He turned over and wrapped himself in the Bursar's curtains.

     There was a creaking outside his nest, and some whispering.

     'No, don't fight the lamp.'

     'I wondered why I hadn't seen him all evening.'

     'Oh, he goes to bed early on Hogswatch Eve, sir. Here we are . . .'

     There was some rustling.

     'We're in luck. It hasn't been  filled,'  said Ponder. 'Looks like he's used one of the Bursar's.'

     'He puts it up every year?'

     'Apparently.'

     'But it's not as though he's a child. A certain child- like simplicity, perhaps.'

     'It might be different for orang-utans, Archchancellor.'

     'Do they do it in the jungle, d'you think?'

     'I don't imagine so, sir. No chimneys, for one thing.'

     'And  quite  short  legs, of course. Extremely  underfunded in the sock area, orang-utans.  They'd be quids  in if  they could hang  up  gloves,  of course. Hogfather'd be on double shifts if they could  hang up their gloves. On account of the length of their arms.'

     'Very good, Archchancellor.'

     'I say, what's  this on the... my  word, a glass of sherry. Well, waste not, want not.' There was a damp glugging noise in the darkness.

     'I think that was supposed to be for the Hogfather, sir.'

     'And the banana?'

     'I imagine that's been left out for the pigs, sir.'

     'Pigs?'

     'Oh, you know, sir. Tusker and Snouter and  Gouger and Rooter. I mean,' Ponder stopped,  conscious  that a grown man shouldn't be  able  to remember this sort of thing, 'that's what children believe.'

     'Bananas  for pigs?  That's  not traditional,  is it? I'd have  thought acorns, perhaps. Or apples or swedes.'

     'Yes, sir, but the Librarian likes bananas, sir.'

     'Very nourishin' fruit, Mr Stibbons.'

     'Yes, sir. Although, funnily enough it's not actually a fruit, sir.'

     'Really?'

     'Yes,  sir. Botanically, it's  a  type of  fish, sir.  According  to my theory it's cladistically associated with  the Krullian pipefish, sir, which of course is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals.'

     'And lives in trees?'

     'Well, not usually,  sir.  The  banana  is  obviously exploiting a  new niche.'

     'Good heavens, really? It's  a  funny thing, but  I've never much liked bananas  and I've always  been a bit suspicious of fish, too. That'd explain it.'

     'Yes, sir.'

     'Do they attack swimmers?'

     'Not that I've heard, sir. Of course, they may be clever enough to only attack swimmers who're far from land.'

     'What, you mean sort of... high up? In the trees, as it were?'

     'Possibly, sir.'

     'Cunning, eh?'

     'Yes, sir.'

     'Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable, Mr Stibbons.'

     'Yes, sir.'

     A match flared in the darkness as Ridcully lit his pipe.

     The Ankh-Morpork wassailers had practised for weeks.

     The  custom was referred  to by Anaglypta Huggs, organizer of the  best and  most select group of the city's singers, as an  occasion for fellowship and good cheer.

     One should always be wary of people who talk unashamedly of 'fellowship and good  cheer' as if it were something that can be  applied to life like a poultice. Turn your  back for a moment and they  may well organize a Maypole dance  and, frankly, there's no  option then but to  try and make it  to the treeline.

     The singers were  halfway down Park  Lane now, and halfway through 'The Red Rosy Hen' in marvellous  harmony.[19] Their collecting tins were  already full of donations for the poor of the city,  or at least those sections  of the poor who in Mrs Huggs'  opinion were  suitably picturesque and not too smelly and could be relied upon to  say thank you.  People had come to  their  doors to listen. Orange light spilled on to  the snow.  Candle  lanterns glowed among the tumbling flakes. If you could  have taken the lid off the  scene,  there would  have  been  chocolates  inside. Or  at  least an interesting  biscuit assortment.

     Mrs Huggs had heard  that wassailing  was  an ardent  ritual,  and  you didn't need anyone to tell you what that meant, but she felt she'd carefully removed all those elements that would affront the refined ear.

     And it was only gradually that the singers became aware of the discord.

     Around  the corner, slipping and sliding on the ice,  came another band of singers.

     Some  people march to a different drummer. The drummer in question here must have been trained elsewhere, possibly by a different species on another planet.

     In front of the group was a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, who was singing at the top of  his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an  entirely  different  song was punctuated  by  bouts  of off-the-beat coughing. He  was  accompanied by a perfectly  ordinary-looking man  in torn, dirty  and yet expensive clothing,  whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned  out by the quacking of a duck  on his head.  He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never  seemed to understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see ducks where no ducks could be. And finally, being towed along by a small grey dog on a string, was Foul Ole Ron, generally regarded in AnkhMorpork as  the  deranged  beggars'  deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats.

     The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror.

     Neither party  noticed, as  the beggars oozed and ambled up the street, that  little  smears  of black and grey were spiralling  out  of  drains and squeezing out from under  tiles and buzzing off into the night.  People have always  had the urge to sing and clang things  at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken  advantage  of  the long  grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the effect.  Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted.

     The  beggars were not  in fact  this well versed in folkloric practice. They  were just  making a din in the wellfounded hope that people would give them money to stop.

     It was just possible to make out a consensus song in there somewhere.

     'And if you  ain't got a penny,' Foul  Ole Ron  yodelled, solo, 'then - fghfgh yffg mftnfmf...'

     The Duck Man had, with great presence of mind, damped a hand over Ron's mouth.

     'So sorry about this,'  he  said, 'but this time I'd like people not to slam their doors on us. And it doesn't scan, anyway.'

     The nearby doors slammed regardless. The other  wassailers fled hastily to a more salubrious location.  Goodwill to  all men was a phrase  coined by someone who hadn't met Foul Ole Ron.

     The beggars stopped singing,  except for Arnold Sideways, who tended to live in his own small world.

     ' ...nobody knows how good we can live, on boots three times a day...'

     Then the change in the air penetrated even his consciousness.

     Snow thumped off the trees as a contrary wind brushed them. There was a whirl of  flakes and it was just possible, since  the beggars did not always have  their mental  compasses pointing due  Real,  that they  heard a  brief snatch of conversation.