Turtle Recall Part 32

He probably didn't like hitting people. It was just something he did. According to the dictates of an obscure potato-venerating religion, vaguely remembered from a troubled childhood, it would all be all right in the end if he still had a potato and was sorry for everything bad that he'd done. It may have worked. [TT]

Tumult, Gammer. A witch who taught Granny Weatherwax. But Granny also claims to have been taught by Nanny Gripes. Given the impatient nature of Esme Weatherwax, the truth of the matter is that she probably pumped all the local witches for as much instruction as they could give her. [ER]

Turnipseed, Adrian. (See DRONGO, BIG MAD.) [SM]

Turtle Movement. A secret society in OMNIA which believes that the Disc is flat and is carried through s.p.a.ce on the backs of four elephants and a giant turtle. Their secret recognition saying is 'The Turtle Moves'. Their secret sign is a left-hand fist with the right hand, palm extended, brought down on it. Most of the senior officials of the Omnian church are members of the 'movement', but since they all wear hoods and are sworn to absolute secrecy each thinks he is the only one. [SG]

Turtle, the Great. (See A'TUIN, GREAT.) Turvey, Hubert. Nephew of Topsy LAVISH and inventor of the Glooper. Rightly or wrongly, Hubert is one of those names you put a shape to. There may well be tall, slim Huberts, but this Hubert is shaped like a proper Hubert, which is to say, stubby and plump. He has red hair, unusual in the standard model Hubert. It grows thickly, straight up from his head, like the bristles of a brush; about five inches up, someone has apparently cut it short with the aid of shears and a spirit level. You could stand a cup and saucer on it. Hubert wears a long white coat, with a breast pocket full of pencils. [MM]

Twoflower. The Disc's first tourist. Originally, he was a small, bald and skinny man, but he soon put on weight if not hair under the influence of Ankh-Morpork's robust cuisine. He had false teeth and wore gla.s.ses, which led many of the Disc's inhabitants to a.s.sume that he had four eyes (both of these innovations were subsequently very popular in Ankh-Morpork).

He came from BES PELARGIC, the major seaport of the AGATEAN EMPIRE on the COUNTERWEIGTH CONTINENT, where he used to work at a desk job.

Twoflower was oddly dressed in knee-length breeches and a shirt in a violent and vivid conflict of colours. Central to his personal philosophy was the very strong belief that no harm could come to him because he was a visitor. A likeable, friendly and innocent man, his travels around the continent were marked by mayhem and sudden death. The fact that he was the original owner of the LUGGAGE has much to do with this. By the time he was encountered in Interesting Times, he had matured a little and grown a wispy beard, but still had that big, beaming, trusting smile. His wife was killed by soldiers, leaving him with their two daughters, Lotus Blossom and Pretty b.u.t.terfly. [COM, LF, IT]

Tyrant, The. The elected ruler of EPHEBE. The current ruler is a little fat man with skinny legs, which gives the impression that an egg is hatching upside down. [SG]

uberwald. Large kingdom, some five or six times the size of the Sto Plains. Its florid crest incorporates the uberwaldian double-headed eagle.

uberwald stretches all the way to the Hub. It is so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers that it is largely unmapped and unexplored.

Historically uberwald was dominated by warring factions of werewolves and vampires. In recent times, since the Diet of Bugs, dwarfs and humans play a much bigger part in the country's organisation.

By and large, however, it is still a series of fortified towns and fiefdoms with no real boundaries and a lot of forest in between. Historically, there has always been a great deal of feuding and no laws apart from whatever the local lords chose to enforce. Banditry is rife and large areas are still controlled by feuding vampire and werewolf clans. In many areas, dwarfs and trolls have still not resolved their old grievances. There are huge tracts of uberwald with much higher than normal background magic.

uberwald, Angua von. See ANGUA.

uberwald, Guye von. The Baron is ANGUA'S father and he is a werewolf. In human form, he is enormous not fat, not tall, just built to perhaps one tenth over scale. He doesn't so much have a face with a beard as a beard with, peeking over the top of the narrow gap between the moustache and the huge eyebrows, small remnants of a face. He makes therefore an imposing figure in his tattered dressing gown, smelling vaguely of old carpets. He has a strong handshake and a tendency to speak in short, sharp sentences. In wolf form (wolf name Silvertail) he is also large and heavy-set. The von uberwalds live in a rugged castle just outside Bonk. The family crest incorporates the uberwaldian double-headed bat and their motto is h.o.m.o Homini Lupus Every Man is a Wolf to Another Man. [TFE]

uberwald, Serafine von. The Baroness is ANGUA'S mother and she is a werewolf. She looks a little like Angua, but padded somewhat by the years. During the events of The Fifth Elephant, she wears a long loose green gown which is very old-fashioned by Ankh-Morpork standards. She is a bit of a sn.o.b and, as Mme Serafine Soxe-Bloonberg of Genua, she went to finishing school with Lady Sybil Ramkin (now VIMES). Her wolf name is Yellowfang. [TFE]

uberwald, Wolfgang von. Wolf was Angua's brother. He was a strong werewolf. In wolf form, he had pale gold hair like a sort of mane he looked a little like ANGUA, but heavier set. As a human, he was a heavily-built man with long blond hair growing thickly on his head and down his shoulders, too. He liked to be naked, and to exercise regularly to demonstrate his fitness. When he did wear clothes, he favoured black uniforms with nickel insignia depicting wolf heads biting lightning. Wolf was a murderous idiot who believed that werewolves were born to rule. He led a movement with these beliefs and their banner was a red flag with, in the middle, a wolf's head, its mouth full of stylised flashes of lightning. Even his father was afraid of him and he was known to have killed one sister (Elsa) and driven his brother Andrei away because they were not cla.s.sic biomorph werewolves but YENNORKS.

He was a head-b.u.t.ting, eye-gouging, down-and-dirty b.a.s.t.a.r.d who was good at thinking ahead and with a delight in ambushes. He was a traditionalist when it came to nastiness. [TFE]

Underschaft, Dr. Chorus Master at the Ankh-Morpork OPERA HOUSE. A single-minded old man in half-moon spectacles who believed that music is all that matters in opera, not the acting, or the shape of the singers. Had a fairly final encounter with the Opera Ghost. [M!!!!!]

Unggue. Goblin religion. The goblin experience of the world is the cult or perhaps religion of Unggue. In short, it is a remarkably complex resurrection-based religion founded on the sanct.i.ty of bodily secretions. Its central tenet runs as follows: everything that is expelled from a goblin's body was clearly once part of them and should, therefore, be treated with reverence and stored properly so that it can be entombed with its owner in the fullness of time. In the meantime the material is stored in Unggue pots, remarkable creations of which I shall speak later.

A moment's distasteful thought will tell us that this could not be achieved by any creature, unless in possession of great wealth, considerable storage s.p.a.ce and compliant neighbours.

Therefore, in reality, most goblins observe the Unggue Had what one might term the common and lax form of Unggue which encompa.s.ses earwax, finger- and toenail clippings, and snot. Water, generally speaking, is reckoned not Unggue, but something which goes through the body without ever being part of it: they reason that there is no apparent difference in the water before and after, as it were (which sadly shines a light on the freshness of the water they encounter in their underground lairs). Similarly, faeces are considered to be food that has merely undergone a change of state. Surprisingly, teeth are of no interest to the goblins, who look on them as a type of fungus, and they appear to attach no importance to hair, of which, it has to be said, they seldom have very much.

The Unggue is stored in Unggue Pots. These are traditionally crafted by the goblin itself, out of anything from precious minerals to leather, wood or bone. Among the former are some of the finest eggsh.e.l.l-thin containers ever found in the world. The plundering of goblin settlements by treasure-hunters in search of these, and the retaliation by the goblins themselves, has coloured humangoblin relationships even to the present day.

Goblins live on the edge, often because they have been driven there. When nothing else can survive, they do. Their universal greeting is, apparently, 'Hang' which means 'Survive'. Sometimes dreadful crimes are laid at their door. Those who live their lives where life hangs by less than a thread understand the dreadful algebra of necessity, which has no mercy. That is the time when the women make the Unggue pot called 'returning', the most beautiful of all the pots, carved with little flowers and washed with tears. [SN]

Ungulant, S.T. Ungulant the Anchorite. Sevrian Thaddeus Ungulant hence 'St'. A saint, possibly of the Omnian church but probably just a generic saint. He lives on a cartwheel nailed to the top of a slim pole in the desert between EPHEBE and OM.

S.T. Ungulant is a very thin man with long hair and beard and skin almost blackened by the desert sun. He wears a loincloth, and he has an imaginary friend called Angus. He is in fact almost completely and utterly mad, due to the sun and a continuous diet of the strange desert mushrooms. But the tiny core of reason left within him is aware that being completely insane is the only way to survive the desert existence. Besides, it means that he can enjoy the nebulous sumptuous meals and insubstantial carnal delights put before him by the small G.o.ds that swarm in the desert. His belief in all of them is possibly the only thing that keeps him alive. [SG]

Unseen University. Motto: NVNC ID VIDES, NVNC NE VIDES. Coat of arms: a livre des sortileges, attache en cuivre, sur un chapeau pointu, on a field, azure.

There is a UU scarf, basically burgundy and midnight blue with some tasteless thin yellow and purple stripes. The stripes are extremely symbolic, although not of anything very specific. The University likes to pretend that their eye-watering clash is an attempt to portray OCTARINE,15 but in reality it graphically ill.u.s.trates the importance of not letting someone like the current Bursar choose a colour scheme after eating half a bottle of dried frog pills. The stripes have been retained anyway, because of Tradition.

UU is the Disc's premier college of magic, whose campus is the occult, if no longer the actual, centre of Ankh-Morpork.

The University was founded in AM 1282 (the city count at the time) by Alberto MALICH, but Ankh-Morpork dating is always suspect; suffice to say that it was some 2,000 years before the present. The aim was to force some sort of regulation on wizardry, which at that time was quite chaotic, and to permit the existence of an inst.i.tution that would allow one wizard to meet another without immediately endeavouring to blow his head off with magical fire, as was then the case.

Like all really old universities, it is hard to tell where the University begins and the city ends, and in any case the size of UU can only be determined by reference to the kind of physics that you have to be a drunken physicist to understand.

In a purely mundane sense the main buildings occupy a large part of the river frontage between the ANKH and SATOR SQUARE, with various outbuildings stretching out as far as Esoteric Street. But a mere floor plan would be quite misleading; UU has rooms and floors where logic says they simply could not exist. It has been a home of magic for so long that this is now part of the architectural inventory, like cement.

There are two ways of getting admitted to UU: achieve some great work of benefit to magic, such as the recovery of an ancient and powerful relic or the invention of a totally new spell, or be sponsored by a senior and respected wizard, after a suitable period of apprenticeship. The eighth son of an eighth son has a right to demand and receive a place.

Er . . .

All right, three ways actual entry can be achieved by anyone of either s.e.x willing to scrub and cook and make beds.

Er . . .

Four ways, in fact possibly the most famous entrance to UU is via the alleyway between the observatory and the Backs, where a few loose bricks in the wall can be removed to make an informal ladder that has been used by students for hundreds of years. Whatever its original name, the alley has been known for years as Scholars' Entry, which in the hands of those inclined to the obvious is always good for a sn.i.g.g.e.r.

With one exception (during the Archchancellorship of CUTANGLE), UU has never admitted women. Usually this is said to be on the grounds of plumbing problems, but probably the real reason is an unspoken dread that women, if allowed to mess around with wizardry, would probably be embarra.s.singly good at it. And less likely to do what they're told.

There is theoretically no age limit on students, since obviously it is better to have anyone with magical talent under the aegis of the University than, er, not under it. The normal age of entrants is around sixteen, although in earlier days it was a lot younger and undergraduates as young as four were enrolled. These days, however, few people at UU undertake magical practice clutching a woolly lamb.

WEALTH.

UU is immensely wealthy, in a nebulous and threadbare kind of way. It owns large sections of Ankh-Morpork, particularly around Sator Square and also in the SHADES, which grew up as a service centre for the new university (a safe distance downstream). However, most of the rents are fixed and tend to be of the half-a-groat-every-Hogswatchnight variety, and the leases are either no longer decipherable or have long since mouldered away.

Generally speaking, the University survives from day to day by voluntary donations, usually in kind. (If you were a greengrocer, living a few streets away from what you perceive as a group of fat and slightly deranged old men sitting on enough raw magic to blow a hole right through Reality and out the other side, then wouldn't you see they got the occasional cartload of potatoes?) TOWN AND GOWN: UNSEEN UNIVERSITY AND ANKH-MORPORK.

As the University is well aware, Ankh-Morpork owes its entire existence to the presence of Unseen. The Shades were the core of the original city but, as the city began to develop its own momentum, the urban sprawl soon encompa.s.sed the villages now known as Dolly Sisters and Nap Hill.

Not unnaturally, the early ARCHCHANCELLOR resented any suggestion of control by the growing civil power and there were various trials of strength in the first few centuries, which usually ended with someone being turned into some kind of amphibian. Eventually an understanding was reached: UU would be left in peace to manage its affairs on the transtemporal level, and citizens would be allowed to go to bed the same shape as they were when they woke up that morning, whatever shape that had been.

Strictly speaking, the laws of Ankh-Morpork do not apply within the walls of the University even now, but this is nothing remarkable since they seldom apply outside the walls either. Wizards misbehaving in the city might be locked up by the WATCH for the night, but will then be handed over to the Archchancellors' Court upon payment of a small fine.

A list of offences under the rules of the Court, and their attendant punishments, includes: Acceptable Waggishness 50p High Spirits 60p Being a Young Rip 75p Having a Fling 75p Sowing Wild Oats 33p per oat Being found Drunk 80p Being found Rascally Drunk 90p Being found Objectionably Sober $1.00 Of course, where there is law there has to be crime, and where there is a court there must be policemen.

So it is at UU. Although these days they are really little more than porters, the University does have its 'policemen', known as the Bledlows (origin unknown) or 'lobsters'. They tend to be heavy-set, elderly men with nevertheless a good turn of speed and the sort of head that is made to wear a bowler hat. They are of limited yet highly focused intellect; their whole being is founded on the certain belief that all students are guilty of everything.

They are generally ex-soldiers or watchmen and their traditional cry is 'I know who you are!'

UNIVERSITY ORGANISATION.

Despite appearances, UU is not simply a college of magic. There are faculties of medicine, minor religions and lore (history), for example. But these are very small and, in any case, University rules require that faculty members must have trained initially as wizards.

UU government is headed by the Archchancellor, who also chairs the College Council, or Hebdomadal Board (from the Latatian hebes sluggish or stupid, and domo to tame or conquer. Hence the purpose of the College Council is to conquer stupidity. It is, say critics, beginning this activity by making a very careful and personal study of the enemy really getting under its skin, as it were).

The Council traditionally consisted of the heads of the eight orders of wizardry. However, since the events chronicled at the end of The Light Fantastic (when the University lost all eight heads but gained some incredibly lifelike statues, most of them now decorating the wall overlooking Sator Square), the ex-officio membership of the heads of orders has ceased and the Council is now directly appointed by the Archchancellor.

The eight orders, each in theory headed by an eighth-level wizard, are: The Ancient and Truly Original Sages of the Unbroken Circle The Hoodwinkers Mrs Widgery's Lodgers The Ancient and Truly Original Brothers of the Silver Star The Venerable Council of Seers The Sages of the Unknown Shadow The Order of Midnight The Last Order, also known as The Other Order A new student may apply to join any one of these orders, which combine the functions of 'houses' in English public schools with something of the 'fraternities' in American colleges. Despite their names, most of them are not at all ancient there have always been orders, but their names have been lost or mislaid or muddled by wars and time. The current crop are the result of a deliberate 're-creation' of the orders less than a century ago. Apart, that is, from Mrs Widgery's Lodgers, which is as old as the University; in the very early days of UU the TOWER OF ART (then the only building on campus) was not big enough to hold all the students and they were boarded at the house of Mrs Widgery, on the site of what is now New Hall.

Once accepted, the student may study for any one of the University's degrees: Bachelor of Thaumatology (B.Thau.) Bachelor of Magic (B.Mgc) Bachelor of Sortilege (B.S.) Bachelor of Magianism (B.Mn.) Bachelor of Divination (B.D.) Bachelor of Civil Lore (B.C.L.) Bachelor of Applied Theurgy (B.Ap.Th.) Bachelor of Impractical Necromancy (B.Im.N.) Bachelor of Fluencing (B.F.)16 Bachelor of Amulets & Talismen (B.Am.Ta.) Bachelor of Cabbalistic Rites (B.C.R.) Bachelor of Hyperphysical Chiromancy (B.H.Ch.) Bachelor of Esoteric Occultism (B.Es.O.) Bachelor of Eldritch Lacemaking (B.El.L.)17 Master of Thaumatology (M.Thau.) Master of Magic (M.M.) Master of Sortilege (M.S.) Master of Magianism (M.Mn.) Master of Divination (M.D.) Master of Civil Lore (M.C.L.) Doctor of Thaumatology (D.Thau.) Doctor of Magic (D.M.) Doctor of Sortilege (D.S.) Doctor of Magianism (D.Mn.) Doctor of Gramarye (D.G.) Doctor of Divination (D.D.) Doctor of Civil Lore (D.C.L.) Doctor of Magical Philosophy (D.M.Phil.) Doctor of Morbid Spellbinding (D.M.S.) Doctor of Condensed Metaphysics (D.C.M.) Doctor of Wizardry (D.W.) In addition to the above, the University also tolerates guest lecturers on 'fringe' aspects of magic (at least, fringe from the point of view of established wizardry) such as shamanism, witchcraft, voodoo and plumbing.

Progression through the eight levels of wizardry is determined in part by the acquisition of degree qualifications and, particularly towards the top of the tree where the number of available places become few and far between (there are only eight eighth-level wizards, at least officially), by a policy of 'dead men's pointy boots', no questions being asked about the manner of their emptying.

Unseen University Doctor's gown and sash (We suppose at this point that it must be admitted, with extreme reluctance, that the formal level is not necessarily an indication of a wizard's actual power. Like the whole structure of UU, the levels and degree system is there to control the power of wizardry rather than further it. It has to be pointed out, for example, that by the University's own rules the wizard RINCEWIND, having defeated a sourcerer (in Sourcery), is therefore at the very least an eighth-level wizard. No one at UU seems to have worked this out, and it is just as well for their temper that this remains the case.) Many of the faculties also support a sponsored Professorship, which, although carrying a st.u.r.dy stipend, also carries with it the stigma of actually being expected to teach the students. The current Professorships are: Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage Professor of Recondite Architecture & Origami Map-Folding Patricius Professor of Magic Magus Professor of Wizardry Invisus Professor of Condensed Metaphysics Octavus Professor of Civil Lore Haudmeritus Professor of Divination Superbus Professor of Astrology Infandus Professor of Morbid Spellbinding Fluxus Professor of Sortilege Professor of Recondite Phenomena Professor of Logic Professor of Illiberal Studies STAFF.

Identified members of the University's staff include: Archchancellor Bursar Chair of Indefinite Studies Dean of College Dean of Liberal Studies Dean of Pentacles Lecturer in Applied Astrology Lecturer in Recent Runes Lecturer in Vindictive Astronomy Lecturer in Creative Uncertainty Librarian Professor of Anthropics Professor of Astrology Reader in Esoteric Studies (also known as 'the Reader in the Lavatory') Reader in Invisible Writings Reader in Woolly Thinking Senior Wrangler Praelector Again, the fact is that a university that has existed for two thousand years, and is as rambling as UU, develops all sorts of quirks. There are professors in distant parts of the building engaged in their own pursuits and hardly ever seen; there are lecturers who don't lecture, and research students who are older than most of the faculty. Mustrum RIDCULLY, Archchancellor at the time of writing, is resigned to the fact that there are plenty of wizards in outlying areas of UU who don't even know who he is. Once in UU, a wizard need never leave. Tenure is automatic. There is always a spare study somewhere, always room in the Great Hall. It is, in short, academic heaven and a perfect way to ensure that the most potentially dangerous men on the Disc spend their time squabbling amongst themselves and, of course, eating big dinners.

TERMS.

The University year is split into eight terms, each of which is approximately one week long in order to minimise the amount of time that the faculty needs to spend in any room with the student body.

The students, however, continue to live in the University throughout much of the calendar year, undertaking their own research and generally absorbing magic from the fabric of the building and adding to its storehouse of knowledge. (The theory runs thusly: it is very well known that students arriving fresh at any university know all there is to know about absolutely everything. But when they leave, after many years of study, they're usually only too ready to admit that there is a lot they don't know. Raw knowledge must therefore have been pa.s.sing from the students into the University, where it acc.u.mulates.) The University terms follow the Great or true astronomical Disc year, despite the fact that most of the world lives by the 'agricultural' year (see CALENDARS). All really old and important universities have terms linked to some temporal scheme now quite opaque to the ma.s.s of the population, to show them what they're missing by being so stupid.

The UU terms are: Octinity; Rotation; Backspindle; Hogswatch; Evelyn; Micklemote; Candlerent (Candlerent is rent from a house which continually deteriorates this presumably has something to do with the Shades, where many of the buildings have deteriorated to the point at which flat ground would be urban improvement); Soul Cakes.

CEREMONIES AND FESTIVALS.

The Convivium.

The UU degree ceremony. The University's Archchancellor, Council, eighth-level wizards, doctors and masters process through the city from the University to the opera house, led by (traditionally) the Commander of the City Watch or, in those recent years when there has been no Commander, by a man carrying a cushion on which is a small pot of mustard and a quill pen (because of Tradition). The procession is extremely colourful and popular and has put at least one nautical observer in mind of an entire fleet of galleons running in front of the wind.

In the opera house, new graduates are awarded their degrees in the presence of the PATRICIAN. After the ceremony, the procession proceeds rather more quickly back to the University for a large meal.

Until two hundred years ago the Convivium was held within the University grounds; it appears to have been moved outside as an exercise in impressing the ma.s.ses; a very similar exercise, in fact, to the Moscow May Day parades in the great days of Soviet power. Look at us, the wizards seem to be saying as they proceed with robes astream we've all got big staffs, and they've all got k.n.o.bs on the end. We don't want to have to use them.

Gaudy Night.

When graduate wizards attend a grand banquet in the Great Hall, with each wizard making a greater effort than usual to outdo his fellows in the splendour of his robes. The winner is carried shoulder-high out of the University and thrown on to the Ankh.

Boy Archchancellor.

This ceremony occurs around the turn of the year, at Hogswatch. A first-year student is selected to be Archchancellor for a whole day, from dawn until dusk. For that period he can exert the full power of the Archchancellorship and there are many tales of j.a.pes played on senior members of the College Council (hence the expression 'a wizard wheeze'). For this reason the student selected for this honour is usually the most unpopular boy in the University, and his life expectancy the following day is brief.

Head of the River.

Like all riverside universities, Unseen is keen to promote its water sports. Because of the nature of the Ankh, rowing is tricky except in times of serious flood, and races consist of teams of eight student wizards chasing each other on foot up the Ankh while carrying a racing skiff (a similar practice, for different reasons, is found in the Alice Springs Regatta in Australia, which takes place on the dry river bed).

The race itself is known as the b.u.mps, because of the nature of the surface of the Ankh. The competing crews race from the University boathouses to the Bra.s.s Bridge. The winning crew is then awarded a 'brown' (pairs of brown pointy boots to replace the ones destroyed by close contact with the Ankh during the race), and becomes Head of the River, an earthy reference to the state of the members' boots and clothing.

May Morning.

Every Mayday morning at dawn, the UU choir sing an anthem from the top of the Tower of Art, while the faculty and students (or as many of them as are awake at dawn) stand in the University gardens and listen. Since the Tower is 800 feet high, the listeners cannot hear the singing but, since the anthem takes five minutes to sing, they all applaud five minutes after dawn.

On a number of occasions the choir itself has failed to get up in time but the 'listeners' still clap anyway. To sneer at this is to misunderstand the Value of Tradition. If you don't understand this, you are nothing but a foreigner.

The Wizards' Excuse Me.

Quite a new function, held on the last day of Backspindle term. It has been said that wizards don't have b.a.l.l.s, but the Excuse Me belies this. It is a large dance to which the cream of Ankh-Morpork society (or, as they say, at least the stuff which is floating on the top) is invited. There are two bands and, most importantly, a buffet with eighteen different kinds of meat and, of course, cheese cubes and pineapple lumps on a stick.

The Excuse Me is particularly favoured by the current LIBRARIAN, as a result of which sales of hair oil soar in the preceding week. He is the only person in Ankh-Morpork who can achieve a parting down his entire body.

Rag Week.

The entire Backspindle term. Wise citizens know enough to be on their guard around this time. The Week has all the normal perils of student humour with the additional seasoning of magic; these are viewed by the University authorities with the amused acceptance that is generally employed vis a vis student activities when baton rounds and tear gas have been found ineffective.

Citizens may encounter, for example, the Short Street Climb, in which wizards armed with crampons and pitons and ropes 'climb', in all seriousness, the length of the street. Many lose their grip and plunge helplessly through the door of the Mended DRUM where, in an attempt to revive themselves, much alcohol is consumed.

Another regular feature is the 'borrowing' of certain civic items and taking them to the Mended Drum, where much alcohol is consumed. Such items typically include street signs, potted plants and, on one occasion, the Bra.s.s Bridge.

Top of the Tower of Art An event often featured in the Week, but liable to break out at any other time, is 'tobogganing'. Traditionally, this took place inside the Tower of Art, when students on tea trays after consuming much alcohol would slide down the 8,888 steps on the spiral staircase, with many death-defying plunges over the missing ones. By the time they were halfway down, in any case, centrifugal force was pinning them to the walls, and wizards often shot from the doorway at the bottom with enough speed to skim them across the Ankh.

These days Rag Week is more normally held inside the University buildings themselves, where the many curving staircases and polished corridors offer endless opportunity for impressively sudden death.

Beating the Bounds.

(Also known as 'Plunkers'.) At dawn on 22 Grune the entire faculty, led by the choir and with the student body trailing behind, walk the ancient boundaries of the University (approximately the Backs, the Maul, Esoteric Street and the river frontage). They walk through or if necessary climb over any buildings that have since been built on the line of progress, while ceremonially striking any members of the public with live ferrets (in memory of Archchancellor Buckleby). Any red-headed men encountered are seized by several strong young wizards and given 'a plunking'; this tradition has, most unusually and subsequent to an incident that left three wizards hanging precariously from a nearby gutter been amended to read 'any red-haired men except of course for Captain CARROT Ironfoundersson of the Watch'. After the progress, the entire membership of the University heads back to the Great Hall for a huge breakfast at which duck must be served.

Scrawn Money.

('Archchancellor Scrawn's Bequest'.) One of the oldest ceremonies in the University calendar, held in Sator Square. All tenants of University property are required to attend, whereupon they are given two pennies, a pair of long socks and a loaf of bread baked the previous morning. They then file into the University where they are allowed to watch the wizards having lunch.

The Poor Scholars.

When UU was first established, a cla.s.s of students was accepted without the benefit of financial backing or formal seconding by a University graduate. These were the 'Poor Scholars', young men with magical potential. It was felt that it would be in the interests of all concerned if the young men were educated in the ways of UU (in the words of Alberto Malich, the founder: 'We'd better keep the bright young b.u.g.g.e.rs where we can see 'em').

They were not given rooms in the Tower of Art, and many had to live in lean-tos constructed against the walls. Once a month, in recognition of these stoics' determination not to be put off from their studies, the faculty would appear at the upper windows of the Tower and throw food to the 'Poor Scholars'. It was a popular event among the staff because it was quite possible to achieve a knockout blow with a well-gnawed cutlet from 200 feet.

This tradition lives on, even though the University is now physically much bigger and takes no 'Poor Scholars'. Once a year, the entire student body forgathers in Sator Square, where the faculty pelts them with stale bread rolls. Thrown with some force.

'Sity and Guilds.

When the Guilds began to set up their own academic establishments there was a lot of rivalry between their various students, and lone UU students would frequently be set on by gangs from colleges. Ankh-Morpork has a relaxed att.i.tude to sudden death, and many faculty members prefer dead students as being easier to teach, but the more pragmatic Guild Presidents, and the then current Archchancellor, decided that enough was enough because all those bodies around the place made it hard to open doors, and so on.

They decided to channel the rivalry into an annual sporting contest, to be called the 'Sity and Guilds Match (although A. J. Loop, in the Ankh-Morpork Almanack and Book of Dayes, claims that this was merely a slightly modernised form of a much older and rather sinister contest known as the Ankh-Morpork Poor Boys' Fun, which involved teams of up to five hundred; certainly the old Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork contain several prohibitions mentioning the term).

The principle was to kick or carry a football from the outskirts of the Shades (the oldest part of the city) to the Tower of Art (the oldest building on the Disc). The game involved teams of fifty students from each of the princ.i.p.al Guilds, plus UU. Goals were scored by kicking the ball through the door (or, more often, the window) of landmarks along the way, many of them having names like the Mended Drum, Bunch of Grapes, etc. The scoring team had then to be bought drinks by the other teams. After a few years, the Archchancellor ruled that only one goal could be scored in each pub since the match had, three years running, gone on for a month.

UU records suggest that students from the University have not partic.i.p.ated recently, but street football with various rules is still an Ankh-Morpork tradition. (In troll areas of the city the troll version of football is still occasionally played, although out of deference to modern sensibilities the 'football' of choice is no longer a human head, and a dwarf is subst.i.tuted.) UNSEEN UNIVERSITY: A GUIDED TOUR.

The University's main gates open on to Sator Square. They are big and plated with solid OCTIRON. There is no doorknocker, and at sunset each day the gates are locked by magic (in actual fact by MODO, the University's dwarf gardener, but it pays to advertise).

Take a moment to inspect the interesting frontage, which is an amazing juxtaposition of architectural styles, although it may be that the word 'confectionery' is more appropriate. From various niches the statues of former Archchancellors, of which UU has a more than adequate supply, stare down over the city.