Unseen Academicals

course, you will be partaking also, Archchancellor.’
    ‘Oh, you don’t become Archchancellor if you don’t get the hang of things quickly. I will just watch for now.’
    He watched. After the second occasion when Macarona, like a silver streak, ran the length of the Hall to flick the ball into the opponents’ goal, Ridcully turned to Ponder and said, ‘We’re going to win, aren’t we?’
    ‘If indeed he is still playing for you,’ put in the former Dean.
    ‘Oh, come now, Henry. Can we at least agree to just play one game at a time here?’
    ‘Well, I think today’s session should end pretty soon, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘It’s the banquet tonight after all and it will take some time to get the place ready.’
    ‘Excuse me, guv, that’s right,’ said Trev behind him, ‘and we’ve got to get the chandelier down an’ put new candles in.’
    ‘Yes, but we have been practising a little demonstration for tonight. Maybe the Archchancellor would like to see it,’ said Nutt.
    Ridcully looked at his watch. ‘Well, yes, Mister Nutt, but time is getting on and so I look forward to seeing it later. Splendid effort all round, though,’ he boomed.

    The night market was setting up in Sator Square as Glenda and Juliet arrived for work. Ankh-Morpork lived on the street, where it got its food, entertainment and, in a city with a ferocious housing shortage, a place to hang around until there was space on a floor. Stalls had been set up anywhere, and flares filled the early-evening air with stink and, almost as a by-product, a certain amount of light.
    Glenda could never resist looking, especially now. She was very good at all sorts of cookery, she really was, and it was important to keep that knowledge at the calm centre of her spinning brain. And there was Verity Pushpram, queen of the sea.
    Glenda had a lot of time for Miss Pushpram, who was a self-made woman, although she could have used some help when it came to her eyes, which were set so far apart that she rather resembled a turbot.
    But Verity, like the ocean that was making her fortune these days, had hidden depths, because she’d made enough to buy a boat, and then another boat and a whole aisle in the fish market. But she still woman-handled her barrow to the square most evenings, where she sold whelks, shrimps, leather crabs, blossom prawns, monkey clams and her famous hot fish sticks.
    Glenda often bought from her; there was the kind of respect you give to an equal who is, crucially, no threat to your own position.
    ‘Going to the big bun fight, girls?’ said Verity cheerfully, waving a halibut at them.
    ‘Yes,’ said Juliet proudly.
    ‘What, both of you?’ said Verity, with a glance towards Glenda, who said, firmly, ‘The Night Kitchen is expanding.’
    ‘Oh well, so long as you’re having fun,’ said Verity, looking, in theory, from one to the other. ‘Here, have one of these, they’re lovely. My treat.’
    She reached down and picked a crab out of a bucket. As it came up it turned out that three more were hanging on to it.
    ‘A crab necklace?’ giggled Juliet.
    ‘Oh, that’s crabs for you,’ said Verity, disentangling the ones who had hitched a ride. ‘Thick as planks, the lot of them. That’s why you can keep them in a bucket without a lid. Any that tries to get out gets pulled back. Yes, as thick as planks.’ Verity held the crab over an ominously bubbling cauldron. ‘Shall I cook it for you now?’
    ‘No!’ said Glenda, much louder than she had intended.
    ‘Are you okay, dear?’ Verity enquired. ‘You look a bit ill.’
    ‘I’m fine. Fine. Just a touch of a sore throat, that’s all.’ Crab bucket, she thought. I thought Pepe was talking nonsense. ‘Erm, can you just truss it up for us? It’s going to be a long night.’
    ‘Right you are,’ said Miss Pushpram, expertly wrapping the unresisting crab in twine. ‘You know what to do, that’s certain. Lovely crabs, these, real good eating. But thick as planks.’

    Crab bucket, thought Glenda as they hurried towards the Night Kitchen. That’s how it works. People from the Sisters disapproving when a girl takes the trolley bus. That’s crab bucket. Practically everything my mum ever told me, that’s crab bucket. Practically everything I’ve ever told Juliet, that’s crab bucket, too. Maybe it’s just another word for the Shove. It’s so nice and warm on the inside that you forget that there’s an outside. The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you