The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

sixty-five”? Whatever happened?’
    ‘We got past the age of sixty-five, Senior Wrangler.’
    *
    The Bursar was, as he would probably be the first to admit, not the most mentally stable of people. He would probably be the first to admit that he was a tea-strainer.
    *
    Once a moderately jolly wizard camped by a dried-up waterhole under the shade of a tree that he was completely unable to identify. And he swore as he hacked and hacked at a can of beer, saying, ‘What kind of idiots put beer in tins?’
    *
    Beer! It was only water, really, with stuff in it. Wasn’t it? And most of what was in it was yeast, which was practically a medicine and definitely a food. In fact, when you thought about it, beer was only a kind of runny bread.
    *
    ‘Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?’
    Y ES.
    ‘Ghastly thought, really’ Rince-wind shuddered. ‘Oh, gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?’
    I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND . P EOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE . T HE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’ .

 
    M IGHTILY Oats has not picked a good time to be a priest.
    He thought he’d come to Lancre for a simple ceremony. Now lie’s caught tip in a war between vampires and witches.
    There’s Voting Agnes, who is really in two minds about everything. Magrat, who is trying to combine witchcraft and nappies, Nanny Ogg … and Granny Weatherwax, who is big trouble.
    And the vampires are intelligent. They’ve got style and fancy waistcoats. They’re out of the casket, and want a bite of the future. Mightily Oats knows he has a prayer, but he wishes he had an axe.
    In Lancre the only truly flat places were tables and the top of some people’s heads.
    *
    Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate.
    *
    Agnes thought that a dumpy girl should not wear a tall hat, especially with black. It made her look as though someone had dropped a liquorice-flavoured ice-cream cone.
    *
    The Lancrastian idea of posh sanitation was a non-slippery path to the privy and a mail-order catalogue with really soft pages.
    *
    Sometimes witches have to be the ones that make the difficult decisions for people. Life and death. Choosing between saving a mother or her new-born son.
    ‘You got to come to Mrs Ivy and her baby missus!’
    ‘I thought old Mrs Patternoster was seeing to her,’ said Granny, ramming her hatpins into place with the urgency of a warrior preparing for sudden battle.
    ‘She says it’s all gone wrong miss!’
    …
    Slice was perched along the sides of a cleft in the mountains that couldn’t be dignified by the name of valley. In the moonlight Granny saw the pale upturned face waiting in the shadows of the garden as she came in to land.
    ‘Evening, Mr Ivy’ she said, leaping off. ‘Upstairs, is she?’
    ‘In the barn,’ said Ivy flatly. ‘The cow kicked her … hard.’
    Granny’s expression stayed impassive.
    ‘We shall see,’ she said, ‘what may be done.’
    In the barn, one look at Mrs Patternoster’s face told her how little that might now be.
    ‘It’s bad,’ she whispered, as Granny looked at the moaning figure on the straw. ‘I reckon we’ll lose both of them … or maybe just one …’
    There was, if you were listening for it, just the suggestion of a question in that sentence. Granny focused her mind.
    ‘It’s a boy’ she said.
    Mrs Patternoster didn’t bother to wonder how Granny knew, but her expression indicated that a little more weight had been added to a burden.
    ‘I’d better go and put it to John Ivy, then,’ she said.
    She’d barely moved before Granny Weatherwax’s hand locked on her arm.
    ‘He’s no part in this,’ she said.
    ‘But after all, he is the—’
    ‘He’s no part in this.’
    Mrs Patternoster looked into the blue stare and knew two things. One was that Mr Ivy had no part in this, and the other was that anything that happened in this barn was never, ever, going to be mentioned again.
    ‘I think I can bring ‘em to mind,’ said Granny, letting go and rolling up her sleeves. ‘Pleasant couple, as I recall. He’s a good husband, by all accounts.’ She poured warm water from its jug into the bowl that the midwife had set up on a manger.
    Mrs Patternoster nodded.
    ‘Of course, it’s difficult for a man working these steep lands alone,’ Granny went on,