“All right, all right, all right,” Old Bailey was saying. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There was a man walked into a bar. No, he wasn’t a man. That’s the joke. Sorry. He was a horse. A horse … no … a piece of string. Three pieces of string. Right. Three pieces of string walk into a bar.” A huge old rook croaked a question. Old Bailey rubbed his chin, then shrugged. “They just do. It’s a joke. They can walk in the joke. He asks for a drink for himself and one for each of his friends. And the barman says, we ‘don’t serve pieces of string here.’ To one of the pieces of string. So. It goes back to its friends and says they ‘don’t serve strings here.’ And it’s a joke, so the middle one does it too, three of them, you see, then the last one, he ties himself around the middle and he pulls the end of him all out. And he orders a drink.” The rook croaked again, sagely. “Three drinks. Right. And the barman says, here, ‘Aren’t you one of those pieces of string?’ And he says, the piece of string, he says, no. ‘I’m a frayed knot.’ ‘Afraid not,’ y’see, ‘a frayed knot.’ Pun. Very, very funny.”
―
Neil Gaiman,
Neverwhere
