Unseen Academicals

punch like that? Go on, try a proper punch!’
    Nutt did.

    Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but even sitting down, you had to stand out. There were, of course, times when a robe got in the way, especially when a wizard was working in his forge, creating a magic metal or mobiloid glass or any of those other little exercises in practical magic where not setting fire to yourself is a happy bonus, so every wizard had some leather trousers and a stained, rotted-by-acid shirt. It was the shared dirty little secret, not very secret, but ingrained with deep-down dirt.
    Ridcully sighed. His colleagues had aimed for the look of the common man, but had only a hazy grasp of what the common man looked like these days, and now they were sniggering and looking at one another and saying things like ‘Cor blimey, don’t you scrub down well, as it were, my ol’ mate.’ Beside them, and looking extremely embarrassed, were two of the university’s bledlows, not knowing what to do with their feet and wishing that they were having a quiet smoke somewhere in the warm.
    ‘Gentlemen,’ Ridcully began, and then with a gleam in his eye added, ‘or should I say, fellow workers by hand and brain, this afternoon we—Yes, Senior Wrangler?’
    ‘Are we, in point of fact, workers? This is a university, after all,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
    ‘I agree with the Senior Wrangler,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Under university statute we are specifically forbidden to engage, other than within college precincts, in any magic above level four, unless specifically asked to do so by the civil power or, under clause three, we really want to. We are acting as place holders, and as such, forbidden from working.’
    ‘Would you accept “slackers by hand and brain”?’ said Ridcully, always happy to see how far he could go.
    ‘Slackers by hand and brain by statute ,’ said the Senior Wrangler primly.
    Ridcully gave up. He could do this all day, but life couldn’t be all fun.
    ‘That being settled, then, I must tell you that I have asked the stalwart Mister Frankly Ottomy and Mister Alf Nobbs to join us in this little escapade. Mister Nobbs says that since we are not wearing football favours we should not attract unwanted attention.’
    The wizards nodded nervously at the bledlows. They were, of course, merely employees of the university, while the wizards were, well, were the university, weren’t they? After all, a university was not just about bricks and mortar, it was about people, specifically wizards. But to a man, the bledlows scared them.
    They were all hefty men with a look of having been carved out of bacon. And they were all descendants of, and practically identical to, those men who had chased those wizards–younger and more limber, and it was amazing how fast you could run with a couple of bledlows behind you–through the foggy night-time streets. If caught, said bledlows, who took enormous pleasure in the prosecution of the university’s private laws and idiosyncratic rules, would then drag you before the Archchancellor on a charge of Attempting to Become Rascally Drunk. That was preferable to fighting back, when the bledlows were widely believed to take the opportunity for a little class warfare. That was years ago, but even now the unexpected sight of a bledlow caused sullen, shameful terror to flow down the spines of men who had acquired more letters after their names than a game of Scrabble.
    Mr Ottomy, recognizing this, leered and touched the brim of his uniform cap. ‘Afternoon, gents,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing. Me and Alf here will see you right. We’d better get movin’, though, they bully off in half an hour.’
    The Senior Wrangler would not have been the Senior Wrangler if he did not hate the sound of silence. As they shuffled out of the back door, wincing at the unfamiliar chafing of trouser upon knee, he turned to Mr Nobbs and said, ‘Nobbs…that’s not a common name. Tell me, Alf, are you by any chance related to the famous Corporal Nobby Nobbs of the Watch?’
    Mr Nobbs took it well, Ridcully thought, given the clumsy lack of protocol.
    ‘Nosir!’
    ‘Ah, a distant branch of the name, then…’
    ‘Nosir! Different tree!’

    In the greyness of her front room, Glenda looked at the suitcase, and despaired. She’d done her best with brown boot polish, week after week,