Unseen Academicals

The Archchancellor sat back. He had a definite feeling that this was going to be fun. Well, she hadn’t blushed and she hadn’t yelled. In fact, she had not done anything, apart from carefully pick up the china.

‘I support Dolly Sisters, sir. Always have done.’

‘And are they any good?’

‘Having a poor patch at the moment, sir.’

‘Ah, then I expect you will want to support our team, which will be very good indeed!’

‘Can’t do that, sir. You’ve got to support your team, sir.’

‘But you just said they weren’t doing well.’

‘That’s when you support your team, sir. Otherwise you’re a numper.’

‘A numper being …?’ said Ridcully.

‘He’s someone who’s all cheering when things are going well, and then runs off to another team when there’s a losing streak. They always shouts the loudest.’

‘So you support the same team all your life?’

‘Well, if you move away it’s okay to change. No one will mind much unless you go to a real enemy.’ She looked at their puzzled expressions, sighed and went on: ‘Like Naphill United and the Whoppers, or Dolly Sisters and Dimwell Old Pals, or the Pigsty Hill Pork Packers and the Cockbill Boars. You know?’

When they clearly didn’t, she continued: ‘They hate each other. Always have done, always will. They are the bad matches. The shutters go up for those. I don’t know what my neighbours would say if they saw me cheering a Dimmer.’

‘But that’s dreadful!’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

‘Excuse me, miss,’ said Ponder, ‘but most of those pairs are quite close to one another, so why do they hate one another so much?’

‘That at least is easy,’ said Dr Hix. ‘It’s hard to hate people who are a long way away. You forget how dreadful they are. But you see a neighbour’s warts every day.’

‘That’s just the sort of cynical comment I’d expect from a postmortem communicator,’ grumbled the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

‘Or a realist,’ said Ridcully, smiling. ‘But Dolly Sisters and Dimwell are quite far apart, miss.’

Glenda shrugged. ‘I know, but it’s always been like that. That’s how it is. That’s all I know.’

‘Well, thank you …?’ There was no mistaking the hanging question.

‘Glenda,’ she said.

‘I see there are a great many things we don’t yet understand.’

‘Yes, sir. Everything.’ She hadn’t meant to say that aloud. It just escaped of its own accord.

There was a stirring among the wizards, who were nonplussed because what had happened could not really have happened. The tea trolley might as well have neighed.

Ridcully banged his hand on the table before the others could summon up words.

‘Well said, miss,’ he chuckled, as Glenda waited for the floor to open and swallow her. ‘And I’m sure that remark came from the heart, because I suspect it could not have come from the head.’

‘Sorry, sir, but the gentleman did ask for my opinion.’

‘Now, that one was from the head. Well done,’ said Ridcully. ‘So do, therefore, give us the benefit of your thinking, Miss Glenda.’

Still in a kind of shock, Glenda looked into the Archchancellor’s eyes and saw that it was no time to be less than bold, but that was unnerving too.

‘Well, what’s this all about, sir? If you want to play, just go and do it, yes? Why change things?’

‘The game of foot-the-ball is very behind the times, Miss Glenda.’

‘Well, so are you— Sorry, sorry, but, well. You know. Wizards are always wizards. Not a lot changes in here, does it? And then you talk about some Master of the Music to make a new chant, and that’s not how it goes. The Shove makes up the chants. They just happen. They just, like, come out of the air. And the pies are pretty awful, that’s true, but when you’re in the Shove, and it’s mucky weather, and the water’s coming through your coat, and your shoes are leaking, and then you bite into your pie, and you know that everyone else is biting into their pie, and the grease slides down your sleeve, well, sir, I don’t have the words for it, sir, I really don’t, sir. There’s a feeling I can’t describe, but it’s a bit like being a kid at Hogswatch, and you can’t just buy it, sir, you can’t write it down or organize it or make it shiny or make it tame. Sorry to speak out of turn, sirs, but that’s the long and the short of it. You must have known it, sir. Didn’t your father ever take you to a game?’