The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

and presidents do not personally turn up in people’s homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead.
    *
    It was the night before Hogswatch. All through the house …
    … one creature stirred. It was a mouse.
    And someone, in the face of all appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although, because it was the festive season, they’d used a piece of pork crackling. The smell of it had been driving the mouse mad all day but now, with no one about, it was prepared to risk it.
    The mouse didn’t know it was a trap. Mice aren’t good at passing on information. Young mice aren’t taken up to famous trap sites and told, ‘This is where your Uncle Arthur passed away’ All it knew was that, what the hey here was something to eat. On a wooden board with some wire round it.
    A brief scurry later and its jaw had closed on the rind.
    Or, rather, passed through it.
    The mouse looked around at what was now lying under the big spring, and thought, ‘Oops …’
    Then its gaze went up to the black-clad figure that had faded into view by the wainscoting.
    ‘Squeak?’ it asked.
    S QUEAK , said the Death of Rats.

    ‘Never say die, master. That’s our motto, eh?’ said Albert. I CAN’T SAY IT’S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE .

    In Biers, unless you weren’t choosy, it paid to order a drink that was transparent because Igor also had undirected ideas about what you could stick on the end of a cocktail stick. If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope that it was an olive.
    *
    ‘Did you check the list?’
    Y ES . T WICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT’S ENOUGH ?
    ‘Definitely’
    C OULDN’T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH . H OW CAN I TELL IF HE’S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE ?
    ‘Oh, well … I don’t know … Has he hung his clothes up, that sort of thing …’
    A ND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I may give him this K LATCHIAN W AR C HARIOT WITH R EAL S PINNING S WORD B LADES ?
    ‘That’s right.’
    A ND IF HE’S BEEN BAD ?
    Albert scratched his head. ‘When I was a lad, you got a bag of bones, ‘s’mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year.’
    O H DEAR . A ND NOW ?
    Albert held a package up to his ear and rustled it. ‘Sounds like socks.’
    S OCKS.
    ‘Could be a woolly vest.’
    S ERVE HIM RIGHT, IF I MAY VENTURE TO EXPRESS AN OPINION …
    *
    The guard was cowering behind an overturned cabinet. He cringed back as Teatime stepped over it. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he shouted. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Ah, I’m glad you asked. I’m your worst nightmare!’ said Teatime cheerfully.
    The man shuddered.
    ‘You mean … the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?’
    ‘Sorry?’ Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed.
    ‘Then you’re the one about where I’m falling, only instead of ground underneath it’s all—’
    ‘No, in fact I’m—’
    The guard sagged. ‘Awww, not the one where there’s all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue—’
    ‘No, I’m—’
    ‘Oh, shit, then you’re the one where there’s this door only there’s no floor beyond it and then there’s these claws—’
    ‘No,’ said Teatime. ‘Not that one.’ He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. ‘I’m the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you stone dead.’
    The guard grinned with relief. ‘Oh, that one,’ he said. ‘But that one’s not very—’
    *
    The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn’t do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork. It hadn’t had time to get dirty. In the morning it’d probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white.
    *
    Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat.
    *
    The late (or at least severely delayed) Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was generally recognized as the worst inventor in the world, yet in a very specialized sense. Merely bad inventors made things that failed to operate. He wasn’t among these small fry. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothingwhen you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. Everything he built worked. It just didn’t do what it said on the box. If you wanted a small ground-to-air missile, you asked Johnson to