‘In that case, I suggest you get yourself a new shirt … you know, one that isn’t greasy, and clean your boots and your nails and everything else, and now you’re getting loaded up with money you must get yourself a sharp new suit. I know a few places that’d give you a good deal.’ He sniffed and added, ‘And have a bath, why don’t you, for the sake of Miss Emily.’

Dick blushed further and grinned. ‘Right you are, Mister Lipwig. I wish I could be deb on air like you are.’

‘It’s easy, Dick, you’ve just got to be yourself. They can’t ever take that away from you.’

And when Moist left his desk for another look at where last night’s excitement had taken place, he met Harry King, dressed to the nines and distressed to the maximum.

Harry flourished a bow tie at Moist and said, ‘I hate these damn things, I mean, what’s the point?’ He growled. ‘Got another bloody civic thing on tonight, Effie just thrives on them. I told her I’m busy, what with dealing with the railway, but she’s determined to make a better man of me. And all this business about what knife and fork you eat from, it’s a deliberate puzzle set out to make a simple bloke like me feel like a stranger. Whatever you pick up isn’t going to change what the food tastes like, but Effie presses my knee hard if I gets it wrong.

‘She wants me to have electrocution lessons, gods be damned, and I’m putting my foot down about that one. Knobs or not, I’m still Harry King and I’m still going to sound like Harry King. And I told Effie that I don’t mind giving the money away to orphanages and suchlike – I like to see the faces of the little kiddies light up like daisies – it’s the swank I don’t like and all the incessant chattering when I could be doing good work in my office. Effie says it’s knoblyess obligay, but just because I’ve got a lot of knobs I don’t have to accept it, right? It’s a terrible thing when a man can’t be himself, knobs or no knobs.’

Fifty miles turnwise of Ankh-Morpork lies the Effing Forest, a source of laughter for some, but nevertheless, throughout the year, full of birdsong and, surprisingly, the occasional logger, as well as the family-run coal mines that are too small for the dwarfs to covet but just about big enough to scratch a living.

On this fine morning in the Wesley family forge, Crucible Wesley was arguing with his brother.

‘Okay, you’re a blacksmith, granted, but that engine looked complicated to oi. Jed, you’re a good smith and a big lad, but I can’t see you hammering out a whole locomotive on your own. You need a bit more of the book learning, say oi. You saw those boys at that there compound in the smoke with their sliding rulers, although you couldn’t quite work out what them was for.’