Nobody noticed. It was enthralling and exciting at the same time, Ridcully concluded. Normally the pointy hat, robe and staff cleared the way faster than a troll with an axe.

They were being pushed! And shoved! But it was not as unpleasant as the words suggested. There were moderate pressures on all sides as people poured in behind, as though the wizards were standing chest deep in the sea, and were swaying and shifting to the slow rhythm of the tide.

‘My goodness,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. ‘Is this football? It’s a bit dull, isn’t it?’

‘Pies were mentioned,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, craning his neck.

‘People are still coming in, guv,’ said Ottomy.

‘But however do we see things?’

‘Depends on the Shove, guv. Usually people near the action shout out.’

‘Ah, I see a pie seller,’ said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. He took a couple of steps forward, there was a random shift and sway in the crowd, and he vanished.

‘How is it now, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt, as people surged around them.

‘Hurts like buggery, excuse my Klatchian,’ muttered Trev, clutching his injured arm to his coat. ‘Are you sure you weren’t holding a hammer?’

‘No hammer, Mister Trev. I’m sorry, but you did ask me—’

‘I know, I know. Where did you learn to punch like that?’

‘Never learned, Mister Trev. I must never raise my hand to another person! But you went on so, and—’

‘I mean, you’re so skinny!’

‘Long bones, Mister Trev, long muscles. I really am very sorry!’

‘My fault, Gobbo, I didn’t know your own strength—’ Suddenly Trev shot forward, cannoning into Nutt.

‘Where’ve you been, my man?’ said the person who had just slapped him hard on the back. ‘We said to meet at the eel-pie stall!’

Now the speaker looked at Nutt and his eyes narrowed. ‘And who’s this stranger who thinks he’s one of us?’

He did not exactly glare at Nutt, but there was a definite sense of a weighing in the balance, and on unfriendly scales.

Trev brushed himself off, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed. ‘Hi, Andy. Er, this is Nutt. He works for me.’

‘What as? A bog brush?’ said Andy. There was laughter from the group behind him. Andy always got a laugh. It was the first thing you noticed, after the glint in his eye.

‘Andy’s dad is captain of Dimwell, Gobbo.’

‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Nutt, extending a hand.

‘Ooo, pleased to meet you, sir,’ Andy mimicked, and Trev grimaced as a calloused hand the size of a plate grasped Nutt’s cheese-straw fingers.

‘He’s got hands like a girl,’ Andy observed, taking a grip.

‘Mister Trev has been telling me wonderful things about the Dimmers, sir,’ said Nutt. Andy grunted. Trev saw his knuckles whiten with effort while Nutt chattered. ‘The camaraderie of the sport must be a wonderful thing.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Andy grunted, finally managing to pull his hand away, his face full of angry puzzlement.

‘And this is my mate, Maxie,’ said Trev quickly, ‘and this is Carter the Farter—’

‘It’s Fartmeister now,’ said Carter.

‘Yeah, right. And this is Jumbo. You want to watch out for him. He’s a thief. Jumbo can pick a lock faster than you can pick your nose.’

The said Jumbo held up a small bronze badge. ‘Guild, of course,’ he said. ‘They nail your ears to the door else.’

‘You mean you break the law for a living?’ said Nutt, horrified.

‘Ain’t you ever heard of the Thieves’ Guild?’ said Andy.

‘Gobbo’s new,’ said Trev protectively. ‘Hasn’t got out much. He’s a goblin, from the high country.’

‘Coming down here, taking our jobs, yeah?’ said Carter.

‘Like, how often do you do a hand’s turn?’ said Trev.

‘Well, I might want to one day.’

‘Milking the cows when they come home?’ said Andy. This got another laugh, on cue. And that was the introductions sorted out, to Nutt’s surprise. He’d been expecting chicken theft to be mentioned. Instead, Carter pulled a couple of tin cans out of a pocket and tossed them to Nutt and Trev.

‘Did a few hours’ unloading down the docks, didn’t I?’ he said defensively, as though a bit of casual labour was some kind of offence. ‘This come off a boat from Fourecks.’

Jumbo fished in his pocket again and pulled out someone else’s watch.

‘Game on in five minutes,’ he declared. ‘Let’s shove… er, if that’s all right with you, Andy?’

Andy nodded. Jumbo looked relieved. It was always important that things were all right with Andy. And Andy was still watching Nutt as a cat watches an unexpectedly cheeky mouse, while massaging his hand.

Mr Ottomy cleared his throat, causing his red Adam’s apple to bob up and down like an indecisive sunset. Shouting in public, yes, he liked that, he was good at that. Speaking in public, now, that was a different kettle of humiliation.

‘Well, er, gents, what we will have here is your actual football, what is basically about the Shove, which is what you gentlemen will be doing soon—’

‘I thought we watched two groups of players vie with one another to get the ball in the opponents’ goal?’

‘Could be, sir, could very much be,’ the bledlow conceded, ‘but in the streets, see, your actual supporters on both sides try and endeavour to shorten the length of the field, as it were, depending on the flow of play, so to speak.’

‘Like living walls, d’y’mean?’ said Ridcully.

‘That style of thing, sir, yes, sir,’ said Ottomy loyally.

‘What about the goals?’

‘Oh, they’re allowed to move the goals, too.’

‘Sorry?’ said Ponder. ‘The spectators can move the goals?’

‘You have put your finger firmly on it, sir.’

‘But that’s sheer anarchy! It’s a mess!’

‘Some of the old boys do say the game has gone downhill, sir, that is true.’

‘Downhill, into and out through the bottom of the world, I’d say.’

‘Good one to play with magic, though,’ said Dr Hix. ‘Well worth a try.’

‘A word to the wise, sir,’ said Ottomy with unwitting accuracy, ‘but you’d be wearing your guts for garters if you tried it with some of the types who play these days. They take it seriously.’

‘Mister Ottomy, I’m sure none of my blokes wear garters—’ Ridcully stopped and listened to Ponder Stibbons’s whispered interjection and continued, ‘well, possibly one, two at most, and it would be a very dull world if we were all the same, that’s what I say.’ He looked around and shrugged. ‘So, this is football, is it? Rather a wizened shell of a game, yes? I, for one, don’t want to stand around all day in the rain while other people have all the fun. Let’s go and find the ball, gentlemen. We are wizards. That must count for something.’

‘I thought we were blokes now,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘Same thing,’ said Ridcully, straining to see over the heads of the crowd.

‘Surely not!’

‘Well,’ said Ridcully, ‘isn’t a bloke someone who likes drinking with his mates and without the company of women? Anyway, I’m fed up with this. Form up behind me, nevertheless. We’re going to see some football.’

The progress of the wizards astonished Ottomy and Nobbs, who had hitherto seen them as fluffy plump creatures quite divorced from real life. But to get to be a senior wizard and stay there called for deep reserves of determination, viciousness and the sugared arrogance that is the mark of every true gentleman, as in ‘Oh, was that your foot? I’m so terribly sorry.’

And, of course, there was Dr Hix, a good man to have in a tight spot because he was (by college statute) an officially bad person, in accordance with UU’s happy grasp of the inevitable[8].

A less mature organization than UU might have taken the view that the way forward would be to hunt such renegades down, at great risk and expense. UU, on the other hand, had given Hix and his team a department and a budget and a career structure, and also the chance to go out into dark caves occasionally and throw fireballs at unofficial evil wizards; it all worked rather well so long as nobody pointed out that the Department of Post-Mortem Communications was really, when you got right down to it, just a politer form of necromancy, wasn’t it?