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  9

  The other two are The Trapping of the Mouse, and Golde Diggers of 1589.

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  10

  Who had already had a few thoughts in that direction, and spent the last years of his life in Newgate Prison when he eventually put them into practice.

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  11

  Another master stroke of publishing genius, because Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Parlia­ment had made Christmas illegal in 1654.

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  12

  Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.

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  13

  A night school just off the Tottenham Court Road, run by an elderly actor who had played butlers and gentlemen's gentlemen in films and television and on the stage since the 1920s.

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  14

  He avoided mentioning that Attila was nice to his mother, or that Vlad Drakula was punctil­ious about saying his prayers every day.

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  15

  Except for the bits about syphilis.

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  16

  A sixteenth‑century half‑wit, not related to any U.S. president.

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  17

  Remarkably, one of these stories is indeed true.

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  18

  The interview was done in 1983 and went as follows:

  Q: You're the Secretary of the United Nations, then?

  A: Si.

  Q: Ever sighted Elvis?

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  19

  Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Threlfall, of 9, The Elms, Paignton. They always maintained that one of the nice things about going on holiday was not having to read the newspapers or listen to the news, just getting away from it all really. And due to a tummy bug contracted by Mr. Threlfall, and Mrs. Threlfall rather overdoing it in the sun their first day, this was their first time out of their hotel room for a week and a half.

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  20

  It didn't matter what the four had called their gang over the years, the frequent name changes usually being prompted by whatever Adam had happened to have read or viewed the previous day (the Adam Young Squad; Adam and Co.; The Hole‑in‑the‑Chalk Gang; The Really Well‑Known Four; The Legion of Really Super‑Heroes; The Quarry Gang; The Secret Four; The Justice Society of Tadfield; The Galaxatrons; The Four Just Persons; The Rebels). Everyone else always referred to them darkly as Them, and eventually they did too.

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  21

  Greasy Johnson was a sad and oversized child. There's one in every school; not exactly fat, but simply huge and wearing almost the same size clothes as his father. Paper tore under his tremendous fingers, pens shattered in his grip. Children whom he tried to play with in quiet, friendly games ended up getting under his huge feet, and Greasy Johnson had become a bully almost in self‑defense. After all, it was better to be called a bully, which at least implied some sort of control and desire, than to be called a big clumsy oaf. He was the despair of the sports master, because if Greasy Johnson had taken the slightest interest in sport, then the school could have been champions. But Greasy Johnson had never found a sport that suited him. He was instead secretly devoted to his collection of tropical fish, which won him prizes. Greasy Johnson was the same age as Adam Young, to within a few hours, and his parents had never told him he was adopted. See? You were right about the babies.

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  22

  If Adam had been in full possession of his powers in those days, the Youngs' Christmas would have been spoiled by the discovery of a dead fat man upside down in their central­ heating duct.

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  23

  It may be worth noting here that most human beings can rarely raise more than .3 of an alp (30 centi‑alps). Adam believed things on a scale ranging from 2 through to 15,640 Everests.

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  24

  And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enough of it long enough, vital signs.

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  25

  But not like every other Burger Lord across the world. German Burger Lords, for example, sold lager instead of root beer, while English Burger Lords managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was delivered, for example) and carefully remove them; your food arrived after half an hour, at room temperature, and it was only because of the strip of warm lettuce between them that you could distinguish the burger from the bun. The Burger Lord pathfinder salesmen had been shot twenty‑five minutes after setting foot in France.

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  26

  Wensleydale's alleged comic was a 94‑week part‑work called Wonders of Nature and Sci­ence. He had every single one so far, and had asked for a set of binders for his birthday. Brian's weekly reading was anything with a lot of exclamation marks in the title, like "WhiZZ!!" or "Clang!!" So was Pepper's, although even under the most refined of tortures she still wouldn't admit to the fact that she also bought Just Seventeen under plain covers. Adam didn't read any comics at all. They never lived up to the kind of things he could do in his head.

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  27

  Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.

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  28

  Note for Americans and other city‑dwelling life‑forms: the rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps, known as "There's nothing like a roaring open fire is there?" Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a small, rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why.

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  29

  NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:

  Two farthings = One Ha'penny.

  Two ha'pennies = One Penny.

  Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit.

  Two Thrupences = A Sixpence.

  Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob.

  Two Bob = A Florin.

  One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown.

  Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note.

  Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies).

  One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

  The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated

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  30

  Actually, less so when he took of his glasses, because then he tripped over things and wore bandages a lot.

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  31

  The Voice of God. But not the voice of God. An entity in its own right. Rather like a Presidential spokesman.

  (<< back)

  32

  Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immedi­ate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys...".

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  33

  Leonardo had felt so too. "I got her bloody smile right in the roughs," he told Crowley' sipping cold wine in the lunchtime sun, "but it went all over the place when I painted it. Her husband had a few things to say about it when I delivered it, but, like I tell him, Signor del Giocondo, apart from you, who's going to see it? Anyway ... explain this helicopter thing again, will you?"

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  34

  He was very proud of his collection. It had taken him ages to put together. This was real Soul music. James Brown wasn't in it.

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  35

  Although it's not what you and I would call dancing. Not good dancing anyway. A demon moves like a white band on "Soul Train."

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  36

  Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a giant plastic snowman at the bottom.

  (<< back)

  37

  The WA enjoyed a renaissance during the great days of Empire expansionism. The British army's endless skirmishes frequently brought it up against witch‑doctors, bone‑pointers, sha­mans, and other occult adversaries. This was the cue for the deployment of the likes of WA CSM Narker, whose striding, bellowing, six‑foot‑six, eighteen‑stone figure, clutching an ar­mor‑plated Book, eight‑pound Bell, and specially reinforced Candle, could clear the veldt of adversaries faster than a Gatling gun. Cecil Rhodes wrote of him: "Some remote tribes consider him to be a kind of god, and it is an extremely brave or foolhardy witch‑doctor who will stand his ground with CSM Narker bearing down on him. I would rather have this man on my side than two battalions of Gurkhas."

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  38

  In any other place than Soho it is quite possible that spectators at a fire might have been interested.

  (<< back)

  39

  There are a number of other things real Hell's Angels can't abide. These include the police, soap, Ford Cortinas, and, in Big Ted's case, anchovies and olives.

  (<< back)

  40

  Magician, or priest. Voodoun is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.

  (<< back)

  41

  $12.95 per LP or cassette, $24.95 per CD, although you got a free copy of the LP with every $500 you donated to Marvin Bagman's mission.

  (<< back)

  42

  It might have surprised Marvin to know there actually was a success rate. Some people would get better from anything.

  (<< back)

  43

  Except for one about ten years earlier, throwing himself on the mercy of the court.

  (<< back)

  44

  Formerly A Cut Above the Rest, formerly Mane Attraction, formerly Cur! Up And Dye, formerly A Snip At the Price, formerly Mister Brian's Art‑de‑Coiffeur, formerly Robinson the Barber's, formerly Fone‑a‑Car Taxis.

  (<< back)

  45

  This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door‑to‑door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice‑skating down it.

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  46

  Not that Hell has any other kind.

  (<< back)

  47

  Not actually an oxymoron. It's the color past ultra‑violet. The technical term for it is infra­black. It can be seen quite easily under experimental conditions. To perform the experiment simply select a healthy brick wall with a good run‑up, and, lowering your head, charge. The color that flashes in bursts behind your eyes, behind the pain, just before you die, is infra‑black.

  (<< back)

  48

  She had. It read:

  A street of light will screem, the black chariot of the Serpente will flayme, and a Queene wille sing quickfilveres songes no moar.

  Most of the family had gone along with Gelatly Device, who wrote a brief monograph in the 1830s explaining it as a metaphor for the banishment of Weishaupt's Illuminati from Bavaria in 1785.

  (<< back)

  49

  This was true. There wasn't a thermometer on earth that could have been persuaded to register both 700° C and ‑140° C at the same time; which was the correct temperature.

  (<< back)

  50

  He did not have a television. Or as his wife put it, "Ronald wouldn't have one of those things in the house, would you Ronald?" and he always agreed, although secretly he would have liked to have seen some of the smut and filth and violence that the National Viewers and Listeners Association complained of. Not because he wanted to see it, of course. Just because he wanted to know what other people should be protected from

  (<< back)

  51

  Although as a member (read, founder) of his local Neighborhood Watch scheme he did attempt to memorize the motorbikes' number plates.

  (<< back)

  52

  Five foot six.

  (<< back)

  53

  He'd slipped and fallen in a hotel shower when he took a holiday there in 1983. Now the mere sight of a bar of yellow soap could send him into near‑fatal flashbacks.

  (<< back)

  54

  Except for Giovanni Jacopo Casanova (1725‑1798), famed amoutist and litterateur, who revealed in volume 12 of his Memoirs that, as a matter of course, he carried around with him at all times a small valise containing "a loaf of bread, a pot of choice Seville marmalade, a knife, fork, and small spoon for stirring, 2 fresh eggs packed with care in unspun wool, a tomato or love‑apple, a small frying pan, a small sauce pan, a spirit burner, a chafing dish, a tin box of salted butter of the Italian type, 2 bone china plates. Also a portion of honey comb, as a sweetener, for my breath and for my coffee. Let my readers understand me when I say to them all: A true gentleman should always be able to break his fast in the manner of a gentleman, wheresoever he may find himself".

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  55

  And there was the matter of Dick Turpin. It looked like the same car, except that forever afterwards it seemed able to do 250 miles on a gallon of petrol, ran so quietly that you practically had to put your mouth over the exhaust pipe to see if the engine was firing, and issued its voice‑synthesized warnings in a series of exquisite and perfectly‑phrased haikus, each one original and apt . . .

  Late frost burns the bloom

  Would a fool not let the belt

  Restrain the body?

  . . . it would say. And,

  The cherry blossom

  Tumbles from the highest tree.

  One needs more petrol

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  56

  Witchfinder Corporal Carpet, librarian, 11 pence per annum bonus.

  (<< back)

  57

  "A relentlefs blockbufter of a boke; heartily recommended" ‑ Pope Innocent VIII.

 

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