Hogfather - Terry Pratchett [82]
“What if—” Ridcully began, but he was too late.
“Well?” said the Dean. “Of course we waited until after lunch—”
“You know, it really used to wind me right up, people with big snooty Hogswatch trees. And I just bet you had one of those swanky fancy nutcrackers like a big thumbscrew,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Some people had to make do with the coal hammer out of the outhouse, of course. And had dinner in the middle of the day instead of lah-di-dah posh dinner in the evening.”
“I can’t help it if my family had money,” said the Dean, and that might have defused things a bit had he not added, “and standards.”
“And big pillowcases!” shouted the Senior Wrangler, bouncing up and down in rage. “And I bet you bought your holly, eh?”
The Dean raised his eyebrows. “Of course! We didn’t go creeping around the country pinching it out of other people’s hedges, like some people did,” he snapped.
“That’s traditional! That’s part of the fun!”
“Celebrating Hogswatch with stolen greenery?”
Ridcully put his hand over his eyes.
The word for this, he had heard, was “cabin fever.” When people had been cooped up for too long in the dark days of the winter, they always tended to get on one another’s nerves, although there was probably a school of thought that would hold that spending your time in a university with more than five thousand known rooms, a huge library, the best kitchens in the city, its own brewery, dairy, extensive wine cellar, laundry, barber shop, cloisters and skittle alley was testing the definition of “cooped up” a little. Mind you, wizards could get on one another’s nerves in opposite corners of a very large field.
“Just shut up, will you?” he said. “It’s Hogswatch! That’s not the time for silly arguments, all right?”
“Oh, yes it is,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies glumly. “It’s exactly the time for silly arguments. In our family we were lucky to get through dinner without a reprise of What A Shame Henry Didn’t Go Into Business With Our Ron. Or Why Hasn’t Anyone Taught Those Kids To Use A Knife? That was another favorite.”
“And the sulks,” said Ponder Stibbons.
“Oh, the sulks,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Not a proper Hogswatch without everyone sitting staring at different walls.”
“The games were worse,” said Ponder.
“Worse than the kids hitting one another with their toys, d’you think? Not a proper Hogswatch afternoon without wheels and bits of broken dolly everywhere and everyone whining. Assault and battery included.”
“We had a game called Hunt the Slipper,” said Ponder. “Someone hid a slipper. And then we had to find it. And then we had a row.”
“It’s not really bad,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “I mean, not proper Hogswatch bad, unless everyone’s wearing a paper hat. There’s always that bit, isn’t there, when someone’s horrible great-aunt puts on a paper hat and smirks at everyone because she’s being so bohemian.”
“I’d forgotten about the paper hats,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Oh dear.”
“And then later on someone’ll suggest a board game,” said Ponder.
“That’s right. Where no one exactly remembers all the rules.”
“Which doesn’t stop someone suggesting that you play for pennies.”
“And five minutes later there’s two people not speaking to one another for the rest of their lives because of tuppence.”
“And some horrible little kid—”
“I know, I know! Some little kid who’s been allowed to stay up wins everyone’s money by being a nasty little cut-throat swot!”
“Right!”
“Er…” said Ponder, who rather suspected that he had been that child.
“And don’t forget the presents,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as if reading off some internal list of gloom. “How…how full of potential they seem in all that paper, how pregnant with possibilities…and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and you have to say ‘How thoughtful,