Good Omens

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

30 During the day. In the evenings she gave Power tarot readings to nervous executives, because old habits die hard.

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

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

33 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.”

34 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?”

35 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.

36 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.”

37 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.

38 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.”

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

40 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.

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

42 $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.

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

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

45 Formerly A Cut Above the Rest, formerly Mane Attraction, formerly Curl 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.

46 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.

47 Not that Hell has any other kind.

48 Not actually an oxymoron. It’s the color past ultra-violet. The technical term for it is infra-black. It can be seen quite easily under experimental conditions. To perform the experiment simply select a healthy brick wall with a good runup, and, lowering your head, charge.

The color that flashes in bursts behind your eyes, behind the pain, just before you die, is infra-black.

49 She had. It r

ead: