It took some explaining, but the core of it, as far as Nutt could understand it, was this: All football teams in the city were rated by Dimwell in proportion to their closeness, physical, psychological or general gut feeling, to the hated Dolly Sisters. It had just evolved that way. If you went to a match between two other teams, you automatically, according to some complex and ever-changing ready-reckoner of love and hate, cheered the team most nearly allied to your native turf or, more accurately, cobbles.
'Do you see what I mean?' Trev finished.
'I have committed what you said to memory, Mister Trev.'
'Oh Brutha, an' I'll bet you 'ave, at that. And it's just Trev when we're not at work, right? We shout together, right?' He punched Nutt playfully on the arm.
'Why did you do that, Mister Trev?' said Nutt. His eyes, almost the only part of him visible, looked hurt. 'You struck me!'
'That wasn't me hitting you, Gobbo! That was just a friendly punch! Big difference! Don't you know that? It's a little tap on the arm, to show we're mates. Go on, do it to me. Go on.' Trev winked.
... You will be polite and, most of all, you will never raise your hand in anger to anyone...
But this wasn't like that, was it? Nutt asked himself. Trev was his friend. This was friendly. A friend thing. He punched the friendly arm.
'That was a punch?' said Trev. 'You call that a punch? A girl could punch better'n that! How come you're still alive with a weedy 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
20
