The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 104: Night Watch Pt. 3 (The Frilly Shirt of the Revolutionary)

Episode Date: January 23, 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 3 of our recap of “Night Watch”. Spoons! Angels! Awkwardly Dancing Around the Bleak Bit!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:Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke - Der Panther - with english translation  Behind the Bastards: Elite Panic: Why The Rich And Powerful Can't Be Trusted - Apple Podcasts [I hugely, hugely recommend this episode. - F]Floodlines - The Atlantic The Way of Mrs. Cosmopilite - Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki Phenology | Definition & Examples - Britannica Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

I was trying to think of a fun Shakespeare character to do panic. The last point, Yorick. When shall we three-metre again? Dunder? Lightning? In vain? Come now, un-sex me here, fuck! Oof. All right, this bodes well. Good boating. Oh, holy shit. So I still do the New York Times crossword every day,

but there's like a little ask-all called Wordplay that goes with it, which also has explanations on the trickier clues. So I'll go to that ask-all if I'm stuck, because it gives me a couple of answers. But I ended up reading the comments today. There's also like a set of notes from the constructor. And so in the crossword spoilers for Saturday's New York Times crossword puzzle, but Shabbat Shalom was one of the answers. And the constructor did like a whole little bit with lots of Yiddish in his constructor notes.

And then the antisemitism was there in the comments. Jesus, really? God, don't the constructors... I know everyone who works at the New York Times is Jewish, but don't they think about the fact that the people doing the crossword might not be? Oh, my God, what? I know.

I was just like in like little French bits all the time. Also not being funny, but like there was only one like Yiddish answer. It was it was more complaining about the Yiddish and the construction. So I'm not being funny. But I recognize I recognize most of those phrases as well, because I don't know, watch a lot of television. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I know what Ove means.

Yeah. Wow. It was just such a weirdly vitriolic comment over such a non-issue. Yeah. It was very like this has not been designed for me specifically. How dare you? People don't like being stupid. All right, well, don't be fucking stupid then. Agreed.

I went off the deep end on Twitter last night or just last night. I retweeted the screenshot of somebody who is a bar worker and had screenshot of a review someone left being all arsed because well, I read a bit out the girl working at the front wouldn't let us change the music and was playing hard rock, which no one wanted to listen to. I asked if I could request a song to which she said no. And then I asked if I could play a different genre brackets

because she was playing weird rock music. She said no. And I asked about changing the genre to which she said, I've been working 12 hours. So no, if I'm a patron at this bar, I expect to be able to listen to the music my group wants, especially when the entire bar is empty. Come on, liked out name and hire better workers and the fuck off.

I know. And the worker like tweeted it like lol. And there's so many salty men in the comments. As it turned out, I was wrong with my retweet because I quote, featured it and said something like, men just cannot stand reading about another man being told no. And it was a girl apparently. And her mates had done it in the first place,

but all of the shit replies are men. So I think they made the same mistake as me. The world is not entirely got to be perfectly designed for you. Like if you don't like the music in a bar, you aren't obligated to drink there. No, exactly. The men in these replies, you're not getting a tip by the way,

you're there to serve customers, not the other way around. Got to balance your ego and pay. They're also patronizing ego and patience with your job. Same as they don't have to go there. The company doesn't have to employ you. Oh my fucking god. Like just so many of these. Ah, it's the fucking horrific sense of entitlement

that completely forgets that the person that you're saying, you have to cater to my every whim and you have to change the music suit me or you don't get a tip and you shouldn't be employed. Is a fucking human being who has to be in that place constantly. Like allow them something that makes their thing more bearable. Yeah. And honestly, even they're wrong as well. That's not normal customer service.

No, I don't think it is in America either, but it certainly isn't in in the UK. Like if we were working behind the bar and someone's like, Oh, it changed the music. Me and my mates, I'd like it be like, no. Or if that's really nicely of like, oh, yeah, what do you maybe? But yeah. Especially if we were cleaning up at the end of the shift.

Yeah, exactly. Like, no, get out. I've been here in 12 hours. You freaks. Let me have this that you. I shouldn't have to ask you to let me have this because I do not need your permission. Jesus, God, I hate people.

I know I would never be able to work customer facing again. No, I've done the odd shift since I left it full time and I've done all right, but it's it's better when you know, it's only that one night and, you know, you're not going to get fired if you rude somebody. Yeah, I don't. Occasionally, I find myself missing the bar work a bit, but I don't really actually want to do bar work again.

I miss that very specific time of my life, which is me and one of my best mates dancing around behind a bar, drinking as much as the customers were and not paying for it. That I can't imagine my response to the various middle age men who used to talk to me like, Oh, God, no. I remember the one who like realized I was relatively new behind the bar and insisted on like walking me step by step

through pouring his Guinness. Yeah, I may have been new behind that bar, but I've been pouring Guinness for a good long while at that point. Also, can everyone fuck off with Guinness, please? With the there's like, it's fine. If it comes out looking the same, I promise. I promise, guys, I know you're going to come back at me on this. I promise it will taste the fucking same.

Yeah, it does. Whether or not it's for exactly the way you like it, I promise. You are imagining it. If you think it's tasting different, I can tell you that from vast experience, pouring and drinking it. Yeah, it's guys, it's fine. I don't remember where I was now, but I was in a bar and someone was pouring me a pint of lager

and it had a massive head on it and they couldn't get it to pour without the head. And it was I could tell it was in no way anything to do with how they were pouring it. It was just like a weirdly lively barrel. And I felt so bad for them. And I was just like, Oh, that really sucks. I'm sorry, do you want me to order something else?

I really am not picky. And they just looked at me and before they could respond, a guy further down the bar told them to pull the pump back differently. And like, I could genuinely see the full murder fancy. Placed behind their eyes. And like, I wasn't trying to do some big dignified thing. It was just I wanted to drink faster and it was going to take them an hour to pour that pint

because that lager was overly lively or whatever. Yeah, I still might prepare it to wait to sing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. At least people getting drinks and pretty happy. I still think my favourite ever faux pas I made while waiting was there was the group that I think they sang or something at the cathedral every week. And then they came in for a Sunday roast

and one time they came in and one of them was quite young. So he was probably like 18 or so is about my age. And it was Easter. So of course, we had a rabbit special on. And of course, every time I brought it to a customer, I was referring to it as the Easter Bunny and this guy's lip started to fucking wobble and I have never felt like such an asshole. Like, I don't think it occurs to me.

We just went, oh, rabbits, a nice thing. And then he's only went Easter Bunny. Oh, I felt like such a dick. But it was also one of the funniest things that had ever happened to me. Before we go into the episode, dear listeners, General Wanker about Tanglinna has been trying to say. And Glicklinna background writer on Blackberg's Father Ted noted turf.

Yeah, giant, transphobic word. I'm not allowed to say on the podcast. Anyway, he's been mean and written lots of dreadful shite about good friend of the pod, Mark Burroughs. So listeners, now be a lovely time if you haven't already. Go grab a copy of Magicotery Pratchett, one of Mark's other books. If you've read them, maybe go and leave a nice review. Maybe just tweet Mark and tell him he's pretty or something.

I don't know. But this is also a nice reminder to any turf who have somehow found the way to the podcast. What the fuck are you doing here, Gersh? Again, again. Again, this is a trans-friendly podcast. I was going to say something totally gone. Something about podcasting, maybe, or?

Oh, yeah, do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Line, line. Hello and welcome to The Tree Shall Make Ye Frat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discord series, when it's time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen.

And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part three, but not the final part of our discussion of Night Watch. We're getting there. Our first four-parter. I'm so glad we split this up into four parts. Yeah, and I was like, oh, this guy. Oh, more. Yeah, that's right. More events. More. OK, yeah.

No, Joanna was right. OK. There's a big event in this section that has quite a few, like, upsetting moments. And I, like, every time I read this book, I blank out how upsetting that section is until I get there. Yeah, yeah. Like, putting the post-its in. Obviously, I read this book, like, two weeks ago,

to prep for it before I started doing the notes and stuff. And I somehow managed to blank it out in those two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. A note on spoilers before we crack on. Obviously, we are a spoiler light podcast, heavy spoilers for the book Night Watch. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discord series. And we're saving any in-all discussion of the final Discord novel,

The Shepherd's Ground, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Inch by inch, pushing the barricade before you. Excellent. Is that how you move a barricade? Pushing it, I was guessing. I think I was picturing a kind of leapfrogging where you start, like, deconstructing and rebuilding.

Like, a cat-filled trap kind of thing. Yeah, that makes more sense. OK. We should look into this for when we start building barricades during our revolution, something we've discussed multiple times. Absolutely. OK. All right. So, so Joanna. Follow-up. Follow-up. We have follow-up.

I have some replies on Reddit talking about, because I asked for people's favorite tiger poems. Let me have a look. Somebody, user, this is God, totally. Also enjoys the tiger by William Blake. Good to know. Bradley, D82. It doesn't have a favorite tiger poem, but does have a favorite tiger book.

The tiger who came to tea. Which is a good choice. That is a good book. And finally, Sander Vogel has come up with a panther poem, which was originally in German and is very cool. In the Jardin de Plante, Paris, his eyes have got so wary of the bars going by, they can't grasp anything else.

He feels like there's a thousand bars, a thousand bars in no world beyond. The soft tread of his strong, supple stride turns him in ever tighter circles, like the dance of force about a center in which a great will stands, stand. But now and then, the curtains over his eyes quietly lift and an image enters,

goes through his tents and silent limbs, and dies out in his heart. Incredibly depressing. That's real good for you. Yeah, I'll link the link that Sander Vogel gave me, which also has the original German, which is just as depressing, I'm told. But thank you for tiger poems, dear listeners.

Yeah. We also got some people on Twitter. Andy and Brum told us to have a look at Royal Navy Dazzleflage, which I had a look. The glitter. Dazzle camouflage, not just the glitter, but the weirdly painting ships. So it was less to hide them,

but more so it was impossible to figure out where it actually fucking was. If you have a quick look just at the Wikipedia pages, there's some really cool pictures of the way weird stripes and stuff were painted on ships. I won't go into a huge detail of it. This looks like, do you remember? Oh, I don't even remember if it's on the podcast

or not we talked about this, but do you remember when we were briefly really interested in the kind of makeup you can do to stop facial recognition? Yes. This looks like that. Yeah, I think it's similar to the shapes. Yeah, it's just like really advanced disruptive camouflage. Love it.

Love it. Yes. But marking this. Cool. Thank you. And oh, one other thing, not Vogueons, not O-Vogueons on Twitter. So you're like, it's not Vogueons.

I was like, good. No one's forcing us to listen to Vogueon poetry today. I wonder if Vogueons wrote poems about tigers. Let's not find out. Anyway, sorry, Tiddie on Twitter said, one of my favorite little bits in the Assassin's Banquet scene is a reference to Ludo Ludorum, who is one of Tepik's schoolmates.

So dating that kind of dates when pyramids falls in the timeline. And I did, I wonder if Tepik and Vettanari cross paths. Oh, I bet. That's cool. There was another name that I recognized and forgot to look up. I'm going to have to do maybe a little deep dive for the next episode on all the names I highlighted and then get time to look at

and see if there's any really good ones in there that I'm going to miss otherwise, because that's a good one that I missed. Yeah, I didn't even highlight that one, so. I think it would be very difficult to spot every single callback and reference and things. Yeah. Anyway, now we've followed up Francine,

do you want to tell us what happened previously on Nightwatch? Yes, previously on Nightwatch. As a young Vettanari learns why the tiger got his stripes, sound vines, aka John Keele, buys a revolutionary pie and tensions sickens like gravy in the streets of Angkorporg. Feeling eyes upon him, Vines nabs young Nobby, feeds him up

and sends him out to watch the people watching before Uno reversing a would-be framer and learning something interesting about medcoats. When violence bubbles to the surface of the mauporkian gravy, Vines prepares to tackle the real enemy, the unmentionables. They fall into his trap as he opens the doors

to the rest of the world, painting his own tableau with a cup of cocoa and an attempted assailant. After some questionable antics with a six-pack of ginger beer, Vines is yanked from the street and into high society. Briefly, he turns down an invitation to insurgency

as Vettanari watches from the shadows behind him. Yay. How about you? How about you? You've got the good one. You want me to summarize this section? I'm not going to lie. I've kind of glossed over a second. This has got to be the last one to summarize, right? I've glossed over a bit because we'll talk about it in depth later.

Okay, awesome. So, this section I mentioned last week, but it ends on page 356 in the Corgi paperback with We Don't Have to Make a Big Fuss About Being the Best Sir, We Just Know. Fair. In this section, Vines sleeps standing up and the watch house is full.

There's riots in the streets and no one's going home. Captain Tilden's gone and Coates gets aggressive as Vines takes young Sam into the yard for some training. Just as Coates reveals his history with Keele, the watch received news that a new captain's incoming. Vines swears the watchman in for real and draws a line that Coates won't cross. It's time to keep the peace.

Vines doesn't know where history is going, so he closes his eyes and follows the cobblestones to the time monks. The garden of inner tranquility is revolving around him and Lutze promises that proof of the future is coming. Back at the watch house, Captain Rust is in charge. Barricades are being built and the streets are ready to explode. The watchman progress out into the streets

and meet Red Shoe ready to lay down his life for whalebone lane. Vines despairs until explosions abound while Vettanari heads out to look around and dancing monks deliver hope in the form of a silver cigar case. Vines knocks Rust down and takes charge of the barricades to keep the peace. More are joining the peaceful places,

but Cable Street's in with them and it's time to unseat the unmentionables. There's anger in the cells, blood on the floor, and swings gone for good in the Cable Street conflagration. And yeah, I've skipped over that section a little bit. Vettanari's dodging guards and overlooking the palace. The barricades are spreading out and getting metaphysical as Reg oversees the formation of a glorious republic.

Meanwhile, the army's commanders are off at a party and the major left in the field is hoping for calm until he gets a visit from Karsa, who's a gestricle mine road might present a problem. Helicopters and loincloths. We've got a flag waved beautifully by Red Shoe, which I feel can cover our helicopter. We've got various missiles as well.

Plenty of missiles. I struggled a bit with loincloths because the only one I could really think of was the fact that the torturer's naked from the waist down, but I don't really want to give it to him. We've been in the Shonky shop and there were mentions of greasy suits and things. There's probably a loincloth in there somewhere.

There's probably one of Conan's old loincloths in the Shonky shop somewhere. Let's give it to that. All right. Conan Cohen. Maybe Conan as well. We don't know. We don't know what the adventure is.

Maybe one of Hrun's loincloths is lurking in the Shonky shop. Oh, man. If Discworld had an influencer culture, Hrun would be able to sell his loincloths like Belle Delphine, Salter, Barthorter. That's... I know pop culture.

That's not a thought. That's not what I wanted to think about. Before we move on, death is here as well. Yeah, in a sinister role. Lurking in the hearts of men. He does. He lurks there. Speaking as a feminist, I'm quite offended.

Death also lurks in the heart of me. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe he doesn't know what darkness lies there. Maybe it's only men he knows the darkness. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Your terrors are incomprehensible

even to an anthropomorphic sonification of death, is what I'm saying. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I accept that. Brackets compliment. Quotes. Do you want to go first? I'm not sure who's first.

I'll go first because your one is iconic as well, so even if it is later. Yeah, sorry. I did the plan first, so I get the iconic one. Fair. One of the hardest lessons of young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge.

It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip and that plans were what people made instead of thinking. It's that last bit in particular, I must say, plans for what people made instead of thinking. That is a horribly insightful sentence. Good grief. Oh, no.

I may have picked the iconic quote, but your quote sums up a lot of what I'm going to end up talking about throughout this episode. Noise. Some people might have heard this before. Well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'm pretty sure that whatever happens, we won't have found freedom,

and there won't be a whole lot of justice, and I'm damn sure we won't have found truth. But it's just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg. Ah, yeah. Such a good moment. It is. There's a lot of good quotes in this, actually. I can quite happily.

A lot of the iconic ones. I can quite happily just sit and read the whole thing around, but I feel like that is not what our podcast is, and would also get us in trouble with the actual publishers of Terry Broucher's book. Yeah, no. I think copyright law is fairly clear on that one. This is not an unauthorized audio book.

It is a discussion. Yes. So, characters. Should we start with Sam? Yes. As you called him, apparently. Often, Sam. Oh, poor Sam.

What a day, or three. He's definitely having a fucking day. I think one of the most interesting moments he has actually comes quite early on in this section, when he's kind of realizing what he could do in the future, but can't do here. He's thinking about, you know, how big can he really let this go?

It's not like he could go and arrest Winder. Yeah. Yeah. But he's thinking the fact that one day in the future, he will arrest Fatenari. Yeah. And it's this sort of weird background of futility that keeps getting forgotten in favor of hope.

Like. Yeah. It's the feeling you get when you read a book you love for like the millions of time, and something horrible happens in the book, but there's a part of you that's like, maybe it won't happen this time. Yeah.

Is that except, obviously, far more traumatic and... I'm really glad you said that, because I had an analogy of how it felt like that was much dumber. Can I hear it? I'll cut it out if you really want. Oh, no. It was just, I wanted like absolutely background noise,

nothing TV on last weekend, so I ended up re-watching like a whole season of RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars, specifically season two, for those of you know. And every time, I really hope that Roxy goes home instead of Alyssa, because Alyssa deserved to be in the final over Roxy. And then every time detox eliminates Alyssa and...

It's the same analogy, just a different medium. But it's not fair. Kind of riffing off that actually, vimes as made up of other people is kind of highlighted here as well. So we talked about I think last week about how like carrot made a lot of impact on vimes. And here it's kind of explicit where it said,

even a few years ago, vimes wouldn't have bothered with the oath. And we see the moment where carrot does it, and vimes like, oh. Shit, that actually really does mean something, doesn't it? We also get like another weirdly influential person in his life. Mentor, we get two grins, Gussie.

Oh yeah, that was one of my favorite quotes in this action as well. He'd fight the man next to him simply as a substitute for kneeing the whole universe in the groin. Oh yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it just made me think about how like, especially now you get to see early sound vimes,

how built up of other people he is. He got Keele obviously, Gussie, and I'm sure a million other street fighters. He got Carrot, he got Sibyl obviously. Yeah. And it's like the ultimate getting to watch character development with vimes. Willikens as well.

I feel like he's an underrated part of the formation of vimes' character, like not just for helping vimes navigate the sort of society waters he's found himself in, but for being quite a grounding influence. Yeah. Like I feel like there's something about knowing that your butler wants to ramans ear off with his teeth,

that helps keep you grounded. Sure. Not somewhere I've been personally, but yeah, sure. Well yeah, but I feel like we can all relate. And I love that. I love how we're all made up of parts of other people. I think that's great. People, places, and things.

People, places, and things. Animal, vegetable, minerals, metaphysical. That's not metaphysical. I am the very model of a modern major general. I am the very model of a metaphysical. No, it doesn't scan. Dammit.

I am the very model of a major metaphysical. There we go. Let's not go down that path. At least last time we were singing musicals on the podcast, it was relevant to this fucking book. You get some of Vimes' cynicism that he's trying to keep his own cynicism alive because he can't get his hopes up. Like he knows he's talking to people who are going to die,

as he says to the monks. He says to Ned, don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. And you can see he's not really telling Ned that so much as he's reminding himself. Because it's just after that he hits that point where he's so completely lost.

He's almost literally collapsing with how a drift he feels standing there with rust next to the barricade, which is when all the monks turn up and throw the cigar case at him. Yeah, I mean, how could you keep that in mind while having to moment by moment play out a situation that is, and it's not like he's done it before. He's lived it before but through a completely different perspective

and obviously events even were slightly different. So it's not like you can't, he's still having to think through every moment and it feels like it's only after a thing has happened he realized how it matched his up except in Cable Street where he's like, well, Keele got out. And then he's like, yeah, but you've been fucking around of it, haven't you?

So there's no guarantee. I feel like that's the only moment he's kind of ahead of his laid out plot. Yeah, very much so. And it's the moment he finds the cigar case and it's described as he no longer felt like a drifting ship. Now we felt the tug of the anchor pulling him around to face the rising tide.

That's it. There's a lot of good metaphor in here. Right? Similarly, I guess that one. Yeah. But yeah, then he keeps working with his younger self and you wonder how much of it is because he's trying to do what Keele did specifically

and how much of it is just he really wants his younger self to not be such a twerp. Yeah, and not die. And not die. He did another lovely moment like the walking with himself thing, which is he reached out steady himself. Yeah. Yeah, nice.

Love that. And there's the moment where he's taken him out in the training yard and he's trying to get young Sam to come at him and young Sam's hesitating and vibes things to himself. Well, I wasn't entirely stupid. And the moment, I think, where he's not as sympathetic as perhaps you might expect when young Sam comes to him

crying after seeing what you saw at Cable Street and then he takes him through the worst of it as well. It's like the temptation to let him go must have been so strong, but then you're not going to end up you because if there's a formative fucking moment it's going to be that, isn't it? Yeah, and the way he talks about the beast

and tame it, it'll come when you call. Yeah, push it down, push it down. Yeah. He's almost seeing this thing that he's carried in himself the entire time being formed in young Sam now and if you think that anger, that ability to lose control was such a huge part of what he went through in the Fifth Elephant.

Yeah. It's never spelled out, well, it is a couple of times, but there's not as much spelling out as you might think of which of these things Keele also said to Vines in the first timeline. Yeah, very much so. Which is interesting. But yeah, so young Sam is, wow.

Right? I feel so bad when they were calling him simple. And Vines is simple, the life which. Poor kid, he doesn't deserve that. No. But yeah, the first, the first moments of the anger that older Vines will feel definitely becoming apparent there. Watching that be born there, it makes Vines even more

of an incredible character because now you see how much formed where Vines got to where he was, like I talked last week about the Vines at the beginning of God's Guards. He's, yeah. Oh, there it is, young Sam watching him, young Sam with this bright, shiny badge and face full of strangeness.

Like watching that and knowing exactly what's going on behind the eyes must be very odd. Yeah. More of that later maybe, but for now. Shall we talk about Nick Coates? Our dark horse. Who gets this kind of, like he's almost being built as a villain. Like obviously he's not a villain.

He's antagonist. Yeah. Yeah. But you have this wonder about how much to suspect him, which builds up to I think one of the best, like reveal moments, which is when he's fighting Vines in the yard. I know.

I nearly had that whole bit as my quote, but I decided I couldn't whisper into my microphone for that long. Vines saying, where do you learn all this stuff anyway? In his response, Sergeant Keele, Sarge. And then before anything else can happen, someone else interrupts. And just that moment of like, wow,

you could have like blown his cover at any time. You decided not to, I'm guessing A, because you want to see how it played out. B, because he didn't want to draw attention to yourself either. But just that. Imagine being able to keep quiet for that long about that. That's amazing. But imagine how weird it must have been for Coat,

the way he's suspecting Sam, what he's suspecting Sam of. And his fury when he realizes that Vines effectively is on the same side of him, but isn't going about it the way Ned would. And he's so upset, you know, you were talking about when he calls Vines, he's simple. But he's talking about the fact, you know, you're going to get these guys killed. Yeah. Yeah. And he is kind of...

It's this reminder that we've got characters who theoretically aren't going to make it. Like we started the book with the gravestones. Yeah. And the... It's not a callback, but it makes you think a lot of the really profound bit in Jingo where the reminder imp... Oh, the disorganizer's going off. Disorganizer, thank you, reels off the death toll.

And like if Vines hadn't done this. And I imagine, I can imagine in his head, he's thinking, I know shit, things are going to happen. But if I don't, what's the list of names going to be? Yeah. Especially because that alternative history in Jingo, the bits we see of, they are barricades in the streets. I feel like that's a seed planted there that practically got to like explore massively here.

Yeah. Moving on to less likable characters. The honourable Ronald Rust brackets. I love that he discussed to you that much. We've got a brackets for him. And I don't... I'm not sure we've ever had that, but any of the many villains. I'm sure I've put bracketed comments about...

I actually did check the show notes for Jingo to check if I put brackets in the Jingo show notes for Ronald Rust. I could have saw what I did, but apparently I didn't. But yeah, so we met Rust in Jingo as this incompetent commander. And obviously in the original version, when Baby Sam went through this, it wasn't Rust, but he's changed enough things. And it's, oh Lord, it's Rust this time round.

An interesting moment as well, where you can't even remember... Remember the original officer there? I like how that's just kind of... All right, not important. Completely irrelevant. Oh no. Now we've got this guy.

And well, I might not remember the original officer and how Keele dealt with it. I know how I deal with Lord Rust and it involves a fist. Yeah. Love the underlining of the simplicity of some officers though, where he gets to what was it? Option inserted into his head to just assume he'd been... There we go.

Yes. Rust inserted this into his range of options. It was way out and suited his opinion of the watch in general, meant he hadn't been ticked by a constable, merely dealt with a simpleton. That's very witchy his way of thinking, isn't it? It's like, just let him believe this. Yeah, that's fine.

And also the line frost nearly formed on Rust's forehead. That's such... I've never heard that metaphor before, but it just gives a perfect botox analogy, doesn't it? No, it's incredible. That section also wins for it when all the squads are lined up for Rust to inspect them. And the shortest one is described as having been accused of naveling

because he wasn't tall enough to eyeball. It is beautiful. But then he shows himself off as not just being a shitty officer, but one of the shitty officers that gets lots and lots of people killed, because he says, fire over the barricade. And if that had been another captain under him, another sergeant under him, then... A lot of people would have...

Everything got much worse again, yeah. Exactly. And we saw him behaving like that in Jingo as well. He was the one that nearly starved a bunch of his own men to death by insisting that they could take a particular route, I believe. Yeah, that's right, yeah. But yeah, so after all of this, when he was in charge of a regiment and did a shit job,

he then gets to do it again later on, but... Yeah. I have got... I haven't put them in as characters, but the two majors that we're dealing with towards the end of this section in the tent, who are kind of just quietly... Major in a captain, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a lot of sympathy for them. I like them as characters because they're sat there going, God, we shouldn't be fucking doing this. What the fuck is this shit? Absolutely. Well, A, I thought that was just like a lovely moment of like re-personalizing them.

And you also got that with the other captain, who was like, not too much for Dicta Vimes, and was like, I don't think there's anything actually revolutionary about singing your own national anthem. That doesn't sound right to me, but... Fanature's just there because people are spring cleaning, clearly. Yeah. And then when one of them hears about

Rust being taken out, he goes, Rust, he said. Oh dear, that's a blow. I dare say the man is dead, said Cartha, and the major tried not to look slightly more tearful. Oh, that is a good moment. Oh yeah, so speaking of revolutionaries, I'm waving from barricades, red shoe. Death to some of the fascist oppressors.

Oppressors? Oppressors. The fascist oppressors. So have we, because we've met Red Shoe before, obviously, have we talked about his name before? If we have, I've forgotten, so please tell me. This is not a piece of research I did. I happened to spot this post in the Discworld subreddit

like two minutes before we started recording. I love that. Footwear is a big thing for revolutionary throughout modern history. There was a famous leader during the Mexican Revolution called Zapata, which means shoe. And he's still kind of an icon in Mexico. The word sabotage comes from French,

because French workers used to wear a type of wooden clog called a sabote, and workers would use them to jam up machinery. Throwing a shoe is still seen as a revolutionary act. So sabotage vandalism with footwear harnessed through a revolutionary event. Jackson Starlin's father and grandfather were also both coblers. That might just be a coincidence, but you know.

There's a cobbler in this going on about the, on the other side, that's interesting. Yeah, I wonder if that was somewhat intentional. And they also point out the parallels with life of Brian. There's a character called Reg, whose parallels a lot of the talking points to the socialist workers' party and the workers' revolutionary party.

And then later in the film, you've also got Cleese playing Arthur, who finds, founds the order of the shoe, because Brian lost a sandal. Yes, very good. So yeah, some fun reference-y stuff there. I love Reg so much as a character. So he's, you feel a lot of pity for him because he's,

and also at the same time, I'm very annoyed by him because I've met him a lot of times and I think I probably was him. And that's the kind of revolutionary, he feels very hard that this is the right thing to do, but if questioned on even one aspect of detail, is like the strength of the feeling there. It's definitely driving him forward,

unfortunately, and not in any productive direction, nor along with any of the other secret cells. Oh yeah, I love this moment of, he's really hopeful that Vimes has got secret files on him. Bet you've got a massive file on me. Yeah, not quite a mile now. Talking about the revolutionary cells that don't know about each other

and poor Reg being this kind of cell of one that they don't know about. Yeah, and then Vimes just eventually like laying it off the hook is like, ah, you're a secret, you're a secret offer. All right, well, we better keep you while we can keep an eye on you then, eh? All right.

I also like that he's just dressed like the characters and they miss. Yeah, the frilly shirt of the revolutionary. And now I've watched the show go, so I'm kind of imagining him as like the Victorian and that. Oh, the poet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just in the tone of voice.

I know we've got mostly, you know, fan casting role, but he would be the perfect actor for Red Shoe. He's going to be reading, you know, they're doing all the new audio books at the moment. He's going to be reading The Truth. Well, there you go. Good to know.

Good to know. We think, well, he must be in Pratchett by now, even if he wasn't before. I would be very surprised if all those people from horrible histories are not also quite into Pratchett. Yeah, that's got to be a lot of overlap. That's a lot of sense of humor overlap, certainly.

But from Red Shoe, we do get the discussion over this kind of formation and the ideals that they're arguing over, putting in reasonably priced love, because the seamstresses don't want to put free love, which is, I think, many people's favorite discworld joke. A genuinely considering, like, the truth, freedom, reasonably priced love thing as a tattoo.

Yeah. It's one of those ones I've heard so many times now that I kind of forget how funny it was the first time. Yeah. When you read it back in context, like, And the joys of, again, I haven't given them their own bit, but Mrs. Rutherford and husband joining in these grand declarations with the realism such as better sewers

and something done about the rats. Yes, absolutely. It's a very nice Terry Pratchett thing to pick the very blatant realism against the high ideal. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is like the apex of that concept, this whole book. And it's not mean.

It's not mocking Reg's ideals. No, because he's making, at the end of the day, the same mistake Ned Coates is. He's just doing it in a slightly more flamboyant and less well-connected way. But Ned Coates is making almost exactly the same mistake and thinking that his revolution is going to change the world for the better.

And I mean, maybe it does a bit, but, you know, it's not going to set far to the vipers nest, so. No. Speaking of the vipers nest, we... We get the end of Captain Swing. Yay. Good. Yeah. He's... So, Swing is like, obviously cast as the big bad guy of the book, but Swing is very much built up as an antagonist in this.

And I know, obviously, it's us who arbitrarily divided this into sections, but he's taken off the board like a long way before the end of the book. Yes. Yes, he is. And that, again, as an apex of a practicing thing, I would say this book is very much the... There are lots of endings in this book.

This is definitely an ending of a sort. This is an ending of the worst part of the government, perhaps. Although, of course, if, like, more things didn't change, it could just be rebuilt. I thought that the fight scene at the end was particularly interesting in that he's having this long argument with Vimes, using a lot of points that have been repeated

by fascist governments through the ages. So, you must understand that in times of national emergency, we cannot be too concerned with the so-called rights of this and that. And it's a very interesting thing, because it almost seems like he's an avatar of that kind of government, of that kind of corruption, because there's no point in arguing this with Vimes. And he must know that at the time.

But Pratchett has written him in as this kind of anthropomorphic personification of this concept. He's just this attitude incarnate. And it must be very satisfying too, so it's right. Absolutely. What's the other line he's got? History needs its butchers as well as its shepherds. And that's another weighted thing,

because obviously, he's talking about how the actions taken place at this time will be remembered. Whereas, obviously, for Vimes, this is him living his own history. Yeah, yeah. And also, yeah, a nice demonstration of how just deluded people can be when thinking of how history will remember them.

Exactly. Or their side of the argument or whatever it is, I'm sure. I'm as guilty of it as anyone else, but sometimes you do read a bit of history and think, like, he thought you were the goodie. Yeah. Or we're the baddies.

Yeah. Well, as you know, Joanna, we've decided not to have skulls on our headphones for this reason. Yeah. Well, that's actually a thing, isn't it? That can be a brand decision. Were they called skull candy as they had phones? That sounds right.

Yeah, yeah. They're the expensive ones, yeah. Yeah, but they also do the cute ones with cat ears. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, if we're going to get the baddies, we need cat ears. There we go.

That's the conclusion. Cool. Right. Feline-themed evil, probably no fascism. Just planning on for the night. Oh, man. We're just going back to Tumblr. Right.

Carson. No. Sorry, Vimes. Vimes killing swing, setting his throat with the ruler. Because we were talking about with Vimes and young Vimes, telling him to leash the beast and it'll come where you call what's kind of an impressive in that death scene, his Vimes are so incredibly impassive about it.

This is not him killing passionately or through rage. This is him surgically removing a cancer. Yeah. And it's the beast channeled very specifically. He's learned how to release it like steam in tiny little bursts. Yeah. This is not an emotional act. This is an act of surgery and doing what needs to be done.

This is becoming like an engine of anger, rather than just a cardboard box. Anyway, yeah, Carson. Yeah. Not in it much in this one, is he? No, we've just got the scene with him at the end of the section. They're blurring around a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Walking out smoke-blackened, interesting. Yeah. And just being the most insubordinate little twerp. Proper little shit. Also being terrifying. Because he knows that the coming from Cable Street being an unmentionable carries enough weight to keep going with these soldiers. But while he's terrifying and he's intimidating,

they're also just completely disgusted by him. Yeah, yeah. And there's, you know, these might be more humanized, less NPC-like people. These are the people that don't want to be chasing people through the streets as cavalry. But there's still this huge element of classism. Part of the reason they're disgusted by Carson

is that he's incredibly unsettling. Yeah. But part of it is also just, God, what a scruffy little Loick above his station. Yeah. Is it now? Now, I agree that a lot of this is about classism. But is it classism to be annoyed if someone walks into your office

and puts their feet up on your desk? Oh, yeah. Maybe not classism. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm sure there is definitely in there. They're as disgusted by his lack of manners as they are by the fact that he's clearly a raging psychopath. Yeah.

No, yeah. It's the end of the sentence, isn't it? It's the nice little Pratchett side as well. He's this and that, and this, that, and the other, slightly longer description. And he was mad. Yeah. Yeah.

I like that. He does the reverse list thing. Because we've talked about before, haven't we, how in rhetorical situations lists usually end with the longest one. And I feel like Pratchett makes very good use of the reversing that expectation when he's describing Carson. Absolutely. And I can imagine absolutely wanting to stab him

after he pulls out the handkerchief and buffs the desk once he's taken his feet off it. Yeah. Just, oh, God, the oink, he is an oink. Last one, not so much a character as a concept. Oh. You're like the person at the end of the presentation, like, any questions?

Not a question so much as a statement. I have sworn never to actually become that person. Thank you. We've got this podcast to get rid of that urge in us both. But the Er mob, yes, that's a good character. I like that. The Er mob. And I was going to talk more about the attention building up,

but I feel like we'll get more into it later. But more pork's famous. Er mob, the state you've got just before a real mob happened. It spread across the city like web and spider. And when some triggering event happened, twang the urgent message through the streets. Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, the tension built there is incredible. Like, if you have any particular notes on that, please go ahead. We can tie it back in. It's just incredible. There's another line a few pages later about the thunderstorm sensation of tensions building up, waiting for the first little thing.

Just imagining that feeling of being around this group of people. And it's not going to be one person. It's not going to be one thing, but it's going to happen. And the kind of foreshadowing of tonight the streets would explode in the explanation of one shot that does it. Yeah.

Just occur to me, as you were saying, like being around the groups of people, and it wouldn't be one. This just reminds me of what we were talking about with the Rat King almost, like the idea of like the hive mind is very unsettling. The idea that you would have to deal with all of these minds at once working as kind of a channel for a general feeling

instead of as individual sentient minds. Yeah. And there's another moment talking about after the shot is fired that reminded me of Morris, all the little rolls break down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran. They didn't try and bite the sheep next to them.

Now, that's interesting. I highlighted that as well, because I slightly disagree with it there. And I know that's a very common concept of how people are. People in disaster situations are awful when things break down, everyone goes to shit. And I probably rounded before about how I don't think that's really true.

People are a lot better than people give them credit for. Generally, after a disaster, after things break down, people are very nice to each other on the whole. It's generally when officials come in and start fucking about that things go wrong. It's not so much I agree or disagree with it, as it reminded me of the whole thing in Morris about the Rat's breaking and running away.

And this, when it all comes down to it, we're just rats moment. Yes, absolutely. Although I'm briefly on this society breaking down thing, it's conversation. I've been listening to a lot of conversations about this because the last of us TV series just started, and obviously I've listened to a million podcasts about it.

Oh, how's the TV series? First episode is really good. I think it's going to be a really good show. And I like when Pedro Pascal exists, so I'm easily pleased. How scary is that? Can I watch this? Yes, but there are a couple of moments that will make you go, ah.

Okay. Well, I'll be watching with Jack because he likes the game, so. Oh yeah, no, you'll be fine then. Do you know if there are spoilers for the second game because he hasn't played that yet? No, the first series is going to be the first game, and then the second series is going to be the second game. Perfect.

All right, I'll give them two. That's an Amazon one, isn't it? No, it's now TV. Let me know if you want my login. Oh, okay. Cool, thanks. But the reason this reminded me of this is that last of us does what a lot of zombie stories do,

which is it's less about the zombie itself. It's the dangerous society and what happens when society breaks down and the danger that starts coming from other people. And a lot of them go into this idea of the problem is when officials come into play, like you said, taking advantage of a disaster situation to create some kind of fascist government like in the last of us. Yeah, or just by hugely underestimating people.

There's been examples of huge disasters where the people who are still in the city or the area afterwards set up things like relief kitchens and just mutual aid stuff, and then the military come in, destroy what they've done, and set up something much worse. Yeah, very much so. The idea of private property is always far more defended by the incoming people than by the people who just

watch their city get destroyed and they're like, no, it's fine, take it. Yeah, please use this. Yeah, the demonization of the idea of looters, not even of looters, like obviously New Orleans and all that. There's another, there's a fantastic and awful, because it's awful to listen to, but it is wonderfully done series on Hurricane Katrina,

actually, that I'll link to if I remember. But anyway, sorry, I'm going completely off track. No, we both went wildly off topic there. What else did I even have in the plan? Oh, Locations, the People's Republic of Triculwine Road, which I just want to shout out as obviously being kind of where we're going to spend a lot of the rest of this book. Now, remind me, are we, this is,

this is sprouted off the original whale bone lane, isn't it? Yes. Yes, okay. I need a map. We're going to have to get on a map. There's one in the book. Oh, I have the ebook as the map.

That's probably right at the end then. Oh, yeah, I don't know if the map's in the ebook, but in the paperback you get, I'm just going to hold this up to the screen, but you have a map about Moorpork that's titled as the Glorious Republic of Triculwine Road. Oh, no, it's right in the beginning. I just must have skipped past it,

because I was trying to get to the words. Yes, good, right. So you can sit and work out, like where all the barricades and stuff are, it's great fun. Cool. But we probably shouldn't do that live on the forecast. No, not while we're recording. No, yeah.

Yes, that's right. But yeah, it's an old new location. Old new location. That's where the barricades have started, but as I hinted, metaphysics is going to come into play. Have we not done Viper's Nest Cable Street headquartered as a location?

Too depressing? Talk about it a bit later. Too depressing, so we'll talk about it a bit later, but that is one of my favourite lines in the book as he realises cable streets in behind the barricades with them and says, well, that's like pitching your tent over a Nest of Viper's Nest. Yes.

And again, he knows it's happened. He knows it would have happened, but you still can't help reacting in the moment. Nope. Very cool. Very good. So little bits we liked. We got some set up and payoff.

We do. We've got a couple of those. I expect, again, as you said, there's loads of those in here. So I just thought I'd pick a couple of nice ones that were already pretty settled by now. When Fred Curlin says something like, are we going to be taking the law into our own hands? And Vime says, yes, Fred.

Only this time we're going to squeeze. Going back to the story he told about the man in the bar who had a handful of glasses. Yep. Very good. Thank you for that reminder. There's also the bit, and it's not quite as blatant or one, but I think it's still definitely there,

where Vime's being shocked about how Marilyn was treated at the start kind of sets up for how much of a twat rust is and how much we know that when he comes in and asks for Marilyn to be turfed out, asked for the stable to be emptied. Because that's always a good way to show how much of a bastard someone is being mean to animals. But it's on top of that something that Vime's has already sorted

and shown he feels strongly about. Yeah. Which I thought was just nice little, too. Yeah. Just picked two. There's another one as well. Nobby gets his spoon. Oh, he does get his spoon.

He's reminiscing at the beginning about Keele, giving him his first spoon. And then here it is, Snouty trying to have Nobby take the spoon and Vime shouting, you can keep the damn spoon. Spoons are not important at this moment. Yes. There's another nice moment where someone's got this fond memory of Keele, and then you find out the actual motivation.

With Dibbler and eating the pie, it was to get the password. And with Nobby and the spoon, it's just trying to get Snouty to go away for a minute. The way he treats Nobby, actually, I think is very sweet throughout, because Nobby is a very endearing character, despite his general scruffiness. Yeah. It's like there's a bit about his sleeping, the concertina effect.

That's kind of, there's a salute there. I think there's a salute there. That looks right. But a couple of bits that made me laugh about Nobby were, when he's sneaking up on Vimes each time, there's always another little adjective describing him. The two of particularly likes, it's like, came a sticky voice and came a gluttonous voice,

which I thought was rather good. And finally, yeah, my mum says I'm insidious. I'm so glad you got that in. That's one of my favourite lines. Proper makes me laugh out loud. My mum says I'm insidious. That sounds right, Nobby. Yeah, good job.

Oh, when he becomes an acting member of The Watch and carves himself a badge out of soap. Yeah. And then like underlining again the fact, like he's eating candles like a little rat. They're like, oh, poor fella. Oh, anyway, you've snuck a time travel one in here. I have.

This is, let's say, talking to Vimes and he's explaining history finds a way. It's like a shipwreck. You're swimming to the shore. The waves will break, whatever you do. But then he says, and when I did the original reader of this, I was so excited. I sent you a screenshot.

Is it not written? The big sea does not care which way the little fishes swim. Yes. We've heard that before, haven't we? We have heard that before. Do I know where have we heard that before? I feel like it might be linked to the short story, the sea and little fishes.

I think you might be right. But it was, it was a saying that like, I think Terry Pratchett said in the intro to sea and little fishes, he was sure he'd heard that somewhere, but not sure where. But he's resurrected. It's obviously too good a line to be left as a short story. So he's managed to get it back in here. But I'm going to throw in some fun headcanon,

which is that Luke says, is it not written? Mostly come from the way of Mrs Cosmopolite. Therefore, has Mrs Cosmopolite ever met Nanny Ogg? And is Mrs Cosmopolite something of a city witch? Well, yes, I think definitely that bit. Yeah. Also, I'm getting her mixed up with Mrs Cake a bit in my head. That's fair.

Tell, in the very first couple of books, one, it was Mrs Cake who predicted the city burning down and ran away, wasn't it? Not Mrs Cosmopolite. Yeah. Okay. In equal rights, did Granny stay with Mrs Cosmopolite or was that again Mrs Cake?

I can't remember. No, Granny stayed with Mrs Cake. Is that right? I'm pretty sure because she's got the precognition. Right. Right. Yes. Yes, that's it.

Okay, good. Okay, yes, because I was thinking, if not, that might be how that phrase got to her. Oh, quite possibly. But no. It could have been Mrs... No, no. They probably hang out though.

That'll be the Coven of City Witches, Mrs Cake, Mrs Cosmopolite and one secret other one. Yeah. Actually, I think there is another one, but we haven't met them yet. Okay. Okay, good. Yeah.

Anyway, but yeah, I was just excited to see another, I see a little fishes moment in this. Absolutely. It's very good. But using that in a completely different way. Because it's very much not the same sentiment as the big scene, not caring which way the little fishes swim

in the short story. Yeah, no, actually, yeah. Quite right. Anyway, it goes to show, doesn't it, as the way of Mrs Cosmopolite? Is it not written? It just goes to show. I have, actually,

I don't think I've linked this in show notes before. Yeah, there were wiki.lsface.org has a list of all of the way of Mrs Cosmopolite. Is it not written? That I was going to take for myself if I couldn't find it, so I'm glad somebody did. Is it not written? If you keep going all cosmic on me,

you'll feel the end of my broom and no mistake. I don't think I've mentioned before on the podcast that I really like and no mistake, which is... And no mistake. Yeah. A bit of a prostitutism. I might start using that more. Right. The end of Lord Greville Pipe.

The author of the Tiger Book was eaten by a tiger. What a genius, Lord, when Stanley Greville Pipe had been. What an observer. Havilok would love to have met him, or even to have visited his grave, but apparently that was inside a tiger somewhere, which, to Greville Pipe's gratified astonishment, he hadn't spotted until it was too late.

Gratified astonishment. And then followed by Vettanari hiding the last extant copies of the book within a anecdotes of the Great Accountants, Volume 3. Perfect. Which Lord Greville Pipe would have appreciated. I'm sure, I'm sure. And then Dark Sarcasm.

Oh, this is me being proud of myself for getting a reference. Another bad move, Dark Sarcasm ought to be taught in schools, he thought. And this, I believe, is a reference to Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd. We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control, no Dark Sarcasm in the classroom.

Oh. Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone. Yes, well done. I did not catch that. And you're welcome, listeners. I opted not to sing it. Right. We can't put it off any longer for answering.

There's some big topics to talk about in this book, aren't there? The confusion, I think, that Vimes is feeling here is really well demonstrated, that's my main talking point. I think that, as you were saying before, like the idea of having to do the job in front of you, while being on this deadline, being on this like sudden deadline, as you say, tonight the streets would explode.

He knows something bad is going to happen. And yet you can't take time out to think properly about that. You just have to keep putting out fires as they come to you. There's nothing you can do to change it. He must be aware of that on some visceral level. And because of that, the tension is really added to by just this sense of confusion and this dichotomy in his head,

until, as you said, it is brought to this climax, right as they are at the barricades. And he says, you can't take the law into your own hands. And his voice faltered. Sometimes it takes the brain a little while to catch up with the mouse. And that feels like, to me, the moment where he stops just going along with task by task and starts acknowledging all of the pieces of the bigger picture

in his head at once and then obviously has that little breakdown and has to go to the streets afterwards. But I think on top of the kind of time travel nonsense that's killing him a bit here, you've also got the fact that, although there are definitely worse sides and better sides, fracture and through the conduit of vines, it's kind of a pain to point out that the idea of being on the side

of the people is inherently kind of difficult, problematic. So people on the side of the people capitalized always ended up disappointed. They found that the people tended not to be grateful or appreciative or thought-thinking or obedient. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem. It wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

And so we're kind of setting up here for a later disappointment. That stuff with the people is also a good callback to the truth where you have the difference between the people and the people and the public interest. Yeah, and then a callback to even further, like the first real page-long rant we had of Vettanari's, which was in one of the earlier watchbooks, but I can't remember which. But yeah, when we had that entire thing of Vettanari being

like, oh, wow, yeah. Okay, you have taken too many steps back from society to be normal anymore. Yeah, which actually completely unrelated. But I liked the little bit about Vettanari wearing the wrong colors, even though that was not allowed and he'd be kicked out the assassins for it. Because it kind of highlighted how it's really just as well. He wasn't an assassin because as has been pointed out in

like many of the Antmoor book books, the reason the guild system works and like the reason the assassins and the thieves are allowed to be around is that they come with these set of limitations and with handicaps in the assassins case. Like, no, you're not allowed to become invisible. That's not okay. That's not cool. That's not good.

I think the point is that Nightwatch does this fantastic job of laying out the confusion in the same way that Vimes is feeling it, while at the same time not just being this annoying mismatch. You are getting all of the different sides laid out at different points through either in a monologue or through somebody saying something to Vimes. And then perhaps just as it would be getting too much for the reader, it all gets too much for Vimes as well. And he just gets this proper head spinning moment

and you kind of get like this little mental reset where you're allowed to kind of go back into the moment. Yeah, very much so. And I think that was kind of cleverly done. And of course, one of the big problems that Vimes is having with all these kind of mental conflicts is the fact that he's on the bad side as well in theory. He is a policeman.

And what that kind of means is something I think you've been looking at a bit. Yeah, very much so. I mean, I think it's interesting that once the barricades start going up and where it kind of spreads around, that this is the peaceful part of town, that more and more police start dropping whatever post and whatever they're being told to do by these military commanders and come and join them.

And Sergeant Dye Dickens, who's an old policeman that's been in the force for a while, that comes and joins them behind the barricades. And he's going to become a bigger part of the story in the next section. Part of the problem, not the problem this book has, but where you have Vimes falling down and trying to figure out how to be, I don't know, the good guy on the bad side

or figuring out how much power he actually has. Because as I mentioned, he can't arrest Winder. He can't solve things the way he solved things in Chingo. There's no battlefield for him to arrest here yet. Give him a minute. That's a good point, actually. As you were saying, when the Major and the Captain were talking before, they underlined the lack of battlefield as well.

Yeah, very much so. Because that was all messy and shit. You can't run around in cavalry and Vimes can't just walk up someone and arrest everyone there. No. And it's something else the Major and the Captain talk about is someone can throw a stone, but then they walk around the corner and they're an upstanding citizen again.

There's no enemy in clear colors to shove your saber at. Yeah. And the city is something they're fighting in rather than being outside and sieging, which is what they used to. But yeah, where I think it falls down in some places is... And maybe not falls down, but Vimes is willing to acknowledge the unpleasant aspects of the job

where he's teaching them to fight and he's encouraging them to use the street fighting, but he's also saying... And obviously, definitely don't get coshes and blackjacks, which can be sold at this place, and I definitely won't show you how to use them. Yeah. And the thing... I think it would be impossible to write this book

without verging on this at some point. Absolutely. Because although it is kind of acknowledged that all of this is shit, when it's Vimes doing it, it's always very careful to be Vimes punching up. It's Vimes going in and destroying people in the torturers nest. See, you really can't...

You really can't think that that's bad when you've just heard the rest of it. Or punching Lord Rust, which we're never not going to be okay with. Yeah, yeah, obviously. This podcast is Pro Punching Lord Rust. Correct, yes. But yeah, it feels more okay when we see him using this stuff

against the unmentionables than when he's just advising on the youth though, because he might understand when you use a blackjack. But I'm not sure I'd trust Fred Colon with similar. Yes, exactly. And definitely not like knock or whatever. Exactly. Or quirk.

Which speaking of quirk, one of the moments, you know, he's frustrated when he's in the Sonke shop and Mr. Soonshine's son is saying, no, I've paid protection already. And he says, and he realizes it must have been quirk, and says, you don't have to pay coppers, we're here for your protection. Yeah.

And the whole bit about coppers learning off other coppers being a problem. Yeah. If you kept learning from these, you'd go down the road of taking bribes and blah, blah, blah. What was it? The line, they found somewhere between impossible perfection and the pit where they could be real coppers,

slightly tarnished because the job did that to you, but not rotten. Yes. And he knows he can't hold them to the standards of, say, carrot. Yeah, not yet. One day he will. But it's very tough. It is very tough because you get the kind of moments of,

I think it was the last section where Vyme says, like, no, I like to be in the middle. And here it's kind of shown that the police shouldn't be on the government side, shouldn't be on the army side, shouldn't necessarily be just on the people side, but should default to that. Oh, default to that. But at the same time, sometimes taking the middle ground

is not there. Well, yeah, I mean, this is the thing. Like, where he starts having his crisis of faith, and the thing that Vymes has always put his faith in is the law, until he stops. And those are always the really good moments, like guards, guards, where it was technically, you know, the law that they were going to sacrifice on to the dragon.

But he wasn't going to let them do that because it wasn't the right thing to do. And here, he's thinking about it more. The city was run by a madman and his shadowy chum, so where was the law? And this is where he takes it into his own hands. A line about being a copper only worked when people let it work.

Yeah. Which is a bigger expansion on that stuff we were talking about last week with the weapons law. Yeah, so policing by consent is a big concept in policing. I know we said we weren't going to go very into it, but big discussion about that in the UK at the moment, even by the couple of top brass who are at least being critical about the whole thing,

saying that, look, we're at serious risk of no longer being in the situation of being able to police by consent. I think it's kind of underlined here as very much the police don't have a position of force, which is good from the point of being able to be on their side. It's highlighted that they only have wicker shields. They don't have all the kind of riot gear

of the police of modern times who make riots happen. That's why it's called riot gear, fun fact. And he mentions again that there'll be agent provocateurs hanging around the place. Well, you literally had our mentionables confessing to that in the last section. Oh, that's right. Yes, of course you did. We were talking about him having them take the oath

and that's something that he's kind of grown from carrot, but the thing he's thinking to himself is you needed something else to tell you it wasn't just a job. Because the people who are stepping over the line to stand with vines, the people who end up helping move the barricades and then end up behind the barricades, are not doing this for the sake of enough pay

to buy a hot meal every day. They're doing this because they've invested in it, even if it's just because they've invested in vines. Vines might have faith in the law, but a lot of them have faith in well-keeled. Another thing is at the end of the day, despite being maybe a little skeptical about it, Vines does take the side of the people.

Yes. Even if the people aren't the high and mighty ideal that Reg might hold them to, vines can see people for what they are and still want to defend them. Exactly. If only the small section of the city that contains them. Which kind of takes us into the horrifying section of the book,

which is less than 10 pages long, really. It's a difficult read. It's a difficult read and we're talking, of course, about going in and taking care of Cable Street. I think I'm right in saying it is the most graphic practice it ever gets about this stuff. There are hints in previous books about what Vines did when he found that man had been kidnapping little girls or something.

But this is the first time where you get to... And again, it's still talked about in hints, isn't it? But not so much. Not so much. As much as it's upsetting to read some of its incredibly good writing, and I'm in a strange kind of dream. He walked across the floor and bent down to pick up something that gleamed in the torchlight.

It was a tooth. God, that's a moment. Something I noticed, though, when he confronts the clerk and shouts at him, and what does daddy do all day, Mr. And this clerk is kind of claiming this innocence. All I did was take notes, even though what he was taking notes for was horrific. I'm just going to jump back to small gods. Okay.

Sure. That sounds right. Very early, we see the seller of the acquisition. Ah, yes. Oh, yes. And it explains details like the mugs, for example, the mugs which each man had brought from home and had legends on them, like a present from the Holy Grail of Osiria to the world's greatest daddy, and the postcards on the wall.

And it all meant this, that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes into work every day and has a job to do. Yes. I'd forgotten about the acquisition cells for a minute there. That is an interesting parallel, especially as I think he left more to the imagination in that one. Very much so. And kind of got more like in this one, it's like, no, you need to understand what's happening here. Just, oh, just, yeah, you're right.

It's full of fantastic. That's writing like the detail about like stand to attention, comfortable shadow vines and the straw-covered ceiling drank and dead in the sound. Feeling of claustrophobic dread that he manages to invoke is just awful and also fantastic, obviously. You were saying, I think before we were into the episode proper, that you always forget about this bit, like... Yeah. It just somehow my brain blanks out.

I think there's two ways to react to reading something that is this horrifying. And I'm not going to call this dark. I know Pratchett kind of railed against that. I can call it dark. I don't care if we're allowed to disagree with them sometimes. I think it's dark as fuck. It is fucking dark. This is definitely a dark bit.

I think there's two reactions to reading something this dark or this visceral especially, or in a TV show and a film, if it's something you reread or rewatch, which is either you remember it and you almost feel sick to it coming up, because, you know, it's coming and you find it a stressful watch or because you remember you skip over it. So like, Buffy watches, I'm sure we have plenty of them in the listenership. Seeing Red is an episode. I know it's coming.

It upsets me and I end up skipping big chunks of it, if not the entire episode. Or you have something like this where you just, because you enjoy the rest of the book so much, you block this bit out. And literally, I read this whole book two weeks ago before we started recording to prep for it, which is my usual process. And I was horrified when that bit came up because I forgot how dark and bleak it was. And somehow I blanked it on my brain until I read it again this week to do the post-it notes. Yeah.

And it's not something you'd want to skip anyway, I'd say, unless like it's a particular trigger for you because you need to understand where the rest of, where some of the emotions are going to come from in the next bit. You need to understand why he burnt the place down. Exactly. And I think one of the best moments in this section is because he sent Fred out for the whiskey. And he's obviously got the whiskey to use to burn the place down to make like a Molotov cocktail type thing with.

And Fred turns around after they've come out of the place again and one of them still throwing up and young Sam is sort of broken a bit by this. And Fred just says, you know, we bought a second bottle of whiskey and they burn, use that to burn. And it was obviously he bought the second bottle for them to have a drink when this was all over with Ben says, no, we use it. Yeah. Yeah.

What is going to make me feel better than a drink right now is to make this place more on fire. Burn more. Yeah. The fact that that comes from Fred is such a good choice as well because Fred Colin is probably I'd say not so much morally dubious, but he is a bit of a wanker. He is not considered one of the like deeper, more emotional ones. Yeah. Well, it's like we were saying in the first section, isn't it?

That's why it was so interesting when he and Nobby had that big emotional reaction at the start. And here we are again. Yeah. And now you can definitely start to see where that came from, from here. Very much so. And Young Sam's reaction to all of it, especially when he says there was a woman in the last cell. Yes. And the comparison to obviously Sam Vine's reaction to it of going in and the people who had gone to

places in their heads and he gave them quiet deaths, which is another really hard read, but getting as many people out as he can. Yeah. And the way he's doing all of this, you pointed out earlier, Young Sam looking at him with his shining face and that's where he decides to, he rains the beast in himself and then convinces Sam to rain the beast in. Yeah. Therefore giving himself the advice he'd need to take out,

find these things in a minute, because it all gets meta. Exactly. But also the moment when they've decided to burn it. Yeah. And Young Sam says, that's why you left the torture tied up, wasn't it? Yeah. Because Vimes has just tried to teach him, no, you don't kill a man who's tied to a chair. So then Vimes feels the need to go and rescue the torturer, at least untie him,

but gets there just in time to see Swing kill him. Yeah. Which at least means we don't have to see him be saved. But yeah, the beast thing actually kind of ties together your two things on this because there's a great line where he's talking about the badge being important and like being shield shaped. And there's kind of a running theme through the watchbooks and highlighted here with coats, actually, where he does not like giving up his badge. He wants that badge, even when he doesn't like being a watchman.

But he's sick of the whole fucking thing. He's about ready to kick that know-how out the window. He clings to his badge. Do you remember the scene, and now I'm struggling to remember which book it is, but where he's basically... Men at Arms, yeah, when he's holding it. It's the last one he's drunken. Yeah, and he's gripping the badge so tightly, it's ensued to his hand.

And I think it's when Vettanari does the shit, he didn't punch the wall. Yes, yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, oh, fuck, go find him. Misjudged that one slightly. And yeah, and it's mentioned here, actually, that it's stuck by the badge, except for that time when even that hadn't been enough and it's stuck by the bottle instead. And there's got to be this whole, like, he's watching Young Sam go through this

and he's doing what he can, but at the same time he's like, this is going to fuck you up so badly, you're going to become like a chronic alcoholic for a while, sorry dude. Yeah, and he's not stopping it. There's nothing he really... He's trying to change the bigger picture of history, but he's not trying to do anything to fix himself, apart from make sure himself gets the beginning of the lessons.

Yeah. Otherwise, what happens if he sorts himself out and never meets Sivill at that time? And yeah, that's not going to... Yeah, he needs his fine shape. And I don't want to keep thinking about that as explicitly as that. Maybe he's just thinking like, I can't really make this any better, can I? I have also been damaged by this. Can you fix yourself?

Absolutely not, no. Yeah, anyway. But the whole thing... What a fucking hard little bit. Yeah. So the thing with the badge being shield shaped, he's thinking of the badge as almost the shield between him and the beast. This is the badge is what reminds him to keep the piece,

the way the oath is the reminder that this is more than just a job. Yeah. But you also have the Cable Street particulars who don't have visible badges. The badge shields them from the law. They put themselves above it, and the badge is their barrier between the law and themselves. Yes. And in a certain sense, as they put themselves above the law,

they put themselves above a certain level of morality. The clerk tries to justify his behaviour with, I just took notes, even though he knows he's taking notes for a torturer. I was only doing my job versus this is so much more than just a job, is the really clever dichotomy that Pratchett's presenting here. And I don't think the way he writes for leases, you know, something that we would consider perfect in a one day, but he has the benefit of it being in a fantasy,

and it being a dream to explore the morality of it, rather than coming down specifically as this is the one good way to be. Yeah, exactly. I don't know how I'd write it differently, obviously. Obviously not. But like, I can't even pinpoint a bit that I change. No, absolutely not. The thing is, and the thing is in all of this kind of story,

not just in Pratchett's ones, there is a certain suspension of disbelief in that if Vimes was not Vimes, then all this would be very different. But he is. Whoever managed to, well, actually, it is kind of shown because Carse also rise up through the rank of Sergeant immediately and shows exactly what can happen if it's not Vimes who's suddenly given that power, but can charisma his way through the...

I mean, I feel like there is quite a big spectrum between Vimes and Carse. No, exactly. Yeah, that's what I said. No, I mean, Carse is more than just not Vimes. He's as far away from Vimes. Yeah, he's the anti-Vimes. Yeah, I guess it's like saying, you know, neon pink, it's not khaki. Technically true.

He's been dead for well over 70 years. Better than, say, burning down an orphanage. Callback. This is better than burning down an orphanage. Yes, burn down torturers, not orphanages. And like taking a step back from our being moral about it and looking at real world parallels, isn't it fucking satisfying to see the place burn down? Oh, God, yeah.

Let's revel in this for a minute. Let's revel in the good feelings we're meant to feel when you see the place burn to the ground and rust punched out on the floor. And swing, meeting the Grim Reaper. Yep, yes. Not knowing how to cope with that with his calipers. Indeed. No, it's a beautiful climax to build to.

And part of the reason I decided not to end it there, but to end it slightly later with Khasa speaking to the sergeants, is it's a beautiful climax to build to. And then there's so much to come from it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, this is like, we've now gone into the epilogue of this section, which takes us into the prologue of the next bit, which is very, yeah.

So many endings. Or endings from Return of the King. Right. Francine, do you want to lighten the mood with a obscure reference finial? Yes. And luckily for us, it is quite a nice one. And it does hinge on the fact I misremembered a line. So apologies.

So right at the beginning of this section, we have, there were hints that it was going to be a sunny day. That should bring things on after the overnight rain. The lilacs, for example. And somewhere in my head, I'd remembered that line as like he was saying that lilacs do something and that had that like, you know, how sometimes you can look at bits of plant life and say, ah, that means the weather's going to do this, that and the other.

Yes. So I thought it was something like that. I mean, I can't, but people can. So I made a mental note to look up as like, is lilac, one of those weather forecasty flowers. And didn't then bother checking the line to see that that's not what he meant at all. Anyway, it's not really, but it's interesting in a different way. And kind of ties back into the book.

Do you know what phonology is, P-H-E-N, without that important R? No, I don't know anything about phonology. Well, it's quite cool. It's the study of periodic events in biological life cycles, less annoyingly described. You know, if you make a note of like the first time you see this flower bloom, the first time you see this insect appear in the year. Yeah.

That's what this is, basically. Oh, right. And so it's very good for tracking things like climate change or tracking the effect of pollutants on things. And that's, oh, just learning how to understand plants and stuff is how it was used in the start of the science. But it turns out lilac's actually a really useful plant for that and has been used as kind of the measure of weather patterns over decades,

since like the 1870s or something like that. Oh, cool. So lilac, elderberry and honeysuckle, with the three ones like it popping up again. Because it makes perfume as well. Yeah, quite cool. Phonology, very cool and good. Right, let's obsess over that for a bit.

Yeah, we will. Okay. That's why I didn't say needling, yeah. I think that's probably everything we are going to say today about that section of Night Watch. We are going to be back next week for part four. As we mentioned at the beginning of four parsers, starting on page 356 in the Corgi paperback,

it was a beguiling theory that might have arisen in the minds of Wiglet and Woddy. What a lovely sentence. Lovely Wiglet and Woddy. Until next week, dear listener, if you would like to get in touch with us, you can follow us on Instagram at the true show make you can. You're allowed.

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which you're like, it's not to be confused with phonology, phonology, or phenomenology. Phenomenon.