Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett Page A

Dimwell Old Pals? The football team? The Dollies are Dolly Sisters Football Club. Dollies hate the Dimmers, the Dimmers hate the Dollies! It’s always been like that!’
    ‘What could have caused such a difference between them?’
    ‘What? There is no difference between them, not when you’ve got past the colours! They’re two teams, alike in villainy! Dolly Sisters wears white and black, Dimwell wears pink and green. It’s all about football. Bloody, bloody, clogging, hacking, punching, gouging, silly football!’ The bitterness in Glenda’s voice would have soured cream.
    ‘But you have a Dolly Sisters scarf!’
    ‘When you live there, it’s safer that way. Anyway, you have to support your own.’
    ‘But is it not a game, like spillikins or halma or Thud?’
    ‘No! It’s more like war, but without the kindness and consideration!’
    ‘Oh, dear. But war is not kind, is it?’ said Nutt, bewilderment clouding his face.
    ‘No!’
    ‘Oh, I see. You were being ironic.’
    She gave him a sideways look. ‘I might have been,’ she conceded. ‘You are an odd one, Mister Nutt. Where are you from, really?’
    The old panic contained again. Be harmless. Be helpful. Make friends. Lie. But how did you lie to friends?
    ‘I must go,’ he said, scurrying down the stone steps. ‘Mister Trev will be waiting!’
    Nice but odd, Glenda thought, watching him leap down the steps. Clever, too. To spot my scarf on a hook ten yards away.
     
    The sound of a rattling tin can alerted Nutt to his boss’s presence before he had even hurried through the old archway to the vats. The other habitués had paused in their work, which, frankly, given its usual snaillike progress, meant hardly any change at all, and were watching him listlessly. But they were watching, at least. Even Concrete looked vaguely alert, but Nutt saw a little dribble of brown in the corner of his mouth. Someone had been giving him iron filings again.
    The can shot up as Trev caught it with his boot, flew over his head, and then came back obliquely, as if rolling down an invisible slope, and landed in his waiting hand. There was a murmur of appreciation from the watchers and Concrete banged his hand on the table, which generally meant approval.
    ‘What kept you, Gobbo? Chatting up Glenda, were you? You’ve got no chance there, take it from me. Been there, tried that, oh yes. No chance, mate.’ He threw a grubby bag towards Nutt. ‘Get these on quick, else you’ll stand out like a diamond in—’
    ‘A sweep’s earhole?’ Nutt suggested.
    ‘Yeah! You’re gettin’ it. Now don’t hang about or we’ll be late.’
    Nutt looked doubtfully at a long, a very long scarf in pink and green and a large yellow woolly hat with a pink bobble on it.
    ‘Pull it down hard so it covers your ears,’ Trev commanded. ‘Get a move on!’
    ‘Er…pink?’ said Nutt doubtfully, holding up the scarf.
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘Well, isn’t football a rough man’s game? Whereas pink, if you will excuse me, is rather a…female colour?’
    Trev grinned. ‘Yeah, that’s right. Think about it. You are the clever one around here. And you can walk and think at the same time, I know that. Makes you stand out from the crowd in these parts.’
    ‘Ah, I think I have it. The pink proclaims an almost belligerent masculinity, saying as it does: I am so masculine I can afford to tempt you to question it, giving me the opportunity to proclaim it anew by doing violence to you in response. I don’t know if you have ever read Ofleberger’s Die Wesentlichen Ungewissheiten Zugehörig der Offenkundigen Männlichkeit? ’
    Trev grabbed his shoulder and spun him round. ‘Wot do you fink, Gobbo?’ he said, his red face a couple of inches from Nutt’s. ‘Wot is your problem? Wot are you all about? You come out with ten-dollar words an’ you lay ’em down like a man doin’ a jigsaw! So how come you’re down in the vats, eh, workin’ for someone like me? It don’t make sense! Are you