Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Page 37
Terry Pratchett
Copyright
CAVEAT
Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.
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1 i.e., everybody
2 It was custom-made for Crowley. Getting just one chip custom-made is incredibly expensive but he could afford it. This watch gave the time in twenty world capitals and in a capital city in Another Place, where it was always one time, and that was Too Late.
3 Saint Beryl Articulatus of Cracow, reputed to have been martyred in the middle of the fifth century. According to legend, Beryl was a young woman who was betrothed against her will to a pagan, Prince Casimir. On their wedding night she prayed to the Lord to intercede, vaguely expecting a miraculous beard to appear, and she had in fact already laid in a small ivory-handled razor, suitable for ladies, against this very eventuality; instead the Lord granted Beryl the miraculous ability to chatter continually about whatever was on her mind, however inconsequential, without pause for breath or food.
According to one version of the legend, Beryl was strangled by Prince Casimir three weeks after the wedding, with their marriage still unconsummated. She died a virgin and a martyr, chattering to the end.
According to another version of the legend, Casimir bought himself a set of earplugs, and she died in bed, with him, at the age of sixty-two.
The Chattering Order of Saint Beryl is under a vow to emulate Saint Beryl at all times, except on Tuesday afternoons, for half an hour, when the nuns are permitted to shut up, and, if they wish, to play table tennis.
4 With a little old lady as the sleuth, and no car chases unless they’re done very slowly.
5 It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.
6 Although he did have to get up in 1832 to go to the lavatory.
7 Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.
8 The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty-seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty-four.
They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads:
“So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life,” and read:
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?
26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.
27 And the Lord did not ask him again.
It appears that these verses were inserted during the proof stage. In those days it was common practice for printers to hang proof sheets to the wooden beams outside their shops, for the edification of the populace and some free proofreading, and since the whole print run was subsequently burned anyway, no one bothered to take up this matter with the nice Mr. A. Ziraphale, who ran the bookshop two doors along and was always so helpful with the translations, and whose handwriting was instantly recognizable.
9 The other two are The Trapping of the Mouse, and Golde Diggers of 1589.
10 Who had already had a few thoughts in that direction, and spent the last years of his life in Newgate Prison when he eventually put them into practice.
11 Another master stroke of publishing genius, because Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Parliament had made Christmas illegal in 1654.
12 Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.
13 A night school just off the Tottenham Court Road, run by an elderly actor who had played butlers and gentlemen’s gentlemen in films and television and on the stage since the 1920s.
14 He avoided mentioning that Attila was nice to his mother, or that Vlad Drakul was punctilious about saying his prayers every day.
15 Except for the bits about syphilis.
16 A sixteenth-century half-wit, not related to any U.S. president.
17 Remarkably, one of these stories is indeed true.
18 The interview was done in 1983 and went as follows:
Q: You’re the Secretary of the United Nations, then?
A: Si.
Q: Ever sighted Elvis?
19 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Threlfall, of 9, The Elms, Paignton. They always maintained that one of the nice things about going on holiday was not having to read the newspapers or listen to the news, just getting away from it all really. And due to a tummy bug contracted by Mr. Threlfall, and Mrs. Threlfall rather overdoing it in the sun their first day, this was their first time out of their hotel room for a week and a half.
20 It didn’t matter what the four had called their gang over the years, the frequent name changes usually being prompted by whatever Adam had happened to have read or viewed the previous day (the Adam Young Squad; Adam and Co.; The Hole-in-the-Chalk Gang; The Really Well-Known Four; The Legion of Really Super-Heroes; The Quarry Gang; The Secret Four; The Justice Society of Tadfi
eld; The Galaxatrons; The Four Just Persons; The Rebels). Everyone else always referred to them darkly as Them, and eventually they did too.
21 Greasy Johnson was a sad and oversized child. There’s one in every school; not exactly fat, but simply huge and wearing almost the same size clothes as his father. Paper tore under his tremendous fingers, pens shattered in his grip. Children whom he tried to play with in quiet, friendly games ended up getting under his huge feet, and Greasy Johnson had become a bully almost in self-defense. After all, it was better to be called a bully, which at least implied some sort of control and desire, than to be called a big clumsy oaf. He was the despair of the sports master, because if Greasy Johnson had taken the slightest interest in sport, then the school could have been champions. But Greasy Johnson had never found a sport that suited him. He was instead secretly devoted to his collection of tropical fish, which won him prizes. Greasy Johnson was the same age as Adam Young, to within a few hours, and his parents had never told him he was adopted. See? You were right about the babies.
22 If Adam had been in full possession of his powers in those days, the Youngs’ Christmas would have been spoiled by the discovery of a dead fat man upside down in their central-heating duct.
23 It may be worth noting here that most human beings can rarely raise more than .3 of an alp (30 centi-alps). Adam believed things on a scale ranging from 2 through to 15,640 Everests.
24 And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enough of it long enough, vital signs.
25 But not like every other Burger Lord across the world. German Burger Lords, for example, sold lager instead of root beer, while English Burger Lords managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was delivered, for example) and carefully remove them; your food arrived after half an hour, at room temperature, and it was only because of the strip of warm lettuce between them that you could distinguish the burger from the bun. The Burger Lord pathfinder salesmen had been shot twenty-five minutes after setting foot in France.
26 Wensleydale’s alleged comic was a 94-week part-work called Wonders of Nature and Science. He had every single one so far, and had asked for a set of binders for his birthday. Brian’s weekly reading was anything with a lot of exclamation marks in the title, like “WhiZZ!!” or “Clang!!” So was Pepper’s, although even under the most refined of tortures she still wouldn’t admit to the fact that she also bought Just Seventeen under plain covers. Adam didn’t read any comics at all. They never lived up to the kind of things he could do in his head.
27 Shadwell hated all Southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.
28 Note for Americans and other city-dwelling life-forms: the rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps, known as “There’s nothing like a roaring open fire is there?” Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a small, rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why.
29 NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:
Two farthings = One Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.
30 During the day. In the evenings she gave Power tarot readings to nervous executives, because old habits die hard.
31 Actually, less so when he took off his glasses, because then he tripped over things and wore bandages a lot.
32 The Voice of God. But not the voice of God. An entity in its own right. Rather like a presidential spokesman.
33 Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn’t work, 2) didn’t do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser’s own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: “Learn, guys.”
34 Leonardo had felt so too. “I got her bloody smile right in the roughs,” he told Crowley, sipping cold wine in the lunchtime sun, “but it went all over the place when I painted it. Her husband had a few things to say about it when I delivered it, but, like I tell him, Signor del Giocondo, apart from you, who’s going to see it? Anyway … explain this helicopter thing again, will you?”
35 He was very proud of his collection. It had taken him ages to put together. This was real Soul Music. James Brown wasn’t in it.
36 Although it’s not what you and I would call dancing. Not good dancing anyway. A demon moves like a white band on “Soul Train.”
37 Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it’s given credit for, it does not have a giant plastic snowman at the bottom.
38 The WA enjoyed a renaissance during the great days of Empire expansionism. The British army’s endless skirmishes frequently brought it up against witch doctors, bone-pointers, shamans, and other occult adversaries. This was the cue for the deployment of the likes of WA CSM Narker, whose striding, bellowing, six-foot-six, eighteen-stone figure, clutching an armor-plated Book, eight-pound Bell, and specially reinforced Candle, could clear the veldt of adversaries faster than a Gatling gun. Cecil Rhodes wrote of him: “Some remote tribes consider him to be a kind of god, and it is an extremely brave or foolhardy witch doctor who will stand his ground with CSM Narker bearing down on him. I would rather have this man on my side than two battalions of Gurkhas.”
39 In any other place than Soho it is quite possible that spectators at a fire might have been interested.
40 There are a number of other things real Hell’s Angels can’t abide. These include the police, soap, Ford Cortinas, and, in Big Ted’s case, anchovies and olives.
41 Magician, or priest. Voodoun is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.
42 $12.95 per LP or cassette, $24.95 per CD, although you got a free copy of the LP with every $500 you donated to Marvin Bagman’s mission.
43 It might have surprised Marvin to know there actually was a success rate. Some people would get better from anything.
44 Except for one about ten years earlier, throwing himself on the mercy of the court.
45 Formerly A Cut Above the Rest, formerly Mane Attraction, formerly Curl Up And Dye, formerly A Snip At the Price, formerly Mister Brian’s Art-de-Coiffeur, formerly Robinson the Barber’s, formerly Fone-a-Car Taxis.
46 This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice skating down it.
47 Not that Hell has any other kind.
48 Not actually an oxymoron. It’s the color past ultra-violet. The technical term for it is infra-black. It can be seen quite easily under experimental conditions. To perform the experiment simply select a healthy brick wall with a good runup, and, lowering your head, charge.
The color that flashes in bursts behind your eyes, behind the pain, just before you die, is infra-black.
49 She had. It read:
A street of light will screem, the black chariot of the Serpente will flayme, and a Queene wille sing quickfilveres songes no moar.
Most of the family had gone along with Gelatly Device, who wrote a brief monograph in the 1830s explaining it as a metaphor for the banishment of Weishaupt’s Illuminati from Bavaria in 1785.
50 This was true. There wasn’t a thermometer on earth that could have been persuaded to register both 700°C and -140°C at the same time, which was the correct temperature.
