Another Hogswatch in Ankh-Morpork. More little glimpses into the lives of its people as they go about the business of the holiday…
Interesting Hogswatch Facts no. 94.
It is an little –known fact, although no secret, that a significant, annually recurring, and most reliable revenue stream for the Guild of Fools and Joculators lies in the licencing of its joke books and pithy aphorisms to the firms that toil to make our Hogswatch crackers.
For this is the one part of the year where the modern Guild's attitude to humour is both welcomed and considered absolutely right and proper. The rigid quality control process insisted upon by the Council of Mirth and applying at all levels from Doctor Whiteface downwards is absolutely instrumental in ensuring that nothing original, or innovative, or modern, or daring ends up being smudgily printed onto a slip of paper and inserted into your Hogswatch cracker.
The consumer of the product may relax in their ease, knowing that only the most welcome annual guests may enter their homes in the form of Hogswatch mottos. The makers of the crackers, such as Mr Johnstones of Theakler Street, carry on turning out a product of escellent quality. And of course the Guild receives licencing and copyright revenue on its oldest and dearest jokes, which are allowed their moment of glory at this season to bask in the warmth of the Hogswatch fire.
{Ankh-Morpork Times, Advertising Feature, paid for by J.B. Johnstone and Sons, Mfctr's of Hogswatch Novelties).
On other pages: p22. Industrial Premises suspected of being used in the manufacture of Unlicenced Hogswatch Crackers burns down in mysterious circumstances. Dr Whiteface of the Guild suggests the alchemical powders used in the cracker strips were unstable and discounts the rumoured presence of Sergeant Clapstick and the Jolly Good Pals as "coincidental".
Several bodies were removed from the ruins, one with custard in its trousers.
"It all started with the Watch-house"…. Vimes said, leading Nobby into the nursery. "Young Sam never really got out of the Book, it's still here somewhere and every so often he goes back to it, but they get older. You know how it is."
The upstairs nursery at Ramkin Manor had a lot of floor-space. It needed it for what was evolving.
"Daddy!" Young Sam called. "Uncer Nobby!"
"What's the mission for today, son?" Sam asked, finding just enough floor space to kneel in.
"Sergeant Detritus off to arrest Chrysoprase, Daddy!"
"Ah, if only…"
A large part of the nursery floor had become a meticuluously laid out streetscape of central Ankh-Morpork. Of course, this was filtered through the eye of an almost-five-year-old boy, so little concerns of scale and detail were not all they could have been.
But when Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil had retained the city's leading manufacturer of dolls' houses to do an absolute scale replica of Pseudopolis Yard for a son who was growing out of a once-beloved Book, they had started something.
Especially when Mr Greenwood and Mr Ball of the Guild of Artificiers had been commissioned to create model figures of the Watch, known suspects, and well-known faces about Town, so as to populate Young Sam's watch-house. This had become Young Sam's must-have toy, and a focal point for creative play between father and son. Sam Vimes, father, realised the idea was ballooning when he came home one night and discovered Purity the nurse had been dragooned into helping create an Opera House out of old cardboard boxes, and the carpet was acquiring its surface of streets, civic features and ground-plans of other city buildings (where they weren't being mocked up out of old cardboard boxes and teacrates).
Sam and Nobby found themselves drawn into a convoluted plot where Chrysophrase and Boggis of the Guilds of Thieves were conspiring to kidnap the figure representing Lord Vetinari, whilst some animals had broken out of the City Zoo. (this had been another commission from the maker of dolls' houses and populated by models drawn from the usual sources. Vimes had worried slightly about a very clear representation of Johanna Smith-Rhodes, the lady Assassin who had a lot to do with the Zoo: she was also one of his special constables, and he wondered about the severity of her reaction if she were to find out. Still, he'd raise it with her, sometime. Maybe another donation to the Zoo or the Animal Management Unit would ease it over.
"My dad made me some toy soldiers once" Nobby said, his eyes forty years in remembrance of the past. "Wouldn't say they was as detailed as this, but the teeth come out and the boots come off."
"The Hogfather could be dropping off some more this year" Sam Vimes said. "For a little boy who likes his Watch and his City!"
The three of them carried on playing, Vimes doing the voices of the evil people who wanted to capture the City, Nobby doing the voices for his fellow Watchmen, young Sam arguing Nobby couldn't have Auntie Angua on the board as a lady AND as a wolf at the same time, until Lady Sybil called them down for dinner. The two Sams, father and son, grinned at each other in bonded affection, and Uncle Nobby (invited to eat with the Vimeses) felt an uncharacteristic warmth that he couldn't put down to the brandy.
Dinner was also in session at the Guild of Assassins. The tables had been laid out in Big School so that everyone could eat together, under the eyes of the dignitaries on High Table.
One of the first things Colonel Maurice had done on arriving at the Guild had been to give 71-Hour Ahmed his sword back, with a bow and a formality.
"Please, mon ami. My wife is a stickler for formal dress and she would look down upon an Assassin without a sword. I would not have you dishonoured."
Ahmed bowed back. "Your kindness does you honour, offendi. Offler will remember this moment when he is selecting righteous infidels who are worthy of Paradise."
And then she had found them, and with cries of joy and delight, Emmanuelle was suddenly a dutiful Quirmian Army wife again.
Ahmed, ignored after his initial introduction, had put on a wry grin for all of five seconds, then recalled the reputation this savagely beautiful woman had.
Would I be married to her? For a night, perhaps. For a lifetime, yes, but it would be a very short lifetime.
The Klatchian Embassy porters who had accompanied them with luggage were sent to drop it off in relevant prepared rooms, then tipped and sent back to the Embassy. Emmanuelle took her husband by the arm and took him to her quarters in Black Widow House, which for the period would be his too. Ahmed grinned, and went to find his allocated room.
And here, a couple of hours later at dinner, the Colonel was in his full dress uniform, up on High Table with his wife and mixing with the dignitaries. The in-school remnant of Black Widow House had been directed to sit with the remnant of Tump House: this left Joan Sanderson-Reeves, the School's deportment and etiquette teacher , in a position to keep an eye on everyone's table manners. As she taught them, this was no small thing.
Whilst deliriously happy to have Maurice at home, Emmanuelle still felt guilty at leaving her girls under Joan's supervision. In normal circumstances, she would have been sitting there presiding over Black Widow House at mealtimes, and she was a lot more lenient than Joan concerning table etiquette: she forgave a lot, and only saw reason to rebuke if somebody were being disgusting or disrespectful of her fellows.
She sighed, and looked down High Table. Lord Downey, several senior Guild members, almost all male apart from Lady T'Malia and Lady de Meserole, who was representing the Patrician. There was that strange Klatchian fellow who'd flown in with Maurice, whom everyone was holding in esteem and respect, and Lord and Lady Rust had accepted a dinner invitiation.
In an incongrouously mellow Morporkian accent, the Klatchian fellow, assisted by Maurice, was discussing the current political and economic situation in Klatch and Hersheba. All present at the table were giving their views respect and due consideration, and it was a pity it was punctuated with piercing, carrying, comments such as "ELBOWS, Miss Skelmersdale!" and "Miss Matthews, may I remind you that you do NOT use the fish knife for the meat course?" and the inevitable "ELBOWS, boy! The dining table is NOT a place to rest one's wretched ELBOWS!"
Amused, Emmanuelle looked around herself to see virtually every male at High Table, including Lord Downey, swiftly and sheepishly taking his elbows off the table. This also applied to 71-hour Ahmed, a man usually afraid of nothing, and to her husband, the much-decorated Legion colonel. She bit a giggle back. But name of several names, I owe my poor girls a favour after subjecting them to Joan. Who is lovely and delightful and has been a good friend to me, but in certain circumstances, is something of a harridan.