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Jingo quotes page 2
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'You can't see any... magnets?' 'What're they?' 'Dunno.' [Well, no, neither does anyone else know that name for the Love of Iron - except perhaps Carrot's dwarf father in gg.]  ‘You were a… military man, weren’t you, Fred?’ said Carrot, as the parade passed by. ‘Yes, sir. Duke of Eorle’s First Heavy Infantry, sir. The Pheasant Pluckers. […] We even had a marching song,’ he said. ‘Mind you, it was quite hard to sing right.’ ‘And o’course before that I was in the Duke of Quirm’s Middleweight Infantry. Saw a lot of action with them.’ ‘I’m sure you did,’ said Carrot, while Angua entertained cynical thoughts about the actual distance of Fred’s vantage point. ‘I’m afraid, Nobby, that the white feather is to shame you into joining up.’ ‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ said Nobby, a man for whom shame held no shame. One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. ‘Are you going out, Sam?’ ‘Yes. I’m just going to kick some arse, dear.’ ‘Oh, good. Just be sure you wrap up well, then.’ ‘There’s a lot of armed men down there.’ ‘My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure,’ said Carrot. ‘Really? Well, there’s eleven of them.’ ‘There’s a good few lordships in this city created by the Patricians,’ said Vimes. ‘Your friend Lord Downey, for one.’ [This is a nice bit of continuity, since in maa and foc Downey is Doctor Downey, but by the time of Hogfather he is Lord Downey. Presumably he has been knighted by Lord Vetinari in between times.] In Vimes’s eyes Rust recognised the fiery gleam of burning boats. ‘That’s Leonard of Quirm, that is! He went missing five years ago!’ [It’s mentioned in maa that he disappeared ‘A couple of years ago’, meaning the events of j take place about three years after maa.] ‘Well, if speed is required, I have this very interesting design for a two-wheeled –’ [An invention that might have improved the ending of Carrot’s claim to the Patrician in maa that Ankh-Morpork needs a king ‘like a fish needs a… er… a thing that doesn’t work underwater, sir.’] ‘Tell me, sergeant, are you of a nautical persuasion?’ Colon saluted again. ‘Nossir! Happily married man, sir.’ ‘I meant, have you ploughed the ocean waves at all?’ Colon gave him a cunning look. ‘Ah, you can’t catch me with that one, sir,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows the horses would sink.’ Leonard paused for a moment and retuned his brain to Radio Colon. ‘Have you, in the past, floated around, on the sea, in a boat, at all?’ He’d probably spent long evenings in his tent, looking up in the dictionary short words beginning with V and trying them out… Veni, vermimi, vomui, I came, I got ratted, I threw up? Visi, veneri, vamoosi, I visited, I caught an embarrassing disease, I ran away? ‘It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country,’ he read. ‘This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.’ [...] his watch, which he had propped up against the Dis-organiser. It was powered by actual clockwork and was much more reliable. [This is likely to be the watch that Carrot bought for Vimes when he married Lady Sybil in maa.] Obviously, it was a consideration that if someone had captured Angua you know that the rescue you were going to probably wouldn’t be hers. The wizards of Ankh-Morpork had been very firm on the subject of printing. It’s not happening here, they said. […] The Engravers’ Guild was also against printing. […] The only attempt to set up a printing press in Ankh-Morpork had ended in a mysterious fire […]. And the Patrician was against printing […]. [So it seems surprising that earlier on in the book we have read: “Constable Visit […] spent all his wages on pamphlets; he even had his own printing press.”] ‘Oh, there weren’t many people around, m’lord.’ ‘That’s a small mercy, at least.’ ‘Just me and Foul Ole Ron and the Duck Man and Blind Hugh…’ [Another nitpick: earlier on, Carrot informed Vimes that Blind Hugh ‘passed away last month’.] ‘Also, this is a frisky wind and me and my crew know how to pull the strings that make the big square canvas things work properly. If your men tried it you’d soon find out how far it is to land.’ ‘How far is it to land?’ ‘About thirty fathoms, hereabouts.’ Something hard rebounded from [Jenkins’s] hat, hit the rail and rolled to a stop by Vimes’s feet. It was a brass knob. ‘Oh, no,’ moaned Jenkins, putting his arms over his head. ‘Now it’s bloody bedsteads again!’ [I don’t really get this thing with bedsteads – this is their third mention, since near the beginning of the book it is mentioned that "It was amazing what could fall on Ankh-Morpork. Rains of small fish were common enough, although bedsteads caused comment" and a little later Carrot tells Vimes that Smelly Slider died when he ‘got hit by a falling bedstead. Freak accident, sir.’ Also, Jenkins’s ‘it’s bloody bedsteads again!’ indicates he’s seen this before, but two paragraphs later he’s telling Vimes that ‘rains of bedsteads are not an everyday occurrence!’ For some reason I always imagine Terry has a bet on with someone as to how many times he can mention rains of bedsteads in one book. I'd welcome any other explanation!] Another squall blew across the bounding boat and the deck was suddenly covered with flashing silver. ‘Back to fish!’ shouted Vimes. ‘That’s better, surely?’ ‘No! It’s worse!’ ‘Why!’ Jenkins held up a tin. ‘These are sardines!’ ‘Fortune favours the brave, sir,’ said Carrot cheerfully. ‘Good. Good. Pleased to hear it, captain. What is her position vis à vis heavily armed, well prepared and excessively manned armies?’ ‘All present and lightly bruised, sir.’ ‘You know what they say, lad. “Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”’ Well, no sense lying over this saddle bound hand and foot and dying of sunstroke all day. He ought to start being a leader of men again, and would do so just as soon as he could get this camel out of his mouth. ‘I learn language on…’ Jabbar waved a hand vaguely, ‘you know, wooden ting, a camel of the sea–’ ‘Boat?’ ‘Right!’ ‘Is this a djinn?’ said Jabbar. ‘I don’t know, but I could certainly do with one,’ said Vimes. ‘Mr Vimes?’ Only Carrot could whisper like that. He associated whispering with concealment and untruth and compromised by whispering very loudly. Jabbar grinned nervously. ‘It happens often in your country, where dogs turn into naked women?’ ‘How did you get on, Reg?’ ‘A bit odd, sir. After the first one chopped my arm off and stabbed me, the rest of them seemed to keep out of my way.’ ‘The sergeant wasn’t trained for this sort of thing. So he said, ‘They’re late.’ ‘Good. Rather them than us.’ ‘Anyway, I’m a wolf living with people, and there’s a name for wolves that live with people. If he whistled, I’d come running.’ ‘And there are many strange stories we can tell you!’ shouted the Patrician. ‘Beti certainly could,’ murmured Colon and was kicked sharply on his ankle. ‘And many strange sights we can show you!’ ‘Beti cert– Aargh!’ |
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Jingo quotes page 2
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