The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 54: Soul Music Pt 1 (Rockstars or Druids)

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

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 “Soul Music”. Ravens! Rats! Reverie!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:The Ship Of Theseus - Philosophy FoundationCircadian Rhythms - WikipediaBaba O’Riley - Youtube (Yes, Joanna knows she got the title wrong when she said “Teenage Wasteland)Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

sweet little furry raven. Yeah, it's my favorite cuppy toy. He's a good furry cuppy toy is his name close. Yeah, obviously. I was going to talk about Blues Brothers and my Blues Brothers origin story. Yes, it's a fun story, but way too long to put in the main podcast. But did you enjoy watching it? You are allowed to say no. It was fine. I mean, you know me in films, I'm happy to binge watch six hours of an episodic TV program, but I just

resent anything that's more than two hours long by default. Yeah, same. And I don't know why. Yeah. And I feel I feel like Blues Brothers is just one of those movies that the nostalgia is a big part of why people love it so much, like The Princess Ride, I just couldn't get into that much because it's a good film, but it's dated and it's yeah, people's memories. When I say I love the Blues Brothers, like I suggested people

watch it because it's so heavily referenced in soul music. And I think this is probably like one of the first ones where it specifically references one thing quite so much like moving pictures was lots of movie references. And this is yeah, I'm definitely glad you made me watch it because there are big bits in here that I remember going the fuck is this the first time I read it. So and now I'm like, Oh, right. It's a play by play here. Yeah. But I never is I don't like being that person

who's like, Oh my God, you haven't seen but you have to it's a classic because that's obnoxious. And I'm not going to list all the classic films I haven't seen because we'll get tweets. We did do a little live tweet of the we did do the Blues Brothers like the Blues Brothers. If anyone wants to dig through the recent archives of I don't know, I did bitmatched it. I think I'm staying pretty high spirits. I was gonna get me. No, I think we kept you positive. The only the only time I

got annoyed with the film honestly, it was like right near the end of about just half an hour of fucking cacophony. I don't mean the music. I sound like an old man. I mean, just the siren siren. Yeah, the sirens. Yeah, the massive car chase and at the same time, like the dog was being a dick. Yeah, muted the film and dealt with it. Yeah, that's fine. I have not to be like the Oh, fun film facts, fun film facts. But it was down. It was Dan Akroyd's first ever

script. And he didn't really have anyone telling him no, at least for the original script. So he wrote in all this ridiculous expensive stuff. And then I hence is one of the most expensive comedies ever made. And I think the studio just kind of went, Okay, I mean, this is ridiculous. But like, we could see how many cop cars we could trash in a single scene. And that's why you went up with this massive ridiculous car chase that broke records for how many cars were destroyed in a single

film. It's worth doing, I think, just yeah, just for seeing a pile of fucked up cop cars. But yeah, and I enjoy that. But at the same time, it is very loud the end of the film drives. 80s films do that. The last half hours of 80s films could always be edited down to 10 minutes. Absolutely. Yeah, I wonder what that's about. Apart from maybe the Princess Bride. But I don't know how much

of that is the story ending. But yeah, no, so Blue's Brothers origin story, like the reason I love it is less, it's a classic and more because it's got like huge fond memories with me because because because long, long time back when I was like, I think I must have been about 10 years old, I have family who live in Vermont, and we went out to stay with them for Christmas. And because of a weird thing with when I finished school, when my

sister finished school, my mom and I flew out a week before and then my dad and sister came out to join us. Okay, which meant we had separate flights back even though we were traveling back on the same day. So my dad and my sister were driving to Boston and then flying out direct. Whereas my mom and I were flying from Vermont to Chicago, and then connecting and flying back to England from there. Okay. And this was 30th of December. It's the day before New Year's Eve. Okay. So my dad

and sister make it back fine. My mom and I are fly out of Burlington gets delayed. My mother is incredibly good at arguing in airports. Okay. It is she had so many dramas traveling as a younger woman that she's not not a dick. She would never go full Karen or anything. She was just always very calm and very polite and got things sorted. So we found out the flight was delayed. They managed to move us on to a later flight out of Chicago. She had some mobility issues and the

later flight was the other side of O'Hare Airport and it's a big airport. So she'd even arranged for someone to meet us off the flight at Chicago with a wheelchair to get her across the airport. Oh, wow. Which was hilarious. I was because I was young and I'd been given those trainers that had the wheels in for I was wearing those. So when this guy turned up with a wheelchair and he looked at little me and he was like, can you run with us? And I was like, I got wheels. Oh, yeah. So I

roller skated through Chicago O'Hare Airport with this guy was madman pushing my mom along in a wheelchair. We get to the gate and our flight has just left with our luggage on it back. However, because my mom had so many issues flying, she'd already packed like a change of clothes and toothbrush and everything in our carry-ons in case this happened. And because she's very good at airports, she managed to get us a hotel for the night, spending money, taxi fare, money for food, and put on to a flight the

following day upgraded to business class. Nice. But then of course, we were stuck in Chicago for 24 hours and needed to kill time. And mom used most of mom really loved the Blues Brothers, her and my dad both really love this film. So most of that spending money got spent on cab fare, driving around Chicago, finding all the locations from the Blues Brothers. Great, great. Yeah. And taking photos so that my dad could see with like a disposable camera. And I was ten, I had no idea what was going

on. I'd never seen this film. So we ended up flying back over New Year's Eve, which doing an overnight flight on New Year's Eve in business class, they just kept bringing champagne around when we were crossing date lines. So I obviously was not a given champagne because I was 10 years old, which I was very obsessed about because at home, I would have been given champagne. This is a lot about who I am as a person. Anyway, so we finally make it home on New Year's Day, like three or four

o'clock in the afternoon. And because I had had no idea what was going on, and mom was like, I can't wait to develop these photos, and she couldn't wait to show my dad and tell him all about everything we'd seen in Chicago from the Blues Brothers. She was like, okay, so Joe doesn't understand. So I was jet lagged and confused. And they were just like, just sit here. And they just put the VHS in and they were like, and watch this movie, which is probably not a completely appropriate movie for

a 10 year old. And a lot of the jokes went over my head. I was about to say all of the inappropriate jokes aren't obvious ones. So I think it's fine, isn't it? I mean, Yeah, I don't think I even asked what a prophylactic was. And I wasn't told for many years because Catholic and like the slightly sad part of the story is that, like, my father got sick a few months later and passed away. So that was his last new years. And we didn't get to spend it with him. And obviously,

we didn't know at the time. Yeah. But it means like one of my fondest memories is being very jet lagged and confused on New Year's Day and just put in front of this video of the Blues Brothers. And it's like, this is why we went to see all of those things yesterday of the day before we don't really know what time is right now. Yeah. So I love it. And so then, like, a few years later, when, because I tried Discworld once and couldn't get into it because I was too young, but a friend of mine was

reading through Discworld and had just finished soul music and knew I love the Blues Brothers. And he was like, here you go, you'll like this one. That was what got me into the Discworld. Right. There you go. This is a significant book. This is this is why it's one of my favorite books. And I think we should talk about it. As we're here with like quite a lot of notes about it and the book in front of us and the small, cuddly toy Raven.

Well, I can't list the do the list. Which list? The list that everyone quotes from it we've got. Oh, it's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes is dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Shall we make a podcast? Let's make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to the true shall make you. Oh, wait till that's gone fast.

In the distance sirens. It's going well so far. Hello, and welcome to the true shall make you fracked a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today is part one of our discussion of soul music. Yeah, Joanna's favorite one of excite.

You are excited. It's very sweet. I have a Raven. Yes, John is holding a cuddly Raven. What have you named the Raven, Joanna? I've named it Quoth because I'm on a course and the two of course you name the reason I like it. It's very sweet. I can't imagine what you call it. I don't call it anyway. It would be silliness to call it anything else.

Notes on spoilers before we get started. This is a spoiler light podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book. We're on soul music, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are 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.

A journey. Across a distant living room floor, which is at least like an acre and it's a surface, but not a carpet. That that whole section confused me very much. I liked it. Yeah, no, I enjoyed that. But I enjoyed this book. It's one of my favorite books.

I don't think we've got anything to follow up on. Do you have anything to follow up on? No, I can remember apologies to the listeners for all the things we haven't followed up on. I'm sure you were getting into by now. Come on, guys. Yeah, I don't expect things of us. Some pure expectations.

If you'd like us to follow up on anything, do tweet us. We might read it. Sure, I did. I replied to a tweet with the useful information this morning. I'm banging the microphone. That's not useful, is it? You sourced a Tumblr post. I'm very impressed.

Well, the trick to sourcing Tumblr posts is you cannot use Tumblr search function because it is the biggest piece of trash I've ever seen. You just need to take an obscure sentence or sentence fragment from the post and Google search in quotes, and then it will come up. Excellent. We've learned something today. So would you like to introduce us?

Yes, sorry. Would you like to introduce us to the big soul music front? Sure, soul music is, I believe, the 16th Discworld Novel. It is published in 1994. It's a I say one of the cult favourites. It's one of the favourites amongst a certain type of person who understands things like music references. I definitely not one of my favourites and definitely one of Joanna's.

So it'll be an interesting one to go through. Like I already did the long rant about why I love the Blues Brothers and why I love this book in association. But I think also part of it is I read this was the first Discworld Discworld I read that got me into reading the series. Because I said I read Color of Magic and Night Fantastic, but I was like eight and didn't like them because I was eight. Yeah, and they're not really good books for eight year olds.

They probably are for some eight year olds, not for me. No, I mean, yeah, you want to you want to start out with Tiffany. So I read this at the age of I think I must have been about 17. And I was also very heavily into my being into music phase because quite frankly, I was trying to impress boys I was hanging around with. Teenagers be teenagers. Yeah, I did that, which to be fair, you know, some of the music I tried to be really into has stuck with me much more than the boys.

I was trying to impress. I'm not sure I ever I'm sure I did at some point, but I don't recall ever trying to be into music more than the bare minimum. I'm just very bad at it. I don't know. We'll talk about that a bit more later, I think. Yeah, I did. I put the effort into being into classic rock because I wanted to go to download festival and there were lots of. And then that was all very fun.

Yeah. Right, then. So shall I talk about what happened in this action? Yes, to recap for us as we are in theory, at least a recap podcast. Yeah, sometimes we talk about the books. So in section one of soul music, we open with a brief summary of previous discord novel, Mort, and we learn that after the after the events of that story, Mort and Isabelle had a child on a dark and stormy night, a cult, a coach rolls over a cliff.

And yes, death could have done something. We meet Susan, recently orphaned, though surprisingly nonplussed about it. She disappeared, appears from an interview with her teacher, Miss Butts. We meet Impe, a bard from Lamedos, recent winner of a beautiful harp and determined to be the best musician the world has ever seen. Death gets introspective. Susan reflects on weirdness and heads for more pork, concrete jungle where dreams are made of in death's domain.

Trusty servant Albert frets in the kitchen as death doesn't come home. Death is set out to learn the art of forgetting by way of a holy man. Impe's first attempts at busking in the big city lead to an education about the Guild of Musicians and their proclivities towards unlicensed performers. In the offices of the Guild, he meets Glod and Lyas, fellow musicians, and the trio learn that the Guild licenses way out of their budget. Death wanders and wanders as the musicians grab dinner. They discuss getting gigs to get the Guilds from Guilders,

and Impe's harp meets a tragic end. Luckily, there's a handy shop around the corner that's definitely always been there and sells all sorts of novelist instruments. With the assistance of Lyas' diamond teeth, Impe acquires a new and mysteriously clever guitar, and Lyas picks up a new drum kit. Meanwhile, back at the Querm College for ladies, Susan's class is interrupted by the death of Rats. That night, with assistance from a talking raven,

the rat tries to impress upon her the importance of the disappearance of her grandfather, who is death. Well, the Raven's not allowed to say. The next day, Binky arrives for Susan at the school's tables. As the boys back in Inkmore Park prepare for their first gig, Susan goes for a late night chat with the Raven before taking a ride on Binky to Death's domain and learns that she may have inherited some grim reaper-like qualities. After an overnight and more fretting from Albert,

Susan heads out the following night, scythe in hand to do her duty. Meanwhile, at the Mended Drum, our misfit bands of musos prepare to play. Susan severs the threads of a brave warrior and meets a few Valkyries before heading to Inkmore Park and a riot at the drum. Just as Impe almost loses his life, he strikes a chord and music fills his timer before Susan can swing the scythe. Post-gig, the band are amazed, the wizards who watched are feeling wild and the librarian gets excited over an organ.

As the band discusses name changes and the need for a keyboardist, Susan investigates the mysterious music, bending history to save Impe's life. Yeah, humans are shit at this job, aren't they? Yeah, it's a theme. It's a theme. Susan's better than Mort was, I'd say. But. Yeah, this is I won't go into like the huge ramp, obviously, I said, as we get into midstage disc world, I'm looking at the parallels, these books have two previous books, and it is quite interesting.

Like this doesn't. Echo a story the way some of them have, but there's definitely the big sequelness to Mort. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it takes us neatly to helicopter and loincloth watch and the things that we're keeping track of. Oh, yes. loincloth implied, especially as with Lyas.

God's sake, Joanna, there's a loincloth again. Why am I spotting these and you're not? I'm sure I'd know the loincloth laser, isn't it? No, a holy man sat under a holy tree, legs crossed, hands on these. He kept his eyes shut in order to focus better on the infinite and wore nothing but a loincloth in order to show his disdain of disc-y things. Page twenty seven in mind a bit earlier in yours. I didn't pay enough attention during the holy man's sequence.

This this was actually the really hard thing about doing notes for this book because I know it's so well and I've read it so many times. I did find myself missing stuff and having to go back because, you know, when you read a book, you've read a million times and you kind of. Yeah, I did that with Reaper Man a couple times. Yeah. Yeah. So I can I can be excused on that loincloth. OK, I wasn't going to punish you. I'm just OK.

I'm calling Binky our helicopter representation. Because it's just that you go so far to stretch for these things and there are proper references. Right, as far as I'm aware, there's no actual helicopters in this. OK, well, all right, but well, actually, I think you'll find on me. Actually, I get it. Sorry. Yeah. But for other things, we keep in track of we don't open on a turtle.

We open on the previously on with more and we've only had one other book where we've had a previously on so far, which was no. Was it either the Lord's and Lady's is abroad? Lord's and Lady's was telling us why everyone was just coming back after several months. Excellent. OK. And that had and it had a bit of a weird sister's preview anyway, so everyone was caught up on Margaret and the fall. Yes, it was done in slightly different tones this one, wasn't it?

But yeah. And it was more of an actual previously on. Whereas this is kind of a a prologue that makes it very clear what the events fought were. Yes. And what was the other thing? Oh, yeah, the only other thing I've been keeping track of is the state of the drum. And it is currently mended and a drum mended. Mended drum is mended.

Excellent. And did you say something about the librarian? And not explained. Not explained. Not explained. He's just very much there in his eight plight presence. I think we're beyond explaining the librarian at this point. I think we've always been beyond just explaining the librarian personally. But yes, well, it took a little while for reality to catch up with us.

Oh, and obviously death is present in the book. We still haven't had a bit without death. I felt that went without saying. Yes, you'd have to really skip over a few bits and I believe your favourite quote is before mine. Oh, it is. It is. It is. As you quite rightly said in your summary, there are there is a dark and stormy night.

It is page 11 on mine and it goes, where to finish a dark, stormy night, a coat, horses gone, plunging through the rickety, useless fence and dropping, tumbling into the gorge below. It doesn't even strike an outcrop of rock before it hits the dried riverbed far below and erupts in two fragments. I thought that was very good. Well, a fun little reversal of the normal we begin on the dark, stormy night because we are kind of beginning, but also we're endings like we're ending

the last book with the cliche beginning of this new one. And I thought it was very good in a very practical way understated understated as it turns out death of a main character or main character of a different book, but still, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. The book never says Morton Isabel died of Moral Sotos and his parents. Yeah, because the book assumes you are slightly more intelligent than that and can work it out from that.

But it also means with that sort of foreshadowing moment with the coach at the beginning or everything that happens at the end of the book has much more impact, especially because we've got a bit of. It's very good foreshadowing throughout this book, actually. Yeah, but we've got a hint of timey wimey about the whole affair. Yes, indeed. My sincerest apologies to listeners for using the phrase timey wimey. Oh, yes. And of course, sorry, the second after this quote was

then the oil from the coach ignites and there is a second explosion out of which rolls because there are certain conventions even in tragedy, a burning wheel. A vehicle exploding after it's crashed is my favourite media trope. It's definitely not my favourite, but it's my favourite right the second. And the Simpsons plays like very well with just randomly exploding vehicles after tiny little impacts of that. Well, yeah.

And I just go for every time I'm very easily pleased with the next vehicle. Future armor also does it very well. I'm rewatching it at the moment and there are a lot of really good moments. Clearly, Matt Groening's one of his favourites, too. Yes. I wonder if Matt Groening of a Renny Pratchett I feel like he must have done. I always assume comedians have comedy writers, but I suppose that there must be somebody who hasn't.

So interesting. Yes. Anyway, anyway, I will keep I will not keep us on track. My quote, you're going to have to try. I'm not going to do well today. I'm sorry. I can do this. I got this. Listeners, I should never be given this responsibility. Your quote, my darling. I went with a silly one because I know I'm all going to get

I'm going to get very dramatic and introspective by the end of this book. This is Susan in her literature class. She listened with half an ear to what the rest of the class was doing. It was a poem about Daffodils. Apparently, the poem poet had liked them very much. Susan was quite stoical about this. It was a free country. People could like Daffodils if they wanted to.

They just should not, in Susan's very definite and precise opinion, be allowed to take up more than a page to say so. She got on with her education in her opinion. School kept on trying to interfere with it. Around her, the poet's vision was taken apart with inexpert tools. God, do you remember how much school would ruin really good things for you? I was very lucky in that I had extremely good English teachers for almost my entire time at school, which I think is why I carried on

as a career in it. But even so, poetry never survived to the. No, practice has the rather inexpert dissection. Quite a lot of books did, and that's a credit to the teachers I had. So I still love to kill a mockingbird. And the the haunting of Elizabelle Cray, the two I think of off my head, is really loving partly because of school. Yeah, I had I had a couple of really good English teachers.

I did the A level as well for English literature. But I also had some dreadful ones. And yet poetry just didn't survive to the problem, at least at GCSE level. So for non English listeners, this is GCSE is the exams we do around age 16. And then A level is one of the options, what you can do from age 16 to 18. But so for GCSE, I had a teacher who really wanted us to enjoy what we were studying, but also was very restricted by I have to teach you how to pass an exam and get the grade you need. Yeah.

Where there was a bit more flexibility in A level, which meant the the stuff we studied with the good teacher, we did some gothic literature. We did Angela Kasser in the bloody chamber. We did before the gothic literature unit, we did Streetcar Name Desire. And that's still one of my favorite plays after studying it. But unfortunately, then with the shit teacher, we did Dracula. And I've never quite been able to read Dracula again. I don't think you need to do.

No, from by all accounts, it's shit. I've never read Dracula is my confession here, listeners. Or I possibly have, but it would have been as a teenager. And I don't remember it now. I honestly can't remember if I read it. I know that Bram Stoker was a prick. Yeah, I would like to try reading it again. I feel like I've got enough distance considering it was over a decade ago.

It was over a decade ago. I will read it at some point. That's definitely one that we I think maybe supplementary reading when we get to Carpe Giaculum. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. We could put it put it in for the book club entry. Yes, as in a cup, as in another friend of ours have decided to read the classic book a month

because we don't have enough scheduled reading in our lives. And I've nearly finished the one that we were meant to read last month. Yeah, same. Oh, I know. I said I do it before I got sleep at them when sleep came. I was not going to turn it away. It's a really short book as well. I just haven't picked it up and read it. I know.

And then we've got G.K. Chesterton this month because you got to choose because I got to choose. And I've been meaning to read a man called Thursday, whatever it's called, the one that Pratt really liked. And you're here because everything ties back to this. You're sneakily using our book club to do research for the podcast, aren't you? To be honest, my next choice was going to be 20,000 Leeds under the sea. And mostly I keep seeing Tumblr posts about how gay it is.

Oh, my God. We should have done that this month, then. Oh, yeah, happy Pride Month, Joanna. Oh, yeah. I'm nice to you this month, aren't I? Sorry. Yeah, everyone has to be nice to me this month because I'm queer. That's how pride works. I think so, yeah. I think that's all I'm doing to celebrate pride is telling people

to be nice to me and doing bisexual eyeshadow colours. I look forward to seeing that. Anyway, sorry. Characters. Bisexual lighting is very flattering. It looks so good on me. Yeah. I'm sorry. Right. Characters.

Susan is canonically bisexual. She's not canonically bisexual, but I've decided she is. I was going to say to them this week. No, I've just decided. You can't just decide what is canon. Look, if I don't get enough queer representation, I'm making my own fine. I'm head canoning Susan as bisexual. I mean, it's never said that she's not. That's fine.

Exactly. And she's got the vibe. She's got the vibe. Yeah, it's the vibe. Now, I actually think Susan's a really interesting character because. So this is not the first time I've had a female protagonist, but I think it's one of the only times we get sort of a young female protagonist. I've seen Margaret's quite young, which is very much there as a foil to Nanny and Granny. I feel like Margaret being quite young is like our age young, though, you know,

like 20s, early 30s. Yeah, right. Young compared to the witches. Exactly. And obviously we had esc and we talked a lot about it. I'm not saying Pratchett doesn't write young women very well. He obviously does. But Susan, for me, this is exciting. Again, because it's a big upgrade from Isabel, it's a big upgrade from Isabel. Yeah. And again, one of the first discord books I read, I think this is the first time I ever read a fantasy book with a female

protagonist, Jesus Christ, specifically a young female protagonist. That wasn't like a love triangle romance, young adult thing. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. Hmm. And I have nothing against love triangle romance, young adult thing. That's that's a perfectly good genre. But I think the only other like young woman I'd really experienced in fantasy before this was Hermione and Harry Potter. Oh, God, I read a lot, a lot of fantasy when I was a kid.

And I must have, but I can't think of any. I mean, there was I suppose there was Narnia. I mean, kids books, there must have been kids books, right? There were kids. There were kids books, like kids, kids books, like young adult. No, I can't think of any of the one or love trying galley and adult. Yeah, no, it would have been later on that I read. You put me on to a lot of the the feministy fantasy stuff.

So there was I suppose there's set about sci-fi the better. Yeah, there's Arya in the Eragon books, but she is not the main character and mostly there for the main character to fancy. Yeah, adorable. I do, I still sort of have a fondness for the Eragon books. I love them at the time. I don't have any intention of revisiting. I might at some point, I quite like them.

So Susan was really excited for me and I like that she is. Quite complicated and she's inconsistent within herself. Like some people were pointed and go, this is bad writing because she thinks like this, but also does this. And it's like, no, that's that's a teenager. Yeah, I'm a person, generally, but definitely a teenager. She's so determined to be firmly logical and not swept up in nonsense.

Yeah, and it's interesting that Pratchett was able to write that so well, considering he's very swept up in nonsense. I think he's a bit of both, isn't he? He likes a he likes a logical thing through. But he's always like, Rihanna Pratchett is written about the kind of person to wake his little girl up in the middle of the night to go much from hunting like he's a he's a nonsense merchant, of course. Yeah, as we can see in front of us.

But in his real life as well, you know, I really like when she's, you know, the first time she sees the rats and you're not going to say, oh, my paws on the whiskers, are you? Yes. But there's a bit later on. She's very anti-twee. When she's deciding whether to follow the rat into the night or not. The world offered two choices.

She could go back to bed or she could follow the rat, which would be a stupid thing to do. Soppy people in books did that sort of thing. They ended up in some idiot world with goblins and feeble-minded talking animals, and they were such sad wet girls. They always let things happen to them without making any efforts. They just went around saying things like, my goodness, me. When it was obvious that any sense of human being could soon get the place

properly organised. Somebody's read a bit too much now on the other one. I do like the Susan. There's the kind of anti Susan, anti Lucy. Well, she's almost like the Susan Susan in the later books, isn't she? And that Susan gets terribly punished for stepping away from childish things. Yes, she is punished, banished from Narnia. You know, and that is the most problematic thing about the Narnia.

Absolutely. Susan's great. But I like what she goes through. I like that she's sort of so firmly logical in the face of the very clear supernatural. And she finds herself going along with it. Fine, this is happening, but there's logical explanation and I won't be swept up in it.

Absolutely, obviously. She's very scully, I think, from ex-files, even down to the last week. I saw a ghost, but this week I'm going to completely disbelieve in other spooky things. Yeah, ex-files is not bingeable for that reason. Yeah, I tried, God knows I tried. I have, because I've still never seen all of it. Young David D'Cofney is a proper weakness of mine.

And then in a couple of series time, Gillian takes over, so. And even older David D'Cofney is still a bit of a weakness of mine. He's the co-kit hard. He's still oddly handsome. Oh, he is. He is. But he was just absolutely heartbreaking in the first two seasons. Oh, he had the face. I mean, he's still not out of his face.

I'm blushing. Anyway, but anyway, Susan's journey, her journey, the journey. But as we get to the end of this book and she's found herself somewhat swept up in the nonsense, she starts feeling very superior. She's sort of looking down on the people and feeling them advanced because she feels like she's always been just a bit more aware of the world. I knew I was different. I knew I was better. I knew I was special.

Every teenage girl's dream. And I like the protagonists. I am the main character. Yes, I knew my head at this for a reason. Speaking of someone who was a pink-haired protagonist for a long time, oh, you're still the main character, Joanna. Yeah, we all know you're the main character. I'm very happy being the sidekick.

You're my favourite sidekick, if that helps. Absolutely. I mean, well, you're tired with the couple. Oh, yeah, no, I mean, I'm not going to try and fight the raven. That would be silly. Doesn't have arms. Joanna, talk about the book, please. I'm sorry, you know, I can't stay on topic today.

OK, and then, obviously, our other big main character is Impey Selen. Is that how it's pronounced? I've no idea. I really am sorry to our listeners now for the fact I do not know how to speak. Well, whilst you get to look for the L's, isn't it? This clip, Sheldon. Oh, my God, no, I should have looked for that.

Anyway, his name translates to Bud of the Holly as in Buddy Holly. So we can, by the end of the book, we start calling him Buddy. But I'm imagining him as young Elvis, which I think is the point, isn't it? Well, yeah, this is one of the things I like is that there is this constant joke that he looks a bit elvish and it's meant to be Elvis. Yeah. Yeah, dark head. What's it? Young Elvis was very handsome.

He was. I googled him so I could get a proper mental image, which I don't I don't usually try and get a fixed mental image of a character, but it just kept going on about it. So I just, yeah, it is kind of worth it for this one, especially because so much of what it references is quite, although it's music, they're quite visual things. Yeah, for sure. And the fact that he looks elvish

is a joke that also pays off with one very funny final reference on like the last page of the book. So I'll talk about that before the listeners start tweeting and saying, but do you know it's because, yes, then we'll get there. And so, yeah, I'm like me today. You're filling in the gaps. I know. Don't hurt me.

And obviously his guitar, which I don't know if this thing is a whole separate character, but it's the mysterious guitar that doesn't quite look like a guitar and makes little noises at him and hums and pairs. I felt very sad about his harp. I was very sad about his harp. I will talk about his harp a bit more, but yes, poor little harp. But also we're doing the fun trope of swearing. I'm going to be the biggest musician in the world.

You see and watching how he gets brought down by hubris. Yes, the teenage argument with dad storming out of Wales. Stone circle. And of course, to this day, it's it's very concerning for young Welsh people that they basically have a choice, either to be a rock star or a druid. Those are the only choices for the Welsh. We are trying to raise awareness about this. We'll be doing a campaign.

We'll be some slow harp music and long panning shots of Snedonia. I have a Wales music stone circle fact. Oh, do you? Oh, yeah. Do you know I'm saving it for this book? And I can't see where I'm going to shoehorn it in. So I'll tell you now, the Stonehenge. You know, the stones come from Wales and kind of carted quite a long way to wherever they are now.

Yeah. Well, that's good. Not Wales, half a factor. Not Wales, exactly. It's possible that's because of their acoustic properties. Really? Yeah. Finally, there are there are certain types of stone that if you bang them in certain ways, they make kind of notes. Yeah, I'll I'll post a link to the article on that

because it's quite quite interesting. And I can't remember a lot of it off the top of my head, but I will. Yes. Also, remember, there is a third choice for Welsh people. They can be bars, they can be druids, or they can be extras in Doctor Who. Oh, yes, of course. So we don't need to do the awareness campaign. Who else have we got? We've got death. Death is here, as we have said.

I'm going to talk about death a bit more later and later. But yes, he's gone wandering off again. It's a bit like Reaper Man, except Susan stepped in. So yeah, we don't have a weird zombie wizard subplot. He's having a bit of a crisis after the death of his adopted daughter and apprentice son-in-law. Yeah. It's a little bit complicated. We've got Albert as well, who is hanging about,

pressing in the kitchen, being very Albert. He does. He fries porridge as it turns out. That's nice to know. Fried porridge does work. Does it? Why do you know that? OK, so I wouldn't like make porridge and then fry it. But when I make nice porridge, I start by gently sifting the oats and some butter

before I add any liquid. Oh, my God. So they sort of toast a little bit. Yeah. Well, now I'm going to try it. OK. Yeah. Toast the oats and some butter. And then you sift. I do that with risotto rice. Yeah. So same thing.

Yeah. OK. Except don't add all the dried mushrooms, kind of. You say that. I do a really good savory porridge with dried mushrooms. No, no, I don't want that. Everyone thinks it sounds really weird, but it really works. No, I believe you and I've tried savory porridge and I understand what it's going for.

I just can't get over the the dissonance in my. I have. Yeah, I don't think I've eaten enough sweet porridge to get really dissonant and out about it, to be fair. For the same reason, I can't really deal with grits. I mean, that's texture is semolina. Like, yeah, OK, that's right enough. The key is generally more butter.

Well, that's the key to everything. Just in life. Yeah. An entire butter. Other spreads are available. Anyway, the death of rats is also here. Anyway, we are talking about a book. It's funny, you're the one who's going to edit this. Yeah, well, you know, I'm not going to.

It's just going to be a really long, rambling, funky episode. Where am I going to edit this? Yeah, the death of rats is around. I'm just I'm glad he's still about. It just makes me quite happy. He's a sweet little thing. It pleases me, sort of bopping about going squeak.

Just as well he is. Yes, handy for communication purposes. And also for communication purposes. We have a raven. We have. We have a raven named Quoth by someone. I can't remember the actual joke about why he's named Quoth, but it's something about the wizard

not being very intelligent, not being very original. Yes. And he lives with a wizard who I was really hoping I'd managed to spot a clever little callback, but he's not the same wizard for more. No, it's not. I had to look that up. Cut Angle, Pute Angle.

No, that's a different. No, that's it. Yeah, it's cheese, something or something. Yeah, that's a shame. I don't remember, but it's not the same. Yeah. But yes, we have Quoth and I've got my cuddly toy Quoth here and we get the joke about refusing to say the n word. Which is not referring to racism,

but to the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which is sort of why he's got Quoth. Brand new sentence, not referring to racism, but to the Edgar Allan Poe. I'm going to just read the stanza out just because I really love this poem. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling

by the graven standard quorum of the countenance at war. Though thy crest be shawn and shaven, thou I said art shawn or craven, ghastly, grim and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore. Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's plutonian shore.

Quoth the raven, nevermore. I love that fucking thing, that's great. It's just so fun to read out loud. Like it's satisfying. It's hard to stop, it's one of those things that you get momentum going and you're like, yeah. Yeah, I need to do more dramatic readings

of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry. Sure. That's a resolution. Not right now, because we're making a podcast. And we've got Glod and Lyas, the dwarf and troll that hook up with imp to become a handy little band. That's real.

Which is quite nice to see dwarf and troll just getting along, not without needing an entire city watch story arc, but they've just gone, we're musicians, let's hang out. Yeah, exactly, yeah. In the same vein as the watch decided, oh, we're all watchmen, so we're going to work together.

Yeah. And then here's, we've got Princess Jade and Gloria Thogsdaughter, another dwarf and troll pairing, this one from the Querm College for Ladies, which I wanted to note mostly because I believe Gloria Thogsdaughter is the first time we've met a female presenting dwarf

that actually uses feminine pronouns, is referred to as a daughter. So far, all we've seen about Norbert Dwarves is that the men and women present as male are very beardy and use male pronouns. Yes. So it seems like it's kind of a concession to the school she got, doesn't it?

That she's agreed to leave the helmet off and plait her beard. Well, yeah, but she is obviously completely female presenting that she's been sent to a girl's school, her name is Thogsdaughter. She is not just female presenting for the sake of being at the school, if that makes sense. No, but she's doing those things.

Yeah, she's doing those. There's a concession it said. Yeah, the plassing, the beard and the, yeah. By female presenting, I don't mean looking female so much as using the pronouns and the name, I don't have you. So yes, that's just a fun thing to put a pin in because that's a new thing for us with Dwarves.

We've got Mr. Cleat of the Musician's Guild. And we've all met this dude and I'm ready to stamp him. Yeah. He is the, he was not by standard definitions a bad man in the same way a plague bearing rat is not from a dispassionate point of view a bad animal. Yes, he just comes in and leaks accounting everywhere.

Yeah, no offence to accountants. I'm sure you're all lovely people. Yeah, it's that special kind of profit above all else, I mean. Yes, the Weasley... Could he not just an accountant? Is he? He's a CFO. Yes, and he's the Weasley oily, slicky in with the hat, tap, tap, laugh.

Yeah. He laughed at things in inverse proportions, the actual humour of the situation. Yeah. He's just a very well-written villain in quite a few words. Yeah, and he kind of brings in the equity paradox, doesn't he? So, yeah, you can't perform until you remember and you can't be a member and sleep.

Yeah. I see him, that's what he was referring to in that little circular bit. Yeah, the equity paradox is fun. Equity being the union for actors. Yeah, in the union. Anyone is, yeah. It's famously difficult to get membership.

Famously difficult to get membership. It's the reason people change their names a lot because you can't have lots of the same names on the register. And they're also just lots of very nice... Like pedigree dogs. ...organisation. Ah! Is that why pedigree dogs have silly names? Yes.

I suppose that rates courses as well. Anyway, yes, we have Miss You Lately Butts. Excellent name. Who runs the Querm College for Ladies. Who has basically set this up as a school to keep girls occupied until they get married. Mm-hmm. But in a more...

...educational manner than most of these schools would be, I think. Hmm. It was a big and dangerous world out there and a girl could do much worse than face it with the sound knowledge of geometry and astronomy under her bodice. Agreed. I like that whenever Miss You Lately Butts is thinking... And I can't stop saying the name, it's really fun.

You Lately. Whenever it's sort of from her point of view and she's... They are girls, not girls. Yes, girls. For a clearer vision of what the sort of school Querm College for Ladies is. I'm not sure if this has been revealed or not yet,

but it's not a major spoiler. Lady Sybil attended Querm College for Ladies. Yes. This is exactly the sort of lady it makes, which I support. Yes. Obviously, as an actual person in real life classes and Ra in the books, I find it rather amusing. And you've also written in the note for this section,

please read the Horse Girl Extra Vowels bit out for me. Please. I couldn't even do it in my head. The trick to doing this is that you also have to really kind of abandon the consonants. OK. The less you let your tongue move and lips come together when speaking Horse Girl, the better. OK.

And for clarification, the brief, fun story of... God, now I sound like a posh wanker, but my family used to have shares in a couple of race horses. That's fine. You've only brought that up a dozen times or so. But it was like a really big syndicate. And my dad was very much a big loud Geordie bloke who'd done well for himself. So when we went to meetings, our table would be very loud and northern.

And I do remember and I was quite young. We were at the races and the table was all being brushed and loud. And a very, very posh couple had turned around to sort of chat to us. I should remember this woman saying, in the most shoulders back, uptight, voice, and are you horsey people? And were you? And were you, Joanna? My father had just won £200 on a horse and announced very proudly

that he was, in fact, a horsey person. Excellent. I won't do his Geordie accents. I cannot do it justice. Until you've had a couple. Not until I've had a couple and been within his breadth of an owner. Yes. But yes, the horsey girls. Oh, I didn't know you rose.

And there's extra fees, you know, for keeping the horse. Very good. And you've got no attack. And bear back riding. And you stare by the ears. Yeah, like that, is it? Yeah, yeah. Bear back. Bear by the ears. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The yards are quite short. They're not, yeah, they're, yeah. OK, it's like a little, little order. OK, it's a little punctuation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I see. This is why I don't get on with horses.

I just can't do the vowels. Yeah, you've got to really elongate the vowels, forget consonants. Throw in a yeah, you sorted. Yeah. OK. I do the yeah. I do the yeah. I do that already. That's fine. Halfway there. We've got Colin and Nobby, but I believe we'll save them till later.

We get an explanation. It's not really a character, but we get an explanation of the hogfather. A couple of our fantasy characters winking into existence. Yes. And now I'll ask you for more personifications. Yes. The hogfather is, is without reading out an entire footnote, because no one needs me to do that.

The Discworld Christmas, except he throws sausages at people. Very meaty Santa Claus. It's very meaty Santa Claus. So it's nice to see that wink into existence here. I liked the possible origin story of a king just throwing a packet of sausages through a window. Yeah, I also like the brief reference to the Sandman who didn't need a very big bag of sand because this implied

he's just going around hitting people over the head with it. Yes. And I've only put this in because I greatly enjoy it, but the Valkyries who come to collect one of your favourite. Trope. Trope's not quite traits. It's not even really a twist on a myth. I I don't think I realised when I wrote it.

I have written a monologue from the point of view of a Valkyrie, and she's written as a very jolly hockey sticks. Yes, Valkyrie. And I don't think I realised at the time that I was basically doing this bit from the book and going, what if that, but half an hour of talking? Yeah, I think yours was a bit different. Yours was kind of like middle class hostess with most S. And, you know, a bit of the jolly jolly hockey sticks,

but wasn't quite the singing mezzo soprano on a horse type. No, it was definitely. Definitely an influence, though, yeah. So it's nice to see myself influenced here, but it does. It makes me laugh. I like the posh. This is the hockey teacher, Valkyries. And Susan compares them to her teachers from Querm College for ladies and the fact that they run up and down a battlefield saying.

Gets a bit of Nellie's. Gets a warrior, you Nellie's. Yeah, it's about a minehuff effect there. I just learned the other day what a mezzo soprano was. And now I've read it in the books. That's nice. What is a mezzo soprano? It's Prano, but a bit lower. One down. Ah, it's about what you are.

Oh, am I? Yeah, and probably what I. Well, I used to sing soprano. Then I was a bit lower. I think these days I'm more out of. Yeah, but I'm a mezzo soprano. I used to sing soprano, but it has been a while. I could I can probably mezzo soprano these days with a bit of a warm up. Yes, it's been a long time since I did the high note of a hallelujah chorus

in this cathedral that I tend to find some way at near Christmas of being in a room with good acoustics and busting out, oh, come on, you faithful. Oh, nice. Yeah, I like a holy night for a little test of whether I can still hit high notes just about still quitting smoking helped. I can still belt, oh, come on, you faithful. I can't sing the soprano desk anymore. Oh, yeah, no, fuck.

Yeah, I used to struggle with that even as Tina. Anyway, right. Sorry. Locations. Locations or locations, locations, Clamados, locations. We learn that right. Is that is it? Sure, isn't it?

Clamados. Yes. I learned how to pronounce this Clamados on the clacks. Clamados. Yeah. The online disco convention we took part in a while ago. And this is obviously a Wales allegory. Maybe maybe. The idea is that it's a bit Welsh,

but the actual name is Sodomal backwards. Oh, and it's a reference to God. I'm not even going to try and say it out loud, but a Dylan Thomas had a fictional Welsh town that was the word bugger am all but bugger all or bugger. I think it was buggery all backwards in. I can't remember what it's called, but it started and it became the proto. It was the proto of under Milkwood.

OK, cool. Hmm. So that's why it's called Clamados because it's a Dylan Thomas reference. Look at him with the surprise little Dylan Thomas reference and amongst all of the. I don't think you can wander towards the Discworld Wales and not allow a bit of Dylan Thomas to seep in somewhere. He just gets in, doesn't he?

I hear that Dylan Thomas can get through the whole size of a 50 pence beast. Can he? Oh, that might be rats. I don't know. Under Milkwood is one of my favourite things. Most of you go away from a Dylan Thomas. And I. Sorry. I've got a Dylan Thomas right now. No. All right.

It's going to get dark. So yes, so that's Clamados. Another location that I'm very excited to talk about is the fact that there's a mysterious shop that wasn't there yesterday. I might not be there tomorrow, except it's also always been there. Literally, all of your writing is directly influenced from Pratchett. I've learned over the last few months. I've realised over the last few months I influenced I was by Pratchett.

I wasn't sure. I wasn't quite aware. So dear listeners who have been with us from near the beginning, we'll remember how excited I got about this particular trope when we were discussing The Light Fantastic. Yes. And in fact, coming across it in The Light Fantastic is what inspired me to eventually write a monologue set in one of these shots that I believe I read a bit of on the podcast way, way back over a year ago.

Tragically, the monologue never got performed because a pandemic happened. Yes, the global catastrophe, you'll understand. Yes, the global catastrophe slightly bit baited it, but I thought I hadn't heard it. I was just just trying to say I know I've read it, but I was like, have I seen that? Did I miss it? No, it was supposed to go on in April 2020. Right. And so I didn't happen. So at some point, some listeners might hear a version of it, maybe, maybe. But yes, I'm just very excited to have that because it's a trope I really love.

And it makes me giggle. It's fun. I like the whole. See, I know it's been there for years, but had it been there for years yesterday? Yes, I really like that line. A nice little. Is that weird phenomenon like you get in dream memory logic, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit like deja vu. Yes, yeah, yeah, for sure.

And then where else we've got death's domain, which is nice to revisit because it's always described so well. And I like seeing it through Susan's eyes of, yeah, little details. Yeah, the omega door knocker. I like that omega being the literary symbol for ending. There's the the bathroom as well. I really love the way that it's all created. And then someone else's Albert's had to obviously build in these human touches

so he can live there. Yeah, yeah. It's like a little just like a bird nesting in a cathedral or something, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to talk about it a bit more next week, because we sort of see a bit more of it again through Susan's eyes and seeing the humanity and what death does. The kind of description of how she could see the in between,

like she could see where the human limits were and where death's limits were. Kind of made me almost dizzy just reading it. I was like, oh, God, it sounds like she got the wrong prescription or something like it's because you have that moment of Albert, who's completely human, who crosses this infinite room comfortably because he doesn't see the infinite. And so then you have Susan, who's got a foot in each world. Yeah, crossing the room like Albert, but seeing it like death. Yeah, I liked the death's desk toy.

The little go. I think we talked briefly about desk toys at one point, didn't we? God, we've talked about a lot of shit on this podcast. I like that he's got one of these little lead ball things, except it just goes once. Very good. Well done. It's very good. Like you get that's the spirit that you got there. You tried.

And then we've got Clash. One's going off outside now. It's a very dramatic scenes on the on the main road outside of the room I record in, which is great, but, you know, can't be helped. It's all ambience. It adds to the experience. It is an ambulance, actually, mispronounce that. That would have been much better if it was right after the siren.

Sorry. Oh, sorry. We've got Clash and the Clash in Foreign Legion, which is a reference to the French Foreign Legion, which I started looking up and then felt myself go down the road. It's a very big Wikipedia page. And I didn't even didn't even look, going to be honest. So I'm aware of the popular culture trope, the French Foreign Legion. People are running away to join the French Foreign Legion

because no one will find them there. And it's because the French Foreign Legion accepts people of all nationalities. Yeah. And will you get French citizenship after you've been there for a certain amount of time? So if you take a serious injury, you get French citizenship automatically. So that's where it started being an actual point in films that someone would have run away to join the French Foreign Legion because he otherwise he'd die in a duel because he looked at a woman.

Yeah. But from the wrong side of the fan on a Tuesday, when it was only overcast slightly. We know someone who nearly joined the Foreign Legion. Do we? Chef Tony. Oh, he turned up and they would close. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that. Oh, beautiful. But yeah, so then it became a silly joke in pop culture

that you would be running away to join the French Foreign Legion. And that's what's being referenced here, the classroom following Legion. No one remembers you. Yes, you can forget your past. No, there you are. Obviously, you take into a slightly more literal level. Yes, death has kind of misunderstood the metaphor. But he's tried. Oh, he's trying.

He's trying. Is that all our places? I've got all the places I've been. So little bits, we light and we start with one of mine, the half and the ship of Theseus. Oh, this is. Where's the actual line? This is fairly early on thinking of imp's harp. Most of the harps in Klamatos were old,

but sometimes they'd need a new frame or a new neck or new strings. But the harp went on and this then gets soul of it, the soul of it. And it's also sort of comes up later when his harp gets broken and he says the soul has gone. So the ship of Theseus is an axiom, a logic puzzle type thing. And it's this idea of if you took Theseus to ship and replaced every plank, every part of it over time, would it still be the same ship?

Yeah, for the much simpler one of the I've got the same ax I had for 40 years, but I've changed the handle on the head a couple of time. Yeah, the reason I'm trying to sound clever by using the ship of Theseus. Everyone knows the ship of Theseus. It was in it was a plot point in the finale of WandaVision. Oh, OK. And so it became a bit of a meme,

mostly with people posting pictures of the sugar babes and saying, you are the ship of Theseus. Oh, I see. Very good. Again, for non-UK listeners, the sugar babes were a girl band where all members were replaced at least once. How many times can you replace the members of the sugar babes and it's still the sugar babes? No, once I got rid of my Tia, that was it.

It was my Tia for me, too. She was the soul. I had I think I had a crush on her, or I wanted to be her. I wasn't sure it was that way, but it's difficult when you're a preteen. Anyway, anyway, yeah. So I like that because it's a good, classical reference, darling. I think everyone knows the ship of Theseus actually have no fucking idea. We could just be massive nerd.

In my case, I I know of this theory, this logic puzzle, but specifically this logic puzzle as the ship of Theseus. I know because of WandaVision and really. Oh, I seem to that come up in your mind philosophy stuff. Weirdly, that had never come up for me before. I mean, like, again, the theory has the specific ship of Theseus of it happen. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one of our listeners that's going. So anyway, anyway, two separate people, Colin and Nob's.

Yes, well done. Good. Yeah, I just like the little bit part dynamic in this. I think it's he's he's gotten down the little exchanges between the two of them perfectly now. And it's the nice bit of worldbuilding as well, that you now have these characters with some regularity popping up in non watch, one non watch novels. Yeah, because they exist in that city.

So of course, they pop up and have a conversation at some point. Yeah. And having colon and knobs is like the perfect ones to put in there because Vimes disrupts any situation he's put in. Yes. And then Vimes is all about the place. Carrot wouldn't just ignore things. But yeah, I just like the the little tendons and the flashes of the ridiculous conversations they have. So that salmon, Sarge said, Nobby, it is a fish of which I'm aware.

Yes. You know, they sell kind of slices of it in tins. So I'm given to understand. Yes. Well, how come all the tins are the same size? Salmon gets thinner at both ends. Interesting point, Nobby. I think and then the next bit of plot happens. It's like I was completely relevant to everything. Perfect. I love it so much.

It's like it's like us. It's like watching us. I also really like the exchange between the two of them when they come across imp, which is that's a half piece plan, Nobby. Liar. That's the honest truth. I've you've been waiting all your life to say that. Considering this entire book is full of equally awful puns, I did like Nobby being called out for that. Was that how long have you had that one up your sleeve, you brat?

The thing is, like ever since reading this book, I have waited for an opportunity to make that fucking joke. And it has never happened, mostly because I'm not sure what a liar looks like. I'm assuming a harp. Yeah, it must be like a small one, maybe. I don't know, but you need you need to hang around more bards, I guess. Yeah, I don't play D&D. Clearly, that's the problem.

I've seen a harpist perform live once. I think they're open for for just in what's his jobs. From New Muddalami. Yeah, I can't remember his last name. I interviewed him. I should know his name. See, this is me with names. It's just it's bad. I'll remember. I'm sure we've probably got quite a few New Muddalami fans listening

who are currently shouting at the podcast, going, it's Justin. Yeah, I don't know if Mel listens to us or not, if she does. Sorry, Mel. Sorry, Mel. Anyway, the problem is, all the people we know who are into New Muddalami are so into them, they're on first name terms with him and never use his surname. Exactly. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, literally, I'm out with Mel the other day and she was like,

oh, I've listened to Justin's new album and I knew who she went. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, floral clock. Yeah. Oh, I like it. This is one of those things where I didn't I didn't realise that concept in my head had come from a project that because this is one of the ones I've only read once or twice. The idea of a floral clock for years in my head has always been like this.

Oh, and then they'll open and close at certain times of the year or whatever. And I'm not really being able to find a real life example of that. I was like, why did I get that idea? So I feel like it's somewhere in France that this happens. And no, it's somewhere in a disc world book in a France allegory, maybe. There's hints of France to Querm. Yeah, definitely, with all the of Beck. Sorry about that.

Yeah, anyway, just the idea of having a floral clock with like flowers that opening plays to at certain times of days is absolutely delightful. It is a charming little idea, and I'm very glad to put it in. And it's stuck in my head for years and years with no idea of where it came from. So I'm glad we got that. General references, references, general references. Anyway, sorry, I don't know how to salute. As with moving pictures, I'm not going to point out literally every

music reference and every Blues Brothers reference by I'm going to take a minute to point out some of my favourites. Yeah, you've got to do the big ones, haven't you? Because they're just so much a part of this one. More so than moving pictures, I'm going to say. Yeah, and you can skim over the moving pictures once, but you cannot do that with this book. And the first one is the reason one of the reasons

I wanted you to watch Blues Brothers before we watched it, which is when the guys go out for dinner, blood ass, do you do fried rat, best damn fried rat in the city? OK, give me four fried rats and some dwarf bread and some Coke. And some Coke, it's so clever. Four fried chickens, a Coke and some dry wiped toast. Which also means I now will always particular imagine Gimlet as a dwarf Aretha Franklin.

Yeah, nice. Have you added a backing track to this? Oh, yeah. You better think about what you're trying. Sorry, I'm not going to sing the poor listeners. They don't deserve that. I like that song. I like that song.

And one of the other little moments was in discussing sport at Querm Ladies College and the fact that Mrs. Delgross, in her idea of a toga, practiced your rythmics in the gym. Yes, I even noticed that one. I'm just imagining someone in a toga doing aerobics style moves specifically to sweet dreams are made of this.

I'm very up for making that a party with a very like deadpan Annie Lennox facial expression for the entire time. Yes, some things. Yeah, definitely into that. Sorry, can't be dancing on the podcast. Can't be dancing on the podcast. It's terrible for an audio medium.

And oh, yeah, the name from an audio large. I'm sorry. The names I already mentioned in me. Income Buddy, Buddy Holly or Bud of the Holly, but Buddy Holly. The other one I liked was Lyas deciding to change his name to Cliff. Yes, and then whoever heard of a cliff in the music industry.

Never work. What's his surname? Cliff Richard. No. Oh, what? Lyas. Yeah. And he's Lyas Bluestone, isn't he? Yeah, is he from Salt from Moving Pictures? Is he? He's not. No, that was Blue John, wasn't it?

It was Blue John. He becomes he joined the watch and talked about him. But it's a bit of a callback to Moving Pictures when you had one of them changing his name to Clint. And there was a similar joke because you'd never get a Clint in the movies. Yes, absolutely. So I like him sort of referencing his own joke again.

And make me smile. And Claude, is he a reference to anything? He that's for the sake of another Blues Brothers reference. Although we have also already had a reference to a dwarf named Claude, because there was someone who... Oh, my God. Yeah. No, there was there was a King Midas joke about someone who... Oh, turned everyone to Claude. Yes. Yes, everything he touched turned to Claude.

And then Gimlet down the road with his eyes like, whatever. His eyes like that. Tawfee runs the delicatessen round the road and looks a lot like Aretha Franklin. So, yeah, those are the only ones I was going to point out for this. I'm going to have a lot more things in the next section. I apologize for becoming unbearable. And then the only other thing I wanted to point out was the

is less a little bit I liked, but more a brief fact check on human diurnal rhythm. Oh, good. I'm glad you looked into that, because that seemed like a rabbit hole. I was not going to risk going down two hours before the podcast started. I'm not going to lie. I stuck to just reading the Wikipedia rascal and even then, mostly for the sake of checking this fact,

just so I wouldn't go down a massive rabbit hole about how diurnal rhythms work. It's not relevant enough to the podcast. But the book says that when the house had human inhabitants, it tended to keep a 26 hour day because humans left to themselves adopt a longer diurnal rhythm in the 24 hour day. So that fact is actually based on a study. I can't remember what year it was, but it's a faulty research because they, although the humans were isolated from external stimuli like daylight,

they didn't take into account the effect of electric lighting. So humans still had access to light, right? And that that had its own face laying lights. So so. But ones that were being turned off by someone else on and off by someone. No, the humans within the study could control the lights for themselves. But what would happen was they would the human circadian rhythm does tend to be about 24 hours.

A lot more thorough research has been done with stricter parameters. In this particular study, where humans found themselves adopting a 25 hour day, they would switch the electric lights off when they felt it was time to sleep. But that had had an effect on the rhythm that then meant it took longer for them to sleep, which meant they like a sunset kind of. Yeah. So that had this knock on effect where the days ended up just slightly longer. Would still be relevant for Albert, though, I bet. Probably, yes, because he'd be controlling the candles or whatever.

Yeah, lanterns. Yeah. But yeah. Interesting. They're glad I didn't go down that rabbit hole because that's I'm glad I didn't read about that because that sounds interesting as something I say now. It is quite interesting. I'm always very there's because there's so many things that affects the human circadian rhythm. I mean, a lot of it is down to an individual human. I've done lots of research on sleep hygiene because I have lots of trouble sleeping.

And obviously, mental health has a huge effect on it. I hate the term sleep hygiene. I hate it, as you know, I've always suffered from insomnia. And yeah, the term sleep hygiene annoys me as much as mindfulness does. Yeah, sleep hygiene implies some kind of negative judgment on the person who is struggling to sleep. And that's what I mean. I just mean I have found ways of improving my sleep pattern.

Yes. I suppose you both remembering to take vitamin D because my mental health has a massive effect on it. Paying attention to natural light and trying to not look at my. I'm really annoyed that the whole drink water and don't stare at your phone right before you try and sleep both work for me. Yeah, well, you know, I know it's a thing and I'm sure it doesn't make it any better. But I have had exactly the same kind of trouble sleeping since I was a little girl

way before smartphones and like I had lots of screen time or anything like that. So all in all, I'm meant to not go to sleep till 2 a.m. And it is a tragedy that the world will not allow that for me. Yeah, in my case, I only really worked on fixing my sleep pattern for when I'm like working and need to be up at six in the morning to be at work for age. And that meant I needed to get to sleep earlier because I didn't want to be sleep deprived for handling nights. Yeah.

And like my natural sleep pattern is a lot more like midnight to nine in the morning. Yeah, that's a lot of sleep. Midnight slash 1 a.m. And I wake up sort of between eight and nine. But yeah, this is literally just what worked for me. And I think it's not the light from my phone. It's what I look at on my phone. Yeah, because I found if I did take my phone to bed, but I was just reading a book on it.

It wasn't the light from the phone that was the issue. It's the fact that if I was if I was reading a book on my phone, it wouldn't affect my sleep pattern. But if I was staying up till midnight looking at Reddit or Twitter, that was affecting my sleep pattern because I was taking in too much information and getting stressed. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, I need to get back to just reading a book, probably. But again, it depends on the book, doesn't it?

Because obviously I used to stay up all night reading. But this is why I've also taken to a really, really slowly rereading Lord of the Rings and I keep that by my bed and I tend to pick up that because it's familiar enough and nice enough. But I also I don't want to. I'm not desperate to keep reading and find out. Yeah. Oh, that's the next plot point in this mystery book. This actually takes us quite neatly on to the bigger stuff.

And you want to talk about woolly thinking. Yeah, I just I put woolly thinking in there as one of the terms season used for this kind of whimsy nonsense just because woolly thinking is something I haven't really heard outside of this book, but I like it. Oh, versus logic versus logic. Yeah, it's it's an interesting character trait of Susan's, I think. I like that he's put it in there because it's the obvious clash between her reality, which is ridiculous and to desire for a completely logical clean

universe. And it's a lot of it is nature versus nature as well. She was raised to be a Susan and a very logical Susan at that. She was. And she happens to have the mind to be very good at it. Yes, because when you're death, of course, that's the entire thing is calculation and being detached. And the whole, you know, a lot of his kind of dry conversations with the recently deceased, this very detached kind of thing. I should have picked out a couple of quotes from the other books,

but that seems like a time-consuming thing. Well, I think Reaper Man is a really good example of this of what can the harvest hope for if not the care of the Reaper Man is that he does care, but that doesn't mean he needs to care. Yeah. And that's what Reaper Man is kind of him figuring that out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But from, yeah, from a day to day basis, you can see more and more his kind of calculating detached nature.

And I like, yeah, we all know a couple of and it's usually guys, a couple of guys who are very emotional, liberal arts, bullshit, blah, blah, what are you doing? Real before feels, fax over emotions, whatever. And refusing to acknowledge the realities of the two are inherently intertwined in your reaction to them is based off emotion. But you cannot 100% separate fact and feeling, especially because everyone carries their own biases.

Yeah. And it's very, it's highlighted well in this book, I think, when you try and just do that, ah, there's logical explanation for this. You end up ignoring the metaphorical rat with a size in front of you. Or in this case, the real the size, the literal rat with a size. And I think it's really fun watching Susan's journey, the journey. The journey. And she learns to conflate the two, the the whimsy and the logic.

Yeah, yeah. And now she knows that there is this whole other world, not world, but she knows there is this supernatural side to everything and that she has a fit in it. Yeah. She incorporates that into her logic. Yeah. And I like that Pratchett doesn't just make her do a 180. She does incorporate it. She broadens her mind enough to let it in. She doesn't suddenly become a soppy little thing who goes,

oh, my paws and whiskers, you know, be weird anyway, because she doesn't have them. I think it's really good writing. I think it's very, very good character writing. And as I was saying earlier, we were talking about Susan. It's a very teenage girl. Yeah. I also like that they've kind of made that the the premise of this school, because it's incredibly well meaning and kind of you can see is progressive for the time period

that this is kind of set in. He's saying, you know, the only gills that think is worse training up girls are the thieves and the seamstresses. And so you can tell it's pretty, you know, men-forward environment. But I like I can see very much the the appeal of teaching the logics, the region, the mathematics, the no messing around to these little girls who elsewhere might be encouraged to only sit down and do nice embroideries of mice holding apple pies or whatever.

Yeah. Weirdly specific. But I might think about Red Bull. I'm thinking about Red Bull. Yeah, there it is. Aren't we in some way all thinking about? I was thinking about doing a Red Bull themed meal for my birthday and then realised that was way too much effort. OK, but that we should maybe do at some point,

because that sounds like a fun little autumn technique, a little harvest themed Red Bull picnic. Yeah, so a little Red Bull feast. Yeah, yeah. OK. Sorry, we've gone off topic. I'll try a pine cone. Darling, you braised pine cones. Oh, of course. I'm sorry, darling. Fry porridge, braised pine cones.

Eugenics bad. Good. Right. God, I'm so sorry. Yeah. Anyway, I think that's an interesting little theme throughout. I don't have a huge amount to say on it, but I think it's worth looking, looking at, keeping an eye on. I enjoy Susan's subtle little character developments through this.

I think it's very good writing, as you say. Yeah. What's your what's your music? Yeah, let's talk about music. All right. I'm bad at talking about music. Excellent. This will go really well then. There is a line that's very near the end of the section. And it's it's when it starts playing, it's when the music really starts. It made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of fire.

It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and stick your fingers in the electric socket of the universe to see what happened next. It made you want to paint your bedroom wall black and cover it with posters. I was not allowed to paint my bedroom wall back as a teenager. So I said, I just covered it with posters. And I mean, literally every available inch of wall in my bedroom was covered in posters from Karang. Oh, that's so sweet.

I wanted a bright orange bedroom wall. I wasn't allowed that idea. I'm really upset. I don't have any pictures of that room because it was I cannot stress how much there was no clear wall space. Actually, it's probably good. I don't have pictures, because I'm sure a lot of those musicians are quite problematic now. Yeah, it can't be helped.

Anyway, you cannot be blamed for the problematic musicians of the mid-2000s. No, absolutely not. But yeah, can you think of any music that's done this for you that you've heard it for the first time and it's switched something in your brain, you've suddenly gone dark and do everything? Unfortunately, not really. There's there's music that kind of does that for me. And certainly when I was a teenager, like Metallica had that kind of feel for me. And I'm really like muse.

Yeah, but for me, the the times that music has hit me and like in a memorable way for the like when I hear it for the first time. Always the ones that just make me very emotional, make me very sad, because I don't often feel. It's going to sound like a freak of it here, but I don't feel things very hard, generally. And things like a physical like gut punch of sadness kind of thing. It's always a bit about, oh, what's happening to me? You're not necessarily want to cry at a sad TV show unless you're hormonal. Yeah, or I will sometimes, but I wouldn't really feel at this. Yeah, I'm going to use this as my therapy.

No, I think it's a bit of an ADHD thing. Yeah, there's kind of a numbness over a lot of the emotional stuff. But so, Johnny, the first version of hurt I heard was Johnny Cash's much to our friends and aunts. Because the Nine Inch Nails one's very good as well. But the first version I heard was Johnny Cash and I remember very clearly, because I was 15, 15. Yeah, when I first heard that and it made a big impact on me because I just remember going, oh, oh, I feel, I feel in my heart. I feel a physical to this and the other one that springs to mind is Oh, Holy Night.

As we were saying earlier, the Christmas cow, yeah, if you, if I, if that is played, if I, if that is played, I will almost always cry. And it's just, it's nothing to do with the content. You know, I'm not religious. It's the, the notes, the way it's sung. I don't know if it's, it's a physical reaction to sound that I don't often have. So it's not cool. How about you?

Do you feel? There are particularly this mood, the ascending steps of fire and sticking your fingers in the plug socket of the universe. I can remember quite a lot. Um, I remember being very young. My dad was fairy into his music. I've now got his massive final collection set in my living room. And I remember hearing Teenage Wasteland by the Hoove the first time and I can't have

been more than about six years old and it made me want to jump off the back. It made me want to jump off the back of the sofa and do a flip. I could not do that, but I wanted to, I remember it making me bounce up and down. And then as I got older, you know, when you, you're a teenager and you start picking your own things, so a lot of the things that have made me feel like this are, I don't know, not cool. Oh, okay. Avril Vines. I'm going to pick out Avril Vines, probably one of those queens.

Do you know what? Fucking queen. Everyone's like piss at me for this, but I used to listen to queen number of P as a teenager and that did give me that way feeling. I remember a brief tangent, but when I was at download festival the first time, and I think it was the Sunday night and the, the whole Sunday night lineup had been amazing. It was all these big bands. They were bands I knew odd songs because they were very famous, but I quite often didn't know

the whole back catalog. So it was like. And loads of metal festival, by the way. Yeah, it's a rock and metal festival in the UK. It used to be in Monsters of Rock. It's in Donington and it's always around my birthday as well, which is fun. But that, like he was like a journey white snake dream theater in Def Leppard. Def Leppard was amazing, but I remember we were walking back and there's a crowd of about a

thousand, there was more than a thousand people, but there was this clump. All walking back from the arena to the campsite and someone started singing queen. It was someone starting to sing killer queen and everyone joined in. And then we did Bohemian Rhapsody and we kind of split down the middle and did harmonies. And there was a bit of a moment of silence and everyone reflecting after Bohemian Rhapsody. And I started singing, don't stop me now. And everyone got going.

Someone picked me up on their shoulders. Oh, you got to start one. I got to start one. And I was in that crowd. I wasn't with you. I remember doing the singing. Oh, you started that. I like that.

Yeah, I started. Don't stop me now. And it was huge for me. Yeah, I'm not surprised. That sounds amazing, especially for like even now you'd be fucking chuffed, wouldn't you? But teenage girl who's like wanting to be the cool metal head. Yeah.

Yeah. I think you were the cool metal head then. So I just turned 17. I had a shaved head. I lived in massive, clumpy boots. I looked like a dick. No, you didn't. Oh, no.

Do you know what? You're way too hard on your teenage self. You were very cool. I thought you were very cool. Oh, I'm glad we became friends. Yeah, me too. But yeah, so that was a big thing for me. Like Queen and that joy of singing in a crowd when you're a teenager,

but also things like Def Leppard and getting into the rock music my older friends were into. And that was around the time I read soul music as well. And I think slightly younger, but hearing girl anachronism by the Dresden dolls, just because it was dead and green woman beating the shit out of a piano and screaming at it. And there's something in it that made me feel very seen.

And I was like, oh, hang on. I don't have to just sit here alone and be sad. I can beat up a piano and scream at it. Like not literally, but it was like, oh, I can be angry as well as sad. I don't have to be quiet. Yeah. And I think that's that's an important thing to learn when you're a teenage girl. Yeah, for sure.

I was very just to go even less cool possibly into the the pop punk, the good Charlotte, the I mean, I loved all of this. Yeah, I again, there was I loved it. And the thing is, I always sound like I don't like music when I talk about it, but I do. It's just I listen to it and it's it does get me in certain moves or whatever. But the yeah, it's very rare. I get the kind of physical gut reaction.

But I just shut like, I've got my ridiculous pop playlist. I was prepared to it. It's stupid, but it genuinely jazzes me up if I'm going to shit me. All right, you know, fuck it, finger boys, go. I've got I really love to sing as well. And so I have playlists of music that are just really satisfying to sing along to. Like I will end up I will end up talking about the song, but out of hell when we get to later in the book.

But that is one that you can't be unhappy. That's one that plays in the kitchen, the whole kitchen singing along in the middle of the rush and using tongs as a microphone. And that's we've got to do a long road trip together one day. We really do. Well, we'll drive to Encanton together and we'll put really loud music on. And it'll be great. That's the shit.

And I mean, yeah, I love music in general. But there's lots of stuff that has lots of different effects of me. And it does kind of help that music was never I never listened to something because my parents hated it. It was never a rebellion because my mom was always quite cool about not in a I'm a cool mum way. But she was just like she was never snobby about it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So she would and she would want to listen to what my sister and I were listening to. And she always got into it. So, you know, our car playlist when she was driving us to school growing up was like the Green Day American Idiot album. Lincoln Park, some 41. Park, you know, that's one of them. That's one of the getting you going.

Angry one, some of that. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, no, I love it. Eminem. Do you know what? I know there's a lot of problematic stuff there, but Eminem did used to kind of get that little spark of rebellion going in me.

And as much as it's problematic, I probably would have never got quite so into writing and performing poetry if it wasn't for growing up listening to. Yes, like the cooler and more interesting rap, like, you know, my dad's tastes were very diverse and I also sort of grew up with Run The MC and stuff from the 90s hip hop scene. But it was also Eminem and Jay-Z and the album he did with Lincoln Park that made me go, oh, you can do the clever stuff with words and put it to a beat and be quick. And that that all very much stuck with me. Yeah.

Speaking of problematic, are we going to vaguely at least mention there are some shit bits in this section? Yeah. I didn't see your purple poster today. Words mentioning Fratid coming at us again with little racial tropes there. It did not escape on it. It did not escape our notice, but I couldn't think of a lot to say that we didn't say last time this came up.

So yeah, I do better. And then that's veered us into a serious topic. So take us into our last and depressing section, John. Yeah, we've been recording for quite a while, so I'm not going to go into a massive bit of detail about this, but as I've been looking at these books and where they trade off where we've been before at this point, talking about death and grief and especially forgetting, we're coming to this as far as death story up goes from the back of Reaper Man.

Yeah, yeah. And this is obviously not immediately after the events. There was because everyone has died normally in the last few books. So we can assume he sort of went back to work for a bit. But his acknowledgement at the start that I could have been there. I could have done something. Yeah, and we'll see sort of how that cycles back around. So I don't really want to go into it, but his determination,

considering this is coming kind of off the back of Reaper Man, of him having this, what's it all about really, and then trying to forget. Yeah. And where in Reaper Man, what he's trying to do is be human so he can arguably, because he wants to understand the harvest from the harvest point of view. Yeah, once he became aware that that was something he could try and do, it kind of, it was like almost unbearable, not too curious. And also he's sort of becoming aware of his own mortality because he knows that the

auditors are trying to replace him. Whereas here, his motivation is not trying to be human. He just wants the human ability to forget. He doesn't want to remember the things that have happened. And he doesn't want to remember the things that will happen. I think it's sort of neatly paralleled with the really beautiful depictions of grief and writing about grief that we had in Reaper Man to get Susan's moment of grief, where she doesn't really react to finding out that she's lost her parents.

Because she doesn't really know how. And the depiction discussion of the normal human way of reacting is there was shock and tears and then eventually it was over because people had ways of dealing with it. There was a sort of script built into the human mind and life went on. Whereas Susan's reaction is to sort of skip the script. Yeah, think about it. No, I expect I will want to react to this at some point, thank you. Which is again, I keep bringing it around to how depressing my life is.

But I lost a parent at a young age and that is kind of how I at least reacted. It was sort of a, I know I am very sad about this, but I don't really quite know how to be sad about this. Yeah, it's a bit big for a kid to deal with. And what actually happened when my sister and I got the news is we went home and we played Spyro and listened to some 41. Yeah, you've kind of meant to be load into it gently with the death of a pet or something, aren't you? And then one day deal with real grief.

But yeah, no, for a little kid to go straight into parental loss, a bit of a fucking Yeah, and I'm not saying this is a big... ...contact warning on this one, aren't we? Yeah, sorry. No, you're all right. I was thinking aloud, I don't want to forget to put it in. But yeah, and I don't mean to sort of bring down the horrible mood of the podcast, but I think it's...

I don't want to bring down the horrible mood. Bring the already terrible episode, I don't want to make it worse. I think it's very well written, and again, Pratchett is just very good at people. And with that, I think I've reached my limit of sounding intelligent. Francine, please tell me you've got an obscure reference, Phineal of sorts. I do, but before we go to that one, actually, I just want to recommend Oliver Sacks as an author of somebody who writes about various neurological things. Very good writer, very good.

And his book, I think it was The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I think it was in that one. Has some bits about people who can't forget things and how damaging that can be. I like the raven. Thank you, nice raven there. Joining in. Yeah, no, it's cool. You all right, guys?

Sorry, audio format. Yeah, anyway, my recommendation of the week is go read some Oliver Sacks if you're interested about what not forgetting things can do to a mind spoiler. Not always great. Yeah, anyway, obscure reference Phineal. He's talking about Imp and his new harp at the time when he's just fallen out with his dad. But he's like, God's like people like this. It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

I was like, is it said? Is it said? Where's it said? So I looked it up and yes, it's said for quite some time. In fact, the saying in its exact ish is 17th century. But has classical origins. The close version to the modern version is Greek, Procopius. Procopius, prosopius.

Procopius, thank you. It says whosoever he purposes that some adversity shall befall a man, touch his first, his reason. And then it's brought back in only 17th, 18th century classical callbacks. And then it's used all the time. Yeah, basically, gods make people mental before they destroy them. Go full. Yeah, it's kind of weird that it kept being brought back, actually, because it makes

sense for the Greek pantheon because they are, you know, canonically a bunch of twats. But Christians tend to try and paint their god in a nicer light. I feel like whenever the classics refer to gods in any way, they're still basically referring to the Greek pantheon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but they're more suited to the dramatics, aren't they? And then I've just got a little bonus silly obscure reference, finial, and it's on page 113 for me.

It's talking about the house of the rich guy that Susan's first. And it says something about, you can tell he's got more money in the sense because the house has too many cornices and mullions. I was like, oh, mullions, eh? Some mullion. Some mullion. It's a little slender divider in a, in like a window art. So if you think of like an art window like that,

like built into stone or something, and then you've got that little column, that little slender column on some of them. It's like a, it's almost a Gothic thing. That's the mullion. So I put that in there because it's reminiscent of the whole finial that started it all. Excellent. Love the call. Finial at the beginnial.

That's it. Well, sorry. Right. I think we, please keep that in the podcast. Was that an outside thought? Okay. I think at this point we have rambled

as much as we can. Well, that's not entirely true. No, but I'm hungry. I'm hungry. Can we stop? I've got to go and make 20 pancakes. So yeah. All right, good.

Thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Two Show, Minky Frett. We'll be back next week on my birthday. Yeah. It's not coming out my birthday. We're going to record on my birthday, part two of Soul Music. Yeah. Might wear a hat.

10th of June, if anyone sent Joanna annoying tweets on that day. Please tweet me happy birthday. My birthday should be a national holiday. We're working on it. In the meantime, however, you can follow us on Instagram at The Two Show, Minky Frett, on Twitter at Minky Frett pod, on Facebook at The Two Show, Minky Frett.

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for two castles and snacks because I have got lots of nonsense planned. Yeah. And yeah, Patreon joiners can now look at two bonus episodes, as well as all the video stuff we put out. So we've got something on landscape architecture, something on Newt for the semiotics. And then for the, yeah, the higher castles and snacks too,

is Joanna's got dramatics. She puts dramatics in that tier. I put dramatics in that tier. Very dramatic. I'll think something useful to put in there one day. You wait. You wait. I've got talent. And I'll find it.

Lots of talent. And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you. Cool. Guys, I've got really hot in this room. I'm freezing when I came in. Yeah. It's kind of roasting in here, despite the fact that it's fucking hot on the last side. I think it's all the rain. The rain's hit the heat and now it's,

now it's in the muddy. Yay. Oh God, it's going to be hard to sleep tonight. I might just not stay up all night. What do I have to do tomorrow? Oh, I did this. All right, maybe I'll go to sleep.