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4 With a little old lady as the sleuth, and no car chases unless they’re done very slowly.
5 It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.
6 Although he did have to get up in 1832 to go to the lavatory.
7 Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.
8 The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty-seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty-four.
They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads:
“So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life,” and read:
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?
26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.
27 And the Lord did not ask him again.
It appears that these verses were inserted during the proof stage. In those days it was common practice for printers to hang proof sheets to the wooden beams outside their shops, for the edification of the populace and some free proofreading, and since the whole print run was subsequently burned anyway, no one bothered to take up this matter with the nice Mr. A. Ziraphale, who ran the bookshop two doors along and was always so helpful with the translations, and whose handwriting was instantly recognizable.
9 The other two are The Trapping of the Mouse, and Golde Diggers of 1589.
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.
11 Another master stroke of publishing genius, because Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Parliament had made Christmas illegal in 1654.
12 Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.
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.
14 He avoided mentioning that Attila was nice to his mother, or that Vlad Drakul was punctilious about saying his prayers every day.
15 Except for the bits about syphilis.
16 A sixteenth-century half-wit, not related to any U.S. president.
17 Remarkably, one of these stories is indeed true.
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?
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.
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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nbsp; 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.
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.
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.
