Good Omens (47 page)

²⁷
 Shadwell hated all Southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.

²⁸
 Note for Americans and other city-dwelling life-forms: the rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps, known as “There's nothing like a roaring open fire is there?” Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a small, rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why.

²⁹
 NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:

Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

³⁰
 During the day. In the evenings she gave Power tarot readings to nervous executives, because old habits die hard.

³¹
 Actually, less so when he took off his glasses, because then he tripped over things and wore bandages a lot.

³²
 The Voice of God. But not the
voice
of God. An entity in its own right. Rather like a presidential spokesman.

³³
 Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: “Learn, guys.”

³⁴
 Leonardo had felt so too. “I got her bloody smile right in the roughs,” he told Crowley, sipping cold wine in the lunchtime sun, “but it went all over the place when I painted it. Her husband had a few things to say about it when I delivered it, but, like I tell him, Signor del Giocondo, apart from you, who's going to see it? Anyway … explain this helicopter thing again, will you?”

³⁵
 He was very proud of his collection. It had taken him ages to put together. This was
real
Soul Music. James Brown wasn't in it.

³⁶
 Although it's not what you and I would call
dancing
. Not good dancing anyway. A demon moves like a white band on “Soul Train.”

³⁷
 Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a giant plastic snowman at the bottom.

³⁸
 The WA enjoyed a renaissance during the great days of Empire expansionism. The British army's endless skirmishes frequently brought it up against witch doctors, bone-pointers, shamans, and other occult adversaries. This was the cue for the deployment of the likes of WA CSM Narker, whose striding, bellowing, six-foot-six, eighteen-stone figure, clutching an armor-plated Book, eight-pound Bell, and specially reinforced Candle, could clear the veldt of adversaries faster than a Gatling gun. Cecil Rhodes wrote of him: “Some remote tribes consider him to be a kind of god, and it is an extremely brave or foolhardy witch doctor who will stand his ground with CSM Narker bearing down on him. I would rather have this man on my side than two battalions of Gurkhas.”

³⁹
  In any other place than Soho it is quite possible that spectators at a fire might have been interest
ed
.

⁴⁰
 There are a number of other things real Hell's Angels can't abide. These include the police, soap, Ford Cortinas, and, in Big Ted's case, anchovies and olives.

⁴¹
 Magician, or priest. Voodoun is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.

⁴²
 $12.95 per LP or cassette, $24.95 per CD, although you got a free copy of the LP with every $500 you donated to Marvin Bagman's mission.

⁴³
 It might have surprised Marvin to know there actually was a success rate. Some people would get better from
anything
.

⁴⁴
 Except for one about ten years earlier, throwing himself on the mercy of the court.

⁴⁵
 Formerly
A Cut Above the Rest,
formerly
Mane Attraction,
formerly
Curl Up And Dye,
formerly
A Snip At the Price,
formerly
Mister Brian's Art-de-Coiffeur,
formerly
Robinson the Barber's,
formerly
Fone-a-Car Taxis.

⁴⁶
 This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice skating down it.

⁴⁷
 Not that Hell has any other kind.

⁴⁸
 Not actually an oxymoron. It's the color past ultra-violet. The technical term for it is infra-black. It can be seen quite easily under experimental conditions. To perform the experiment simply select a healthy brick wall with a good runup, and, lowering your head, charge.

The color that flashes in bursts behind your eyes, behind the pain, just before you die, is infra-black.

⁴⁹
 She had. It read:

A street of light will screem, the black chariot of the Serpente will flayme, and a Queene wille sing quickfilveres songes no moar.

Most of the family had gone along with Gelatly Device, who wrote a brief monograph in the 1830s explaining it as a metaphor for the banishment of Weishaupt's Illuminati from Bavaria in 1785.

⁵⁰
 This was true. There wasn't a thermometer on earth that could have been persuaded to register both 700°C and -140°C at the same time, which was the correct temperature.

⁵¹
 He did not have a television. Or as his wife put it, “Ronald wouldn't have one of those things in the house, would you Ronald?” and he always agreed, although secretly he would have liked to have seen some of the smut and filth and violence that the National Viewers and Listeners Association complained of. Not because he wanted to see it, of course. Just because he wanted to know what other people should be protected from.

⁵²
 Although as a member (read, founder) of his local Neighborhood Watch scheme he did attempt to memorize the motorbikes' number plates.

⁵³
 Five foot six.

⁵⁴
 He'd slipped and fallen in a hotel shower when he took a holiday there in 1983. Now the mere sight of a bar of yellow soap could send him into near-fatal flashbacks.

⁵⁵
 Except for Giovanni Jacopo Casanova (1725–1798), famed amourist and litterateur, who revealed in volume 12 of his Memoirs that, as a matter of course, he carried around with him at all times a small valise containing “a loaf of bread, a pot of choice Seville marmalade, a knife, fork, and small spoon for stirring, 2 fresh eggs packed with care in unspun wool, a tomato or love-apple, a small frying pan, a small sauce pan, a spirit burner, a chafing dish, a tin box of salted butter of the Italian type, 2 bone china plates. Also a portion of honey comb, as a sweetener, for my breath and for my coffee. Let my readers understand me when I say to them all: A true gentleman should always be able to break his fast in the manner of a gentleman, wheresoever he may find himself.”

⁵⁶
 And there was the matter of Dick Turpin. It looked like the same car, except that forever afterwards it seemed able to do 250 miles on a gallon of petrol, ran so quietly that you practically had to put your mouth over the exhaust pipe to see if the engine was firing, and issued its voice-synthesized warnings in a series of exquisite and perfectly phrased haikus, each one original and apt …

Late frost burns the bloom

Would a fool not let the belt

Restrain the body?

. . . it would say. And,

The cherry blossom

Tumbles from the highest tree.

One needs more petrol.

⁵⁷
 Witchfinder Corporal Carpet, librarian, 11 pence per annum bonus.

⁵⁸
 “A relentlefs blockbufter of a boke; heartily recommended”—Pope Innocent VIII.

⁵⁹
 To the right collector, the Witchfinder Army's library would have been worth millions. The right collector would have to have been very rich, and not have minded gravy stains, cigarette burns, marginal notations, or the late Witchfinder Lance Corporal Wotling's passion for drawing mustaches and spectacles on all woodcut illustrations of witches and demons.