The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 114: A Hat Full of Sky Pt. 1 (Exactly This Insufferable)

Episode Date: May 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 “A Hat Full of Sky”. Hubris! A Horse! Bees! 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:TTSMYF Presents Marc Burrows: The Magic of Terry Pratchett - We Got TicketsThe Band With Folk In - Zwergenmarsch - YoutubeA Marvellous Shrimp - Twitter Queer Trad Folk Ballads - Spotify 113: Monstrous Regiment Pt 3 (Gender is a Fake Drug) -  r/TTSMYFWomen in the Navy (or: that time I heard Terry Pratchett say "tits") - r/TTSMYF Mythopoeic Awards  A Hat Full of Sky - Colin Smythe  Straight-tusked elephant - WikipediaWhite Horse Hill - National Trust     The Ivy-Wife - LiederNet In a Wood - Oxford Lieder   Beech: queen of the forest, here and abroad. - Free Online Library    Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

So the trick to making a cup of coffee instead of a cup of gravy is to not put the coffee away in the cupboard. How, Joanna, how was your time in a castle? In Germany. In Germany. It was bloody marvellous, it was. I'm not sure why I just went a bit cockney. Just to underline the fact that you were indeed a foreigner in a strange land. Look, I got very good at saying, ich spreche kind Deutsch und es tut mir leid, ich bin Englisch. Super. Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm English. So good. So this was the Discworld Con in Germany, which has a proper name that I looked up and forgot. Schäben-Welt-Convention in Witzenhausen in Germany, specifically at Castle Ludwigstein.

Nice. Yeah, I remember shit. No, it was, I'm going to apologize to listeners now that I sounded a bit off because at some point during the Germanic travels, I picked up COVID. Special German COVID. Special German COVID, which is great. My brain's going in eight directions at once and none of them are the right direction. Which is why this episode is coming out a little late. Apologies. Apologies. However, Joanna sounds surprisingly good. I must say, I was expecting you to be far less coherent than this. So thumbs up. I've had a lot of coffee. We'll see how we are by the end of the episode. Yeah, so tell me about the convention. Tell me about it. It's in a castle. It was amazing. It was gorgeous cobblestones. I was so proud of myself for not falling flat

on my face at any point, considering all of the cobblestones. Yeah, glad we weren't boots. Yes, healed boots, but boots. I did do a little video diary. I haven't finished putting it together yet, but that'll appear at some point when my brain works again. But now I met loads of really lovely people. I spent way too much time in the bar. German Discworld fans can drink. I bet they can. Yeah. Did you drink out of a stein? No, but as is not surprising in a Discworld convention at one point, I was randomly handed a glass of mead. Oh, super. I like that. It was a great band at the Con as well. The band with Folkin who played lots of, they had some stuff in English language. They did a really fun cover

of Wellerman that was Discworld themed. They did a very strange thing. I didn't understand that involved an odd German congerline and I wasn't sure what I was seeing was real. Excellent. Good. So I'm just making notes here like this as an academic study, but it's for the show notes. Tell me more about this congerline. Is it in the room with us? Is it in the room with us now? They also did a dwarf song about gold, but it was to the theme of like, you know, the animals went in two by two, hurrah. Gold. To gold, to gold, to gold, to gold. But yeah, I realised I know quite a lot of songs to that theme. So I'm going to go and obsess over the origins of that at some point. Okay.

The tune. The tune. Yeah. The Johnny O'Hudley near you. Oh yeah. Okay. Excellent. And one horrific English rugby channel that's specifically racist against Germans in which I did not sing at the German Discworld Convention. Cool, good. But it was a really great time. Lots of really lovely people. Lots of interesting stuff. I got to see Mark's show with some special German jokes in it. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's coming up soon for us, by the way. Listeners, a few tickets left still. Just a few is exciting. Yeah, and there probably still will be when I release this, because it's coming out in zero the same day we're recording. So I'll link it in the show notes still.

Yes, go and buy tickets. Come see Mark with a little bit of us around the edges. Yeah, and Barry's and Edmunds. Sonny, Barry's and Edmunds, Suffolk. We have several tractors. More than several. We can't promise tractors at the show, but we can't promise there won't be tractors at the show, it is Suffolk. Oh yeah, so the convention itself then, like what, because I've never been to one of these things, what kind of stalls are there? So there weren't many stalls for this one. There was like lots of opportunities to buy project books, obviously in various languages. It was all volunteer run and they had a very specific thing and volunteers don't handle in cash. So it was all done on like BFS will type

stamp cards along with a very confusing system involving having a small cuddly animal that you had to hand over and then you get a bottle and you had to give a bottle back to get the cuddly. I still don't really understand what was happening there, but I've come home with a small cuddly toy frog. So I feel like I came out the winner. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This sounds like some headology nonsense, but all right. It was right. There was an excellent stall selling sausages in a barn. I ate many a sausage in a barn. Oh, so you're still here to tell the tail line. I am still here. They contained, well, named to be, it was bratwurst, so German name. German sausage in a barn in Tannis is pretty

reliable. Yeah, it was excellent. It was slightly weird because there was a castle that's been converted into a youth hostel. I haven't stayed in something like a youth hostel since I went on school residential trips, and it felt a bit like a school residential trip. Oh, yeah. I've got horribly... Yeah, you never really did much of the travel in the early Chinese, did you? No, I was being really boring and working. I've got really badly bruised legs from trying to climb onto the top bunk of the bunk beds while slightly dipped. Oh, no. Never, never go through the top bunk if you've got a choice. It was a mistake. Well, I figured if I was on the bottom bunk, I'd sit up and hit my head a lot

because of who I am as a person. But yeah, it was really hard. I thought you had a lovely time. You didn't get to travel on a double decker train, I've seen the video. I got to travel on a double decker train. That was very exciting. And hi to new listeners who might have found us fire me wandering around, babbling on about my podcast at the German Discworld Convention. Oh, right. So going from the very good to the very annoying, our other soft open topic today is the writer's strike. Yeah, that's happening. Which Joanna has thoughts on, which is why I've bullet pointed it in case we forgot.

My thoughts aren't super coherent, again, because COVID brain, but it's exciting. This is far from the first writer's strike. They've been happening basically every time there's a change in how media is distributed, especially when it comes to television. So 60s, 70s, 80s, we've had writer strikes. The last big one was 2007, which some listeners will know that affected quite a lot of major TV shows. Yeah, there's a lot of shows you rewatch and you're like, oh, why is this season only six episodes? There's normally 20. Oh, writer's strike. The American office is an interesting one for that. Well, the thing is with a writer's strike is that stuff can technically

keep filming as long as the writers don't go on set. And that's very borderline with this one. That's been very interesting with this new strike. With the 2007 one, the office wanted to keep filming. They had some episodes written and ready to go. And Steve Carell refused because he didn't want to be a scab because he had written episodes for the show in the past and called in sick with giant balls when they tried to make him go and film. So yes, the 2007 one was the last big one. And that was to do with writers receiving a fair amount of residuals for television that was being distributed online. This is just around the time that iTunes video became a thing. In fact, one of the first top selling episodes of television

on iTunes video was the first American office Christmas special. Handy little that's where we were in time. That was in like 2005 2006. So yeah, so this one is obviously linked a lot more to streaming and writers not being paid fairly for residuals from streaming things. The fact that streamers are incredibly unwilling to share viewership data. So writers aren't being paid based on how much their work is actually getting shown alongside this new trend for mini writers rooms, which basically give writers a lot less time to work on a project. It's kind of being gig economy, doesn't it? They're pretty much trying to turn it into what a lot of the UK writing scene is, which is not good. The UK TV writing scene is not great unless you happen to come into it

with a ton of privilege. So yeah, that's a rough summary. There are much better summaries on the internet and I'll link to one in the show notes. The AI side of it. Oh, GQ one's great, isn't it? Yeah, that's what I have open just to double check all the talking bullshit. But yeah, the AI side of it I found particularly interesting as a writer whose feature is being slightly jeopardized by AI. And yeah, obviously, it's a completely different genre to the stuff I write. I'm very much a nonfiction article writer. But that is what is currently being subsumed by a lot of AI. And seeing the creative field be like standing up against it like this is quite encouraging. Especially because to use AI to falsay something like script development, it has, you know,

neural networks aren't trained on avoid, they have to be fed something. So if an AI creates a script because it's been fed the work of preexisting writers, should those writers not be paid for what the AI produces? Of course. But then of course, you have the argument that shouldn't therefore everybody be paid for everything that everything's derived from because my lifetime of reading is what gives me my outfit. But however, I don't agree with that. I'm parroting the argument I've seen again and again. It's a sticky argument. I don't think there's a clear solution. I think that the studios and especially the streamers are being really shit about this strike. They're currently very sticking their fingers in their ears, going la la la. And doing

everything you can to force say show runners slash sort of writer producer types to somehow still be involved in working on shows that are shooting shows that in the 2007 strike would have just had to shut down production. Now things like rings of power, the new season of House of Dragon, the new season of Andor are all going ahead with shooting but without any writers officially working on them during shooting. And how has that happened just because the contracts are worse than they were 10 years ago? Yeah, people are tied into shit contracts with huge streamers like HBO and Disney are the two big ones you can point fingers at really. But it's an issue across the board. There's arguments that a show runner is not technically a writer. So despite

the fact that Disney tried to underpay show runners by calling them headrises a few years ago, now they're calling them show runners. So it puts a lot of those creatives in a really shit position and also I think it's going to be used to the detriment of these shows because people have to very demonstrably not write while things are being filmed. Changes won't be made that should be made and we'll end up with shit television for it. So whereas with the 2007 strike there ended up being a huge gap in content, it was a 100 day strike and it was about six months to a year later that you really saw where the gaps in content were for shorter seasons. Stuff that just didn't get renewed stuff that like had to take a year off so it lost the fan base

it had and that killed it for a second season. I think what you're going to get now is that we won't have that same gap in content, but the content we get will be shit. Yes. Right. And somehow people will try them. I've already seen this narrative of like, oh, writing shit anyway, so clearly we don't need writers. It's a very blue tick narrative. Speaking of nothing, sorry. Speaking of nothing to do with this. The other big topic of the week is of course the royal wedding. The coronation. Man gets hat. Man gets hat. Thank you, private eye. Protesters mistreated. Yes, man gets hat. Protesters mistreated. I woke up in time towards the parade on the way back. Yeah. That was impressive. I watched Clone Wars all day while knitting.

There's a parade in that. Yeah. So similar days, I think. Any thoughts on the coronation? I guess if you didn't see it. No, I couldn't give up. We're not exactly royalists here on the true show. Thank you for that. Met Gala. Bigger fan of the Met Gala. Still think it was a weird choice to want a Karl Lagerfeld, but big fan of all the celebrities that just wore designers that Karl Lagerfeld would have fucking hated. Yeah, absolutely. Also quite liked the little bit where the cockroach got in the spotlight for a minute there. That was cute. But do you remember like when Twitter was really good and like that cockroach would have had its own Twitter account within like five minutes? On the plus side, we've all seen Pedro Pascal's knees. You don't get that at a coronation.

He did look exactly like a postman though. You really fucking did. Obviously, because I don't consume quite the same media as you. I've kind of missed the boat on this whole everybody's weirdly obsessed with Pedro Pascal thing. Yeah. I did quite dig the Royal Mail by Balenciaga look. Yeah. That was cute. For fashion listeners, I'm aware it wasn't Balenciaga. I can't remember who the designer was now, though. No, I know. It's just a... I know, but there might be a short hand for high fashion. But yeah, no, I don't really have any coronation thoughts other than like, ick. Royalty gives me the ick. Yeah. Nice hat. So in summary, don't really care about the coronation, but high fashion, fun. Always fun. Yes. And supporting

the cockroach and Pedro Pascal's knees, speaking of which, would you like to make a podcast? Yes. Let's make a podcast about Pedro Pascal's knees. Or we could talk about Hat Full of Sky. Hat Full of Sky. Also good. Hello, and welcome to the Two Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one of Stime in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of our discussion of a Hat Full of Sky. Hat Full of Sky. A Hat Full of Sky, you say. Oh, a curious item. To shreds, you say. It is Hat Full of Sky. It is the second Tiffany Akin book. We are back already with our favorite

new witch. We are. Note on spoilers before we crack on. This is a spoiler-like podcast. Obviously heavy spoilers for the book, Hat Full of Sky. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Riding on a coach, arguing with your left knee. We've all been there. We've all been there. Follow-up. We've got things to follow up on. Follow-up. Follow-up. Yeah. Do you want to start? Yes. First of all, an apology. I sit corrected. I said in part three of our discussion on what's just written that Jackram doesn't get referred to with pronouns in that one specific

section. And Jackram does indeed get referred to with pronouns in that specific section. I see. I sit very corrected. More fun though. Beverly, on Twitter, painted us a shrimp and it's really cool. Oh, yeah. The mantis shrimp. It brings me much joy. Have you finally been able to spot your gender in the colors? God, no. So I'm going to link to that in the show notes because it's a really cool picture. So in the episode, I was trying to remember when, at some point before, we had talked about folk songs taking place in the month of May and I could not remember. That's because it wasn't a proper episode. It was a bonus episode for patrons. But in finally working that out,

Nerys also made us a playlist of queer folk songs. Oh, okay. I will link to the show notes. It's a delight. Very cool. Very good. It is. And we've had all sorts of delights on Reddit. We have. Yeah. Last couple of episodes, we've had loads of cool discussion come from it. And I might have like unrelated to that episode stuff as well. So just go check out the subreddit if you haven't already. But specifically, I will link to the Reddit thread for part three because there are loads of great like podcast recommendations on things like suffrage, Batsuit Clad, I think, posted a couple on those. There are some articles on things like trans women's role in the Stonewall riots, trans women and trans men's role, and like the problems that

black women face during suffrage, as lots of intersectionality stuff that we didn't cover in as much depth as we would if we had six hours for each episode. God, we got so much stuff we didn't get to cover. And yeah, lots of cool stuff like that. Also, follow up specifically, Butter Bars we talked about. I think you mentioned that that's what those insignia, the two gold bars on the shoulder were called. And I just said something like, what? But apparently, it's like the shape of the insignia, two gold bars. Okay, yeah. That was user C Sana. He said that. We've also got a fantastic, and I won't even try and shorten it for this, anecdote entitled, Women in the Navy Brackets, or that time I heard Terry Pratchett say tits.

It's a good story. Please follow that link and enjoy. There was also a great little one about Omnian naming conventions in which a listener mentioned to us a guy called Nicholas Barbin, 17th century economist who helped develop the concept of fire insurance, whose original given name allegedly was, if Jesus Christ had not died for thee, there has been damned. So I love some of the mightily praiseworthy AE who exalted Omn and visited them for this planetary pamphlet. So yeah, that brought me a lot of joy. Classic. I love that. All right. Amazing. Thank you everybody for all the cool annotations and links and feedbacks and everything. I've really enjoyed going through all of that over the last

couple of weeks. It is a delight. Shall we crack on and talk about Hat Full of Sky then? Yeah, let's let's do that. So Hat Full of Sky is the 32nd Discworld Novel. It was published in 2004. The second book, as I've said, in the Tiffany Aking Arc, it won a lot of awards, obviously, including a Locust Award, and a Mythopeic Award, which I hadn't heard of, but which sounds quite cool. It's given for fiction in the spirit of the Inklings. The Inklings being the famous literary discussion group attended by Tolkien and Lewis, which I think I went into in depth during one of our down the rabbit hole things on the Patreon. But yeah, the reception in general, very good. I found a comment from Pratchett on one of the forums talking about how well it had been

received with librarians, parent-teacher groups and the like. He said, let me share with you the email from my editor. So quoting the quote, I'm pleased to inform you that the Amelia Bloomer Project of Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Roundtable of the American Library Association has named their 2005 Amelia Bloomer's book list, and that it includes a Hat Full of Sky quote, quoting a quote, unquote, the book selected for the 2005 Amelia Bloomer list show the fight for the freedom of self, of body, of mind, and of spirit that embody feminist principles. And so Pratchett said, and I certainly won't complain, not your actual religious right by a long way, certainly. So if poor old C.S. Lewis is getting it in the neck, I think by now I'm

entitled to a small burning. Wake up America. In response, I think somebody saying his books might get censored. So yeah, that's quite a fun thread. And yeah, that's pretty much all I've got for the intro on this one. Because we've got fun things to talk about. And I thought perhaps you might like to summarize the first four chapters, is it? Yeah, chapters one through four for the first section, I believe I've tweeted it. In this section, first, Miss Tick gives us a guide to the Fiegelfolk. Then in chapter one, something is searching. Tiffany has new boots that pinch in a green dress, but not a real green dress. That's cruel. She sees herself and something finds a mind. Yesterday, Tiffany said goodbye to Granny and the chalk. And today, she's bidding farewell

to her family as she sets off to go into service. With Miss Tick, Tiffany heads off. The Wee Free Men haven't been to apparent lately, not since Robb anybody's wedding to the new Kelder. Roland catches up to Tiffany just in time to give her a farewell gift, which she doesn't open, and receive a curtsy in return. Lurking Fiegel spots something following and back at the mound, there's some writing developing. Jeannie the Kelder tells the Fiegel's not to interfere. In chapter two, in two shirts, Tiffany makes a note in her diary and Miss Tick makes a shamble. After a brief moment of ununderstandable panic, the coach arrives and Tick and Tiff go for a walk. The egg explosion was probably just a random magical just charge. Waiting in the woods, Miss Level arrives to take on

Tiffany. They fly and Tiffany truly sees the chalk. In chapter three, at Miss Level's cottage, the apprenticeships put off for the night. There's something strange cleaning up around Tiffany. The next morning, Tiffany dons her new silver horse and reads the posters on the stairs. Miss Level's explain her circus history across two bodies and introduces Tiffany to Oswald before the chores begin. In a hyvor interlude, we learn the strange history of Dr. Bustle. Back on the chalk, Robb's worried about Tiffany and turns down a drink. Jeannie understands and sends the Fiegel's forward to fight. In chapter four, Robb makes a plan and the Fiegel's get dressed up. Tiffany's helping in the villages and meets Mr. Weevill and his money. On the chalk, a poorly assembled but

wealthy stranger catches the cart and makes it go faster. Tiffany can't shamble and something is coming. A girl on a broomstick arrives at Level's cottage and invites Tiffany to the Sabbath and the stagecoach continues on with its strange passenger. Awesome. That's a good book. I quite like this one. Yeah, it's a nice one. It's a nice little well-paced setup, I think. Nice little bit of suspense. Buzzing, always a bit frightening for me, particularly, but... Yeah, you're not a fan of the buzz, are you? No. Unless it's bees, of course. Yeah, yeah. Big fan of the bees. Helicopter and line cloth watch. Fiegel's circling on a buzzard high over the downs is getting helicopter for this episode. Of course. Because we've still got two

weeks to go and plenty of broomsticks around. Did we get an email calling us out for not having that as a helicopter already? I think we're never reading that. That was Nightwatch. I already got corrected a lot on Twitter at the time, but it was a listener who's a bit behind. So, yeah. Listener, when you get to this episode, I know. Hi. Hi, I'm not actually annoyed. For line cloth, I'm going with Fiegel Scarecrow Pelvis, which is also the name of my new indie band. Good and bad, okay. Sure. I also want to quickly mention that the trousers and coat for the Fiegel Scarecrow are borrowed from a Biding Swindle, the ferret keeper, and what a fucking name. A Biding Swindle, yes. Oh, I need to go back and make some notes of the names in here.

I did a couple of the place names, but yeah, there's got to be some great lanker naming conventions here. Excellent. Yes. Have you gotten a relevant elephant? I have. When we were talking about the Hiva, the book says something about it. Here we go. In this sense, they are like the common hermit elephant of Hwondaland, elephant of Solitaris that will always seek the strongest mud hut as a cell, which I like hermit elephant, very good. So I was learning at some point recently about the straight tusked elephant, which was a species of elephant, now extinct very sadly, that used to live in Western Asia and Europe. It weighed 11 to 15 tons, which is fucking massive.

For comparison, an African bull elephant weighs more like 4.75 tons. So three times the size of a big fucking African elephant. Yeah, real big fucking elephant. And then a little bonus, the Paleo loxodon falconeri is an extinct species of elephant, again, very sad, that derived from a population of straight tusked elephants that became isolated on Sicily. And due to this isolation, they became dwarf elephants standing around one meter tall. And by some estimations, this may have taken as little as 40 generations from the biggest mammal to ever have walked the land, as far as we know, to a tiny little meter high elephant, which I am increasingly upset, do not still exist.

Imagine. Okay, quotes. The red gold light of sunset was flowing across the land and down there were the long shadows of two shirts and further away the woods and villages all the way back to the long curve till of the chalk, which glowed red and the white carving of the chalk horse burned gold like some giant pendant. Tiffany stared at it. In the fading light of the afternoon with the shadows racing away from the sliding sun, it looked alive. Lovely. I think the descriptions again, of landscape here, absolutely beautiful. Love the way that Pratchett lingers through Tiffany's eyes on everything to do with the chalk. Yeah, it's just, yeah, beautiful. So yeah, similarly, this is where Tiffany was saying

goodbye to Granny Aking and just a really short one. The chalk hills were taking them, just like they'd taken the bones of Granny Aking. That's the remains of the shepherding hut. That's beautiful. Yeah, just really like that. I think the, yeah, the continued loving mel and collie of Granny Aking's memory there, when Tiffany talks about her, I think it's lovely. Yeah, it's beautiful. Speaking of Tiffany, let's talk characters then. Yes, our protagonist, lovely little Tiffany. So she's two years older here than the events of We Free Men. She is 11. Yep, a good age to be. There's a really, there's a really great line when she's, she's in bed and she's listening to her parents. It's quite easy to hear accident,

accidentally over here, people talking downstairs. If you hold an opt-on glass, the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it. Yeah, I was a nosey little kid as well. Yeah. Tiffany's interesting in this one though. She's, so she's got this C-metric, which is full of all sorts of foreboding as the buzzing thing keeps getting an idea of her mind whenever she does it. And I don't know if it's because I've read this before, obviously. I can't really remember the plot at the end of the book yet, but, or because we've just looked in such depths at things like borrowing and that is every time she steps outside of her mind, you're like, oh, yeah, that's a bad idea. There's also something interesting. I'm kind of pointing

up now that obviously I read the whole book to prep for this, but a week ago and my brain's fried. So you've got this idea. She's using this trick to look at herself to see how her new dress looks, to see how the necklace looks with her new dress. This is clearly a thing where she's leaving her mind open for something dodgy that buzzes. It's a kind of newish sense of vanity she's picking up, she grows older, she wants to live, which is a very 11-year-old girl thing. But if you remember the Susan problem of Narnia, where Susan becomes too vain to be allowed to go back to Narnia, there's a little hint of punishment for preening here, maybe, that I'm keeping an eye on. That is interesting. The bit about the memory,

sorry, the memory, the mirror for me, I liked when he described the actual mirror she had, as you'd have to kind of put bits of yourself together in a thing, which, A, yes, very much so, trying to work from compact, but B seemed kind of metaphorical in a way, perhaps. It also reminds me, the whole see-me thing, of I had a friend called Daisy at school who was one of those just incredibly artistic types, just obscenely so, and like could, ambidextrous, could write in mirror writing. Amazing. Yeah, and one thing she'd do was, if she didn't have a mirror and she wanted to do makeup or a hair or something, was stare at you and use your face as like a map to, and she could do it perfectly on her own face, if she could just

orient herself on. That's really quite terrifying. Yeah. I love it. But she was so nice and lovely that it wasn't too, it wasn't like creepy at the time, but if you described, that would be a really cool thing, I think, to put in a character that could perhaps be a little creepy, but yeah. That's a great detail. Daisy, if you ever hear this, you did very cool things. I'm sure you're listening now. There's also some interesting moments of Tiffany, she sort of picked up some of the wrong lessons at the end of We Free Men from Granny Weatherwax and she's got a lot of prideful. She's remembering Granny Weatherwax saying, and I will show you respect as you in turn will show respect to me.

Mistress Weatherwax, the witch who all the other witches secretly wanted to be like, had shown her respect so you'd think the others can make an effort in that department. Yeah. Yeah. And when Miss Level's sort of talking about the fact that Granny Weatherwax took a hat off to Tiffany and she says, you know, you are as much of a witch as Granny said you were and Tiffany's beaming with pride on the inside. You know what they say about pride? Good for you. Never goes wrong. Don't worry. I hardly know this. Oh, good. It's been a while since we tried to shoehorn that in.

I like the getting to grips with wishing aloud. Yes. That's a fun little don't make any fairy tale wishes for God's sake. It's the new monkey's poor slant on things. Which is also setting up quite nicely for later in the book. Oh, yes. We love, we like a foreshadow here at The Trick Show, make you proud. Do. Speaking of misplaced pride, Miss Tick. The sort of a witchfinder, Miss Tick. The sort of a witchfinder, Miss Tick. I thought it was quite interesting how clearly we see her flaws in this one. We don't go straight into the wise old guide role. We're very much in the

till, you know, adults were allowed to be flawed and obviously so. And oh, yes, I saw that all along. And I also very much just to enjoy her politely. I'll just go and look at this rock, shall I? Well, it wasn't very interesting. But yes, I like the immediately flawed adult. And I think it's a good set up for when we meet Miss Level. Yes, flawed in a different way. Or arguably not flawed, but clearly has some issues. Damaged in a different way. Yes. Let's say that. Very cool and interesting backstory. Yes, very cool and interesting. You're muted.

Yes, very cool and interesting backstory. Yeah, Miss Level, who's a research witch, which is a nice, and we get both of her a research witch, which is nice. And we get more of an extended explanation of what a research witch does, because we were interested, introduced to the concept way back in Weird Sisters. Yeah, it was the original Fairy Godmother, right? Goody Wemper. Yeah. No, so she was a different witch from the original Goody Wemper, from the original Fairy Godmother. It was the Fairy Godmother who gives Magra at the wand,

but it's Goody Wemper who's cottage Magra inherited and who had trained Magra in the ways of research witching. Right. Yes, that sounds right. I think also that maybe the Godmother had books and stuff as well. But yes, no, you're right, Goody Wemper. So this new, this new witch we've met is a scientist. Is a scientist. Very cool. Working out which bit of the newt. What kind of eye, at what point should you put it in? Do I fold it into the potion, Joanna? Do I whisk it? You just fold in the newt.

Sterituna. Anyway, yeah, sorry, Miss Level. It's really interesting how her big secret gets sort of built up too. Tiffany notices how cheerful she is and notices that cheerfulness has got cracks around the edges, which is just a really great line. She's clearly used to being very harshly rejected for this. Yeah. In a way that Tiffany's just not interested in rejecting her for. She's like, okay, all right, no, this seems all right, I guess. Not keen on this ghost thing though.

Like I love that she didn't even think about mentioning that. She was so worried about her own oddity that she didn't even think to mention that Oswald would be moving her furniture around. The undergeist. Yes, which loves that by the way. Yeah, 100%. But yeah, Tiffany walking down the stairs and she sees these circus posters and starts working things out that Miss Level might in fact be topsy and turvy. Also love that the circus is called Professor Monty Bladders Three Ring Circus. And there's, I had a look at annotated project today, and I really like that the annotation for

that is just, it is difficult to believe that a British humorist could call a circus owner Monty by coincidence. See the egress. See the egress. That's one of my favourite bits, project bits, the egress bit. Still disappointing. I agree that it is not in fact a giant bird. Yes, I would like there to be an exit with a giant bird. Yes, I think that would be a good sign for my gesturing with a wing. Gesturing with a wing.

Yes, please leave. Oh, yes. Anyway, big fan of both of Miss Level. Yes, and Oswald, who so far seems, you know, well-meaning if a little annoying. Jeannie, the new Kelder. Yes, a complex character from the word go. Love that. I really like that Jeannie with Jeannie Pratchett is kind of does what I didn't like about the like Tiffany and Fiona relationship and we've remembered a lot better.

So I do like it here. Does that make sense? Yes. Like I didn't like it because it felt like just a teen girl rivalry a bit and we've remembered here is like completely understood and justified. It's interesting that she very much seems to see Tiffany as a grown woman. I mean, physically. Yeah, and I wonder if that's it because like she's treating, although obviously she knows that she wasn't like actually married to Robb anybody and all of that.

She's treating her very much as an adult rival here, not as a child in danger. Very much so. And it dives into her insecurities. Like Tiffany remembers, you know, the look Jeannie had given her just for a moment of being pure poison, which seems quite ominous. And then she's stopping Robb from going. And the book puts in another very good foreshadowing moment. Jeannie was homesick and lonely and frightened of the future, which is why she was about to get things wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very explicit foreshadow that you don't often get.

Yeah. And yeah. So it kind of dives into the thing it didn't dive into with film, which is Jeannie is like this because she's come, she is establishing a role in a new place. Because Tiffany, in a sense, does have this competition eventually. She just needs to know that Robb is more loyal to her than Tiffany. Yes. Yeah. I think she finds her own way around it. She's, she, she knows it's the right thing to do, but she doesn't want to go against what's sensible, I think. Yeah. It's hard to, because there's two sides of her here. There's the wife and the kelder, but I don't think either of them are less sensible than the other

in her position. Obviously, because we're rooting for Tiffany, we want her to tell Robb anybody to go right away. But, you know, in that situation, imagine if he's terrifying. She's pregnant with seven tiny feagles. Yes. One of which will be a kelder. I think part of it is she needs to know that she has control over the situation, so she needs to know that she can tell Robb not to go before she tells him to go. Yeah. Yeah. I like her attempts to bring literacy to the... Oh, poor Robin is writing. Yeah. I like it, though. There's a little kick in man. I like the fear of the letter Q. That's a loudest tale.

The first rules of writing steal a bit of paper and some pen. Yeah. Perfect. That's how I get along, and I do it for everything. It's fine. I do find it interesting that, you know, obviously, the idea is about the feagles panicking about writing and why Robb particularly is so uncomfortable with it. One of the things he said is, writing even goes on saying a man's words after he's dead. That was in my best Scottish accent or Fiegel accent, which that's a sentiment we've had in this world, and we'll have again, and is also a lovely thing to think of considering what we're doing. Yeah. It is both a sinister and hopeful proposition, I think, of having one's words

continue, not even just after you're dead, is it, but in 10 years when you're a completely different person. Yeah. Yeah. Let's not look back at my writing from 10 years ago. I settled up, may have even mentioned it on the podcast, but I dug up some of my old school essays and I was like, yeah, do you know what? I've always been exactly this insufferable. I love that. I could edit these, but on the whole, I'm into this feminist look at Oslo. Good. Well done, me. Amazing. I can only hope that I am only that insufferable when I look back at myself in 10 years. And we have a new clan, Gonagall, awfully wee big Billy Big Chin McFiegel. I was really hoping

I could do that in one. And another example of somebody very much out of their depth, putting their little foot down, saying, notice me. Hi, it's me, awfully wee big Billy Big Chin McFiegel. All right, you can do it. And he's little. He's a very little Fiegel. Yeah. And a very young Gonagall. Yes, we don't know much about him yet, do we? Apart from he's, he's come south from the mountains with... From the Long Lake tribe clan. And the Scarecrow is his idea. Yes, that's right. Yes, he's a creative. So we see Roland again. Yes. Last time we saw him, he was a fairly disoriented spoilt little boy. Yep. And now he's fairly disoriented. Less of a twit, I think he's described. Yes, but there was so much of twit to start with.

So he apparently can't quite cope with being curtsied to. And therefore, Tiffany takes great delight in curtsying to him, which is... I like that the only reason you'd curtsy is out of spite. That's a good rule for life, I think. Spiteful curtsying only. He's sort of taken to hanging around near Tiffany occasionally. She couldn't stand the way he kept looking like a spaniel that had been kicked. I can very much see Tiffany just being annoyed by a boy with just... You know, that's kicked spaniel look. Just like... Yes. Assert yourself, please. Or I will keep curtsying just to make you blush. I think it's fair to say there might still be a tiny bit of lingering bitterness as well that he got all the credit for everything that happened

a couple of years ago. Yeah, but on the plus side, there is very much an awareness of that from his side, I'm sure. Yes. And it must be nice to hold that soft power. Over his head. Yes. So we very briefly meet Petulio. I think we'll talk about her a lot more next week. Yes, The Pig Witches Apprentice. The Pig Witches Apprentice covered in a cultural ray that keeps getting tangled together when she bows. I think it's the first time we get to see Tiffany try to make a friend of her own age. Yeah, we haven't seen Tiffany with any other young witches or even just young people apart from Roland who doesn't count.

And I like the look into the kind of internal monologue while she's talking to Petulio. She's like, Petulio is very nice. I'm being a twat. How do I do this? Yes, I would like to come to the meeting. Thank you. Okay. Very familiar. And she's sort of trying very hard to not be that easily annoyed. I'm smarter than everyone else person. Yeah, absolutely. Just like, yes, I'm just going to try and be like a young girl who can make a friend here. Come on, we can do this. We can do this. And then what else do we have? Oh, yeah, The Hiver. Yeah. My main note about this was during the big explanation of The Hiver in the academic book

we've managed to zoom along to was that they're not alive, but they have as it were the shape of life. And it reminded me very much of a virus, because obviously a few years ago, who can remember why? There was a lot of talk about the nature of viruses. And I learned a lot about how they're not really alive, kind of, but they are in any meaningful sense because they follow these stimuli. And yeah, I quite like the thinking of The Hiver as a virus in that way. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I like the idea that it's built into the very beginning of the universe in the seconds of creation, that it's always been there. This theory that it advances life. The actual sort of zooming to, as you mentioned, The Hiver in the university as well

is one of the things perhaps it does a lot that I really like, those cinematic, written cinematic moments. Yeah. Pullback rise above the cottage, fly the eye across the nighttime. And physically flying you visually, despite only using words. God, that's a sentence to the university and into the library. And even if you are reading this as a standalone, like if you're a younger reader who's starting with the Tiffany A. King books, it's still really imaginable. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I really enjoy that detail. Did you also notice that it mentions an expedition to the Loco region? Oh, I didn't know. Have we been there before? In The First Science of Discworld Book. Oh, well, can't be remembering that. And yes, it doesn't bother footnoting it again, but we do get

the sign of insanity with multiple exclamation marks as Dr. Bustle loses it. Melts, yes. I like that as a little trope. You get to writing the diary and going slowly, mad as you do. So, yep, very nice example of it. It's another thing where you can really picture it as well. You can like hear a voiceover as you watch someone angrily scribble. They're called me mad. Yeah, I think Haiva, very another lovely example of Pratchett's propensity to make particularly terrifying villains that don't really have motivation, don't have feelings, don't have, they're not to be reasoned with. Yeah, it's a like pure instinct creature. Yeah, very cool. I have a little bonus character. The old man whose boots got nicked by the feagles. And it's because he spoke in a

dialect, which I found pleasing. And then I found Pratchett talking about it. He says they was down good boots, they could walk home from the parable by themselves, vibe appointed they in the right direction. And they marched off with my old hat too. And I got he just as I wanted he all soft and fluffy. And it's giving that kind of gender often to objects or just using they where you wouldn't expect there's lots of actual grammatical ways to explain this properly that I don't know if that on my head. But commenter on one of the alt.net forums said why do the old people in the book all speak with such poor grammar as a foreigner I find it confusing the older citizens should have such strange patterns of speech dialects that I could understand but this is

plain weird. Pratchett replies, no, it's plain English. Seriously, the ancient Mr. Weevill, for example, which is another one, but I like this example better, uses construction still found in the southwest of England and elsewhere. He told I told he here they be I'd be here. Granny Weatherwax is a little better, but still uses constructions that say old rural to a native English speaker. Amazing. Yeah. And yes, so that's the characters. Do we have any locations? We have a few locations, but I would just talk about the White Horse and the chalk because we mentioned this when we were talking about Weevill Man and all the stuff that's being referenced there. The White Horse specifically is the Uffington White Horse. Yes. Not far from

Dragon Hill, which we talked about in Weevill Man. Yes. Something interesting I didn't know. I was looking up some some fun facts about the Uffington White Horse, which is a beautiful huge chalk carving near Uffington Castle. Yes. So it's like, and now I can't remember the name of the county. Thank you. You think I'd remember that. It was covered over in World War II to stop enemy pilots using it for navigation. Oh, I didn't know that. Is that the turf put in kind of thing? I don't know if it was turf or if they were using tarps, but it was definitely covered. So the first, we're not sure how old the Uffington White Horse is for certain. The first written record of it is in the 12th century, and that area has been, and that showed that the area

had been known as White Horse Hills since at least the reign of William I, but it's believed to be Iron Age in origin. So way before even that, which would make it contemporary with a nearby Iron Age hill fort. So it's very fucking old. And yeah, it's so cold and cool. It's so cold. It's so cool. It's breathing. It's cool. It's old. It's massive. It's on a hill and it's chill. But it's really, the description of the necklace goes into the describe that Roland gives Tiffany goes into the description of the horse. It'd been carved in the turf. Back before history began by people who had managed to convey in a few flowing lines, everything a horse was. Strength, grace, beauty and speed, straining to break free of the hill.

And the line, I think we said before, which it's not what a horse looks like, it's what it be. Tape what a horse looks like, it's what it be. Yeah. It's a beautiful description. I believe we've heard from the mouth of Nanny Og before, but I can't remember in which context. We've had something similar from Nanny Og, I think. I also just love, so my quote had the line about the horse being filled in, which is before Tiffany's opened the present, the carving of the chalk horse burned gold like some giant's pendant. So then to receive her own cold silver version of it.

Very nice. Yes, I didn't catch that. That's a beautiful small little contrast. But yeah, there's a book from the 1800s called The White Horses of the West of England, which I think I've downloaded somewhere I want to have a look at at some point, but that's not to go into in-depth in this show, because there are only so many other things to talk about. Yes. Cool. So little bits we liked. Would you like to kick us off, Francine? Yeah. So we've talked about this subject briefly before, the doctrine of signatures, which is the old idea that certain plants have visual clues as to their healing properties.

I like the development of the idea here, so where the plants actually tell you explicitly what they do. Yes. So the quote being, this one's false Gentian. She told Tiffany when they were in the long cool workroom behind the cottage, she was holding up a weed triumphantly. Everyone thinks it's another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight using my blue magnifying glass. Tiffany tried it and read, good for colds may cause drowsiness do not operate heavy machinery, which excellent. Reminds me a little bit of the God of evolutions designs. Yes. And I also like just the little look into the lab here. So we've got stored moonlight and a blue magnifying glass, and I would like to have

a look around this lab. I would like to have a look around this lab. There is a little authors note at the back, which clarifies that the doctrine of signatures was a real thing, which I quite like with these Tiffany books, there seems to just be an author's note saying this was real. Oh, that's cool. Yes. It makes more sense for a kid's book, doesn't it? Yeah. It'll teach me not to get to the end. But yeah, I like that. I like the development of it. I enjoy that too. What's coming up on the next bit? Forbidden jars. It's me again. Yeah. So the learnings and the hiver and the book and all that, we talk about the discoveries in the jars. What about the warnings they said? Why did the jar you found the plans in have the

word do not open in any circumstances engraved in 15 ancient languages in the lid? Which reminded me of our one of our favorite topics, nuclear semiotics. Yep. In this case, it's hiver semiotics, I suppose. And also has like vibes of Dead Sea Scrolls, I think, because we're talking about discoveries of a text relating it to the beginning of creation and all of that. And yeah, banan jars. Yeah. All very cool. Very good. And also the famous Hogfather quote of, if you put an end of world button saying do not push. Yep. And yeah, it's a wizard. Of course, it's a fucking wizard. So yeah, nuclear semiotics meets Dead Sea Scrolls, 10 out of 10. I support it. How about you? You got

something? You got something for us? Jolliness. Tiffany's new bedroom at Miss Levels Cottage. It's a nice room. Everything had frills. Some attempt had been made to make the room jolly, as if being a bedroom was a jolly, wonderful thing to be. And I think it's just a really artful bit of description. There's something very specific about the word jolly. Yes. That conjures up such a sort of organized fun. It's different than cheerful, isn't it? There's definitely some lace coasters, I think. There's a little kitten somewhere. Yeah. Something might be cross-stitched. Actually, this kind of connects. The lawyer Toad? Yes. It's mentioned that he doesn't have a name because Toads don't have names despite sinister forces wanting you to

believe otherwise or something. I'm like, are you calling Beatrix Putter a sinister force here, Mr. Prouchard? I'm not going to lie. I mean, I'm not completely against the concept. Look, Miss Tiki Winkle is planning something. Yeah, she's got that glint in her eye. Yeah. And I forgot if you wrote wind in the willows, but they're in on it. Yeah, 100%. Place names. Place names. Yeah, another just a little one here. I like Miss Levels Address, which is Miss Level Cottage in the Wood near the Dead Oak Tree in Lost Man's Lane. High overhang, if out, leave letters in old boot by door, which is both very vague and very specific. The best kind of address. And we also mentioned Old Mother Blackcap over in

Sideling Without, which I just thought is a fantastic settlement name. Yes. Sideling Without sounds like a very real English place name as well. Yeah. Sideling is a very good word. Sideling works very well for these, yes. 100%. Dobby Stones? Dobby Stones, cousin to Hackstone, I believe. I think same thing, right? Yes. So Tiffany keeps a Dobby Stone, which was supposed to be lucky because it had a hole in it. We talked about Hackstones on the podcast before. I'm going to say it was Guards, Guards, because I had a look at Annotated Pratchett, and apparently Stones with holes in them being

magical is an idea that first appeared in Guards, Guards. And the timeline works out about right, because a dear listener sent us our very own Hackstones. Mine's still on the shelf right of place. And as of yet, as far as I'm aware, I have not been attacked by fairies. Yep. So I'm going to say they're doing the job. I've not been peering through it to try and see into the fairy realm either. Well, no, obviously, don't be silly. Don't be silly, Francine. Absolutely. But so Annotated Pratchett offered some interesting context. A, these Stones with holes in were first called Dobby Stones in the Thieves Guild Diary after a con man named Dobby Stone on Discworld.

Here on Round World, Dobby Stones are hollow Stones with a hole in the top into which are poured offerings of milk to spirits. And there's some similar stuff in particularly Scottish mythology. So they are different to Hackstones. Yes. And then Stones with holes, considered luckies. I'm going to call it Hackstones. And there are slightly different Stones with holes called Brownie Stones. And a Dobby is another name for a Brownie, which of course, links us back to the feagles. And that really nearly sent me on about eight different tangents, but I still have the rest of the episode to plan. So we've got a pin in that. We'll come back to that. Yeah.

Stones with holes. Gotcha. Yep. I'll remember 100% what that is. And then finally, of course, we have bees. Bees. We have bees. We've talked a lot about bees on the podcast, on bonus episodes of the podcast. Patrons, Francine just did an amazing second rabbit hole on bees. I like bees. I've been drawing bees a lot this month. Oh, so many bees. So many bees. Ms. Level explains the idea of talking to the bees and telling the bees. So she introduces Tiffany to the hive and she explains to Tiffany, you know, she has a chat with them, passes on news and gossip. Every beekeeper knows about telling the bees, which is wonderful. Because that's a very real thing we've talked about.

Yeah. I also like that she mentions that bees don't sting anybody's pure of heart and honest or whatever. But unfortunately, the bees don't know about this convention. So. And I really like that in that section, where Tiffany meets the bees, she also meets the goats. And mine is a goat is a worrying thing if you used to sheep because a goat is a sheep with brains. And it's very nice kind of establishing that Tiffany is a fish out of water here, is that she's now got to deal with the harder level of sheep. Yeah. Yeah. We're also getting big echoes of Eskin Granny here, I think, although we've not got the iron thumb of Granny. No, but it's a similar flavour.

Yeah. We're doing the chores instead of learning how to set blue fires in the fireplace kind of thing. Yeah. Learning the ordinary flavour of witchcraft. This is a great, Wee Free Man was really great for establishing Tiffany in the chore because this new character is this new part of Discworld and then bringing Granny at the end. This book is really great for doing something we've talked about Pratchett doing before, which is taking stuff and kind of making his books rhyme by using the ideas again and more and more developed ways. And this is a sequel to The Wee Free Man, obviously, but it also takes on a lot of the equal rights stuff, the Eskin Granny stuff. And then it managed to function as a sequel

to The Sea and Little Fishes, but I'll talk about that a bit later. Okay. In fact, I'll talk about that right now, actually. I didn't realise I managed to... Oh, my God. I just managed to talk myself right into my main talking point of this whole episode, which is this idea of formalising witchcraft. We just shocked ourselves with a segue. For once, I managed to bring a smooth segue, didn't fucking notice and then confused myself with it. It's like accidentally taking the right turning and being shocked. Ferry that, I'm so lost now. Okay, so this book takes all the ideas of established witchcraft,

as I said, and it functions as a sequel to many of the witch books. And it starts formalising this idea of witchcraft in a really interesting way. But it starts before it formalises witchcraft, it starts with this guide to feagles and kind of formalises their mythology, which almost functions as like a previously on as well. It saves us a lot of, as you know, Bob, when it comes to all the stuff with feagles. Yeah, definitely. And I think it's like, it's for kids as well. It's helpful just to have that, you know, we can't expect them to grab the other Bacosa shelf and flick through it necessarily. And also, I as an adult still, but definitely as a kid loved a kind of fantasy book that had like a bit from another book and

had a glossary. Appendices. Yes, gotta love an appendices. And a map. One thing I did notice in that feagle introduction, it had the line, he'll wear a kilt made of any old material because among the feagles, the clan allegiance is shown by tattoos. I'm going to go into history of tartan staff on a bonus episode. But very briefly, the idea of clan tartans is actually a comparatively modern idea. It's kind of an inventive myth that came about in about the 19th century. Fucking Victorians. Yep. Romanticisation of Highland culture and all that jazz. It was actually a couple of very enterprising Eastern Europeans that established the trend, which I, anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. But I do wonder if that line is in

there because someone maybe after the Wee Free Men might have said something along the, but are they all the different clans of feagles wearing different tartans? Is this the thing? And this is sort of a quick acknowledgement of some criticisms of what I've been had. But I had a quick look, maybe. But I also had a quick look from Old Fan Pratchett and I couldn't find anything super specific because most of the things that were being pointed out about Wee Free Men are, oh, this idea of a school for witches. Are you referencing something and Pratchett's saying, like, what? Yeah, Jill Murphy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's more of that in the discussion about Hatful of Sky, obviously. Yeah. Obviously. All the fucking reviews for it as well. This whole era,

you can't write anything without it being compared to Harry Potter. That's just tedious. Yeah. But to remember the worst witch books, I loved those. Yeah, I fucking adored those. The TV series was really good as well. Yeah. I think I remember that. Right. So, yeah. So we have the feagles stuff. And then you start going into these ideas about witches. Some of it kind of changes what we've had from previous books. There's a whole thing of the witches needing jobs, which feels a bit foreign. And, you know, you weren't allowed to charge money for the witching. So all witches did some other job as well, hence Ms. Tick also being a wandering teacher. Yes. Which for Ms. Tick makes sense. But like Nanny and Granny don't have other jobs. Well, Granny does healing stuff.

People come in and they're her clients, they have their cures and things. Yeah. I thought of that more as just part of her witching though. Yeah. But I think that's, there's overlap between the job and the. Yes. Witching, I guess. But yeah. Also, maybe they're retired. I don't know. Quite possibly. But I don't see them taking money for it. Like it all seems to exist, as it's explained here, like on this kind of barter system. Which I like. Also, just as more work is like being done in this book to kind of formalize witchcraft. So, you know, Tiffany going off to train in a cottage, which is stuff we've had inklings of before. That's how Magra ended up in Goody Wempers Cottage. These ideas of cottages being passed down. But we see it as a

much more sort of structured thing here, to a certain extent. So just as that gets introduced, we then get introduced to a new idea of magic, the shambles, which is chaotic and unexplainable. Well, it's kind of like the witch version of a salmometer, whatever we're going to say it. Yes. But with no clear instruction of how it works, and it's sort of, you can't think about it too much. You need things from your pocket. So it helps to keep interesting things in your pockets. Instinctual technology. Yeah. I also just continuing with the whole thing of crutch. It's really good at funny lists that when Tiffany calls it cat's cradle, she says,

yeah, I can do all of them. The jewels and the cradle and the house and the flock and the three old ladies, one with a squint carrying the bucket of fish to market when they meet the donkey. Did you ever do cat's cradle? I did. And bored my sister because you need two people to do all the transferring. Yeah. I don't think I could do it now, apart from the initial shape. From what practice said about the shambles, it seems like a kind of a focus tool as much as anything else. He described it in one of the forum posts as a way of tricking your talents into life, that track. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. It's, which you know, cat's cradle was kind of a version of one of those focus tools, isn't it? It's similar to those little bits of jewelry you play with or

your office, your desk toys, which we've talked about before. Yeah. Yes. Or like I've got lots of certain training myself into hand gestures to memorize things like I've worked with actors who also use sign language to help them learn lines. So like they remember I need to do specific lines by doing the sign when I'm on stage and that helps build it all in. Cool. But yeah. So we get this really great bit where Tiffany kind of mentally sums up mystics' teachings to herself, which includes a thing about don't stand between two mirrors. Yes, obviously. And it's a very nice, even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility. Never cackle. Don't wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. And it's a nice little bit.

We've seen a lot of these lessons be very hard one across previous witch's books. And so now we get it in handy paragraph here to see what Tiffany is taking with her. And you get this demonstration of what like day to day witching is in a way, I don't think we, you get so much of in the previous witch's books because the whole point of them is something else. The norm is happening. So we get to really see that the, how it's described, filling what's empty and emptying what's full. Yeah. There's definitely some of it in equal rights, but this is definitely a more explicit explanation. I like the phrasing of it. And again, this takes what was happening in equal rights with Granny and Esk and develops it and enriches it. And there's this looming specter of

Granny Weatherwax over all of it, you know, the bits of pride that Tiffany has picked up from Granny Weatherwax before she's picked up everything else she needs goes along with that pride. Not that Granny Weatherwax is prideful, of course. No, of course not. And sort of questioning mislevel over Granny Weatherwax being in charge of the witches and no, it's all very equal and mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing. But yeah, I think it's a really interesting continuation. I will say for listeners, we have covered The Sea and Little Fishes on the podcast. If you haven't read it, listen to the episode, How Dare You? What the hell? I really recommend reading it before we go into the next two thirds of this

book, because this is, although it's mostly closely tied to Carpe Jugulum, like literally a scene was cut from it that then went into Carpe Jugulum. I feel like this feels very much like it's taken away, started The Sea and Little Fishes and then builds on it and expands on it. And it's really wonderful. Yeah, definitely. I agree. Cool. Good stuff. All right. Well, the returning again to a theme we've talked about a couple of times now is that this as a children's book and the kind of distinction between it and some of the others. But more specifically, kind of the pride that Pratchett takes in writing children's books is always worth having another look at because some of the discourse around this book was a lot of people commenting like,

oh, you know, as far as I'm concerned, Pratchett's never written a children's book. And that's that and the other. And it's attempting to be complementary with it. And I've seen it on more modern Facebook groups and everything like that as well. Why would you call this a child's book? It's got complex themes, this, that and the other. You can tell what they're trying to do, but by putting it like that, they're very much putting down children's books, which it's, I think, stupid. And I think Pratchett more kindly agrees. He says, some of the differences between writing for children and writing for adults, you've obviously got more attention to vocabulary, which is not the same as a small vocabulary.

There are references, perhaps, that you would leave out that you've put in for the adults, because you just can't, you can't assume the same level of, yeah, I remember this from 10 years ago. And as he put it, a much smaller advance for the author. So reply to one of the forum comments specifically saying, oh, I don't think this is a children's book. Pratchett replies, thank you for that. However, I think I am writing for children. Children's librarians who get sensitive about adult books presented as being for children must also think so, because they gave it the Carnegie Medal, it being Wee Free Men. Both it and, oh, no, not Wee Free Men, sorry, Carnegie Medal was Morris.

Yes, yes. Both it and the two Tiffany A. King books have picked up all kinds of worthy awards and commendations from reading groups and librarians association. And I get a great deal of mail from kids. As for the two trilogies, well, I send loads of them for kids. They're for kids. The kind of kids, the kind of kids that can read can often access more than you think. There's a little very gentle scold there for underestimating children, I think. And there was one extra bit about the references that I think I hadn't really, we haven't really discussed before and I hadn't seen this comment before. One of the commenters noted the inclusion of Moonshine as a reference and that she was like

slightly surprised by it, not in a bad way, but just like, oh, yeah, like that's something a lot of kids wouldn't have known. I remember reading the term Moonshine when I was little and not knowing what it was and then being delighted when I was older to find out like it was liquor. Because if you think about it like Moonshine, what's that? And Pratchett said, that is close to the core of writing text that's going to be read by kids. You're letting them down if you pitch too low because surely you should be subtly enhancing their knowledge and vocabulary. And if you play safe, you'll bore them. A kid of 11 or 12 could easily enough find out what Moonshine whiskey is and learn something interesting into the bargain.

They seem pretty clued up. Certainly when I talk to groups of kids after the We Free Men, they all seem to know that a special sheep liniment was a strong drink. So yeah, I thought it's because these two, these first two Tiffany books aren't as, again, we're trying to slightly avoid the word dark, aren't as serious as some of the topics that we see in later Tiffany books and aren't as serious perhaps as the amazing Morris. I think it would be easier to label them as kids books than those ones perhaps. But even so, it's interesting that you see the pushback from readers just because they enjoyed them, because they found value and worth in them that they couldn't be written for

children. Yeah, 100%. And there's, it's a slight snobbishness that, yeah, as you said, it's like complimentary on the surface and underneath. And I do like the detail of Tiffany as being this character who really likes reading the dictionary. And it's a nice way to, they're not need to dumb down the vocabulary. But if there's a word that maybe the readers don't know, you can justify it with Tiffany's dictionary understanding. Absolutely. I also think some of the pushback from Pratchett is that he's proud of it. He's written a book that is for children. And it's difficult to do that. And it's difficult in a different direction that it is for writing for adults. He's like, no, no, no, it's not just a

publisher. I did this specifically for children. Look, look at how careful I was with vocabulary. Look at the slightly different foreshadowing. Look at the kind of moral lessons I presented in a slightly different way. Look, look how hard I've worked. I'm very good at this actually. And the result is a really great book. But yeah, and I agree. I think writing for children is a whole different kettle of fish. Perhaps there's a little shared fish with the other kettle, but oh no. Now I'm thinking about what the term kettle of fish means. And why do you have a whole kettle of fish there? Why is

this used as a metaphor? Well, a fish kettle was a, is the name for a specific implement used for cooking fish. It looks more like a big silver, like deep tray with a lid that goes over it. I see. But why in this case, is it being used, do you think, as the, as the phrase? Well, maybe you'd have multiple fish kettles and you'd be cooking salmon in one and trout in another. I'm sure. Yes, it's, it's, I think I can, I can grasp the concept generally of there being two containers of different things. I'm just wondering how this became the one in common violence. I don't know because I've got so in the habit of mixing metaphors that I'm occasionally surprised

to remember is Kettle of Fish and not Kettle of Fall Games. Well, you know, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. We've made our bed now, something. You've opened this can of beans, now lying it. There we go. Before we go completely off topic in a way, did you have anything else? No, that's it on that. There's one I forgot to mention because it's not really relevant to anything other than we notice this in witches books is that this keeps us informed, which is territory by acknowledging that there is a gibbous moon, one of the dollar phases of the moon that seldom gets illustrated,

the full moon and crescent moon get all the publicity. So it's just nice to acknowledge we're still firmly, firmly having opinions over the shape of moons. Especially when it is gibbousing at one. Yes, I do like it when my moon gibbouses. Francine, do you have an obscure reference for me? I do. Well, Tiffany is looking at trees, looking at the forest. She says something about how once you know that beech trees drip poison onto the floor,

killing the other plants, then you see them as a different type of timber, something along those lines. I was like, is that a thing? Like, I live like near loads of beech trees and I've never really thought about it, but I suppose there's not that much growing underneath them. And at the end of the day, Joanna, I'm afraid, spoiler, I still don't know whether it's a thing. It was once believed widely, certainly. The beechers gave like drip to kind of poison called beech drip that killed plant life under the trees. Today, botanists say it's more likely that the huge, dense, shady area is not conducive

to plant growth and it's the lack of sunlight rather than poison to blame. I don't know. There still seems to be some contention over it. I've asked, but I didn't think to ask until it was going to be too late to for him to respond. But I've asked plants for apology, the podcast we like about plants, whether he happens to know. I'll be very pleased when I know one way or the other. But Thomas Hardy wrote about it twice. His poems all mentioned it twice. So yeah, in The Ivy Wife, one of the stanzas is, I longed to love a full bowed beech and be as high as her. I stretched an arm within his reach

and signaled unity, but with his drip he forced to breach and tried to poison me. So this is from the point of view of, I think, an ivy creeper going up and being rebuffed. One of his other poems, in a wood, pale beech and pine tree blue, set in one clay, bow to bow, cannot you, bide out your day, when the rain skim and skip, why, ma, sweet, comradeship, blighting with poison drip, neighborly spray. Which, actually, I love the poem overall. It goes on about how you've gone out for a nice walk in the woods to get some silven piece, something like that. I think he puts it, but all the trees are out to fucking get ya. It's got echoes of the,

now I know what the birdsong means. Amazing. So yeah, that's that. Excellent. Incomplete of obscure reference video. My favorite kind. Okay, well, I think that's everything we are going to say about part one of Hat Full of Sky. We'll be back next week unless I get another COVID. Yeah. I seem to have gotten away with it. My colleague had it, and that was a few days ago

I saw her, and I'm not ill, so. If nothing catches fire, we'll be back next week with part two, which begins in chapter five, and ends at the end of chapter eight. So chapters five through eight inclusive. Another four chapters. Yup. We can do that. Until next time, dear listener, don't forget there are still some tickets available for Mark Burrow's one-man comic lecture, The Magic of Pottery Pratchett, Embarrassed Numbers at the Hunts Club on 19th of May with a bit of bonus us around the edges, link will be in the show notes.

Would you like to loiter around the edges? Also, we've got a bonus episode coming up for the 25th of May, so please send us specifically any questions you might have for us for that episode, any random hopes and dreams you've got for Good Omen series two, any feelings, particularly on Night Watch, and its importance to the WhatsApp. Any information on beach trees? Any thoughts on beach trees specifically? Thank you. So until next week, dear listener, you can find us on Instagram at the true shall make you fret, on Twitter at make you fret pod, on Facebook at the true shall make you fret.

Join our subreddit community because it's marvelous, subreddit r slash t t s m y f. You can email us all those thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, albatrosses, beach trees, things about Good Omen series two, and anything else you want to throw over our bonus episode, the true shall make you fret pod at gmail.com. And if you'd like to support this nonsense financially, then go to patreon.com forward slash the true shall make you fret, and exchange your hard earned pennies for all sorts of fun bonus things. There are so many bonus things. There are so many bonus things. And until next time, dear listener, don't let us detain you.

Yeah, as long as we just try and make a low edit one again. As long as we don't say anything incriminating. Let's try not to commit any crimes between now and then.