly wash dishes, she gave them a light baptism.
‘I appreciate that you do not wish to spoil my evening, sir,’ said Ridcully. ‘But I would not hesitate to spoil your day tomorrow.
‘These days you only ever tell me about a problem when you’ve thought up a solution. I respect this, although I find it a bit creepy.
have a very fast metabolism,’ said Nutt. ‘I don’t mind about that,’ said Glenda, ‘so long as you don’t go showing it to people.
This was a discrimination that was, in Glenda’s view, at practically forensic standards of observation for Juliet.
Juliet was still reading as they waited for the horse bus. Such sudden devotion to a printed page worried Glenda. The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting ideas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and do damage.
She read the way a cat eats: furtively, daring anyone to notice.
‘Then who is dealing with our financial affairs?’ said Ridcully. ‘Since last month? Me,’ said Ponder, ‘but I would be happy to hand the responsibility over to the first volunteer.’ This worked. Regrettably, it always did.
Ponder plunged on, because when you have dived off a cliff your only hope is to press for the abolition of gravity.
Trev had never seen anyone who could be so easily engrossed. Other people who ended up working in the vats were a bit weird, it was almost a requirement, but the little dark-grey fellow was somehow weird in the opposite direction.
‘He ought to be sent back to where he came from,’ muttered Juliet, as the guard moved on along the bus. Glenda chose not to rise to this. As far as she had been able to tell, up until today, at least, her friend had no opinions of her own, and simply echoed anything other people said to her. But then she couldn’t resist. ‘That would be Treacle Mine Road, then. He was born in the city.’
‘On a different note, Mustrum … How is your young visitor?’ ‘My visit— Oh, you mean the … uh …’ ‘That’s right.’ Vetinari smiled at the slab as if sharing a joke with it. ‘The, as you put it, Uh.’ ‘I note the sarcasm. As a wizard, I must tell you that words have power.’ ‘As a politician, I must tell you I already know.
The Librarian was not very familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical.
‘I have read, Mister Trev, that love laughs at locksmiths.’ ‘Really? And what does it do when it’s been smacked in the face by a bull’s arse?’ ‘The poets are not forthcoming in that respect, Mister Trev.’
‘You two have a history, I think,’ said Nutt. ‘You are a sharp one, aren’t you? Quiet and sharp. Like a knife. Yeah, I suppose it was a history. I wanted it to be more of a geography, but she kept slappin’ my hand.’
Glenda enjoyed her job. She didn’t have a career; they were for people who could not hold down jobs.
It showed some very tall and skinny men – their masculinity was beyond doubt, but possibly beyond belief.
Pedestriana
‘It quite put me off my breakfast. Metaphorically speaking, of course.’
‘Excuse me, miss,’ said Ponder, ‘but most of those pairs are quite close to one another, so why do they hate one another so much?’ ‘That at least is easy,’ said Dr Hix. ‘It’s hard to hate people who are a long way away. You forget how dreadful they are. But you see a neighbour’s warts every day.’
‘I see there are a great many things we don’t yet understand.’ ‘Yes, sir. Everything.’
‘And I’m sure that remark came from the heart, because I suspect it could not have come from the head.’
peroration.
Glenda, on the other hand, never found anything good in her size and indeed seldom found anything in her size. In theory, something should fit, but all she ever found was facts, which are so unbecoming.
Perhaps it was the look of someone permanently doing sums in his head, and not just proper sums either, but the sneaky sort with letters in them.
Adopt, adapt, improve, that’s my motto.’ Well, if you adapted it then it’s now grab, copy and look innocent, Ridcully thought, but carefully.
And she was surprised that there was room for even this, since most of the front page was dedicated to the football, but the Times liked to start several stories on the front page and then, just when they were getting interesting, whisk them off to page 35, or somewhere, to end their days behind the crossword and the permanent advert for surgical trusses.
Glenda never normally read the leader column because there was only a certain number of times she was prepared to see the word ‘however’ used in a 120-word article.
