Going Postal (42 page)
The Carpet People
The Dark Side of the Sun
Strata • Truckers
Diggers • Wings
Only You Can Save Mankind
Johnny and the Dead • Johnny and the Bomb
The Unadulterated Cat
(with Gray Jollife)
Good Omens
(with Neil Gaiman)
T
HE
D
ISCWORLD
® S
ERIES:
Thud! • Going Postal
Monstrous Regiment • Night Watch
The Last Hero • The Truth • Thief of Time
The Fifth Elephant • Carpe Jugulum
The Last Continent • Jingo
Hogfather • Feet of Clay • Maskerade
Interesting Times • Soul Music • Men at Arms
Lords and Ladies • Small Gods
Witches Abroad • Reaper Man
Moving Pictures • Eric
(with Josh Kirby)
Guards! Guards! • Pyramids
Wyrd Sisters • Sourcery • Mort • Equal Rites
The Light Fantastic • The Color of Magic
The Art of Discworld
(with Paul Kidby)
Mort: A Discworld Big Comic
(with Graham Higgins)
The Streets of Ankh-Morpork
(with Stephen Briggs)
The Discworld Companion
(with Stephen Briggs)
The Discworld Mapp
(with Stephen Briggs)
The Pratchett Portfolio
(with Paul Kidby)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
GOING POSTAL
. Copyright © 2004 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2007 ISBN: 9780061807190
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*
Dimwell Arrhythmic Rhyming Slang: Various rhyming slangs are known, and have given the universe such terms as “apples and pears” (stairs), “rubbity-dub” (pub), and “busy bee” (General Theory of Relativity). The Dimwell Street rhyming slang is pretty unique in that it does not, in fact, rhyme. No one knows why, but theories so far advanced are 1) that it is quite complex and in fact follows hidden rules, or 2) Dimwell is well named, or 3) it’s made up to annoy strangers, which is the case with most such slangs.
*
It is wrong to judge by appearances. Despite his expression, which was of a piglet having a bright idea, and his mode of speech, which might put you in mind of a small, breathless, neurotic, but ridiculously expensive dog, Mr. Horsefry might well have been a kind, generous, and pious man. In the same way, the man climbing out of your window in a stripy jumper, a mask, and a great hurry might merely be lost on the way to a fancy-dress party, and the man in the wig and robes at the focus of the courtroom might only be a transvestite who wandered in out of the rain. Snap judgments can be so unfair.
*
In areas more wooded, less dominated by the cabbage and general brassica industry, it would, of course, have been in the sticks.
*
Women are always significantly underrepresented in secret orders.
*
Again.
*
Many cultures practice neither of these in the hustle and bustle of the modern world, because no one can remember what they are.
*
That, for example, stolen horses got dismantled in the dead of night and might well turn up with a dye job and two different legs. And it was said that there was one horse in Ankh-Morpork that had a longitudinal seam from head to tail, being sewn together from what was left of two horses that had been involved in a particularly nasty accident.
*
Which would have been agonizing.
*
Often, but not uniquely, a ladle, but sometimes a metal spatula or, rarely, a mechanical egg-whisk that nobody in the house admits to ever buying. The desperate, mad rattling and cries of “How can it close on the damn thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we
ever
use it?” is as praise unto Anoia. She also eats corkscrews.
*
Another bastard phrase that’d sell itself to any weasel in a tight corner.
*
Ridcully practiced the First Available Surface method of filing.
*
Archchancellor Ridcully was a great believer in retaliation by promotion. You couldn’t have civilians criticizing one of
his
wizards. That was
his
job.