The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 102: Night Watch Pt. 1 (Foreshadow and Backshadow)

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Night Watch”. Ravens! Lightning! Quantum! Part 2 of Night Watch will begin on page 163 (“The beast remembers”) and end on page 257 (“A little more champagne?”)Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Night Watch - The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0Night Watch - Discworld Wiki Brewers Britain and Ireland - Internet Archive [News] 2023 will be the Year of the Querulous Megapode! - r/discworld Discworld Divinity - SF Crows Nest (via Wayback Machine) Paul Kidby on Night Watch - Fantasy Book Review (via Wayback Machine)Battye Embroidered Wall Hanging - William Morris Gallery Sir Terry Pratchett in conversation with Dr Jacqueline Simpson in 2010 - The Folklore SocietyMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

I feel like you're going to enjoy my shoehorn. So this Hungarian folklore book. Right. Yeah. I can't even remember what it's called now. It's English translations of Hungarian folk tales, but it's got a massive introduction that goes into like superstitions, witches. We've both been doing some fantastic blind research in the last few days, listeners, and have discovered some esoteric nonsense to make the hard clad. So if I can remember, I'm pretty sure this book was published in the late 19th century,

and one of the things it contains is a selection of superstitious days in Hungarian folklore who laughs on Friday, well cry on Sunday. To sneeze on Friday, the first thing in the morning when the stomach is empty means some great catastrophe. If a hen commenced to sit on her eggs on a Friday, the eggs become adult. Were all of them Friday because the picture you sent me, they were all Friday. Did traditional Hungarian superstition just have something really against Fridays? No, it was just organised by days, so there was a Friday section, and then a St George's Day section. The skin of a marmot caught before St George's Day will make a purse which will never empty.

Oh, good. How far before though? Because when do you get into after St George's Day territory? I think it's by year, so January through St George's Day, if you catch a marmot, good. After St George's Day, through to Christmas, don't bother. Of course, so January marmot should be fine. Yeah, January marmot, if you're going to make a marmot skin purse. There was a bunch of number-related superstitions. Seven is very superstitious. The seventh child plays an important part in everything. Only a seventh child can lift in treasures. Seventh child, seven years old, has great magic power. What do you mean, lifted in treasures?

Too scared to ask. Okay. The devil's grandmother is 777 years old. Always? I guess. Or just when this book was written. Or just coincidentally when this book was published. Three very often occurs in fairy tales. It is an important number with witches. It is said there are 33,333 witches in Hungary. Wow, that's a great extra. Because this was English people collecting Hungarian folklore early to mid-19th century, I want to know how much of this was people just fucking with them? Yes. Also, I just love the second story in the book. It's titled Stephen the Murderer. Oh, foreshadowing. Just like...

The foreshadowing or is that like hitting you with a mullet? I'm not sure that's foreshadowing so much. It's just a story about a murderer's name with Stephen. What more do you fucking want from me? There's also some very nice stuff about how Hungarian fairy tales seem to traditionally open, but I'm saving that. I'm saving that for another bit of podcasty goodness. Oh, good. Oh, nice. But also, have we got any Hungarian listeners? Hungarian listeners, if you're there and have cool folklore knowledge for me, please. Yeah, if you could put around to the devil's grandmother and find out how tactfully you find out how old she is now, that would be great.

If you could also just have a witch census. Count the witches, yeah. Make sure there's only 33,333. That might be difficult. If you think about it, it's really hard to count a circle of standing stones. Oh, yeah. The only way you can do it is by leaving a loaf of bread by each one. The witches will have eaten the loaves by the time you get back to the start, even if they all stand in a circle. All right, we're going to have to think this through. Well, that's why we're asking the Hungarians to do it for us. They're practical people. They name their stories things like Stephen the murderer. Anyway, listeners, join our Patreon

if you want to find out why I was reading about Hungarian folklore. Oh, good. That'd be the added bonus of hearing me pronounce things in all sorts of languages. Speaking of, I told you this tonight, but one of my blind research finds this week was in Second Hand Bookshop. I managed to get myself another Brewer's that I hadn't had, and this one's about place names. It's UK and the British Isles, whatever. And I opened it for the first time genuinely randomly on the skin of stone. The skin of stone. The stone of scone. And I'll edit that appropriately. Some of those syllables must go together. Anyway, proof that God hates me. And that God is Scottish. And that you're destined to become king.

Yeah, all of those. You never want God to hate you and for you to become king because that is very beheading, isn't it? Bit beheading, possibly struck by lightning. Who knows? Depends on the God. Absolutely. All right. Speaking of struck by lightning, do you want to make a podcast? Yes, I think so. I'm not wearing Wellington boots. But yes, let's make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Trishamiki Threat podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one as time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll.

And this is part one of our discussion of Night Watch. Fucking is, eh? The 29th Discworld Novel. We are here. We made it to Night Watch, Francine. We did. Oh, my God. It snuck up on me. I said so on Twitter, but I'm feeling quite intimidated. Like, this is one of the ones I'm a bit nervous about. In fact, they're all this year, all of the ones I am. But this one's like the, you know. This is so beloved. The first big, yeah.

The regularly and everyone's top five, top 10, top one, which I always dance around by saying, I think it's the best Discworld book, but not my personal favorite. Note on spoilers before we crack on, we are a spoiler light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book Night Watch, although we'll try not to go too deep into stuff that happens later in the book. But we will also avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving at any and all discussion of the final Discworld Novel,

the Shepherds' Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Perfectly replicating the Night Watch beat, knowing the cobbles through the soles of your shoes. You could have said through your feet and then it would have rhymed. Oh, it's sorry. All right. I'm not a natural poet like you, Joanna. Have you got any follow-up, Francine? Have you? I've got one. I feel very bad. Alex, our resident space expert,

emailed us on the day we recorded our Hogs Watch episode and just didn't make it into the episode. I'm taking my job as space person very seriously and I come wearing seasonal space news, which is the unboxing day slash December 26th. It is the new year on Mars. Mars years count from an arbitrary-ish Earth date, so we'll be entering Mars year 37. But yes, thank you, Alex, for letting us know. Happy Martian New Year to everybody. Ah, yay. I like that. I hope everybody had a wonderful Martian New Year. And also, yes, happy New Year to all of our dear little listeners. Yes. What did you say? What's the quarrelous megapode?

Quarrelous megapode. Quarrelous megapode. That megapode sure is quarrelous. That's what they say now. Right. We've got a lot to talk about. So, Francine, do you want to introduce us to Nightwatch? Yeah. So, Nightwatch, the 29th this world novel, published in 2002. This is, as I said, a bit of an intimidating book to cover. To call it a fan favorite doesn't really do it justice. Every fan poll I found for favorite Discworld books has Nightwatch as the winner, often leagues ahead of its competitors. You've often got small gods in the truth and all that kind

of crammed up right close together, but quite away behind Nightwatch. Radio Morpheus, painstaking ranked list has Nightwatch perched atop. Because of this, I kind of assumed it would be covered in accolades, but although it was very well reviewed critically, it doesn't have all the awards, I feel it should. It placed second in the annual Locust Award that year, and it won the 2003 Prometheus Award, which is the Libertarian Futurist Society's award. I would love to know what practice thought about that. It's kind of also intimidating book because it covers some of the topics about which many people, including both of us, feel very strongly. It gets political, it gets violent, it sprays way outside of Black and White into the Moral Gray,

maybe the Moral Lilac. We will be covering all that stuff, but not so much for this episode. There's a lot of set up stuff here, so just let all of you know we're not giving over the serious stuff. We'll get there. The working title for this book was The Nature of the Beast, which is quite a violent title in itself. I mean, quite from this section of the book, from Vimes, was there was that small part of him he'd heard sometimes during strenuous arrests after long chases, the part that wanted to punch and punch long after punching had already achieved its effect. There was a joy to it, he called it The Beast. However, that title was discarded when Francis Fivefield published a book with exactly that title in the UK in late 2001,

and instead they've gone with The Night Watch, which made for some rather lovely cover art, didn't it Joanna? Yeah, so the story of it getting this title with a bit more context, this is the first disc world novel proper that Paul Kidby did the cover art for. So he worked with Pratchett for quite a while at this point. He did the Pratchett portfolio, he'd done the illustrations for Nanny Ogg's cookbook, he of course did The Last Hero, which we've talked about at great lengths. But this is when he became the cover artist, and I don't know if when The Nature of the Beast changed to something else, but at one point the working title was Forest of the Mind, according to Rob Wilkinsburg.

Yes, quite right, yes. I hadn't gone back to look at that, but yeah. So Paul was the recipient, one of the recipients of Terry's famous phone calls. Explain those phone calls. Terry Pratchett had certain people, Stephen Briggs was another one, Jacqueline Simpson, Neil Gaiman, who he would call up and say, here you know how this one goes, and then start working out some plot detail or something. Sometimes it was he wanted natural scientific answer to something, like Pat Harkins was another one he used to call quite a lot, but sometimes it was just him, and he would like sometimes just randomly hang up

mid-sentence because he'd worked out whatever plot thing was the problem and the other person needed to say anything. I love that. I always criticize that in TV shows and films when people just hang up without saying goodbye. I'm like, nobody does that, but I guess someone did. Sorry, I interrupted, Carol. So there's two different versions of this story. The Rob Wilkins one by way of Terry Pratchett in Rob's book, A Life with Footnotes, goes, one of Terry's famous phone calls in which plots to be discussed, Terry had also sent him some early pages. One day, Paul arrived at the chapel and anxiously unwrapped a painting of Sam Vime's eye patch in place, chewing on a cigar at the head of the members of the city watch,

rendered as a pastiche of Rembrandt's militia company of district two under the command of Captain Franz Bannock Koch, a painting known for short as The Night Watch. In the space, so also, sorry for further context, Josh Kirby had passed away in 2001, hence the need for a new cover artist. In the space where Rembrandt painted himself peering through from the rear of the group, Paul had painted a portrait of Josh. It was the perfect tribute. And on top of that, automatically yielded a far better title for the novel, thanks to Paul, Forest of the Mind became Night Watch. I bet it was The Nature of the Beast, then The Forest of the Mind, then Night Watch.

Yeah. Because if he didn't like Forest of the Mind, that makes sense. It was like a second choice. Yes. But I am speculating. Paul's version of the story is slightly different, which is that he took the idea to Terry of doing this painting first, and Terry approved it. And then he did the painting and put Josh Kirby in. So I don't know whether I don't know if he did turn up at the chapel with a fully completed painting involving some lines, but according to the interview with Paul, there was actually a lot of back and forth with Terry about this painting. There was, at least they got put in after a discussion, didn't they? Yeah. So I expect, well, I think both stories can be true. There's just some

detail left out of the first to be more of a concise story, isn't there? Very practical. And it's a nice story. I like it. And I like that Kirby's in there. And it's a fantastic cover. It is. It's a gorgeous cover. The original painting is gorgeous. The dramatic lighting is beautiful. And Paul Kirby has done, as he did with the cover of Morris that we both liked. He's just done a beautiful pastiche of the work. So one of my favorite little details of the Paul Kirby cover for Night Watch is the in place of the dog in the original painting. There's a little swamp dragon. One last little factoid from the whole Paul Kirby cover art thing. There was a charity auction at a disc

world convention before this came out in which three people got the opportunity to have their names put into a disc world novel, this one specifically. Okay. And one of the he incorporated one of those people into the cover and that person now into the painting. Oh, good. But one of the other people who got their name into the book, thanks to that auction, is Ken Follett, an author a lot of our listeners might have heard of. Was that in Rob's book? Or did you tell me that? I can't remember whether it was in Rob's book I told you or if it was in this interview with Paul. Okay. Well, I know it was one of the first two because I just sent you the interview and then

left you too. But Ken Follett is very famous for having a luxurious head of hair. So he's written in as Dr. Follett, the current head of the Assassin's Guild. And there's a line about is that all his real hair, do you think? Which is nice, isn't it? Because when you read it, you're like, Follett follicle is that? So yes, I'm glad I know the origin of that joke. Super. I like that. So the book itself is often described as a very dark book. But I will say this is a term to which Pratchett took some umbrage. And another of the interviews I was reading today, there are quite a lot of interviews around this book and not enough that are recorded. I spent quite a long time looking for a video of Pratchett speaking about this and I couldn't

find any. So if anyone has one, please send. But this is with an old sci-fi site. I'll link the way back machines. It's a dead link now. But it has been said Night Watch is slightly darker and covers more adult scenes. So that's the journalist. Pratchett says, what do you mean that they weren't adult beforehand? There's a revolution. People get killed. That's stuff for kids. Lord of the Rings is incredibly dark. What's really bad stuff happens to people, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. A dark book, a truly dark book, is one where there is no light at the end of the tunnel, where things start off going bad and carry on getting badder before they get worse. And then it's all over. I'm kind of puzzled by the suggestion that

it's dark. Things end up, shall we say, at least no worse than they were when they started. And that seems far from dark to me. The fact that it deals with some rather grim things is, I think, a different matter. Yeah, that whole interview is quite good actually. I might read a bit more from it in another section to make it make more sense. But yeah, very cool. And what do you think then to that, actually? Would you describe it as a dark book? I think I have done. I think it is darker than some. I think we're going to obviously talk about the time travel stuff in a lot more detail later on, but the fact that you start with seven gravestones. Yeah. And I think one of the best written villains, and I'll dive into him in a lot more detail later,

I don't think it's dark in a very different way. We just did Amazing Morris and we had a lot of our incredulous, this is a kid's book. Yeah. A lot of just straight up horrifying stuff happens, like with the Rat King. Yes, oddly, this is less horror, isn't it, than the kid's book we just read. This is much less horror. I don't think it's dark, because I don't think it's unoptimistic. I suppose it would be more accurate to say it is a book with a lot of dark components that doesn't make it a darker book overall. It looks humanity's worst point square in the face, but then it does kick them in the nuts. Yes. And I think as we move to later on sections, we'll talk about some of the darker moments in it. One thing I did notice, and I'm going

to be keeping an eye on this as we work through the book. Oh, we have a string already, do we? I see. Oh, we've got a lot of, this is thought court. Watch out for the twine readers listeners. Obviously, I always keep track of when slash if death turns up in a just one book. And for a book with, you know, at one point a row of seven gravestones, not a whole lot of the Grim Reaper. Oh, do we? Okay. And I'm, he's in it. Okay. He's not in section one, though, is he? No. No. We'll get to helicopter and loincloth watching a second and have a look at that, but I'm building up to a point here. I'm building up to a point that I might have made by the end of February. Listeners, we're actually just covering this book this year. You know, we could.

All right, but let's not. Shall I tell us what happened in this section? Yes, sure. Yeah, that may be the longest intro I've ever done. Sorry. There's so much to talk about, Francine. The first section goes up to page 163 in the call we pay for back and ends with the line. I'll have breakfast on when you get back. It's liver, calves. So maybe, okay, there, I'll be back for breakfast. In this section, his grace, Samuel Vimes finishes shaving before handling the scream of a young assassin sent to visit on a training exercise. Lilac is blooming in symbols and labor, but things will take a while yet. So Sam heads to Burke. I can't remember why I put a V there.

There was a reason. Sergeant Strung in the arm is dead of duty thanks to the villainous casser and sporting Lilac, Nolan and Nobby and Colin visit the cemetery and Keele's grave, among others, just after Mrs. Palm and Mrs. Batty. Vimes misses how things used to be as he stands before veterinary, having narrowly missed a committee. A klax comes, carcers cornered, but he's up high with a handy crossbow. Buggy swires hovers, detritus fires a warning shot, and magical storms come sweeping down the plains as Vimes and Carcer wrestle on the library roof, lightning strikes. Ridiculis on the lawn in a bathtub and not much else, and Vimes and Carcer are missing, displaced in space and time. Vimes wakes in pain in an eye patch and claims the

name John Keele to the doctor and the woman who found him. Pseudopolis yards not a watch house and seamstresses save him from a second mugging. Vimes is back in the past and out after curfew, and he's placed under arrest. He wakes in the cells with Carcer and Keele's up in front of the watch captain, but a handy monk interrupts before Vimes can do something he'll regret. The real John Keele's dead thanks to Carcer, and Lutzi explains that Vimes needs to create his own future from the present running side by side with how history should be. Back in ancient history, Hugh hangs out with hippos and insists on a four-day limit. Lutzi promises a perfect moment before placing Vimes back in front of Captain Tilden to take on the title of John Keele.

He swears an oath and touches a shilling before sleeping at lawns. These are not good times in Inkmoorpork. Vimes heads to Treacle Mine Road to take charge. He wants to know what happened to the residents of the hurry-up wagon, firing quirk for taking bribes and not receipts. Sergeant Knox worried about Cable Street, and Vimes takes his younger self out for a stroll. Little Vimes details but struggles with the big political picture. Out on the wagon, Miss Palms 1 picked up. Vimes isn't taking bribes and Captain Swing of Cable Street's not taking the prisoners, or giving out receipts. The curfew breakers are sent home, and Rosie's getting suspicious. Vimes fights off attackers and delivers an unconscious, unmentionable to Dr Lawn,

just in time for breakfast. Good. Excellent. I made that sound a little bit more cannibally than it was. Onto Helicopter and loincloth watch then. I'm intrigued. Well, there's no helicopters because it's not safe to fly on in a storm like that. Of course. Wow. This may be the first time you've admitted it. But they're there in spirit. Okay, thank you. Oh, wait, no. Joanna, there are flying cogwheels. Oh, there are flying cogwheels. Cool. That's nice enough. Thank you, Francie. That's for a loincloth. That's for a loincloth. Well, you see Ridcully and Ponder's Hat does the job. Yeah, no, that's closer to a loincloth than usual. Before Ponder's Hat, a large blob of foam, which up until that point had been performing sterling service in the cause of essential

decencies, slipped slowly to the floor. So I'd like to give that blob of foam the official loincloth on it. I would like to linger for a second on the fact that Pratchett probably thought hard about that sentence because it's wonderfully constructed. It is incredible. And indeed, the sentence where Ridcully emerges from the bath like a Leviathan, I think it was. Yes. Which has stuck in my head since the first time I read this, I believe. It's also just nice to have that moment of levity because after that, you know, we go to the past and everything's a bit fucked up. Levity Leviathan. A levitous Leviathan. Yes, there we go. I was trying to think of the adjective.

I'm not sure it is levitous. Quickly on other things we keep track of, the librarian gets explained, which we haven't had for a while. Yes, that's interesting, isn't it? It also, I like the fact that it's become more and more normal to everyone as it's gone on to the point where this one points out. If someone ever reported that there was a orangutan in the library, I was hoping we could ignore that. The wizards would probably go and ask the librarian if he'd seen it. Quotes. Quotes, quotes, quotes. You're first. He never forgot. He just put the memories away like old silverware that you didn't want to tarnish, and every year they came back sharp and sparkling and stabbed him in the heart.

That's some good shit in this book. It is amazing. Okay, there we go. I said I didn't think he was stupid, Mr. Vimes. I knew a clever couple like you'd think I'd got two knives. Yeah, right, said Vimes. He could feel his hair trying to stand on end. Little blue caterpillars of light were crackling over the ironwork of the dome and even over his armour. Mr. Vimes, what? Vimes snapped. Smoke was rising from the weathercocks' bearings. I got three knives, Mr. Vimes, said Carcer, bringing his arm up. The lightning struck. Such a good moment. What a... I don't need to explain why that's good. Everyone know that. No, he's why it's a good line and read it. Yeah.

Let's talk about characters. Let's start with Sam Vimes or his Grace the Duke of Ant commander of the city. Watch, sir, Samuel Vimes. As I call him, because I have respect. Anyway, Vimes. He's, yeah, he's grown. He has grown. He's miffed to have been taken off the assassin's register. Yes. I think this isn't long after the events of the Fifth Elephant, is it? Because we're now at the end of the pregnancy that Sybil announces in the Fifth Elephant. Yeah. Am I allowed to say she's giving birth? I mean, it's pretty... I said it in the summary. So, yeah, she's giving birth.

Of course you did. So, the Fifth Elephant was like Sam's first successful go at being a diplomat, shall we say? Yeah. I mean, he dabbled in it in Jingo, but I think it was still very coppery. I mean, he literally arrested the vassal field. He did do that, yeah. But he also made friends with the prince. He did. He did do that. But yeah. So, Fifth Elephant, he managed to negotiate successfully with dwarves. And I'm guessing that has then allowed him a little bit more responsibility on the city,

which has its ups and downsides. And now he's genuinely playing along with a lot of it. He's thinking about what uniform he should wear. Yeah. He's accepted that the uniforms he's got to wear, he's not kind of pushing back an authority in quite the same way. Yeah. Obviously, minimal plumage. Yeah. I like this thematic thing, if he feels like he's doing something wrong, if people aren't trying to kill him, though, like this idea of being irked at the assassins for taking him off the register.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, does that mean I'm not pissing enough people off? No, I mean, it means you'll piss more people off dead. But I'm going to obviously not talk about everything that's set up in this section that's going to pay off in later sections because we need to get to later sections. Eventually one day. And today, we would like to go to bed eventually. Yes. But it's such a fucking foreshadow of a book, isn't it?

The whole thing, foreshadowing, backshadowing, layers of shadow. Left shadowing. Yeah. And it's all at night time, which makes all this shadow even more impressive. Well, I suppose you've got more flames and nooks and crannies and such. This is true. Yes, yes, yes. But I like that when you put him into the past, you get my favorite thing, the de-familiarization, but it's the young Rosie Palm describing his character without knowing him and going into this detail of, you sound like an officer, you eat well,

you could lose a few pounds, poor thing. You're covered in scars, your legs are tattered from the knees down, so that says watchman, but you're not a watchman from the city. Maybe you're military, but you fight dirty, so you used to fighting for your life in the melee. You don't wear rings, which is footshot, foot soldier. And then the displacement, oh, and you're married. Yeah. You're one of the most married men to ever be married.

I like that. Also, I know we've got Rosie Palm in a little bit, but because he was saying that she was describing Keele, Vimes, I'd just like to say that Vime's description of her is very not early Pratchett. So there is basically nothing about like how good looking she is or anything like that. There was just a couple of context clues as to that the fact she was a seamstress and one that didn't take any shit, whatever. And there's no description of the fact she was very blonde and tanned or red-haired and whatever. And yeah, that was just a moment of me going, oh yeah, we are so far past that now.

Not a hint of thigh rubbing about it. We're looking at the important things about the character, yeah. Jumping back to Vimes, I also like Pratchett uses Vimes as a way to do some of his class warfare and standards bits. And you get it here where he's talking about the fact that you never got your clothes from the pawn shop. Yes. You'd get them at the Shonky shop and sell them at the pawn shop, but you wouldn't get them from the pawn shop.

Yes. What was it at the bottom of the ladder? The rungs are very close together. Yes. I think so, but yeah. Which is similar to the things we've had before, like, too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash. Thank you. I was about to get that backwards. Yeah. Oh, God. Love it. Oh, sorry, Karen. Did you... Well, obviously, I'm assuming you noticed because it's a funny bit, but when he's

as keel, becoming the new Zardin to Arms, insisting on taking the oath and the shilling. Yes, yes. That's a nice parallel to Guards, Guards and Kara joining the watch. Oh, of course. And Kara was kind of shockingly well versed in it and now Vimes is. Yes. Kara read the books and now Vimes has learned all of this from Kara and it's stuck so much that he's taken it back into the past in the old watch. I like that. Oh, I've got... Oh, no, it's all paradox-y. Good. Love it. While also being the least karate-karat.

Yes. I'll put this in here because it doesn't really fit anywhere, but you made me start paying attention to perspective shifts. And I think there was only one point in this section where it's not from Vimes's point of view, unless I missed a bit. And that's when he is walking out after firing one of them. He fires Quirk. Quirk, yes, sorry. And what do you think, Zard, said Coates coming up behind Nock as the sergeant glared at the departing deck? Oh, yeah. And that's the only... I may have missed a bit because I wasn't paying attention because I was too into the plot or something, but I think, and that's interesting.

Yeah, I think that's probably one of the only scenes in the book where we see Vimes from someone else's perspective. I think almost every scene with Vimes is Vimes. We've also got Baby Vimes. Oh, yeah, little Baby Vimes. Precious Baby Vimes. I like him teaching his young self to walk and that's another set up when you consider there's a baby on the way. Oh, yeah, he's teaching. Yeah, he's teaching someone to walk. I didn't think of that as like a metaphor of teaching someone how to walk. Yeah. And he's kind of literally... He's not parenting himself, but he's mentoring himself. And as he's also becoming a father back in the other timeline, you pointed out he's at the dad jokes already. Yeah, I made a note about that bit actually,

but not about that bit. It was Vimes always preferred to walk by himself. And now there were two of him walking by himself. I just thought that was very clever, a little bit of wording, but yeah, ha, fun. But I like his scathing ideas of his younger self. Did I really have the political awareness of a headlouse on the self-preservation instincts of a lemming? Because he's thriving, it's so fun to read, even though he's terrified at the start here. There's a bit where... And I think it's when he's saying the oath actually, he says something about that this probably wasn't a good idea, but he was flying now. I was like, yes, we're in the Vime Zone. He's loving this nonsense. Yeah, I think that's when he's talking himself up to the better pay and the better rank.

It's also fun when you think about the perspective of this young Vimes has got to become these sad Vimes from the beginning of Guards Guards before he becomes these Vimes. And if you wonder how much of it is political disillusionment? Yeah, I mean the... Let's talk about that later in the book. Yeah, because that was going to get really depressing. So, Sibyl. Yeah, that's a future us's problem. Speaking of future us's problem, Sibyl. Lady Sibyl, et cetera. Not quite a lady yet.

Not quite a lady yet. Are you a lady from when you're born, if you are? Yeah, if you inherit the title. Yeah. I believe so. What if your mum's still alive? Oh, maybe not then. I don't know. Listeners, answers on a guilt edged postcard. So posh it's edged.

I mean, as far as the main book goes, you know, she's taken out the action because she's in labour and then also because we've gone back into the past. Yes. But we do briefly get to meet young Sibyl who immediately threatens them with a sword. So, I stand from a young age. Yes, absolutely. Well, Vimes did just knock out the butler as well, I think. Yes. Speaking of the butler. Haha.

Willikins. Willikins. Who is the young boot boy in the past? Yes. But here is being the supportive. He's, when Vimes is starting to wonder how much he should worry about Sibyl and Willikins gives him a look of almost unbutlery concern. Yes.

Yes, that's very cheesy, isn't it? I was like, sir. But with a raised eyebrow. Well, one of Willikins' roles in Sam's life is to help him be posh when he needs to. And so in this, he's sort of having to remind him like, well, it's fine because you have to understand that she is effectively bred for childbirth. Yes. Which I think was actually Sibyl's line from the Fifth Elephant. Yes, probably so, yeah.

Yeah, but if and we've just learned, of course, that Willikins has been with the family since he was a boy. Yes. So he's, yeah, he knows the family that well. We might have learned that already. I don't think we did, though. Well, we've probably killed a guest. He's very entrenched. Casa.

Yeah. What a fucking good villain. Incarceration, am I right? What? Like it's a cognate with a lot of prison connected words. But he's a frightening man. A demon on both shoulders urging him on. It was believable right up until you looked hard into those cheeky smiling eyes

and saw deep down the demons looking back. He's almost tea time again. He's almost tea time, but I think he's got more debts to him. Tea time is fucked up, but with a childish giggle. Whereas Casa has that actually tea time knows that he is guilty. He knows he is doing bad things, but he enjoys doing them. So he does them anyway. Do we think that Casa believes himself innocent?

No, but I think Casa can present that innocence in a way that tea time doesn't. That's true. Tea time is immediately upsetting to anyone who sees him. Fratch has a habit of giving all of his bad guys odd laughs. Yes. We've got the snusne at one point, haven't we? We've got the little giggle from tea time. We've got the haha here from Casa.

Yeah. Yeah. We've got just a, yeah, it's a continuation of maybe a villain he's been building. Yeah. It's an extra depth to them. Yeah, he's just chaos, isn't he? He's dark chaos. Yeah, he's something that Pratchett embraces really well,

which is just what if someone ignores a certain set of rules? Yeah. Yeah. What if somebody says, actually, no, not society. But something I'll dive into more later as well is that Casa works so well as a villain with like zero set up. We have never met this character before. Yeah.

And he's just introduced as like, yes, this is this guy that the watch has been dealing with for ages. It's really fucking stressful. I think because he almost appears as an anti-vime straight away, he's so perfect as a opposite to vimes. As a vimes here is talking quite extensively about the lore and how important it is in the new Warpork. And then Casa is just this embodiment of absolutely no.

What the fuck are you going to do about it? Speaking of, actually, Annotated Pratchett has a sort of quite a nice breakdown about where this book plays with opposite versions of a lot of the characters and name is. Yeah, yeah. And then goes into a bit of Casa is the sort of fucked up version of Jean Valjean. I was going to say Hugh Jackman. 24601.

Is that right? Yes. An anti-Jackman's voice because. And Vime's Shover. Anyway, before I start singing empty chairs on empty tables. We're both trying so hard not to sing them as far as now. Listeners, if I leave that silence in, it's so you can appreciate that fact. We're basically just biting our fists.

The worst bit is, is both of us had at least three different songs from it. We wanted to sing at the same time. Yeah. No, I was going to go in a one day more. Stop it. No, sorry. Stop it. Okay, but it's really appropriate.

I know, but it's not not right now. Next section. Tell me about what we were talking about. John Keel. John Keel. Let's move on to John Keel, who's first introduced as a moss covered headstone with just his name wiped off. Yeah.

Which is a great start to the book considering Vime's has got to go and become him. Yes. And I thought a lovely bit of very cinematic foreshadowing or spoiler-free-ness or something because he says all of the rest of the headstones or the wooden crosses are covered in moss, which doesn't necessarily line up with what we know about the people who visit them every year, but works really well as a fuck who are those crosses. And it makes you think about that even though he could have simply not described them, he could have just said next to the six other crosses,

but he says covered with moss. And I think that's to draw your attention to the fact you don't know who they are. Yes. Apart from the one very clean one. I am the one with a very fresh pile of debt. Good reg. Speaking of reg shoe, who I had to double check the chronology of reg shoe. So we first meet him in Reaper Man.

The chronology of reg shoe. Oh, that's a lovely sentence. Isn't it just, we first met him in Reaper Man, but he was already a zombie at that point before other things stopped dying because he was running, I can't remember the name of the organization, but some kind of zombie support group slash political organization. Yes.

Oh, that's going to annoy me. Actually, it's not. Let's just forget it. Yes. He was the experienced zombie. Yes. He was the experienced zombie. He is still a zombie at the end of Reaper Man.

There was a lot of discussion and various threads from things like Alt Van Pratchett where people were trying to work out was he killed and then was that, was he taken by death at the end of Reaper Man and that was retcons. So I had to get the book out and no, he wasn't. Yeah, no. Because he was going to bug me. Yeah. And he joins the watch in Gingo.

Yes, that's right. Because he turns up and complains so much that he just gets a job. I just think it's quite sweet that he takes care of his own grave and goes back and sleeps there in solidarity. Yeah. Well, it's interesting, I suppose, actually, that we had, we had Red Shoe joining the watch in Gingo, but now we find out that Vimes has known him for a very long time.

Yes. And we'll go more into the story of Red Shoe. I want to briefly shout out Cherry Littlebossom, who's obviously not here for Wedge very long, but when she is, she is just aggressively competent. Yeah. We love a bit of aggressive competency on this podcast. If you're going to be competent, you better be aggressive with it.

Vimes is like, oh, God, no, she'll do it by the book, and then gets here and is like, no, you've sent everyone to the right place, including, and I've sent Colin and Nobby over here. Why? Because he won't go that way. I know you've taken him out for reasons, but kind of contrasting there with the traditional competency of carrot, which is not playing well. It's kind of even more highlights, Cherry's, I think.

Oh, when he's trying to sneak, but you just can't because of his proper carrot-ness. Oh, I found a word today. That, that, thank you. Thank you so much. But no, that applies to this, which is, which is not that one. That means shaped like a cucumber, which is cryptochromism, which is a secret color, camouflage. Incredible.

Yeah, which actually, I think probably makes more sense in the next section. But we're here now and we know about cryptochromism. Let's see if we remember it next week. It was in the Oxta. I was looking for something else and found that. Awesome. We've got Buggy Swires, who we first met, I believe, in Feet of Clay. That sounds right.

But I can't remember when he actually joined the watch, though. Oh, which is something we never mentioned. He was a rat hunter in Feet of Clay, and there was mention of a rat catcher's guild there. So we were discussing. He was made a special constable, and that might have been during Feet of Clay. Yeah, and then maybe it just stuck, and now he's the aerial support and rides a heron. Look at how it all ties together.

What good books these are. It's almost like it's part of the same series. Goodness. But back in the heron now, let's talk about... Well, it's not the heron now. It's in the past we meet young Rosie Parham, which is a really fun fleshing out of a character who's been hanging around in the background of the books for quite a while.

I love young Rosie. Yeah, Mrs. I think not. I love that she takes that as an insult, Sam remembering that this is a very senior honorific in the seamstresses guild. Yeah, I guess it's like calling somebody Madam when they're 16 or something. Sorry. And then alongside her, we've got Miss Batty in this kind of ungrowing joke that she actually does crochet.

Oh, in the sad walrus man. And Rosie getting slightly annoyed, because actually Miss Batty's making quite a lot of money. People like people who can sew. Which also brings just one of my favorite little recurring jokes of what's a tap in the upright? It's a type of jam doughnut. No more needed.

Which also made me really want a jam doughnut. Yes. Miss Batty though, we found a thing about Batty in real life. Batty who commissioned a tapestry. Who was a tapestry artist herself? Yes, commissioned the design from May Morris, daughter of William Morris. Was that the... Yes, that's the one.

May Morris, William Morris's younger daughter, became head of the firm's embroidery department, which he was 23. Clients could order unique one-off pieces designed specifically to meet their own taste and requirements. This is one of the largest hangings May ever designed. It was commissioned by a Mrs. Batty who, like many clients, wanted her family to do the stitching themselves. It is richly decorated with birds, beasts and flowers,

and features the family's coat of arms, as well as 15 mottos, including ye early bird, Getith ye worm. And the living dog is more than the dead lion. Yay! And May Morris also followed her father into the whole socialism thing. So we stand. Good luck, good luck. Yes.

The Batty family were embroidered as if not seamstresses. Yes, we'll link to that in the show notes as well. And then who else? Oh yeah, Dr. Lawn, Mossy Lawn. What a lovely pox doctor he is. Well, yes. Is he the only good doctor we've met? I think he's the best doctor we've met so far that isn't an eagle.

Is he the doctor that fixed up that gnarly? No, because they got doughnut Jimmy the horse doctor. That's it, that's it. There we go. Yes. All right, we have two doctors we would trust in Angkor Pork, Mossy Lawn and Jimmy the horse doctor. Mossy Lawn, who we trust because he trained in clatch

where they have novel ideas like keeping patients alive. Oh, weird. Which fits with, like, obviously history over here where successful medicine developed a lot further in places other than England. Wash your hands. What are you, a foreigner? And we've got Snouty who, not a villain, but gets another weird laugh. He's got his snar.

But I like that that's one of Vime's first big moments of remembrance is, oh, hang on, you're Snouty! Yes. You had this and you never confused your fruit either. Well, that, I must say, was a joke I highlighted in screen-shotted to Joanna. He said, and you're a man who never confuses his fruit. She was like, what the fuck does that mean? Is this another one like I didn't understand what they meant by noses, boots and shoes?

And it is because Snouty asked earlier up page, how do you like them bananas? Quite. Which I just read and accepted, clearly. I prefer how do you like them bananas to how do you like them apples? How do you like them bananas, mister? Anyway, I'm trying not to do literally every character we meet in this who else we've got. We have got Captain Tilden, who I've got quite a bit of sympathy for. A sort of retired military man who's ended up doing this and

considering what a sort of ragtag bunch of misfits the watch is. Thank you. He struggles with it a bit. Yes, he's clearly used to organizing slightly more disciplined regiment. Set to greater store by shiny breastplates and smartness on parade. Indeed. I know, by the way, that you've left out Quirk here. But I'm going to insist that we put him back in because he's a connection.

He was a captain Quirk, his captain of the day watch. Oh, Captain Mayonnaise Quirk, of course he is. So that's another lovely. And then he's punched out by, who is then, Corporal Carrot. Oh, yeah, because there's also a reference of a Gaskin, a Leggy Gaskin or something, who is the watchman whose funeral they've just attended in Guards Guards. Oh, well done. I annotated Pratchett caught that one.

I did not. Very good. Very good. There we go. And of course we've got young Colin as well. Ah, yes. Who is youngish. I know he is young, but he just doesn't come across that way.

Well, he's fairly newly married, I think at this point. He has got a wife. The half-hearted timorousness and lack of imagination. Whereas Quirk had been evil little, suddenly his way and Nock had been Fred's teacher. Yes. Yeah. And I didn't get Nock in either, but he's the nasty guy.

But I do like that when Vime starts talking about promotions and he's got this sort of, ah, look, we're Sargeants. We're doing Sargeanty things together. We're all Sargeants together and, oh, we don't care about anybody kicking anybody else in the natures, do we? No, because we're Sargeants. Sargeanty Sargeant. Oh, God.

That's such a great moment. And then Captain, find the swing. Get your laughing out of the way. Nothing establishes someone as a villain quite so quickly as having them interested in phrenology. Oh, yes. Isn't that a good way to just go, oh. This guy must be cringe.

He's got calipers. Yeah, yes. It even adds to the fact that we already knew he was in charge of some torturous organisation. The fact that he comes in with calipers takes like, oh, no. You've got the eye of a mass murderer. In my pocket. Swing riots, we're a thing.

Oh, yeah. There are so many revolutionary references through this whole thing. They were an uprising in 1830 by agricultural workers. Something I noticed. We say don't let us detain you at the end of our episodes. Something that veterinary says. But find these swings says don't let me detain you. Which I do hope you'll be attempting in the correct cadence at the end of this episode.

Yeah, but I'll fuck it up. Okay. Just I want to lower everyone's expectations now. I think it's safest. But yeah, that's cool. So I know veterinary nicks it off of him, I guess. Well, there was a vacancy. But what a great way to say this one's a little bit fucked up.

Like the calipers and then just say he's got no rhythm to him. It's why he speaks so weirdly. So it reminded me of Edward Death. But he has like the weird kind of pacing, like a speech impediment thing. But this guy is different. It's like a just can't get the rhythm right at all. And he's jerking as well with it. And it's just, yeah, he's clearly slightly offbeat with how people should be.

Like it's, it's a nice physical way of showing that. And again, it's something perhaps it seems to like it's just people who are off, offbeat, literally offbeat. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a really great character detail for setting up a villain. And lastly, so exciting to see him again. Lutze is here.

Oh, lousy. Lousy. Sweeper. Yes. He introduced himself as the sweeper to Vimes when he takes him out of time. One curiosity I've got, and we'll talk later about the storms and the fact that this is in theory happening literally in conjunction with Thief of Time, but then trying to work out Lutze's specific chronology of so did he go and finish all

the events of Thief of Time and then come back to history to fix this bit? Yes. I think so. Yeah. Which aspect? Yeah. Yeah. There must be a few.

This must be one of the very tricky bits that A, require someone with a bit of expertise to fix and B, require in Lutze's view somebody who cares enough to fix it in a way that Vimes will not just be kicked into the collateral damage gutter. But it's nice to see Lutze again. Yes. It's nice to have that direct continuation considering. I mean, well, obviously we'd met him before Thief of Time because he's in small gods. Yeah, but this is the...

And side note that I enjoy that Q's way of settling in in the same place is to go 10,000 years back in the past and hang out with the hippos that used to actually live in the river Inc. and are now just on the crest. Absolutely. I like the idea you just put a zen garden into a more pork and it immediately adopts a certain amount of cat book doings and cigarette butts and it becomes part of the picture. Yeah. Ah, but somebody throw a bottle in.

Which is a nice punch line. And then locations. So we go to the cemetery of small gods. We do. Described as among the city's bone orchards, the cemetery was the equivalent of the draw marked Misk. Fantastic. Bone orchards.

I missed that. And at the cemetery of small gods, we of course have the comic grave dinner, digger, legitimate first. Is that...? It's from Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1. Oh, okay, okay. When Hamlet walks through the church yard, the scene traditionally starts with two clowns and then one of the clowns leaves, but there's a second clown there who's singing and digging

graves while Hamlet is walking through with a ratio. Got it. And starts throwing skulls at them, which is when Hamlet picks one up and says, Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, a ratio. So I have a question about legitimate first. Other than is the comic grave dinner...? Yeah. Christ, let's try that sentence again.

Good, yes. Is the comic grave digger a thing? Yes, it is. It's from Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1. Other question. So his name is shortened to Leggy, but his name is legitimate. Should it be Leggy? Oh, Leggy and Reggie.

I'm going with Leggy. I think he's Leggy first. Well, Leggy. Good old Leggy. Yes. Okay, yeah, let's go with that. Also, this, I feel like, is a recurring joke in a slightly different form, but I can't think of the original one.

There's another, and I think it's a lanker child or adult, but he said, you can't blame a mother for being proud. And there's a child called something like legitimate. I think you might be right. I think we have had a joke along these lines before. But now we have two lines for it. Yes. And then, obviously, we go to lots of places.

We see the original Trickle Mine road watch house, which we last saw in Guards, Guards. Unfortunately, it got destroyed a bit by a dragon. Well, you know. So, it's nice to revisit it here. Yeah, no, I'd forgotten that bit, actually. Yeah, so the extra bonus for Sam. Yeah.

Yeah, going back to his old stomping ground and then some. Yeah. There's also a mention of, and we go to- I'm calling him Sam now. I really am getting a bit, sorry. The Cable Street watch house, the home of the Cable Street particulars. We have where find these swing, he's doing his fucked up things. And this is another reference.

This is a reference to the Battle of Cable Street. Yes. Which was Oswald Mosley leading the British Union of Fascists on a march through the East End and. Getting soundly battered. Well, there was people complaining to the Home Secretary about it happening. So, the Home Secretary went, oh, well, then in that case, the Fascists need police protection.

So, the soundly battered was anti-fascists versus fascists and police. Yes. In one of the East End's best moments. Yes. Thank you, East End. Cool. So, little bits we liked. What do we like?

What little bits have we got in store for us? You're a fan of the Sammys. I'm a fan of the Sammys. That's a nice little reference. So, Bobbys, English slang for police. And that refers to Home Secretary is Sir Robert Peel, who set up the Metropolitan Police,

which was the first proper police force to replace the kind of mixture of night watchmen, local constables, and occasional military intervention. And similar forces were set up across England in its wake. And on this world, Sammys, they were called even in town, that had never heard of Sam Bhimes. He was just a little proud of that. Sammys meant watchmen who could think without the lips moving, who didn't take bribes much,

and were on the whole trustworthy for a given value of trust, at least. So, perhaps a sunnier view of a Sammys than we might have of a Bobby. And they also used to be called Peelers. You still know what you mean if someone says Peelers, but it's kind of archaic, or possibly just a bit more regional. But yeah, Robert Peel. Not one of the worst people who did policemen stuff. The Marslow.

I try. So, trying to not go full A curve right now. We're still going to hold back together. Not what we've got so much to do, yes. Yes. Treacle mines is next, isn't it? Yes. So, we've heard about treacle mines briefly before,

and I think we speculated or said something about it before as well. So, in this one, we go into it in a bit more depth. In practice, they thought of it as junk that was too heavy to cut away. It was part of the winding gear from a treacle mine, long since abandoned. And there's a finds remembered as a kid begging chippings of pig treacle off the miners. One lump of that oozing the sweetness of prehistoric sugarcane could keep a boy's mouth happily shut for a week.

And as it explains in a footnote, and as I think we looked at in the fifth elephant. That sounds right. Ancient sweds of natural sugarcane can become what in various parts of the disc is known as hokey pokey, pigs treacle, or rock molasses. And I listened this week, or re-listened to, but I think it must have been a long time since I first listened to it,

a conversation between Jacqueline Simpson, who is Pratchett's co-author of The Folklore of Discworld, and Pratchett himself, which were recorded in 2010 by the Folklore Society and are an absolute delight, 100 out of 100. Everyone should listen to it. I will link it in those transcripts too. And part of that conversation was Pratchett talking about how he'd heard of the concept of treacle mines,

which is rather pleasing Jacqueline Simpson says. Now, you know about treacle mines too, don't you, Terry? Terry, my father, every time he used to drive past Bisham, which is near Marlowe on the Thames, he pointed out treacle mines to me. Perhaps, like all good folklore, it's tantalizingly reasonable. One can imagine treacle mines. I mean, you know, the pit head and all the rest of it,

and the guy getting sticky money, and their wives having to scrub them down in the evening. It's so easy to go from that point. If you have an imagination, you want it to be true. Beautiful. So that's nice. That's something that's been slowly marinating or... Percolating.

Boiling in his mind for many a year, which I thought was charming. And I do love the idea of a treacle mine. That's fun. Yes. No, that brings me great joy. I enjoy imagining it. There is a great moment when detritus fires the warning shot. Ah.

It was a sound like a swarm of hellish bees, and then a crash of tiles and masonry. Pieces of tile raided down into the square. An entire chimney, still with a wisp of smoke coming from it, smashed down a few yards from where Vines was standing. I feel like this is the kind of outdoor explosive equivalent of the single plate rolling past. Yes.

The architectural single plate is an entire chimney. Still smoking. Yeah. Or the boots still being there after someone's being blown out of them, which I think we had in the light. Fantastic. Yes. Another bit of light.

We were discussing during Amazing Morris how Quoth learned to speak, and here we learn that the Tower of Art has a subset of stalking ravens. Yes, yes, yes. Hundreds of generations of living in a highly charged magical environment have raised the intelligent level of what have been bright creatures to begin with. But although they were intelligent, they weren't hugely clever. And these are the ravens watching,

while Buggy's trying to watch through his telescope, and I say, what's happening, Mr? It sounds like Quoth was the cleverest of the lot, got sick of them. But it got a job. Flew off with a, you know, a handkerchief tied on a stick. Somehow. Maybe in his beak. Yep, I think that works.

Or perched amongst his tail feathers. Yeah. A clutch in his claws, that's how ravens carry. Oh, that would make a lot more sense than either of the things we said. Just forgot Raven said claws for a minute, didn't we? Let's move on from there. I don't know a lot about falconry, relatively. So epic storm descriptions, Joanna, you've become the weather

human today. Well, we do like the big weather bits, don't we? We do, we do. There's a couple of beautiful moments in this, as the storm comes sweeping the other blinds. Thunder rolled. It was the roll of a giant iron cube down the stairways of the gods, a crackling, thudding crash that tore the sky in half and shook the building.

Be good. The way he uses it to build up the anticipation as well. It's this hot, sunny day, but you can see the storm. You know that moment where you can see the storm coming, but you're still stood in the sun. Yes, yes, yes, because that's my favorite thing in the world. I must have talked about this when we talked about the reef and man cover. Dark sky, something golden.

So the sunlight and then stood the dark sky of the storm. My favorite aesthetic. I love it. That was another one. Thunder rumbled again. The sky wasn't just storm black now. There were pinks and purples in the clouds as though they were bruised. The clouds moving like snakes in a sack to an endless sullen rumbling.

And it's not just the storm coming while it's sunny, but it's the storm is coming and you can hear it coming. Yes. Yeah. And again, it's very evocative. Again, like we've talked about before with the weather being the kind of anchoring thing that we can all imagine that brings us into the moment. That is very much one of those, I think.

Going back to your quote earlier as well, we were talking about the little moments of electricity sparking across the armor and the iron roof as Casar says he's got his third knife. Yeah. Ah, yeah. A little later on, the one with the thing I probably highlighted actually, so I'm glad you got the storms, was when it was so very early in the morning that late at night wasn't quite over.

White mist hung everywhere in the streets and deposited droplets like tiny pearls on vines as sure as he prepared to break the law. Oh, that's a good line. There's dressing him in riches that he gets ready to not smash his way into the watch house, but thump the window in such a way. Which is a nice bit I didn't mention of should I teach young Sam this every coppish in order to break into his own nick. Yeah, yeah.

Is that going to be useful for him now more harm than good? But doing it at the storm brings me neatly to my big talking point, which is part of why this book is so good is that it's building on so much continuity. And the storm is a really good example. Like one of the big storm moments, the viewpoint now as well, is one of the things that happens in this huge magical storm is it strikes the clockmakers and all of the clocks stop. Now, I wonder what would happen if that happened.

This isn't just any storm. This is all happening during the storm from thief of time. Yeah, we didn't think about what was going on with everyone else. No, because everything was stopped. Except when it started again, obviously some things didn't. Yes. Very cool and very good. I think we can both agree there.

Yes, the moment, I think because I don't think I've ever read them so close in succession. No, I'm not sure I've ever had the moment to go, when I read the line and it hit the clockmaker shop. And I do wish we'd been able to do this. So we went straight from thief of time into night watch. Like I considered moving our chronology around a bit to do that and then realised that that was getting silly. Yeah, no, no, this is, it's close enough, I think.

But it is worth, listeners, consult our page numbers from thief of time. But section two ended with the lightning hitting. Yes, time stopped. That's the last. Yes. It's worth going back and reading that passage and kind of looking at how that goes into this. It's really fun. But that's why I was asking about like Lutze's chronology,

because obviously then he goes and resolves all the events of thief of time. And then this is obviously part of the cleanup. Yeah. And in small gods, he's doing that as well as nice. Fucking about somewhere nearby. Yes, very much so. It's a, yeah, continuity. I mean, just a side note of, because I'm trying not to have this talking point just be,

this is a really good book, but this is a really good book. And we haven't mentioned yet how good the fucking opening line is. Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the screen, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it. Yeah. But there's so many beautiful little things you have, like I said, some setup and power for later on, when Nobby's talking about getting his first spoon

and Dibla's talking about selling his first pie. Yeah. Just so much built on the earlier watch books. And so you talked about the Sammys, but the whole growth of the watch, the fact that the watch has now started to spread out to the other cities, and the clacks have helped. Mm-hmm. The part of going through the revolution of communication,

which was obviously such a huge plot point in the Fifth Elephant. Yes. Yeah. And again, this is all quite quick succession, but. It's become so commonplace that it's created a whole version of communication. And well, it already existed in Fifth Elephants. They were talking about using the clacks as opposite, weren't they? Right.

Yes, yes, yes. But seeing it develop here. And then it also has so much to pull from other books to create this incredible narrative. You have bringing back the trousers of time, which have come up over and over again. And so Samm talks about it. He talked about it with the wizards. They talked about how things can have gone differently,

and they use it to set up the 25th of May and to build urgency into the book. Mm-hmm. You have Lutze talking about vimes even ended up looking like keel with the eye patch. Is it narrative causality or historical imperative? And you know how I feel about narrative causality. Well, you know how I feel about historical imperative. Quite so. But that is two things.

Because Lutze then says something about the Abbott telling him on absolutely no uncertain terms to not get involved in this at all, but historical imperative will win. And that's like such a good shorthand that if you haven't read Thief of Time, that still works. I think I probably read this before I read Thief of Time. Oh yeah, hard call for me, but probably so. Yeah. But it still works as a joke. But when you've read Thief of Time and have all the context of how the Abbott and Lutze

interact, it's even better. Some of the moments with like Fred and Nobby at the beginning again, you were saying like the foreshadowing. A, I like the little moments of who's putting the sprig in to say like who we're going to see again later. And also the fact that Nobby and Cullen react so emotionally to something, when that's not really how they act, well apart from when Cullen gets the sugar cube stolen, of course.

It is weird. And poor Constable Ping, who doesn't know what he's asking. And uncharacteristic suicidal urge or whatever it was. And this whole idea, yeah, well, the lilac is such a good example of it. So we have Karsa as a villain established like right at the beginning. In an older Discworld book, in an older watch book, Karsa would have been built through the book. Think about how Edward gets built up, not a watch book, but how Tea Time gets built up.

Or although he's an antagonist of a different shape. I think he's a villain from the beginning. Oh yeah, he's a villain from the beginning, but our experiences with him are slowly built across the book before we see him come into any conflict with our protagonist. Yes, yes, yes. Whereas here, it just says at the beginning, this guy's bad and everyone's ready to arrest him. This guy's bad. He's murdered a watchman.

He has drawn Sam Bynes away from something that we've just established is important enough for him to wear his stupid fucking uniform that he doesn't want to wear. And that he is acknowledged is very important. But straight away, the idea of him going that has been thrown. And Vettnari agrees and has just sent them away. But you don't need the build up. So instead, the story gets to build up other things like what happened on the 25th of May and the lilac.

And Sam seeing it and it's associated with the memory is growing in the graveyard. Ping asks if he should wear it. And Conan and Nobby very much confront him with, do you know why? Because if you don't know, then you don't need to know. And it's mentioned on how it how it gets everywhere. You don't plant it. It just whips up everywhere. You know, you can't ignore it.

It's just there. It's a memory kind of allegory. And this time we maybe mean it. And Vettnari wearing it as well, which establishes that it's not just a watchman thing. Yes. Hints. Clues. Clues.

And it's building a mystery as it was, or at least, hey, you don't know everything that happens yet with that rather than with Carcer because you can just put Carcer in and say, yeah, look, it's a bastard. Intrigue. It's building intrigue. Yes, that's the thing. And it also, so we've talked about the fact that obviously the chronology of the disc is fucky, the chronology of Ankh-Morpok is fucky, Ankh-Morpok is very differently sized and shaped

back in colour and magic to how it is now. It acknowledges that the wizards are preridically and therefore behave very differently. These are the backstabby, dead man's shoes wizards when Vines is talking about approaching them for help. And we're going back about 30 years, I'm guessing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

But not quite as far back maybe as Rincewin's tour around the Horpies. So much beige. And also a lot of pink. No, pink, sorry, pink. So much pink. Yeah. But then we... Sorry.

Well, we also get the establishing the political state pre-Vettnari. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say like the fact that everything changes so dramatically in 30 years kind of underlines how effective Vettnari's been. Exactly. Even the sort of spell though. Yeah.

Lord Winder, Winder. I've been saying Winder. I think Winder works. Yeah. Who's insane, everyone thinks Snapcase is going to be better. Yes, Snapcase, that sounds like a sane name, doesn't it? Absolutely. You've got young Sam Vines breaking down the political situation with his own

insurgency around it and bearing in mind, like I said, the watch does not go from Vines goes back to be John Keel and therefore the watch becomes what the watch is now in the books. The watch still has to go through the three, four-man operation is during guards' guards. Yes. And Tricolmine Road burning down before it can get to the watch of the Fifth Elephant or the Early Night Watch. Yeah. And I mean, if you think about like the watch that's described at the start of

which is the first one? Sorry, guards' guards, isn't it? Or men at arms? Yeah, guards' guards is the first one. Yeah, yeah. When Carrot turns up, I mean Carrot's a massive catalyst for a lot of that change. There seems to be a lot of stagnation, but maybe the stagnation is better than the downward spiral it would have been.

There's a lot of stuff with, as we mentioned earlier, the day watch and Mayonnaise Quirk. So seeing this version of it and Young Vines having doing his political breakdown and with his unsurety of, well, it didn't feel right to go and break up a group of people for talking. Yeah. Yeah. And we uploaded some of them into the hurry up and took them to a table screen. So just for talking and, oh, that's right. Mrs. Elsley Boy Elson never came home and now they're looking at me funny.

Yeah. And that is something we don't have to explore further, really. Because when we find out, well, we know already by this point, some of it spelled out a bit more later. But what we've just found out, essentially, is that Young Sam Vines has realizing he has sent somebody to be tortured to death. Yeah. And that's something people probably come to terms with in quite a negative way

over the next couple of years, I'm guessing, as the immediacy of this page. He out and out says, and older Vines points, it's a good summary of the situation. Everyone knows Cable Street particulars torture people. Why don't you do anything about it? Because they torture people. Yeah. I've read like so many sort of weird totalitarian state narratives since I read this book for the first time, because that became a very popular genre.

And I started reading a lot of that stuff. But the insidious totalitarianism in this book is really quite well done and quite scarily done. It's because it's realistic. Yeah. You know, it's not gone full hunger games. You can't imagine the hunger games, I've just gone straight for YA, of course, style totalitarian government emerging in the next 30 years.

You can imagine, perhaps it's stretching the imagination a bit, but within our lifetimes, things deteriorating to this level. You can imagine the V for Vendetta levels of totalitarianism. Yeah. And this is kind of that. Yeah. This is at that point. Except less techy.

But it also works because, yeah, it's a fantasy story, but because we have the modern day Angkmoorpork to compare it to. Yeah. Actually, do you know what? I'm going to backpedal a bit there. I wonder if it's not quite as to... It's a bit more of a laissez-faire capitalist style totalitarianism than V for Vendetta. It's not very 1984.

It's more just this is the kind of oppression that happens when you run everything for short-term gain. Yeah. I can totally see that. Something else that's interesting is there's something of a guild system. Yes. Oh, yeah. Kinda. Yeah.

But it's not the veterinary guild system. Pro-tech. Yeah. This is more... This is more our style, organized crime. Yeah. Our style. Us being in charge of the local organized crime syndicate.

No, I mean, round world. Yes. Francine and I are not mobsters. We don't have time. One other thing before we dive into your point, that doesn't totally fit, but just the writing has grown to the point where Pratchett can be like incredibly poetic in this in a way he never would have done in an earlier book, especially in earlier watchbook.

Like when the poetry turns up, it's often in witches books and things. But here you've got lines like, it went with the lilac sentence song forever. What happened to the days when it was also simple faded like the lilac. Vimes when he's missing his cigar case. He felt for a moment more anger than despair and more sorrow than anger. Like they're just beautiful poetic lines. They are.

There's some of that in the earlier watchbooks. But it's not every other page like it is here. Yeah. Yeah. Like those are just a few examples. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It does all... Yeah. Some of it's like... Keatsy, isn't it? It's like... Yeah.

It's very romantic in the classic literature sense of the world, not... Yeah. ...gooey hearts. That was a horrible phrase. And within that he builds a refrain into the book of you do the job that's in front of you. As well as the very obvious refrain of a certain song. He keeps remembering of how did they rise up. And the job that's in front of you is a very ambiguous, ambivalent term.

It can mean it can go by the way, can't it? So it can be you do the job that's in front of you like Young Vimes did. Yeah. You do the job you're told to do. And then you realize that actually maybe that's not the job that should be in front of me. Oh, there's not the job I need to do. Yes. And that's what the older Vimes is doing.

Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, what a good book. Absolutely a good book. So speaking of the fact that we've got Monday and Warpork to compare all of this to, and we're looking at the political situation, time travel, Francine. Let's talk about that. Yeah. So we've talked about kind of the time travel tropes and everything before and the paradoxes.

So we don't really need to go all over all that, apart from to acknowledge that I like the way that he's done it here. I like the mixture of the kind of technical-ish, sci-fi-ish explaining what's going on through the comedy of Luke Sagan. That's a very good lie. And, you know, little hints of quantum, little soupsant of quantum, little sprinkle. Can you sprinkle quantum or is it too strange? No one explained to me whether or not you can sprinkle quantum.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. But we also get kind of nod to the more traditional time travel stuff. There's one bit I hate, but I don't hate because it's badly done. I hate because I hate thinking about it. The afterwards, well, there will be a you as much you as you are now. So who can say it's not you?

This meeting will be a sort of loop in time. In one sense, it will never end. The idea of a version of me being like pruned off like a cutting from a plant and having to live in this loop, I hate that. Yeah, no, it's so funny. I hate that idea. I will say. Oh, sorry.

Yeah. No, I just I can't remember if we talked about it in thief of time or not. But my favorite, this is how the paradoxes are dealt with in time travel is from lost where one guy's just like, whatever happened, happened, whatever happens, happens. That's it. Yeah. And that's pretty much what we're doing here. Exactly.

We've added a bit more of a, I'll tell you what, it's a cleverly done version of the annoying trope of you're here for a reason. Like your ghost is here for a reason. You've got unfinished business. It's like, you do have unfinished business, but that's because this accident created that unfinished business. Yeah. And now you need to do it because we've not got room for you back in the proper timeline.

Until we sort of fix this timeline. Offered in the profit. Yeah. Plus narrative causality. Yes. And historical imperative. And historical imperative. Name a more iconic duo.

Wow, we haven't even said the two genders. We're taking this so seriously. But speaking of taking it seriously, segueing within my own monologue, very good. I think that the beauty of the time travel stuff here is the way it's used to create strength of emotion and terror and tension and relatability. So the situation that he's in throughout this, there's always some kind of physical peril, obviously. Yeah.

So from the beginning, he's in a dangerous time. He is going through dangerous places. It's nighttime. He's getting mugged. He's getting castes around. There's obviously stuff that happens later that's extremely violent, dangerous. All of that. You've also got this underlying, I want to go home, says Vimes.

And when he can't find his cigar case, he has a, I think it was phrased, a twist of terror, which is oof. Yeah, oof. There had to be, there was a future there had to be. He remembered it, but it only existed as that memory. And that was as fragile as the reflection on a soap bubble. And maybe just as easily popped. So just this existential fear that Vimes is having to work through.

At the same time, it's kind of working through his emotions about the fact that he's kind of loving this. Yeah. But at the same time, his wife's at home giving birth and it's taking longer than maybe he thought it would. And that's concerning, obviously. And also he's in the wrong decade. And is, does Sybil still exist?

Is this, and he's just managing to shut all that off, but you just got these little flashes through of the existential terror. And that's great. Yeah. And at the same time, he's managed to make it this kind of oddly relatable scenario. And I mean, relatable in a kind of daydreamy way. So when he says that, it's something like it was all coming back to him in a great wave. This was Triclamine Road.

This was his first watch house. This was where it all began. If you imagine like being catapulted back to somewhere, you knew so well. And being put back. It's a kind of intense nostalgia that feels, it makes you feel a certain way. It's like visiting your old school. Yes. Yes.

But like as an adult, which is admittedly not something I've really done, but. No, so I tried to kind of get a taste of this recently and I got a taste of it, but it wasn't as strong as I'd hoped in a way. So when I was in the Midlands recently for work, I went back to my old hometown, where I lived when I was very little. I haven't been back since I was seven years old. And I got, I walked around and I kind of knew where I was, but not really. And I kind of knew some of the landmarks.

And I just had those little flashes of this is the first time I've seen this in a long time. Yeah. And that nice, but weird, like a little twist of emotion. I'm just going to nick practice words here because obviously it's better at it than me. Yeah, I'm not doing a very good job explaining this, but I'm hoping I don't need to because people will know what I mean. Yeah. And it's very nicely done.

It made me think, actually, I just wondered, like, do you, do you have any idea of where you would be catapulted back to if you were accidentally? As I, as I assume, honestly, Joanna, you might be one day catapulted back in time through a magical storm while you were balancing precariously on top of a glass dome on top of a library. Like, okay, so I feel like if we're trying to match it to something that happens in the book, there are certain parameters and it needs to be a place that is important to me, where I would potentially be, and potentially with some sort of conflict or things about here.

Yeah. Or certainly something that's going to happen that could change either way, change everything other way. Yeah. So I was thinking something like the pub where I had my first pub job, but like the approach of Christmas fair weekend, which for context, there used to be a huge Christmas market in our town that was always like, if you worked in hospitality, it was hell.

Like it was, it was three days of solid hell. Like just orders would start coming in when the place opened, orders would not stop until it closed at night. All right, cool. So if we're putting you back in this situation, do you reckon you could mentor your young self through this? Well, I'm going to assume here that we've accidentally killed your actual mentor, if there was one.

I don't think I could mentor my young self not because I'm not capable of mentoring, because my young self was a dickhead who would not have fucking listened. Well, actually, I suppose we're not trying to go for the best possible outcome here, are we? The point is, we're trying to make sure there's a U-shaped hole in the future to drop you back into. So we do kind of need to fill that mentor's role in a certain way. We need to be able to teach you to deal with the kitchen in a way that doesn't make you just

quit this job immediately, I suppose, would be the conflict here, wouldn't it? Yeah, so again, I couldn't do it because I'd just be like, no, anything else, get out, stop it. No, too protective of yourself, yeah. Or I'd try and get myself to be better at my job than I was then, and then I would have maybe risen in ranks in kitchens faster, and that would have been worse. How weird do you think it would be just to be sent back 15 years? Yeah, 15 years, but in the same town.

It would be so weird. Like when you think back, you don't imagine everything looking like forever ago, but it would be. Yeah, the cars would look weird. We're kind of on the verge of some big changes there as well, aren't we? Not everyone has a smartphone, not everyone. Yeah, the phones, I think I had my first smartphone when I was a teenager, but if you think like 20 years wouldn't have had smartphones, we would have had like flip phones or Nokia 3310.

But imagining a scenario then, you get what I mean about that weird conflict of, oh, that makes me feel away. Yeah, well, so like a few years ago, some friends of ours got married and then had their wedding reception in the crypt, which is like a function hall thing attached to our local Catholic Church, and our local Catholic Church is attached to the local Catholic primary school, so I went to that school, I went to that church, I went to like after school clubs and things in that crypt, but it was also, it wasn't like a crypt, but it was like the building and stuff underneath the church. I had my first day of communion there, but it was also,

we have my father's funeral there and the wake in that crypt downstairs, and the wedding happened to fall on the anniversary of my father passing away, which the wedding room were really lovely about the fact that I was A, working and showing up late, and B, going to turn up and immediately chug a pint of gin. Yeah, I'm so glad I didn't need to go into the church because I haven't been into that church for many years and I'm not sure I can go on holy ground anymore, but walking into the crypt was like a gut punch of nostalgia. And not necessarily bad or good, just an emotion.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, yes, that's it. It's such a, I wonder if that emotion is, it's just because it's all the different emotions mixed up into one, it's like when you perfectly mix colours and it comes out grey. It's like walking into somewhere you haven't been for 20 years and knowing exactly where the loo is. Yes. Yeah, where would you go if you were castrated back in time by a magical storm? Yes, I don't know. I don't want to go back to anywhere, really. I'm going to have to be a child, I think.

To try and make any positive impact at all. That's fair, I respect that. I think school, yeah, I think middle school, I hated it, absolutely despised it. So this is why I've kind of not wanted to play the game in my mind even, but I think... I mean, you don't have to answer, you can just leave it as... No, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think middle school because there were, like, I'm going back far enough that it would be very cool to be able to walk around the familiar ground in the olden days.

Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, and I think I could make probably a positive difference in my life when I was 12. Again, I shouldn't be, and that's not the point, is it? I should be trying to make the same things happen, but you couldn't, could you? No, that was what I was struggling with. Yeah. Like, if I went back in time, I would want to try and make my life better for myself, and the only reason it wouldn't happen is that I know my past self is a stubborn little cow

that won't listen. I know. Because I am a stubborn little cow that won't listen. Yeah, and this, of course, this exact question or this conflict we're having with ourselves now comes up later in the book. Yes, it does. Where Sam Vimes has to make a choice of whether he creates the right size for himself or whether he does, what he knows is correct.

Yeah, which is a hell of a question, which we will get to. What's your anchor object? I've really struggled with that one, because I know I have a lot of things in my house, but I am not strictly an incredibly sentimental person, and I have very few things that are very important to me that I carry around a lot of the time. So, the two answers I could think of were my phone, because honestly, my entire fucking life's on it, and I'm very attached to it. Yeah, and it would be a really good object.

Like, it seems like a kind of shallow thing, but it's not. It's got photographs on it, and it's a reminder that the future exists. Yes. You wouldn't be able to connect to the internet on it, but it's a, you know, no one makes a weird black rectangle glass thing. Exactly. There's a use for it. Oh, man, you're not going to have a charger.

Sorry, no. The other thing is that, for Christmas, my little nephew with my big sister's help made me a little friendship bracelet in red and black, and that's sort of joined my having around with me or popping in my handbag. So, maybe that, because that's a nice little thing. What about you? Do you have an anchor object? Probably my engagement wedding ring.

So, I'm going similar to soundbites here, really. It's just something that I always, like, I very much feel when I'm not going to the morning if I take them off a gardening and whatever, and obviously, they're a physical reminder of the fact I should be attempting to get back to my loving husband and tiny little monster dog. Yes. Yes, I suppose I'd be trying to get back to you, my darling co-host. Thank you, darling.

So, I guess my spinsel work. Which is of course the group chat, is there? Yeah, exactly. The group chat. Oh, look at you. You'd be sitting at the back of Willys before it closed, scrolling through the memes. Oh, God, no, yeah. You were so even.

You would have sent me back to a fixed point in time. You'd send me back to Woolworths at 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning, front or back, because we started a minute at the front and then we came cool and met a bit back at Willys. We went and bought a lot of energy drinks and sweets and then listened to music played on someone's tinny phone speaker. Yeah, absolutely. Had my first kiss back there.

I definitely kissed someone back there. All right, okay, we've gone way off topic. We've been talking for, I don't know, two hours. Have you gotten a pure scare reference finial, Francine, or a conclusion? Well, one of the two, certainly. So anyway, the obscure reference finial is Mr. Sal...

Oh, fuck. How did I decide I was saying that? Solciferous. Mr. Solciferous, who Mr. Lawn is treating right up until he bursts. And I looked up the word solciferous and one of the annotation sites, this is thediscworld.fandom.com, reckons that Mr. Solciferous's names to play on calciferous, a gland in earthworms.

A gland in earthworms, is it? Calciferous means, like, da, calcium-y. Yeah, that's what I thought. But anyway, what I reckoned, because I found it in a couple of very old books, is that it means salty. It's a very archaic word for salty and I'm not sure why. I suppose a salt... Does a salted slug explode?

Is that what happens to it? No, it melts, doesn't it? All right, I reckon it's just a word he saw and liked in you. Salt makes you bloat, though. Yeah, that'll be it. Yeah, there we go. No, I think I reckon it's just a word he saw and liked in the Pratchettian way, if that's a fun name.

Yes, I love it. Solciferous, yeah. Very archaic word, we're bringing it back. All right, mate, don't be solciferous about it. So yeah, we're bringing it back, it's my new drag name. Noice. Mr. Solciferous. That is a very nice short one, because all of the other obscure reference finials

are going to fit into there when we're talking about horrible bloody revolutions. Yes, right. So that was part one of our discussion of Nightwatch. I'm not going to say that's everything we could say, because again... Obviously, it's not. We've just had to physically restrain ourselves. We'll be back next week with part two. I can't tell you, I can tell you where it starts,

which is on page 163 with the Beast of Remembers, this time Vimee Slap Soundly. However, we decided before we began recording today, that Nightwatch is now going to be four episodes. Because... Because there's just so much. Come on, guys. Come on. You understand.

Yeah, you see what's happened here. Yeah. You still have a lot. This is long. I don't know how long I'm going to edit this down to, but right now we've been going for nearly two and a half hours, and there's not a lot I want to trim out of it. So this is going to be a four-episode discussion of this book.

Hopefully, by the time this episode comes out, I will have put when the next section ends in the show notes, if not, keep an eye out on Twitter in various places. Speaking of... If, until next week, you would like to contact us, you can follow us on Instagram at trueshermakeyfret, on Twitter at makeyfretpod, on Facebook at the trueshermakeyfret. Join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f.

Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, and counter-revolutionaries at the trueshermakeyfretpod at gmail.com. And if you would like to support us financially, you can go to patreon.com forward slash the trueshermakeyfret and exchange your hard-end pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense, including the belated December rabbit hole about talking cats. And the uncut video versions of these episodes, which this time includes both of us physically kind of going,

oh no, I'm not going to keep talking, which is always fun. And spoilers for the rest of the book, but like the flailing started lads. Yeah. And until next time, dear listener. Don't let us detain you. Pah, past the buck. Yeah, I thought it was your turn.