34. If you’re only going to have one indulgence in life, why not this one? I can’t see anything wrong with it. If I worked for a circus, knew how to play the tuba, and looked good in a grass skirt, I’d probably do the exact same thing. Whether or not Reginald Clench looked good in a grass skirt is open to debate.
35. That’s thick as in lots of them close together, not thick as in stupid. Maybe some of them were a bit thick, but that’s not important right now.
36. That’s thick as in deep, not thick as in stupid. This carpet was, in fact, of unusually high intelligence.
37. How I wish that could be knocked gnoisily with her gnarled knuckles! If only we could fit a knight’s knitted knapsack of gnome’s knickers into this scene! Don’t you sometimes just love kpointless gletters?
38. A factoid is a very small fact. A facticle is a very small factoid. A factini is a very small facticle. You can fit two hundred and seventy-three factinis on a pinhead.
39. You see what I did there, don’t you? I skipped the cup of tea – the bit where Queenie has a good old catch-up with Granny – because who wants to listen to a couple of old people banging on about the olden days, eh? Nobody. Not me, not you, not Little Boy Blue or Jimmy Choo or the mayor of Timbuktu.
40. Health and safety announcement for very stupid people. Don’t do this. Actually, come to think of it, if you are stupid enough to want to do this, you should probably go ahead and get it done, because it’s only a matter of time before you wipe yourself out in some act of catastrophic denseness or other, so it might as well be this one.
41. Those of you with an interest in mucus will be pleased to hear that a large amount of snot was involved. Others, who find this kind of detail distasteful, may wish to skip this footnote, which, as you can see, is optional.
42. If you see the word IT, that doesn’t mean someone is shouting the word ‘it’ for no apparent reason. IT stands for Information Technology, which is a fancy term for computers. A more accurate term would be MAOTILUPTT, which stands for Mucking About On The Internet Looking Up Pointless Things Technology, but for some reason this acronym has never caught on.
43. ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is a serious disease, though in this case it’s just Hannah shouting the word ‘me’. Acronyms can be awkward things, as anyone who works for the Paris Osteopathy Organisation will tell you.
44. Personally, I blame his mother. She was too hard on him as a child. Or too soft on him. One of the two. Or maybe both. But that’s another story. Suffice to say, any woman who lavishes more love on her collection of pet newts than on her son is unlikely to rear a happy child. (The newts turned out great, though. Pillars of society, they are.)
45. It is not possible to look plussed. Only nonplussed. Most people, when they look nonplussed, also look inert, which is interesting, because it is also not possible to look ert. At least I’ve never managed it.
46. Grooming is an important form of social bonding for all primates, including humans. If people spent more time picking things out of other people’s hair, we’d all get on a lot better. We really would. If the United Nations began each session with a spot of international grooming, the planet would be a far more peaceful place. But that’s enough about world peace. We’ve got more important things to deal with.
47. That’s rapt, not wrapped. If you ever find yourself thinking that learning to spell is a boring waste of time, remember this as an example of the confusion that can be caused by clumsy spilling.
48. These are rhetorical questions, which means they don’t have an answer. Or if they do have an answer, nobody cares what it is. Why, oh why do people ask rhetorical questions? What is the point? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? What am I talking about?
49. This adjective is not intended to give offence to any porcine readers. Some pigs have lovely, intelligent eyes, and charming personalities. But, let’s face it, personal hygiene is rarely a strong point.
50. It is highly unusual to say the word ‘sniffle’ instead of actually sniffling. Old Bill was wellknown throughout the Middle of Nowhere regional force as an eccentric weeper and unorthodox sniffler.
51. Walkie-talkie-holding people in high visibility-jackets appear from nowhere at all public gatherings. Nobody knows where they come from or where they go or what they are for.
Circus of Thieves on the Rampage Page 12
