Thud!

Highlights

Page 10

‘You wanted me, sir?’ he said, turning to Vetinari again. ‘There’s a Silicon Anti-Defamation League march in Water Street and I’ve got traffic backed up all the way to Least Gate—’ ‘I’m sure it can wait, commander.’ ‘Yes, sir. That’s the trouble, sir. That’s what it’s doing.’ Vetinari waved a languid hand. ‘But full carts congesting the street, Vimes, is a sign of progress,’ he declared. ‘Only in the figurative sense, sir,’ said Vimes.

Note: Why can’t everyone be funny like him. T God 😭

Page 25

If you wanted the bare facts, it was where the dwarfs had ambushed the trolls and/or the trolls had ambushed the dwarfs, one ill-famed day under unkind stars. Oh, they’d fought one another since Creation, as far as Vimes understood it, but at the Battle of Koom Valley that mutual hatred became, as it were, Official, and as such had developed a kind of mobile geography. Where any dwarf fought any troll, there was Koom Valley. Even if it was a punch-up in a pub, it was Koom Valley. It was part of the mythology of both races, a rallying cry, the ancestral reason why you couldn’t trust those short, bearded/big, rocky bastards. There had been plenty of such Koom Valleys since that first one. The war between the dwarfs and the trolls was a battle of natural forces, like the war between the wind and the waves. It had a momentum of its own. Saturday was Koom Valley Day and Ankh-Morpork was full of trolls and dwarfs, and you know what? The further trolls and dwarfs got from the mountains, the more that bloody, bloody Koom Valley mattered. The parades were okay; the Watch had got good at keeping them apart, and anyway they were in the morning when everyone was still mostly sober. But when the dwarf bars and the troll bars emptied out in the evening, hell went for a stroll with its sleeves rolled up.

Note: Sounds like Northern Ireland

Page 27

And then, just when you thought it was as bad as it could be, up popped Grag Hamcrusher and his chums. Deep-downers, they were called, dwarfs as fundamental as the bedrock. They’d turned up a month ago, occupied some old house in Treacle Street and had hired a bunch of local lads to open up the basements. They were ‘grags’. Vimes knew just enough dwarfish to know that grag meant ‘renowned master of dwarfish lore’. Hamcrusher, however, had mastered it in his own special way. He preached the superiority of dwarf over troll, and that the duty of every dwarf was to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers and remove trollkind from the face of the world. It was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory.

Note: Can’t argue with that last bit.

Page 39

Nobby was having a problem. ‘Here, sarge, what’s he going on about?’ he whispered. ‘It sounds like he’s yawning all the time. What’s a galler rear?’ ‘A gallery, Nobby. That’s very high-class talkin’, that is.’ ‘I can hardly understand him!’ ‘Shows it’s high class, Nobby. It wouldn’t be much good if people like you could understand, right?’

Note: True true!

Page 40

‘I suppose some rich private collector has it now,’ Sir Reynold moaned. ‘But how could he keep it a secret? The canvas is one of the most recognizable paintings in the world! Every civilized person would spot it in an instant!’ ‘What did it look like?’ said Fred Colon. Sir Reynold performed that downshift of assumptions that was the normal response to any conversation with Ankh-Morpork’s Finest. ‘I can probableah find you a copy,’ he said weakly. ‘But the original is fifty feet long! Have you never seen it?’

Page 45

‘Yeah, but …’ Fred Colon hesitated here. He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.

Page 58

Fred grunted his disdain for a mere fact of geography. ‘War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?’ he said. ‘Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?’ ‘Absol— Well, okay.’ ‘Defending yourself from a totalitarian aggressor?’ ‘All right, I’ll grant you that, but—’ ‘Saving civilization against a horde of—’ ‘It doesn’t do any good in the long run is what I’m saying, Nobby, if you’d listen for five seconds together,’ said Fred Colon sharply. ‘Yeah, but in the long run what does, sarge?’

Note: What have the Romans energy

Page 74

The city dwarfs regarded them with awe, respect and, it had to be said, a certain amount of embarrassment, like some honoured but slightly loopy relative. Because somewhere in the head of every city dwarf there was a little voice that said: you should live in a mine, you should be in the mountains, you shouldn’t walk under open skies, you should be a real dwarf. In other words, you shouldn’t really be working in your uncle’s pigment and dye factory in Dolly Sisters. However, since you are, you could at least try to think like a proper dwarf. And part of that meant being guided by the deep-downers, the dwarfs’ dwarfs, who live in caves miles below the surface and never see the sun. Somewhere down there in the dark was true dwarfishness. They had the knowing of it, and they could guide you …

Note: This guy really understood the human experience.

Page 183

Barricades … well, that’s what they were called on the Watch inventory. Ha! Lengths of wood painted in black and yellow stripes and mounted on trestles were not barricades, not to anyone who’d been behind a real one, which was built of rubbish and furniture and barrels and fear and bowel-knotting defiance. No, these simple things were the physical symbol of an idea. It was a line in the sand. It said: thus far, and no further. It said: this is where the law is. Step over this line and you’ve gone beyond the law. Step over this line, with your massive axes and huge morningstars and heavy, heavy spiky clubs, and we few, we happy few, who stand here with our wooden truncheons, we’ll … we’ll … … well, you just better not step over the line, okay?

Note: Shakespearean

Page 185

Magic’s a little bit alive, a little bit tricky. Just when you think you’ve got it by the throat it bites you in the arse. No magic in my Watch, Mr Pessimal. We use good old-fashioned policing.’

Page 211

‘I don’t believe there’s a dancer called Broccoli!’ ‘Well, she did use to be called Candi, sarge, but then she heard that broccoli is better for you—’ ‘Corporal Nobbs!’

Page 215

Vetinari drummed his fingers on the table. ‘What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?’ ‘I’d tell you a downright lie, sir.’ ‘Then I will not do so,’ said Vetinari, smiling faintly. ‘Thank you, sir. Nor will I.’ ‘Where are your prisoners?’ ‘We spread them around the Watch House yards,’ said Vimes. ‘As they wake up we hose ’em clean, take their names, give ’em a receipt for their weapon and a hot drink and push ’em out into the street.’ ‘Their weapons are culturally very important to them, Vimes,’ said Vetinari. ‘Yeah, sir, I know. I myself have a strong cultural bias against getting my brains bashed in and my knees cut off,’ said Vimes, stifling a yawn and wincing as his ribs objected.

Page 286

You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters! You headsdown little scurriers in the dark! What did you bring to my city? What were you thinking? Did you want the deep-downers here? Did you dare deplore what Hamcrusher said, all that bile and ancient lies? Or did you say ‘Well, I don’t agree with him, of course, but he’s got a point’? Did you say, ‘Oh he goes too far but it’s about time somebody said it’? And now, have you come here to wring your hands and say how dreadful, it was nothing to do with you? Who were the dwarfs in the mobs, then? Aren’t you community leaders? Were you leading them? And why are you here now, you ugly snivelling grubbers? Is it possible, is it possible, that now, after that bastard’s bodyguards tried to kill my family, you’re here to complain? Have I broken some code, trodden on some ancient toe? To hell with it. To hell with you.

Page 343

On the other side of the curtain children were squabbling, a baby was crying, and there was the smell of rat-and-cabbage casserole. Someone was sharpening an axe. And someone else was snoring. For a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork, solitude was something that you had to cultivate on the inside.

Page 404

In the face of these risks, Sea-Land gave up its plans to sail around the world. Two of its major competitors did not. One was Evergreen Marine. Evergreen, founded as a tramp company by the ambitious Taiwanese entrepreneur Chang Yung-fain 1968, had become a major operator across the Pacific and on the Far East–Europe route, undercutting conference freight rates to gain traffic. In May 1982, Evergreen ordered 16 containerships from yards in Japan and Taiwan at a cost of $1 billion and announced that it would run round-the-world services heading both east and west. The vessels, originally planned to carry 2,240 20-foot containers, were soon redesigned to hold 2,728. Chang called these vessels his “G-class” and named them accordingly: Ever Gifted, Ever Glory, Ever Gleamy. They would steam at 21 knots, fast enough that each of the 19 ports of call would see an Evergreen ship in each direction every 10 days. Evergreen’s ships would circumnavigate the world in 81 days east-bound, 82 days going west.

Note: Haha. I was reminded of this book and encouraged to pick it up because of the suez thing

Page 381

‘You’ll be Death, then?’ said Vimes, after a while. AH, MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting the book on his finger to keep the place. ‘I’ve seen you before.’ I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES. ‘And this is it, is it?’ HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death. Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really didn’t want to say, and it was happening here. ‘Is it?’ he insisted. ‘Is this it? This time I die?’ COULD BE. ‘Could be? What sort of answer is that?’ said Vimes. A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON’T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK. Vimes rolled over on to his stomach, gritted his teeth and pushed himself on to his hands and knees again. He managed a few yards before slumping back down. He heard the sound of a chair being moved. ‘Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?’ he said. I AM, said Death, sitting down again. ‘But you’re here!’ AS WELL. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed a pretty good sigh. IT APPEARS THAT THE BUTLER DID IT. ‘Did what?’ IT IS A MADE-UP STORY. VERY STRANGE. ALL ONE NEED DO IS TURN TO THE LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE. WHAT, THEREFORE, IS THE POINT OF DELIBERATEDLY NOT KNOWING? It sounded like gibberish to Vimes, so he ignored it. Some of the aches had gone, although his head still hammered. There was an empty feeling, everywhere. He just wanted to sleep.

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