To Say Nothing of the Dog

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.

The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.

One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.

You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by-

People will buy anything at jumble sales,' I said. 'At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table.

And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.

No," I said finally. "Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?" "1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering.

A Grand Design we couldn't see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.

Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.

Translated ‘Non omnia possumus omnus’ as ‘No possums allowed on the omnibus.

Finch picked up one of the ancient fax-mags and brought it over to me. "I don't need anything to read," I said. "I'll just sit here and eavesdrop along with you." "I thought you might sit on the mag," he said. "It's extremely difficult to get soot out of chintz.

I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era.

If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.

Cyril had staked out his claim and refused to move. "Move over!" I said, freeing one hand from holding the cat to push. "Dogs are supposed to sleep at the foot of the bed." Cyril had never heard of this rule. He jammed his body up against my back and began to snore. I tugged at the rugs, trying to get enough to cover me, and turned on my side, the cat cradled in my arms. Princess Arjumand paid no attention to the regulations of animals on the bed either. She promptly wriggled free and walked round the bed, treading on Cyril, who responded with a faint "oof," and kneading her claws in my leg. Cyril shoved and shoved again until he had the entire bed and all the covers, and Princess Arjumand draped herself across my neck with her full weight on my Adam's apple. Cyril shoved some more. An hour into this little drama it began to rain in earnest, and everyone moved in under the covers and began jockeying for position again.

History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats.

Nothing in all those "O swan" poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented being mistaken for felines. Or bit.

Poor thing, consigned to a life of frivolousness and wretched things for breakfast. Not allowed to go to school or do anything worthwhile, and eel pie besides.

That’s the problem with models—they only include the details people think are relevant,

There is nothing more helpful than shouted instructions, particularly incomprehensible ones. I

It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick’s Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off.

Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram “urgent” and Admiral Kimmel isn’t warned of the impending Japanese attack. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.

One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober.

This is the Victorian era," she said. "Women didn't have to make sense.

There was a crack of thunder so loud I was convinced I’d been struck by lightning for lying.

face Lady Schrapnell. And I promised I’d help

I sat there watching him examine the fish and marvelling at what we’d caught. A genuine eccentric Oxford don. They’re an extinct species, too...

The multinationals who’d been backing Darby and Gentilla lost interest, and time travel had been handed over to historians and scientists,

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to nonsignificance.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an elopement.