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This afternoon the Reading Central Criminal Court found the three pigs not guilty of all charges relating to the first-degree murder of Mr. Wolff.”
“Johnny said that Roger told him that a friend of his who lives next door to someone who knows Miss Klaar said it’s a fact in her street.
Jack finished his toast and looked at Madeleine’s picture on the cover of The Toad, which had the headline WASHED-UP HAS-BEEN WITH WEIGHT PROBLEM VICIOUSLY ATTACKS JOURNALIST. The Mole, whose journalist didn’t get a broken jaw that night led with SOCK IT TO HIM, LOLA!
You so much as look at a bacon roll and I’ll have you suspended.”
Well, there’s usually a rule of three somewhere. Either quantitative, as in bears, billy goats, blind mice, little pigs, fiddlers, bags of wool or what-have-you, or qualitative, such as small, medium, large, stupid, stupider, stupidest. If you come across any stepmothers, they’re usually evil, woodcutters always come into fame and fortune, orphans are ten a penny, and pigs, cats, bears and wolves frequently anthropomorphize.”
“The Billy Goats Gruff are a blast,” said Jack. “I’ll introduce you one day.” “No troll?” “In the clink. Eight-to-ten-year stretch for threatening behavior.”
“What happened to your last DS?” “His name was Alan Butcher. A good man. He died in a car accident.” “I’m sorry.” “Not as sorry as I was; I was the one that ran over him in my wife’s Volvo. But it wasn’t my fault—he stepped out in front of me.” “Was he…tall?” asked Mary a bit recklessly. Jack shook his head sadly. “You’ve heard about the giant killing already?
“I might have an issue with the window.” “What window?” “That’s the issue.”
He’s also convinced he has only a month to live, so he doesn’t mind going through the door first on a raid.”
He was fourteen times world Scrabble champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score. He spent the greater part of his life campaigning to have respelt those words that look as though they are spelt wrongly but aren’t.” “Such as…?” “Oh, skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhea, that sort of thing. He also thought that ‘abbreviation’ was too long for its meaning, that ‘monosyllabic’ should have one syllable, ‘dyslexic’ should be renamed ‘O’ and ‘unspeakable’ should be respelt ‘unsfzpxkable.’
the Bolly, old trout, I’ve got a tongue like the Gobi Desert.’
“And you were expelled for sewing the school cat to the janitor.” “The joyous experimentation of children,” she declared, laughing fondly at the memory. “What fun that was!
“It’s okay. It was ten years, seven months and three days ago. I’m completely over it—”
“Registered to Mr. H. A. Dumpty, a red 1963 modified Ford Zephyr, registration number Echo Golf Golf three one four.
To say that Ashley, Baker and Kandlestyk-Maeker were disappointed would be a severe understatement.
Jack wandered through to the kitchen, where he found Ben, who was dressed up for a night on the town. “Where are you off to?” “Clubbing,” replied Ben as he carefully combed his hair in front of the mirror. “Those poor seals.
Sources close to the King tell us that Prince Hamlet has been acting erratically ever since the unexpected yet entirely natural and unsuspicious death of his father eight weeks before.
No one knows Solomon as I do. He’s not as bad as everyone makes out. He might buy venerable old companies and strip their assets, causing numerous layoffs and the odd corporate suicide or two, but that’s business. Inside, he’s a big teddy bear.”
Notorious racketeer and underworld crime boss Giorgio Porgia was found guilty yesterday on 208 counts of “undertaking home improvements with menaces.”
Daughters grow up. They don’t stay all hair band, My Little Pony and ‘Wheels on the bus go round and round’ forever, you know.”
Think of this: If it weren’t for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no van Gogh, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong. The civilization that devises the infrastructure to allow these wonderful things to be created is essentially a product of war—death and suffering—and commerce—deceit and inequality. Even your liberty to discuss the shortcomings of your own species has its foundations in blood and hardship.”
“Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly, and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.”
She was a woman of extraordinary beauty, the most rare and radiant maiden who ever walked upon this globe. Her skin was as soft as silk, and her eyes shone like emeralds. Her dark and flowing hair tossed joyfully in the wind as she ran, and her laughter was like cherubs singing in the morning breeze.” “Hmm,” responded Pandora. “I heard she was a bit of a trollop.” “Oh, she was,”
Indeed, given the time scale involved and the size of the universe, unlikely things, paradoxically enough, become quite commonplace.
Setting one’s opponents’ feet in a bath of cement and then throwing them in the Thames is considered very old hat these days. We used to encase people alive in motorway supports. I’m amazed,” he added nostalgically, “that the elevated sections of Junction 10 even stay up. They tell me I’m just a sad old romantic.
“In a word, it’s shit.” “The case? I don’t need you to tell me that.” “No, the vacuumings. It’s bird shit.” “Bird shit?” “Shit of birds, sir.” “I know what bird shit is, Bob, but what’s it doing at Grimm’s Road?” “I don’t know.
PIGGY IN ROAST BEEF SHOCK A piggy was caught eating roast beef yesterday, in direct contravention of rules governing the use of animal-based products’ being included in animal feed. The piggy, one of a litter of five, was in isolation yesterday as officers from DEFRA tried to trace the other members of his family. A spokesman for the agency had this to say: “Fortunately for us, one of the little piggies stayed at home, and another, when offered the roast beef, refused. A fourth went “wee wee wee” all the way home and is now also in quarantine. We are still trying to trace the first little
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Jack relaxed. He had every reason to dislike Briggs, but he didn’t. He wasn’t bad, just weak. “If I ever make it to the Guild, I’ll include you in my stories.” Briggs seemed to cheer up at this. He’d wanted to be like Friedland Chymes for years—yet now he was thinking he’d prefer to be like Spratt. A bit down at heel and almost invisible locked away at the NCD—but honest.
The jury was shocked into wakefulness on the eighth day of the Straw-into-Gold trial by the dramatic naming of the defendant yesterday. The previously unnamed illegal gold-spinner had been making a mockery of British justice by his insistence that the judge try to guess his name before he would agree to plea. After seven days and 8,632 guesses, the judge finally hit upon the correct name, whereupon Rumplestiltskin (this reporter can now faithfully record) flew into an inflamed passion, accused the judge of “listening down chimneys” and stamped his foot so hard it went through the floor. The
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The actress Lola Vavoom broke her self-imposed exile of fourteen years yesterday to demand that the press leave her alone. The reclusive fifty-five-year-old former star of screen and stage who has been absent from newspaper columns since 1990 demanded that the press stop hounding her every move and making her life a misery. “I thought she was dead,” admitted “Skip” McHale,
I am Detective Inspector Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division, Reading Police. This is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.” “I’ll never remember all that. I’ll just call you Ronald and Nancy. Who’s he?” “This is Mr. Brown-Horrocks from the Most Worshipful Guild of Detectives.” “Ah. You can be Ronald as well.
my mobile was blown up.” “You could have used Mary’s.” “It was taken by an identical-twin butler.”
should imagine the poultry industry might be very interested in a three-ton chicken, sir.” “Don’t be ridiculous, Mary. You’d never find an oven big enough.
Mrs. Dumpty thought she had shot him; Bessie thought she’d poisoned him. Grundy thought his hit man had got him, and Spongg wired his car. But none of them killed him, not even that lunatic Quatt. The giant beast that Humpty had become was killed by a man named Jack…when he chopped down a beanstalk.”
“Call me Jack,” he whispered. “We’ve been through enough.” “You’re going to be okay, Jack.” “I’ll be honest, Mary—” “You should call me by my first name too, Jack.” “Sorry. I’ll be honest, Mary—”
