The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,87

stop and ask directions on the way down.

*

‘… that girl you’re going out with … She’s nearly six feet tall and she’s got a bosom like … well, she’s a big girl, Nobby’ Fred Colon was at a loss. ‘She told me, Nobby, that she’s been Miss May on the centrefold of Girls, Giggles and Garters] Well, I mean …!’

‘What do you mean, sarge? Anyway, she wasn’t just Miss May, she was the first week in June as well,’ Nobby pointed out. ‘It was the only way they had room.’

‘Err, well, I ask you,’ Fred floundered, ‘is a girl who displays her body for money the right kind of wife for a copper? Ask yourself that!’

Nobby’s face wrinkled up in deep thought.

‘Is this a trick question, sarge?’ he said, at last.

*

Corporal Nobbs attends a burglary at the Royal Art Museum.

‘Hey, this must be a clue, sarge!’ said Nobby. ‘Look, someone dumped a load of stinking ol’ rubbish here!’

‘Don’t touch that, please!’ said Sir Reynold, rushing over. ‘That’s Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays! It’s Daniellarina Pouter’s most controversial hwork!’

‘It’s only a lot of old rubbish,’ Nobby protested, backing away.

‘Art is greater than the sum of its mere mechanical components, corporal,’ said the curator.

‘What about this one, then?’ said Nobby, pointing to the adjacent plinth. ‘It’s just a big stake with a nail in it! Is this art, too?’

‘Freedom? If it hwas ever on the market, it hwould probableah fetch thirty thousand dollars,’ said Sir Reynold.

‘For a bit of wood with a nail in it?’ said Fred Colon. ‘Who did it?’

‘After he viewed Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays! Lord Vetinari graciously had Ms Pouter nailed to the stake by her ear,’ said Sir Reynold. ‘However, she did manage to pull free during the afternoon.’

‘I bet she was mad!’ said Nobby.

‘Not after she hwon several awards for it. I believe she’s planning to nail herself to several other things. It could be a very exciting exhibition.’

*

Colon knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.

*

‘Dave said the government hushed it up.’

‘Yeah, but your mate Dave says the government always hushes things up, Nobby’ said Fred.

‘Well, they do.’

‘Except he always gets to hear about ‘em, and he never gets hushed up,’ said Fred.

‘I know you like to point the finger of scoff, sarge, but there’s a lot goes on that we don’t know about.’

‘Like what, exactly?’ Colon retorted. ‘Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about.’

*

‘Don’t try to put me at my ease,’ said Vimes. ‘It makes me nervous when people do that.’

*

Coppers stayed alive by trickery. That’s how it worked. You had your Watch Houses with the big blue lights outside, and you made certain there were always burly watchmen visible in the big public places, and you swanked around like you owned the place. But you didn’t own it. It was all smoke and mirrors. You magicked a little policeman into everyone’s head. You relied on people giving in, knowing the rules. But in truth a hundred well-armed people could wipe out the Watch, if they knew what they were doing. Once some madman finds out that a copper taken unawares dies just like anyone else, the spell is broken.

*

Ankh-Morpork was built on Ankh-Morpork. Everyone knew that. They had been building with stone here ten thousand years ago. As the annual flooding of the Ankh brought more silt, so the city had risen on its walls until attics had become cellars. Even at basement level today, it was always said, a man with a pickaxe and a good sense of direction could cross the city by knocking his way through underground walls, provided he could also breathe mud.

*

Blackboard monitor. Well, he had been, in that little street school more than forty-five years ago. Mum had insisted. Gods knew where she’d sprung the penny a day it cost, although most of the time Dame Slightly had been happy to accept payment in old clothes and firewood. Numbers, letters, weights, measures; it was not what you’d call a rich curriculum. Vimes had attended for nine months or so, until the streets demanded he learn much harder and sharper lessons. But, for a while, he’d been trusted to hand out