The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,88
the slates and clean the blackboard. Oh, the heady, strutting power of it, when you’re six years old!
*
Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BLT was all about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all.
A young man of godlike proportions† was standing in the doorway.
Vimes takes parental duty seriously …
He’d be home in time. Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although Young Sam appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even two minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go to five minutes then you’d go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours … and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o’clock, prompt. Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He’d promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.
*
and the book he reads …
It was called Where’s My Cow?
The unidentified complainant had lost their cow. That was the story, really.
Page one started promisingly:
Where’s my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, ‘Baa!’
It is a sheep!
That’s not my cow!
Then the author began to get to grips with their material:
Where’s my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, ‘Neigh!’
It is a horse!
That’s not my cow!
At this point the author had reached an agony of creation and was writing from the racked depths of their soul.
Where’s my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, ‘Hruuugh!’
It is a hippopotamus!
That’s not my cow!
(Rest assured: the cow is found.)
*
‘When did you last eat?’ said Sybil.
‘I had a lettuce, tomato and bacon sandwich, dear,’ Vimes said, endeavouring by tone of voice to suggest that the bacon had been a mere condiment rather than a slab barely covered by the bread.
‘I expect you jolly well did,’ said Sybil, rather more accurately conveying the fact that she didn’t believe a word of it.
Tomato ketchup is not a vegetable.
‘What’s the password?’ Vimes said quickly.
The shadowy figure, who was cloaked and hooded, hesitated.
‘Pathword? Ecthcuthe me, I’ve got it written down thomewhere—’
‘Okay, Igor, come on in,’ said Carrot.
‘How did you know it wath me, thur?’ said Igor.
*
‘I’m going to have a look for Angua,’ said Carrot. ‘She hasn’t slept in her bed.’
‘But at this time of the month—’
‘I know, sir. She hasn’t slept in her basket, either.’
*
Vetinari drummed his fingers on the table. ‘What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?’
‘I’d tell you a downright lie, sir’
‘Then I will not do so,’ said Vetinari, smiling faintly.
‘Thank you, sir. Nor will I.’
*
‘We need to talk to you,’ said Carrot. ‘Do you want a lawyer?’
‘No, I ate already’
‘You eat lawyers?’ said Carrot.
Brick gave him an empty stare until sufficient brain cells had been mustered.
‘What d’y’call dem fings, dey kinda crumble when you eat dem?’ he ventured.
Carrot looked at Detritus and Angua, to see if there was going to be any help there.
‘Could be lawyers,’ he conceded.
‘Dey go soggy if you dips ‘em in somefing,’ said Brick.
‘More likely to be biscuits, then?’ Carrot suggested.
*
There was an old military saying that Fred Colon used to describe total bewilderment and confusion. An individual in that state, according to Fred, ‘couldn’t tell if it was arsehole or breakfast time’.
*
The plain fact was that while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she was actually very likeable. This was because she had the self-esteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out in any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: ‘Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that’s not going to matter’
*
‘It’s the jerk syndrome. It means … sometimes a woman is so beautiful that any man with half a brain isn’t going to think of asking her out, okay? Because it’s obvious that she’s far too grand for the likes of him. Are you with me?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, that’s Tawneee. And, for the purposes of this explanation, Nobby has not got half a brain. He’s so used to women saying no when he asks them out that he’s not afraid of being blown out. So he asks her, because