The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

everything …’
    Magrat still looked puzzled.
    ‘After the wedding, is what I’m hinting about,’ said Nanny.
    ‘Oh, that. No, most of that’s being done by a caterer.’
    *
    It wasn’t that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.
    There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny’s high C could clean it.
    *
    ‘Swish city bastards.’
    ‘They don’t know what it’s like to be up to the armpit in a cow’s backside on a snowy night. Hah!’
    ‘And there ain’t one of ‘em that— what’re you talking about? You ain’t got a cow.’
    ‘No, but I know what it’s like.’
    *
    ‘What do we do with the mail?’ said Ridcully
    ‘I take the palace stuff, and we generally leave the sack hanging up on a nail outside the tavern so that people can help themselves,’ said Shawn.
    ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ said Ponder.
    ‘Don’t think so. It’s a strong nail,’ said Shawn.
    *
    ‘I remember years ago my granny telling me about Queen Amonia, well, I say queen, but she never was queen except for about three hours because of what I’m about to unfold, on account of them playing hide-and-seek at the wedding party and her hiding in a big heavy old chest in some attic and the lid slamming shut and no one finding her for seven months, by which time you could definitely say the wedding cake was getting a bit stale.’

    ‘That’s the thing about witchcraft,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer.’

    Nanny said, ‘Funny to think of our Magrat being married and everything.’
    ‘What do you mean, everything?’
    ‘Well, you know - married,’ said Nanny. ‘I gave her a few tips. Always wear something in bed. Keeps a man interested.’
    ‘You always wore your hat.’
    ‘Right.’
    *
    ‘What was that dance your Jason and his men did when they’d got drunk?’ said Granny.
    ‘It’s the Lancre Stick and Bucket Dance, Esme.’
    ‘It’s legal, is it?’
    ‘Technically they shouldn’t do it when there’s women present,’ said Nanny. ‘Otherwise it’s sexual morrisment.’
    *
    The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

 
    B E a MAN in the City Watch! The City Watch needs MEN!’ But what it’s got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-Constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-Constable Angua (a woman … most of tbe time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving).
    And they need all the help they can get. Because they’ve only got twenty-four hours to clean tip the town and this is Ankh-Morpork we’re talking about…
    ‘Sergeant Colon,’ said Angua. ‘He was the fat one, yes?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Why has he got a pet monkey?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Carrot. ‘I think it is Corporal Nobbs to whom you refer …’
    *
    ‘Who was that man with the granite face I saw in the Watch House?’ said Angua.
    ‘That was Detritus the troll,’ said Carrot.
    ‘No, that man,’ said Angua, learning as had so many others that Carrot tended to have a bit of trouble with metaphors. ‘Face like thu— face like someone very disgruntled.’
    ‘Oh, that was Captain Vimes. But he’s never been gruntled, I think’
    *
    Vimes’s meeting with the Patrician ended as all such meetings did, with the guest going away in possession of an unfocused yet nagging suspicion that he’d only just escaped with his life.
    *
    Sybil Ramkin lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side. Women who were merely well-off saved up and bought dresses made of silk edged with lace and pearls, but Lady Ramkin was so rich she could afford to stomp around the place in rubber boots and a tweed skirt that had belonged to her mother. She was so rich she could afford to live on biscuits and cheese sandwiches. She was so rich she lived in three rooms in a thirty-four-roomed mansion; the rest of them were full of very expensive and very old furniture, covered in dust sheets.
    *
    The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned,