‘So, he was a bugger and a clogger and a biter too, was he?’

‘What? Are you pulling my tonker?’

‘I would not wish to do so initially, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, so solemnly thatTrev had to grin, ‘but, you see, if he fought the opposing team with even moreforce than they used, does that not mean that he—’

‘He was my dad,’ said Trev. ‘That means you don’t try any fancy maths, okay?’

‘Okay indeed. And you never wanted to follow in his footsteps?’

‘What, and get brung home on a stretcher? I got my brains from my ol’ mum, notfrom Dad. He was a good bloke and loved his football, but he wasn’t flush withbrains to start with an’ on that day some of ’em were leakin’ out of his ear.The Dollies got ’im in the melee and sorted ’im out good and proper. That’s notfor me, Gobbo. I’m smart.’

‘Yes, Mister Trev, I can see that.’

‘Get the gear on and let’s go, okay? We don’t want to miss anything.’

‘Fing,’ said Nutt automatically, as he started to wind the huge scarf aroundhis neck.

‘What?’ said Trev, frowning.

‘Wot?’ said Nutt, his voice a little muffled. There was a lot of scarf. It wasalmost covering his mouth.

‘Are you pulling my chuff, Gobbo?’ said Trev, handing him an ancient sweater,faded and saggy with age.

‘Please, Mister Trev, I don’t know! There appears to be so much I mightinadvertently pull!’ He tugged on the big woolly hat with the pink pompom onit. ‘They are so very pink, Mister Trev. We must be bursting with machismo!’

‘I don’t know what you person’ly are bursting with, Gobbo, but here’s somethin’to learn. “Come on if you think you’re hard enough.” Now you say it.’

‘Come on if you think you’re hard enough,’ said Nutt obediently.

‘Well, okay,’ said Trev, inspecting him. ‘Just remember, if anyone startspushing you around during the game, and givin’ you grief, just you say that to’em and they’ll see you’re wearing the Dimmer colours and they’ll think twice.Got it?’

Nutt, somewhere in the space between the big bobbly hat and the boa constrictorof a scarf, nodded.

‘Wow, there you are, Gobbo, a complete… fan. Your own mother wouldn’t recognizeyou!’

There was a pause before a voice emerged from inside the mound of ancientwoollens, which looked very much like a nursery layette made by a couple ofgiants who weren’t sure what to expect.

‘I believe you are accurate.’

‘Yeah? Well, that’s good, innit? Now let’s go and meet the lads. Move fast,stay close.’

‘Now remember, this is a pre-season friendly between the Angels and theWhoppers, right?’ said Trev, as they stepped out into a fine rain which,because of Ankh-Morpork’s standing cloud of pollution, was morphing gently intosmog. ‘They’re both pretty crap, they’ll never amount to anythin’, but theDimmers shout for the Angels, right?’

It took some explaining, but the core of it, as far as Nutt could understandit, was this: All football teams in the city were rated by Dimwell inproportion to their closeness, physical, psychological or general gut feeling,to the hated Dolly Sisters. It had just evolved that way. If you went to amatch between two other teams, you automatically, according to some complex andever-changing ready-reckoner of love and hate, cheered the team most nearlyallied 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 notat work, right? We shout together, right?’ He punched Nutt playfully on thearm.

‘Why did you do that, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt. His eyes, almost the only partof him visible, looked hurt. ‘You struck me!’

‘That wasn’t me hitting you, Gobbo! That was just a friendly punch! Bigdifference! Don’t you know that? It’s a little tap on the arm, to show we’remates. 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 angerto 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 punchbetter’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 awizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but evensitting down, you had to stand out. There were, of course, times when a robegot in the way, especially when a wizard was working in his forge, creating amagic metal or mobiloid glass or any of those other little exercises inpractical magic where not setting fire to yourself is a happy bonus, so everywizard had some leather trousers and a stained, rotted-by-acid shirt. It wasthe shared dirty little secret, not very secret, but ingrained with deep-downdirt.

Ridcully sighed. His colleagues had aimed for the look of the common man, buthad only a hazy grasp of what the common man looked like these days, and nowthey were sniggering and looking at one another and saying things like ‘Corblimey, don’t you scrub down well, as it were, my ol’ mate.’ Beside them, andlooking extremely embarrassed, were two of the university’s bledlows, notknowing what to do with their feet and wishing that they were having a quietsmoke somewhere in the warm.

‘Gentlemen,’ Ridcully began, and then with a gleam in his eye added, ‘or shouldI say, fellow workers by hand and brain, this afternoon we—Yes, SeniorWrangler?’

‘Are we, in point of fact, workers? This is a university, after all,’ said theSenior Wrangler.

‘I agree with the Senior Wrangler,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Underuniversity statute we are specifically forbidden to engage, other than withincollege precincts, in any magic above level four, unless specifically asked todo so by the civil power or, under clause three, we really want to. We areacting as place holders, and as such, forbidden from working.’

‘Would you accept “slackers by hand and brain”?’ said Ridcully, always happy tosee 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 stalwartMister 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 notattract unwanted attention.’

The wizards nodded nervously at the bledlows. They were, of course, merelyemployees 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, itwas 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. Andthey were all descendants of, and practically identical to, those men who hadchased those wizards–younger and more limber, and it was amazing how fast youcould run with a couple of bledlows behind you–through the foggy night-timestreets. If caught, said bledlows, who took enormous pleasure in theprosecution of the university’s private laws and idiosyncratic rules, wouldthen drag you before the Archchancellor on a charge of Attempting to BecomeRascally Drunk. That was preferable to fighting back, when the bledlows werewidely believed to take the opportunity for a little class warfare. That wasyears ago, but even now the unexpected sight of a bledlow caused sullen,shameful terror to flow down the spines of men who had acquired more lettersafter their names than a game of Scrabble.