The Ministry of SUITs (34 page)

31. A Deal Struck

32. A Total Plank

33. A Missing Friend

34. The Tunnel

35. Angel Etiquette

36. We Suspect a Mole

37. Substandard Cavalry

38. The Quartermaster's Store

39. Return to Sanity

40. Shattered

41. Spin Me Right 'Round

42. A P.E. Teacher's History Lesson

43. Pillow Fights

44. What's in the Glove Box?

45. “We Must Do Something Immediately”

46. Reinforcements

47. Escape

48. Steam Power

49. Above Standard Cavalry

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

 

A Feiwel and Friends Book

An Imprint of Macmillan

THE MINISTRY OF SUITS
. Copyright © 2016 by Paul Gamble. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at
[email protected]
.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-250-07682-3 (hardcover) / ISBN 978-1-250-08682-2 (e-book)

Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto

First Edition: 2016

mackids.com

eISBN: 9781250086822

1. 1
   Generally pirates lose their legs while on board their ships in the heat of battle. While on board a galleon they don't have access to a full set of modern, plastic, molded prosthetic limbs. Therefore the wooden legs tend to come off the nearest piece of furniture available. And it's hard to fit a sneaker or a Doc Marten boot on the end of a wooden leg off a Queen Anne sideboard. Therefore pirates generally don't need two shoes. They just need one shoe. And possibly a caster if they want to go roller-skating.
   

2. 2
   Magically dirty pants are widely regarded as the worst type of dirty pants.
   

3. 3
   For those of you who need to know, Jack and David live in Northern Ireland. It's the north end of the island of Ireland. For years people argued over who owned Northern Ireland. Jack and David didn't ever really know why. But it seemed dreadfully important to a lot of people. However, you will be glad to know that politics have nothing to do with our story.…
   

4. 4
   It should be noted that most scarecrows are badly constructed. It's part of what makes them scarecrows. If they were constructed more adequately, they wouldn't be scarecrows. They'd be store mannequins.
   

5. 5
   This is the kind of thing that your parents lie to you about. Danger is fun. You know it. Your parents know it. Politicians know it. It's just that no one can actually admit it. (At least no one ever admitted it until chapter twelve of this book.)
   

6. 6
   It is hard to drool in a becoming way. In fact, it's almost impossible to be charming and erudite while drooling. Which is why St. Bernard dogs are so rarely seen being interviewed on the red carpet at the Oscars.
   

7. 7
   People think that Gummy Bears seem happy and jolly, but generally their short, wobbly lives are spent in abject terror of having their limbs ripped off and eaten.
   

8. 8
   This was, of course, assuming that the bear had not already had something to eat for breakfast. If the bear had already eaten, the risk would have been of becoming a bear's brunch.
   

9. 9
   Jack never wanted a croissant. It was always unclear to Jack why adults, who could eat what they wanted for breakfast, would opt for a croissant over a bacon sandwich. Personally he felt that adults who opted for muesli at breakfast should be locked up in an asylum until they admitted it tasted awful. Bacon tasted wonderful and Jack felt that if pigs did not want to be eaten they wouldn't make such an effort to taste so nice.
   

   Of course now that Jack was facing the prospect of being eaten by a bear he was concentrating very hard on not tasting nice himself. It felt like it was working, but he couldn't be sure.
   

10. 10
    Jack made a mental note to check with his English teacher if the word
    chair
    could be used as a verb. He knew it was a noun, but he was unsure if the sentence “Just before the bear killed the young boy, the young boy had chaired him,” would be grammatically correct.
    

11. 11
    Many people would wonder why a man would check that his limbs were in the correct sockets. The reason for this and for much else will become clear later on, in chapter thirty.
    

12. 12
    Some of you will have been wondering why this chapter was called “The chair of Destiny.” You will have expected there to be some mystical chair that told Jack what his future would be. It was just an ordinary chair, as it turns out. But the woman who owned the café was called Destiny. She owned several things that weren't chairs. There was a hairbrush of Destiny, a car of Destiny, a nice pair of high heels of Destiny, and so on. Very few of these items had any significant magical powers. (For those of you who love your grammar, this is why the word
    Destiny
    was capitalized [proper noun] whereas the word
    chair
    wasn't [ordinary noun].)
    

13. 13
    The proper name for a person who studies bears is an ursinologist. Grey clearly doesn't know this word. It is vital never to mistake this word for the word
    urologist
    , which is the word for a person who studies wee. A urologist ursinologist would be a person who studied the wee of bears. The world is so unbelievably diverse that there is almost certainly a urologist ursinologist in it somewhere. His scientist friends probably bully him mercilessly.
    

14. 14
    Remember this point; it becomes vitally important in chapter nine.It's a pity that Jack can't read the footnotes, as they would make his life considerably easier. One of the major problems in trying to live life is the lack of helpful footnotes.
    

15. 15
    Are you wondering if there is really such a thing as a curiosity gland? Of course there is. Otherwise there would be nothing making you curious about whether or not there is such a thing as a curiosity gland.
    

    For those of you thinking that you weren't actually curious about whether there is such a thing as a curiosity gland, that probably just means you have an overactive apathy organ.
    

16. 16
    You may be wondering why you would ever consider fitting a tortoise with a pogo stick. After all, if Aesop is to be believed, a tortoise can beat a hare in a race. Of course the answer to this is that a tortoise could never beat a hare in a race. The true story about the legendary race between the hare and the tortoise is that the tortoise cheated the hare in two separate races. However, Aesop, like all good children's authors, believed that all children's stories should provide a moral lesson to their readers and so he didn't report the actual facts.
    

    I'm not a very good children's author.
    

    Make sure you eat five pieces of fruit and vegetables a day.…
    

    Or not. Whatever. It's not like I'm going to tell on you.
    

17. 17
    He was actually in his fifties; the reason for his youthful appearance wouldn't become clear until much later on. However, if you want a clue as to the reason why, one of his arms was slightly longer than the other.…
    

18. 18
    A financial services arm is essentially a bank. Years ago when people worked in financial services they said they were bankers. Then the world decided that bankers were all evil. So bankers decided to change their names to financial services. In due course people will decide that financial services are evil and the name will change again to something else—like economic operation providers. This happens in all parts of life. You may notice that these days politicians have a tendency to no longer refer to themselves as politicians. Rather they tend to use the words “public representative.” This changing of names to protect images happens throughout history. Rat catchers became pest control. Toilet cleaners became lavatory attendants.
    

19. 19
    No one really knows what management consultants do—surprisingly, least of all, management consultants.
    

20. 20
    Madame Tussauds is very proud of its waxworks and claims they are
    identical
    to many famous celebrities. If they are identical, this means that many famous people are made almost entirely of wax. Therefore if Benedict Cumberbatch or Tom Cruise pops into your house for a visit, it is vitally important that you do not let them stand next to the radiator for any significant length of time.
    

21. 21
    David said that he always felt slightly sad when he saw Mr. Rackham's legs. Overinflated ballons are the saddest of all states for long balloons. Because you know that they will live and die as a balloon. Underinflated balloons have enough give in them to be twisted and folded. This leads to a great deal of excitement in their lives as at any stage a balloon modeler may grab them and turn them into a dog. Or a giraffe (dog with a long neck). Or even a poodle (dog with a slightly different kind of tail).… Balloon modelers have a limited repertoire and they are fooling no one.
    

22. 22
    Mr. Rackham also used the chalkboard and his nails instead of a whistle while the boys played football and rugby. Bizarrely enough this had a rather positive effect. All the boys hated the screeching sound so much that they tried to avoid fouling another player at all costs. Perhaps if professional sporting organizations wish to ensure more fair games, they should consider replacing all referees' whistles with chalkboards. Although this would require referees to be professionally manicured as part of their training regime.
    

23. 23
    Wrong, wrong, wrong …
    

24. 24
    Mr. Rackham called all of the boys in P.E. “ladies.” The boys assumed that he meant this as a joke. The problem was when the boys were having a joint lesson with the girls, he also called the girls “ladies.”
    

    Jack once suggested that his calling them “ladies” wasn't meant as a joke at all and that Mr. Rackham just had an incredibly shaky grasp of biology. Although many people agreed with Jack that this was a possibility, so far no one had discovered any empirical evidence to back it up.
    

25. 25
    Some of you may be asking, “What does death smell like?” Well, if you want the answer to that question, just go to Jack's school. Because there's a pair of socks there that smell exactly like it.
    

26. 26
    It is hard to imagine what this would have looked like. An insect has many legs, a snake none. Therefore the suggestion seems to be that the creature that was spotted had a reasonable amount of legs. Although it's hard to imagine why a creature with a reasonable amount of legs would inspire such terror.
    

27. 27
    If you're wondering what Katy Perry song it was, it was “Roar”—rather appropriate, really.
    

28. 28
    Hence elephants are wrong about the white keys being made of ivory …
    

29. 29
    Please refer all the way back to footnote 5.
    

30. 30
    To clarify, we are only talking about the noise that the actual cabbage itself will make if you drop it into a street without people in it. If you drop a cabbage into a street
    with
    people in it, the noise it will make is a dull thud followed by, “Hey, who's dropping cabbages?”
    

31. 31
    Duvet covers aren't inherently interesting. Although what is interesting is how they actually make the duvets that are inside them.
    

32. 32
    As well as not having ears, squids don't have noses either. Yet another reason they don't wear sunglasses. If you read much about squids, you will also come to realize they frequently live in deep underwater, dark, shady environments. This is because they don't want to have to spend all their life squinting, because their sunglasses have fallen off again.
    

33. 33
    Actually, gravity is anything but simple physics. Try asking your physics teacher to explain why it works. She will tell you about objects attracting each other and that this is how gravity works. Then say to her that you didn't ask how it works, you asked
    why
    it works. Watch as her face crumples and she finds herself completely stumped. This will generally give you a pleasant feeling of smugness. It is a feeling that you will be able to enjoy at your leisure that afternoon when you find yourself in detention.
    

    On some occasions this approach has caused high school science teachers to have mental breakdowns. In the event that this happens it's only fair if you occasionally go and visit them in whatever home they've been put into.
    

34. 34
    Or how when you're doing well at an exam and have lots to say it seems to be mere seconds before the teacher tells you to put down your pen. But if the exam is going badly, and you have nothing to write, it seems to drag on forever. Make your own list of these. I shouldn't have to do all your thinking for you.
    

35. 35
    It is interesting to see how as technology has improved, these tracking devices have become more effective and miniaturized. If you look at your parents' fillings, they are large, clunky metal things, whereas modern fillings are elegant and white. Personally I suspect the people who design the tracking devices these days are the same people who design Apple computers.
    

36. 36
    Sadly, Jack already had two fillings before he joined the Ministry. The Tooth Fairy would always be able to find him.
    

37. 37
    It should be admitted that they were rather vulnerable to bows and arrows, but as long as you had a team of loyal knights with a puncture repair kit and a set of pumps, this wasn't an enormous problem. It's much easier to reinflate part of your battlements than it is to actually rebuild them.
    

38. 38
    He was not thinking how unusual it was to be loved by anyone. Mr. Tom Jones has been very clear about that point. That is not unusual at all.
    

39. 39
    If you haven't guessed already, Jack read a lot of comics and graphic novels.
    

40. 40
    The stone hand was enormous. Jack imagined that if he had heard fingernails this large being pulled down a huge chalkboard his head would have exploded.
    

41. 41
    Jack noticed that the face painted on the lid of the sarcophagus had large black lines painted around its eyes. He wondered if the ancient Egyptians had been big fans of pandas or were just Goths.
    

42. 42
    There is also evidence to show that 86 percent of people who were bitten by crocodiles in Ancient Egypt were bitten only because they could not run away, as their legs were overly covered in bandages.
    

43. 43
    Because even the editor of the Ministry Handbook is terrified of the Misery.
    

44. 44
    This would be less tragic if I weren't currently sitting in front of a computer, surrounded by piles of books, and wearing a
    Star Wars
    dressing gown.
    

45. 45
    And even if I did get that tweet I wouldn't be able to go. I don't have anything to wear, and I'm pretty sure that a Sith dressing gown doesn't count as “black tie.”
    

46. 46
    Jack was annoyed to have to admit that gravity was still working effectively. He was still rather irritated about how mean gravity could be after what it had done to him in chapter twenty-three.