The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 61: Maskerade Pt. 2 (As The Actress Said To The Bishop)

Episode Date: September 13, 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 2 of our recap of “Maskerade”. Plinges! Popping Corks! Mrs Palm! 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:Maskerade - The Annotated Pratchett FileLindsay Ellis on Phantom of the Opera:Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera: A Video Essay The Most Whitewashed Character In Literary History Loose Canon: Phantom of the Opera (Part 1) - Before Broadway  Loose Canon: Phantom of the Opera (Part 2): After Lord Andy The Curse of The Yellow Clarinet - Jenny ClarinetI Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General - YouTubeTom Lehrer - The Elements - LIVE FILM From Copenhagen in 1967 - YouTubeThe Holy Anorankh - The AFP TimelinesInsights Into Couture Sewing Part 1 - Time To SewOn the Origin of Really Shiny Species - National GeographicMogadored - World Wide WordsMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

so many pages of notes, and it's going to be so disappointing for you when you realise most of this is nonsense. Well, the new Matrix trailer came out and there's a shot of Keanu Reeves in a bathtub with a rubber duck on his head. So I'm assuming the fandoms are all pretty feral right now. What's that, the fourth? Fourth one? Fourth, yes. How long has it been since the Matrix? A while.

And no, Keanu Reeves is in it, so it might be good. And the Wachowskis are heavily involved. It's not like a weird... rip-off thing, and it's not a remake. OK. From the trailer, it looks pretty good, but like... I mean, we've still not really seen the first ones. We are going to sit and do that.

I think we owe Callum a Matrix, I think. I think it's been like nearly a year since we watched Hamilton together, by the way, I think, isn't it? Oh, God. Wasn't it awesome? It was before Lockdown 2. Yeah, it was before the Circuit Break Lockdown. And it was after I'd moved into this place because we watched it here. Which, by the way, we'd better not have a fucking other Circuit Break thingy at the end of October,

because I'm going to Jersey. They're threatening a two-week one around October, half-term. Yeah, which is when I'm meant to be in Jersey, seeing my mum for her 60th. So, like, no, please. Oh, don't forget, we've got Grace Petrie tickets as well. Cool. Nice. I'm looking forward to that. But yes, I'll be very upset if we have to go into another lockdown,

especially because I finally just started going to things and doing things again. Yeah, I'm kind of working up to that. To be fair, I'm going to things and doing things on the basis that I am double-vaxxed, still wear a mask in busy places and taking lateral flow tests before and after doing them. Yeah, don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm being overly cautious about COVID. It's more that I have really lost many of the social skills I had, which weren't in abundance to start with.

Like, I know it's like the joke, but I've always found that stuff quite hard. I worked quite hard on it and genuinely now when I find myself at work, or like, even when my mum came to stay, I was like, I've forgotten how to fucking interact. Like, with people, like with you and Carl and Jack, it's fine, because I've seen and talked to you through the whole lockdown. But anyone else, like, I can feel myself being so awkward. I'm not good with, like, groups of people and needing to converse with strangers

in the way I used to, like I used to, because our local pub was a tiny pub, you'd stand inside and you'd have to talk to a stranger. I was good at it. Yeah, to a nutshell, I can massively, massively boosted my social skills. Whereas now you have to sit outside and on little tables, and I don't bother going to the pub much, A, because now it's a 40-minute walk for me, and B, unless I've made plans with people, I can't be asked. And a lot of the time, I just can't be asked.

Like, I've started going to gigs and things again, because there I'm sort of going with a person and it's nice to see. I'm seeing Andrew O'Neill at the beginning of October, which I'm very excited about. Oh, cool. Who are you going with? Boy. Cool. Where are you going?

Cambridge, the Blue Moon Club, which I've not been to before. No, I haven't. I've heard good things. No, so I'm very excited. I haven't seen Andrew O'Neill live for, like, three years, I want to say. Is this their first tour since then? Probably, I'm guessing, because COVID. Quite possibly, yeah. But also, it's just people don't often tour near us.

He sang me as a weird one. Yeah, yeah, we sometimes get Ipswich more often than Cambridge, actually, I must say. Yeah, Ipswich sometimes Norwich, but that's a bit far for a night. Yeah, unless it's something I really want to see, yeah. Yeah, but then with Norwich, I don't like it. Yeah, well, I did Colchester last week for the drag show. I was really hoping they said they were going to try and bring their Halloween tour

to Colchester as well, but it's not on the list and none of the other venues are anywhere near like the closest one is London. And that's going to be the one that sells out really quickly and the tickets are twice as expensive and it's going to be probably busier than I am. I'm still I'm still a bit iffy about London. Yeah, yeah, London and Brighton, I think I'll leave for another couple months. London, mostly. I would like to get to Cambridge.

I was tempted to offer Callum a lift tomorrow, but I don't think he would enjoy that. So I won't make him be with me in a car in Cambridge on Saturday. The traffic there is hideous. It is. It was bad enough walking through Cambridge because I had my eyes down in Cambridge. Yeah. And I had to go back the day after for like a follow up appointment and just trying to walk from the station to the optician, which is

when I've got a stomp on and it's not busy, maybe 20 minutes, took me close to 40. I just forget how far everything from the station is in Cambridge. Yeah, because it doesn't feel far because it's all very direct lines. Yeah. But then you actually start walking and you realise actually now it's even a couple trains that way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope the the shows that we have lined up go on.

Yes. Actually, it's going on. Also, I'm hopefully going to a Rocky Horror production at the beginning of November with my sister, which will be amazing. I'm glad you and your sister are doing lots of things. Yeah, we've become a lot closer and started hanging out a lot more recently. It's been really nice. Yeah, that's good. I mean, encouraging her into the world of going to see things that involve

vast amounts of glitter. Of course. I strongly advise that for anybody, apart from the fact that it gets everywhere and will be everywhere forever. Yes. No, I've mentioned. Do you remember you gave me a sparkly dress once? Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, I mentioned to my sister I was thinking about wearing my sparkly dress

and she said, if it leaves any glitter in my car, I will kill you. And this dress leaves clouds of glitter wherever I go, which is great from like being seen as a worldly ethereal being thing. But I think your your husband banned me from wearing it in the nutshell because he had to sweep up a lot of glitter. I can't remember if it was Jack who banned me or kept someone banned me from wearing it in the nutshell. It's very sparkly.

Oh, well, yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to give you that in fairness. I wanted that. It's just I did not have the assets to wear it. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm not complaining because I look amazing in it. I just have to wear it places where I don't mind leaving clouds of glitter everywhere. Yes, Carl's not included. You know what he's wearing in my car is just you'll get dog hair on you.

That's fine. Dog hair and glitter. Some dog hair and glitter around here. Right, should we should we make a podcast? Speaking of dog hair and glitter. Yes, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to the Two Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series

one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen and I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of masquerade. Act two, masquerade. Which is going very well because my book has fallen apart. Oh, fantastic. You've got one of your your old copies of you. This is very well loved notes on spoilers before we crack on.

We are a spoiler like podcast, heavy spoilers for the book, masquerade, obviously. But we will avoid spoiling major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any in 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. Through a secret mirror door and down spooky corridors to a disappointing cellar. Marvelous. My sword didn't strike as far as I wanted it to.

I'm sorry. Well, we have dispatchers from the round world. Thank you, round world, for dispatching to us. We appreciate the Albatross supports. Oh, yes. First up, Ellen. Thank you, Ellen. Ellen sent us a set of Lindsay Ellis's videos on Phantom of the Opera, which are very good fun. Lindsay Ellis always does really good stuff.

So I've linked to all of those in the show notes down below. Sonda Vagle, I'm sorry. I've probably said that wrong. On Twitter sent us a blog post explaining the yellow clarinet superstition. Yeah, that was my bad. I just assumed it was one of Pratchett's throwing you off references. Silly me, of course, it's a thing. So I won't detail the whole explanation

because the blog post does it much better than I could, but it is linked down below in the show notes. However, it did include a poem about the man with the little yellow clarinet. Can I read the poem? Please do. Excellent. The little man so long. Sorry. It's not as long as it looks, as the actress said to the bishop. Hey. The little man with the big moustache and the funny drooping eye

he plays no more in the orchestra for the leader made him fly. But whether he fled well over that, no one will really fret. Whoever heard that little man play on his yellow clarinet. What a Jonah this genius was to the actors on the stage. Whenever he played a tremolo, it doubled the villain's rage and empty seats and ill luck with which the Thespians met. They swore was due to the man who played on the yellow clarinet. A look of terror would quickly creep quickly creep

in the leading lady's face when she came on and looking down would see that fiend in his place. She begged the manager on her knees. The music used to admit the sounds of that yellow clarinet would throw her into a fit. It is hard, they say, to acquire the skill the merry notes to transpose on this instrument from the music score that lies before one's nose. But harder still, it must be indeed when the player is drunk too much

and he strikes a key with which the rest of the band is not in touch. Well, that is what happened the other night in the second act of the play. The little man from excess in drink was in a very bad way. On the demon read that he firmly held to his lips, he blew too hard and it cracked and gave the wildest shrieks as some cats in some backyard. To us, then the leader ordered him out and the fellow went hugging to his besotted heart his infernal instrument. Oh, how can we thank the leader and how can we learn to forget

that little man with the big moustache and the yellow clarinet? That is incredibly Victorian meter. It's really that's what the only reason I wanted to read it. I love it. The did you read out the book title? Oh, no, I didn't. Sorry. The bow-legged ghost and other stories. Colon, a book of hubris, sketches versus dialogues and facetious paragraphs. And which I like just because I love those overly long Victorian titles.

That's what it's one of my favourite things about the period, which was so very terrible in so many ways. But they did have good book titles. Yes. So yeah, that's a cool thing. That is a very cool thing. Thank you, Sonda Vagal and sorry again for mangling your Twitter handle. Beeping outside of my window, I do apologize. How dare they and other dispatch from the round.

Well, Pete Brown got in touch with a couple of points. First up, pointing out that granny and death did have a canonical conversation at the end of which is abroad while they were inside the mirror. We were speculating last week whether granny and death had met before. Quite right. He, as we now know, was wrong, but suggested the yellow clarinet could be hinted a saxophone, which isn't very popular in an orchestra. I think it was noted on the same page as the clarinet thing, though.

So yes, so not completely wrong, but also wanted to put in Pete's suggestion because he added this marvellous imaginary exchange between someone rather upper class at the orchestra on spotting a saxophone. Well, looks like the oboe section will sound like a 1990s, 1980s, sex scene tonight, higher synth, which is one of the funniest sentences for it in a while. Pisa also had some really good perspective on the character of Agnes, and I'm going to save that for when we get to characters.

Oh, OK. I like it. So maybe we'll be a foreshadowing. Dun, dun, dah. There's a less dramatic version of that for, like, coming up. Dun, dun, dah. Dun, dun, dah. No, see, that seems like it's just arrived, doesn't it? OK, never, never mind.

Let's just, let's just go. Speaking of foreshadowing, Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on Masquerade? Absolutely, I shall pre-shadow. Yes, do pre-shadow us. Previously on Masquerade. The rule of three has been broken and once mending. To that end, Nanny and Granny seek Agnes' knit, their missing piece,

whose inconveniently swaned off to Anchmorpork to be a songstress. Nanny's known to plan supplies some cash and the two witches board a fast coach to the big wahoonie. Meanwhile, in the city, Agnes embraces her inner pair dita. In audition, she sings with the power of several prima donnas and secures a place in the opera. But the triumph is not without tribulations. The Anchmorpork opera is plagued by appearance,

obsessed tradition, poor bookkeeping and, oh yes, a murderous ghost. Marvelous. Everybody loves a murderous ghost. That's my favourite. So Joanna, would you like to summarise what's going to happen this time? This time on Masquerade. The coach carrying Nanny and Granny finally makes its arrival at Anchmorpork. As Enrico Basilica steps off the stagecoach to starry-eyed standing,

our dramatic doyen said to Elm Street to take up lodgings with Granny's old pal, Mrs. Palm. Meanwhile, back at the opera house, Agnes is informed that she'll be ghosting the part of iodine, giving a voice to Christine Sparkle. As Christine swaps their reams back, claiming the big mirror to suit her prima donna, Agnes impresses Dr. Undershaft with her vocal prowess, and unhappy Undershaft prepares to protest the shallow casting choices but is viciously prevented due to an unfortunate episode of strangulation. As Agnes shops for helpful herbs, she narrowly avoids being spotted by Nanny and Granny,

also she thinks. The witches visit Mr. Goatburger, the publisher, who refuses to pay up. At the opera house, Saltzella and Bucket are horrified to discover a broken double base, although at least it's not a body, and Bucket hints at the strangeness of plinge. Granny and Nanny arc at the architecture on that opera house, as Nanny convinces Granny that they ought to attend. That night, Agnes sings for Christine as Nett Granny and Nanny watch on. Granny has a feeling and heads to box eight as the interval approaches.

The witches meet an emotional Mrs. Plinge, and Granny walks her home as Nanny takes over, in a manner of speaking. As the interval begins, the late Dr. Undershaft drops in dramatically. Thieves confront Granny and Mrs. Plinge as they walk through the shades, but a mysterious masked figure saves them with some sumptuous sword work. Bucket finally agrees to call in the city watch as Agnes remains it calm in a crisis, and Christine bravely agrees that the show must go on. Nanny, with the aid of a few cups of tea, is now ingratiated into the opera house staff,

and watches Act 2 from the wings. Granny joins her, and after Christine's curtain calls, they watch Walter Plinge clean up and befriend Griebo. That night, Agnes hears singing on the stage, but only finds Walter listening to the music in the walls. She gives Christine a nourishing herbal drink that leaves the glittering girl unconscious, and continues her singing lessons with the mirror. The next morning, Bucket receives a polite letter from the ghost,

and learns that the watch will attend the opera that evening. The witches attend the publishers, and thanks to Granny's glare, Nanny walks away with the $3,000 owed to her. The witches hatch a plan to get into the mysterious box eight, involving Granny getting dramatic as the Lady Esmeralda goes for a shopping spree. What for? Yeah, I was hoping we could just pull ourselves back. Everyone's got that in their head now.

Meanwhile at breakfast, Agnes chats to André and has an attack of common sense. Returning to her room, her inner peddita is thrilled to find a secret passage behind the mirror. Basilica settles in at the opera house, and his old friend Lady Esmeralda arrives just in time to attend the lunch, and held in his honour as Nanny pops to the kitchens, and helps out with a very special dessert recipe. At lunch, Nanny serves as Granny buys box eight, and promises to attend in the company of a man. Things heat up around the table, but Granny and Enrico remain marvelously undisturbed.

A salt cellar and bucket cool off, Agnes is led out of the disappointing labyrinth of cellars by a helpful water plinch, who claims to have last seen the ghost in the mirror-filled ballet school. Cool. Yeah, sorry, a lot happened again. No, yeah, no. It's really fast paced, but easier to follow than his previous fast paced ones. I think it was really well done. Yeah, it's very fast paced, but especially when you think about the fact that that was

all pretty much 24 hours. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's like a little real-time bit in the middle, isn't it? The whole book's pretty real-time once there. Once there, he nank more forecatchers, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. So, did you find any helicopters, any long-cloths?

When they arrive in Atmorpork, the agent looked like a man who would hang glided over hell, which I am calling our helicopter proxy for the episode. Especially as that is our favorite past tense. I really enjoyed conjugating hang glides thanks to Eddie Izzard. They hang glided, hang glid. As for loincloths, heavily implied in all operas. Yep. That seems fair.

I can't think of anything more loincloth-y. No, no, you're good. All right. Not a patch on the copper jelly mould, I know, but we have to make do with the loincloths given to us. Absolutely. So, quotes. Yours is first, I believe.

Yes. Sorry, it's a long one, as the actress said to the bishop. How many times are you going to get that in there today? Yes, I was going to nick that one if you hadn't, but I'm kind of glad you did because it is long. I'm not going to say it now. The actor didn't say anything to the bishop, Joe. I'm going to read your quote. The actor and the bishop have no reason to be in the room together,

apart from your weird fantasies. There's a chess joke in here somewhere, but I'm very tired. Edges, walls. Doors. Once the space was enclosed, it became a universe of its own. Some things remained trapped in it. The music passed through one side of her head and out the other, but with it came other things, strands of things, echoes of old screams.

She drifted down further, down below the consciousness, into the darkness beyond the circle of firelight. There was fear here. It stalked the place like a great dark animal that lurked in every corner. It was in the stones. Old terror crouched in the shadows. It was one of the most ancient terrors, the one that meant that no sooner had mankind

learned to walk on two legs than it dropped to its knees. It was the terror of impermanence, the knowledge that all of this would pass away, that a beautiful voice or a wonderful figure was something whose arrival you couldn't control and whose departure you couldn't delay. It wasn't perhaps what she had been looking for, but it was the sea in which it swam.

She went deeper and there it was, roaring through the nighttime of the soul of the place, like a deep, cold current. I'm always amazed by how evocatively project managers to convey, not just abstract, but abstract fantasy ideas. Yeah, it's really quite amazing, especially a passage like that in the middle of

the same section that involves nanny-og firing champagne at the ceiling. By the way, I meant to look this up, but Granny mentions a feeling in her thumbs, which is obviously a reference to the pricking in my thumbs. Do you know what that's from originally? I should know that. But Beth, what is it?

Okay, cool, cool, cool. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked to spy comes. Excellent, yes. Thank you, good. There we go, I'm useful. My mind just kept going, Spidey senses, Spidey senses.

Yes, everyone knows the Spidey senses located in the thumb. What's your point? What? Oh, yeah. Quick, or the actress and the bishop will come back. Mine's much shorter and sillier, which probably is a good thing, because otherwise we'd be ever so

mired in seriousness by this point. But... That's never going to happen on this podcast, Francine. That's true. There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, although it was really more of a crash-endo, the long, drawn-out clatter that begins when a pile of plates begins to slip,

continues when someone tries to grab at them, develops a desperate counter-theme when the person realises they don't have three hands and ends with the roin-roin-roin of the one miraculously intact plate spinning round and round on the floor. This is a weirdly specific thing that Pratchett writes really well,

because this is definitely not the only time in the Discworld books where we get something for the plates falling over and that one plate staying. I think we might have already seen it in Lanka Castle. It's bringing up memories of that for me somehow. Yeah, and it definitely crops up an amazing morris. Yeah, sir.

As a very clumsy human being, it's evocative and... Relatable. Relatable to me, yes. Do you ever tell you about the time I dropped a tray of champagne outside in wedding? Yeah, when you were serving at Iquith at the time. Yeah, I got my foot stuck in a rabbit hole.

Yeah, well, it sounds like it could be a metaphor, but it's not that happened. Iquith is not the place to be serving trays of champagne while you're walking across the grass. Well, quite. I thought I'd gotten away because all the guests were so nice about it, but then I spotted the manager watching from the conservatory.

Yes, well, we know that manager's not a particularly nice man. True. I didn't then, though, and I did feel bad for disappointing you. So, going on to characters, we're starting with the protagonist, I see. Yes, we're going to revisit some before we go on to newer ones. Agnes.

Agnes. So, I mentioned in my summary her whole attack of common sense thing. I think it's quite fun that all the witches manifest things differently. Granny sees herself very much as an observer, but it's very specific in her grannyish way of thinking, to the point where her way of thinking often sort of has to be, you know, explained to the audience. And then Nanny, the whole point of Nanny's character

is that she ingrates herself in everywhere. There's another line in the book about someone realized she'd acquired an ogre. Whereas Agnes is attacked of common sense, especially ranting about the opera, she feels a bit like an audience proxy. Yeah, she's a straight man. Yeah, and she's the one to sit there with the audience.

Yeah, she sort of nods at the audience and goes, yes, I know that's ridiculous. That's why we're parodying it in this book. Isn't it fun? Yeah, that is quite cool, actually, that they've kind of got a fourth wall. It's not quite a fourth wall. Protagonist, almost, yeah. And it's nice because it's sort of an example of her witchiness,

although she's determined not to be a witch, that she's so good at seeing clarity. Yeah, absolutely. She's, she kind of seems scared by it, though, doesn't she? She realizes that she is kind of noticing all this stuff, and then she's like, oh, this is what? Which is notice. And then she's like, no, no, it's fine.

I'm just a sensible girl with a separate personality. Nothing witchy about me whatsoever. It's fine. And a magic singing voice. The mirror bit, I thought was a good example of that, like the realization that she was being... She had the reaction that a witch would to the mirrors. Yes, when she's in the ballet school and she's caught between the mirrors

and she's determined to be okay with it because she's not a witch, and then she's really not okay with it. Yeah, yeah, she has like a physical reaction. It kind of definitely cements the idea that she's going to be witchy. Yeah, I enjoyed that. And then I actually wasn't going to talk about the fat jokes thing, partly because I talked about it so much last week, and partly because I wanted to really sum up my thoughts

when we got on to the third episode. And this is not the worst section for it. But Peter Zemel was really interesting. This was the bit I said I wanted to talk about here. Oh, yeah. Just because this is a perspective I hadn't really considered. So I'm just going to read this verbatim. Don't know if this will add anything to the discussion on Agnes,

and I don't want to excuse Pratchett laying into the fat jokes, but I can tell you when I first read Masquerade as a stupid teenage boy, it was the first Pratchett book I'd read. My sword and sorcery addled mine rather wobbly identified Agnes as the main female protagonist and female protagonist. Female protagonists are always princesses and therefore young, slim, and pretty. You could not dislodge my conviction that main female protagonist had to be young, slim, and pretty with a big stick.

I remember reading the outlying regions taking some time to come to rest and thinking, ah, right, young, slim, and pretty with quite a bouncy bra. Every time Pratchett mentioned her size, I'd grudgingly update my mental image by a couple of pounds, which meant that she ended the book at something like a healthy weight. On repeated readings, I became more indignant by the characters criticising Agnes's weight, which helped me to get to the point of properly articulating

that protagonists and people are free to come in any shape or size. Not that I should have needed help to know that, but there we are. So I thought that was quite interesting, because I hadn't really thought about the perspective of needing to learn that. That's really cool. I really like that email. It reminds me of, I remember not quite the same, but similarly as a teenager going through a phase where I was like, if there was a, obviously played for, not played for last exactly,

but a character who wasn't conventionally attractive in a TV show or film or anything, I'd be like waiting for the makeover scene and stuff like that. And then it was kind of media evolved a little bit over the last few years, and that stopped happening all the time. I remember going, oh yeah, no, that doesn't, it's fine. People look like people. That's fine. The early 2000s has a lot to answer for trying to convince us that the before's aren't stunningly pretty.

And my main go-to example for this is always the Princess Diaries trying to imagine Anne Hathaway as not attractive when it's Anne Hathaway. And like New Girl when Jess is like, has to stand in for Cece as a model. It's like, okay, we're all pretending that Jess doesn't look like a model. Okay, cool. And fucking Downton with the whole, oh, Edith is meant to be like the ugly sister here. It's like, she's pretty, she's fine. Do you think the English aristocracy are all symbols? Have you met the English aristocracy?

That's normally a lot more teeth. Absolutely. No, that's a really, really cool perspective. I enjoy, I enjoy perspectives from teenage boys especially actually just because it's something we haven't been able to get much of. We haven't really known many teenage boy fans of this, have we weirdly? Because I know that's like the stereotypical fan base of Terry Fracture. I assume Peter is obviously not a teenage boy anymore. No, no, no. But he's recounting it very well.

Yeah, because all the men we've known who've been super into it have been like older than us. Yeah, but also, you know, perspective does, not perspective, representation matters. Yes, absolutely, yeah. And sometimes it does take a point being hem at home. This is the thing, I don't dislike the fact that there's a fat protagonist. I dislike the fact that, I don't dislike the fact that characters are dicks about the fact that Agnes is fat because that's realistic. I dislike the book making so many fat jokes about Agnes.

Yeah. Those are what don't need to be there. And actually, characters making comments about Agnes' size brings me to one of my preferred, one of the things and brings me into the next character, which is Saltzella. Yes, which I was pronouncing wrong last episode and somebody on Reddit corrected me. So thank you. Yeah, I think Nathan pointed out the sort of Saltzella. Saltzella, yes. Is that relevant to something?

Or is it just that's how it's pronounced? I think we landed on no. But Saltzella thinking to himself, do you think she knows how fat she is? Yes. And I think it's kind of interesting that in the book, the only characters who have used the word fat to describe Agnes now, officially once in a monologue, are Granny and Saltzella. That is an interesting way to put it in the mouths of those two characters. Yes.

Compared to Mr. Bucket, who is very proud of the fact he calls a spade a spade, but... But not this one. Not this spade. This spade has a lovely personality and wonderful hair. Yes. And he's very embarrassed about the fact that he's going to make her the understudy. Like he knows he should be ashamed, but he's going to do it anyway. Yeah. But yeah, so Saltzella, he's just a really interesting character. And I don't want to go into massive amounts of detail, but I like a sarcastic arsehole.

Yeah, he had another few good lines, didn't he? I've not bookmarked them because otherwise we're just going to be reading out. No. Did he have any you particularly liked? I did have... I like Dr. Rundershaft saying, you know, Saltzella always said that sort of thing. And it's talking about people would rather swallow a big lion, choke on a little fib, and he's thinking about Agnes' casting. And that's true. Saltzella...

Yeah, absolutely. He is the sort of character who would say that sort of thing. I'll Bucket ask what's Saltzella, what's the difference between opera and madness? And he probably applies better scenery. Absolutely. But also his reaction to Nanny's, not Nanny's, Granny's, what would you take out of a burning house of what would you like me to take? Is such a good summary of his character.

Was he the only one at the opera house so far that Granny's arse that hasn't? Wasn't it? Yes. So that's quite interesting that Granny is like, I can't get the measure of you straight away, so... And that was the one character she decided that for, so it's... Yeah, that's interesting. And then who else do we have? We have Christine.

I'm going to talk about her a bit more later, but I do like her sort of... My father always said a dear little pixie would come and help me. And I think Agnes, you're my... Or Paditi, you're my dear little pixie. And obviously that's a fun... A, I have such a soft spot for her. I think she's so sweet, even if she's a bit of an idiot and very thoughtless and... So self-centered.

I love where she's sort of... They're just about to put Agnes on for right to, and she does the dramatic... Well, we can't disappoint the dear public. Smiled a bit too bravely. It's her very, very specific cleverness. Yeah, I kind of hate it and love it at the same time. I really enjoy reading it. Obviously, I couldn't really find myself becoming friends with her.

But the dear little pixie thing is a nice reference back to Phantom of the Opera with Christine's father, promises that an angel of music would come to her, and that's who the Phantom's kind of being. That's right. And then there's a reference to Skull of an Angel, wasn't there? Yes. When Granny was describing... Was it Granny describing the...

I think it was Granny. Oh, no, it was Granny. Thinking about the encounter, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the masked swordsman. And then he goes, this is also such a good section for Granny. Oh, yeah, she's the hero of section two, I would say. She is. So much of it is about her.

And so we get more of her in a monologue than we don't... We get more of her in a monologue that's not directly tied to Granny. Yeah. Whereas I'd say a lot of witches are broad and lords and ladies, all of nannies in a monologue that we get is very tied to what's going on with Granny. Yeah, yeah, no, it is nice to see her as a separate being. I'd say in which the broad the bit we get is when she goes off on her own to be dancing with Cassandre and dancing.

Yeah, so those were kind of glimpses, but yeah, we get a whole section of it there. And just seeing her in a monologue when it comes to Granny as well and not being happy about things like Granny sort of spending all of her money. Yeah, yeah, she's not falling over Granny for sure. She's definitely like... It was interesting that like the opening bit where she gets embarrassed at Mrs. Palms, I thought was a really good bit of subversion of expectations. That was a very good subversion of expectations, especially with Granny sort of a,

oh, hello. Yeah, I know exactly where she is. There was a really good line about Nanny. You only had to look at Nanny Ogre running back at you to believe she could write something like The Joy of Snacks. Yes. I like her Ogish politics and advanced morality. Yes. She wasn't political so much as Ogish, especially after preining the previous king with a massive leg of lamb. Do we think that was Verence's father?

Yes, I think so. And I also think she didn't braid him. Well, no, okay. She went a bit lower. He seemed like the sort of king who had his brains further down. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I liked the line about not regretting losing her innocence because she'd never found any use for it. Yes. And when it's the interval and Dr. Wundershaft's body drops down and everyone's around it and she gets in by saying, let me through, I'm a nosy person. Yes. It works, it works.

It does work. I really wish I had like half an ounce of Nanny Ogre's confidence. It's definitely a type of confidence that is more realistic to pursue than Granny where the wax is, I think, I think we can. Yeah, I don't think I can ever have that kind of steely self-determination, but I reckon I can barge into a room and say, let me through, I'm a nosy person. Speaking of Granny. Speaking of. Speaking of Granny. Speaking of her. I shall speak of Granny.

We get more sort of little insights into her wicked side. Yeah, she's definitely enjoying herself a bit now she's back in the city. Especially when it comes to the thieves attacking them. Obviously, it's the swordsman who takes her down, but Nanny's very willing to stitch them up with a rusty blunt needle. Yes, it's interesting because it's definitely like, obviously, I'm not going to let them die, but yeah. That's mean I've got to be nice to them.

And she seemed quite pleased when the, before the ghost came along, when they kind of revealed themselves to be just bad loss and she could just happen them. I think it was just nice for her to have something very simple to deal with that wasn't at all metaphysical. Yes. We also learn of the Trollish and Twarfish nicknames for her. Yeah, what she's sad about. Well, I think she is and she isn't.

I mean, I think she's sad in a kind of quietly primed way. Yeah, I don't know. It sounds like she must have looked a bit crestfallen if Nanny was trying to backpedal. Well, yeah. I think she, I don't think it's sadness. I think maybe irked that she's not as respected as she thought. Yeah, yeah, she'd probably prefer respect than fear. So we have Ogreha Hoa.

I'm sorry, I don't actually pronounce Trollish or Twarfish particularly well, because they're not real. Trolls in the audience, please feel free to send an angry email. Engagement. She who must be avoided according to the trolls and the Dwarves caller Kezrek Dibidiz, which is go around the other side of the mountain. Oh dear. So I expect we'll talk about Nanny and Granny a little more later.

We will. We definitely will. If we pop along to Andre, who's around as much as the others, but is memorable. He used to teach music to the Seraph's children in Clatch, which I think maybe a little reference to the ghost in the Phantom of the Opera used to be in Persia. There's like a, oh yeah. Some kind of Renaissance man.

Andre is not like a particularly analog of one character in Phantom of the Opera. I mean, there's hints of Raul to him and you can see the sort of the tiny hints that maybe there's meant to be a bit of a romance between him and Agnes that's never out and outstated. And that you can't tell if it's if it's blushing or if he's he's like obviously a bit of a, ah, and he could be the ghost because he's lurking in dark places. Yes. Yes. He's he's the dark horse perhaps.

Yes. Mysterious Andre. Yes. And it's quite, it seems to be genuinely just quite nice to Agnes, who is, it's very fairly suspicious. Yeah. I think part of the suspicion of him is that no one else is quite so nice to Agnes, apart from maybe Dr. Undershaft, who is only that so nice when he is in the Aria.

Poor bit, Dr. Undershaft. I liked him. I liked him. He's not written him down here, so let's mention him briefly as the poor Dr. Undershaft. I liked him. R.I.P., Dr. Undershaft. We hardly knew you. I like that death seems to suggest that he's going to heaven or whatever because

it's a would you would you like there to be instead of a this is what's going to happen to you like for the right capture. Are there choirs? Would you like some? Which is a lovely lovely afterlife for him. I should also probably note with Mr. Undershaft's death that he very much recognises the person strangling him before they put the mask on and run off. Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. I'm trying very hard not to spoil who the ghost is and stuff even though we've said before. Is that it? I know there's at least a couple of people reading along this time and I'm like, oh god. The responsibility. I don't like responsibility. Who else do we have? We have Mrs. Plinge.

Yes, who is filled with fear, as Granny says. Yeah, she's terrified as well as overworked and tired. Um, looked as if she didn't get very much to eat and not a lot to sleep either. Annie had a lot of time for the plinges of the world. Yes. Yeah, and she cares very deeply about her son and worries about him very deeply and works hard and clearly gets paid a pittance. Yes, which back on our labor rights for people in opera houses ran.

Yes, absolutely. Union eyes. Union eyes, you lot. Yes, because have I gone on this rant before? I feel like if Pratchett had lived longer, we would have had a union book as the industrial revelation continued. Yeah, I mean, there were obviously hints at it with characters that we haven't spent a lot of time with yet.

We've also got Walter Plinge, obviously. Yes. As referenced in our last episode, loosely based on the character. Frank Spencer. Thank you. Played by Michael Crawford, who went on to play the Phantom. Yeah. Yeah.

I noticed in this section that he does not speak with punctuation. No, not in the way. There is no punctuation in his speech. There's no commas. Yeah, which, I don't know, might be like contrast to all the exclamation marks or something, a nice little bit of narrative symmetry or might just be because it's funny. He does use a lot of exclamation marks, at least on the page I'm on when he's... Oh, I think now, I must have just realized the, the lack of commas.

Yeah. When he's going about his day-to-day doing things like pasting up posters, then all the words come out. I think it's described as like a machine gun rattle. Yeah. But bless him, sort of adopting Griebo. Oh, yeah. No, isn't it nice?

And Mr. Griebo just takes care of them by hitting them with his port, isn't there? I've been out every time. Yes. Walter needs his own cat. Yes, he does. But again, sort of a mystery character of why is he lurking? He's listening, you hear the singing and then he's listening to the music in the walls. Yes, and Agnes keeps coming upon him when she's lost, lost in inverted commas.

Yeah. And he clearly, not clearly, it seems like he doesn't believe her as much as you'd expect. Yeah. Like there's a hidden intelligence there alongside his clinchness. Yes. And then we have Mrs. Palm, who I believe you put in because you have an anecdote. I do. This is a really good anecdote from annotated Pratchett.

Also, this is a nice callback to Equal writes where Granny befriended Mrs. Palm. Yes. Yeah, it's nice that that little friendship's kind of continued through into this one. Well, I think with what Mrs. Palm does, it's cousin to witchcraft. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. In the relationship. Yeah.

In the same way that like the head housekeeper that was like a cousin to it there, isn't it? There's a certain amount of illusion and glamour and... Yes. There's a line when we meet Mrs. Palm and Colette and Nanny's very shocked when Granny says, Hello, Colette. Fascinating earrings you're wearing. Yes. So listeners might be aware that there was a company called Clairecraft that made

disco miniatures and jewelry and things. Just down the road from us. Yes, down in Wolpit. They went out of business 2005. One particular thing they sold was the Anna rank, which was a small model of an Egyptian cross wearing an Anna rag. Oh. The actual story of how that came about is another story, which can also be found on L space.

I'll link to that bit in the show notes. Now, listeners will also remember the old fan Pratchett existed, which was sort of Pratchett fan forum. And it was a running joke on there that the male readers would often propose to the female readers on the group. So Colette was one of the, I guess, admin type people on the group and therefore very visible. So it was often proposed to.

Again, more background on this available on L space. They have some fun explanation of like the in jokes of old or found up Pratchett. I'm so sad I wasn't a fan of that time. I know. Like historical Thomo. So Colette had a pair of the Anna rank earrings, went to a disc world signing in May 1994. And Pratchett, Terry noticed them while she was getting her book signed. It was the first time he'd seen the Anna ranks as earrings.

So then at the end of 1994 in December, he emailed her and said he was doing the final draft of Masquerade, which of, and this is in Colette's own word, and which of the following two characters would I like to be called Colette, the makeup girl at the opera house or one of the young ladies at Mrs. Palms, and that mention might be made of her interesting earrings. When I picked myself off the floor and being the mischievous soul that I am, I wrote back to Terry and asked if Colette could be one of the young ladies at Mrs. Palms, explaining that I felt such a young lady would be much more likely to not only wear

interesting earrings, but also receive a lot of marriage proposals from men she hardly knew. When I got my copy of Masquerade signed, Terry wrote in it, what's a nice girl like you doing in a book like this, a dedication in the same league, as that which he wrote when he signed my Discworld Gamebook look, which was to Colette, will you marry me? Oh, it's so cool. I love it. Isn't that fun? Awesome. I want some Anna Rank earrings now, but it's just, wasn't Terry Pratchett great?

He was, wasn't he? Well, well done him. What a lovely little thing. I was just thinking earlier today, I don't think I could have made this podcast if he was still alive. I would have been horrified if he'd heard me criticise him, which I know is incredibly cowardly of me, but I would have not been able to do anything but kind of skim over any of the bits I had critiqued about. I feel like we could have managed it, but I would have been a lot more stressed all the time, especially now where I'm like super chill. Yes, of course. Do I want a super chill Hagan, I call you?

No one calls me. I think they might have given me, I'm sorry. Do I want a super fly Hagan? That's more like it. Backwards baseball cap implied. Right, sorry, locations. Oh yeah, right. So if anyone like was a member of Altfan, Pratchett in the old days, or happens to know Colette, how do we think that the story is lovely? Yeah, no, that's really, really good. Okay, where are we? Locations, Isle of Gods? Yes.

This is just fun because we haven't really, we haven't looked at maps of Ankh-Morpork yet. They do exist. I've got the Ankh-Morpork items. I think we've got one on the Atlas, haven't we? Yeah, I think so. And obviously the game. But the Isle of Gods is sort of situated where the river bent so much it almost formed an island, and is where the city kept all the things it occasionally needed but was uneasy about, like the watch house, the theaters, the prison, and the publishers. So it's just nice to consider the sort of placement of where we are within the bigger city.

And you had something about secret passageways? Oh yeah, sorry, I just opened the Atlas book and got distracted. Yeah, I just liked that they described the secret passageway as what a secret passageway usually is, which is kind of forgotten, walled up corridor, which I'd love in its own right, by the way. I'd be so happy if I found a secret passageway in my house. Yeah. There's definitely no room for one here, but one day. And the kind of inner conflict between Agnes, like it's going to be rats,

it's going to be damp, and Perdita, like surely there's an underground lake with stalactites. Surely what good is the world if there is not a sparkling lake with tandles? And a huge organ. On which you will play many virtuoso pieces. Yes, and yes, I mentioned it as a location only because it is a lot relevant and I like the, and yeah, I want a secret passageway. And behind a mirror as well, that's so cool. And yes, going through the mirror is another nice little metaphor, isn't it,

through the looking glass in there. Yeah, and again, also, Phantom of the Opera. Oh yeah, obviously. That's where the secret passage was. Yes. I was definitely paying attention to that entire show, don't worry. I was trying my best. I wasn't on my phone or anything. This is very good to me. Look, when we get our castle, we'll have some secret passages in a secret room where you pull out a book and the bookshelf slides to one side.

Oh, one day. Yeah, so that's all the locations. That is a really short locations compared to usual. Well, we don't really go anywhere. No, we're in the opera house. I still haven't done any research on architecture of opera houses because I found more interesting things to look at, but I do still like, I liked the description of all of the architecture being on the front. Yes, the box that someone had glued architecture to. Yeah, it's like, I've got to make this pretty.

And interesting that Granny, I know this was your quote, but I quite like the musings about because there was no windows and when the door was shut, it became its own little universe. Yeah, that is always such a weird thing in theaters. Yeah, it is quite evocative of a theater, of a cinema, and then when you walk out again into the real world, it's like, mmm, good lord. Okay, cool. Little bits we like. Little bits we like. Let's start with you, Francine. So on page 126, the coach driver is recollecting the terrible old women he had with him

and Nanny's insistence on hearing and telling stories in particular, and talks about Nanny's story, which embarrassed him so much, he nearly fell off the coach, which was about a very tall man and a piano, which I'm pretty sure is a vaguely veiled reference to a joke, I'm sure we've all heard in the pub, but I'm going to tell you anyway. And I'll explore the punchline. Oh, thank you. A guy walks into a tavern. As he walks up to the bar, he noticed a 12-inch man playing the piano. So we asked the bartender, what's that all about?

The bartender told him that he'd tell him later on, don't worry about it for now. So the guy orders a drink and the bartender says, before you get your drink, you do get to rub the magic beer bottle and make one wish. Okay, said the guy. He went over to the magic beer bottle, perched on the end of the bar there, and gives it a rub, and poof, out comes a genie. The genie, of course, says, you have one wish. The guy, sort about it and being a simple sort, wished for a million bucks.

A cloud of smoke fills the room, and then both the genie and the guy disappears. In a few minutes, the guy reappears in the bar, surrounded by ducks, flapping mallards, feathers everywhere, it's terrible. The guy was astounded and said to the bartender, hey, I didn't want a million ducks. The bartender replied, do you think I wanted a 12-inch pianist? The wording of that largely stolen from a Reddit post, which I'll link to if I remember, but we've all heard a version of it.

Yep, and it never fails to make me giggle. Ah, dear. And from 12-inch pianists to sociology. Oh, brand new sentence. Oh, that's me as well, sorry. I do love the brand new sentences we end up with on this podcast sometimes. Yeah, no, I liked the kind of little dabblings into sociology we got with just nannies to the point comments.

I don't feel done down. I felt fine until you told me I was done down, said nanny, putting her finger on a major sociological point. Which is a kind of a thing that Pratchett does quite well, I think a few times just very fluently. Well, we had interesting times, didn't we? Yes, yes. Yeah, the, are you really representing these people

or are you just using them for your own end kind of thing? Yeah. What would you like? Longer piece of string would be nice. Yes. And then, we witches have always held everything in common. You know that, said granny. Well, yes, said nanny.

And once again, cut to the heart of the sociopolitical debate. It's easy to hold everything in common when no one's got anything. Which I think is a little bit of a dig at the fact that a lot of young leftists become decidedly not so leftist when they grow up and get a bit of cash. Yes. Which I haven't done yet, the second bit. So I suppose we'll find out.

If I get, if I want to get a lot of money and turn into a Tory, do shoot me, darling. I mean, it's not happened to me so far. No, yes, yes. I came into a bit of cash and haven't started voting conservative. No, nor have you started interfering in opera houses yet, but we'll see this time. There isn't one locally.

Oh, that's true, yeah. Interfering in the theatre royal doesn't really seem quite so exciting. No, no, I haven't heard of any ghosts. I bet there's ghosts. We should go on the ghost tour soon. I've been on the ghost tour in years. This town is so hilariously haunted. It's great.

I know, with such a, and it's so not spooky. Well, it's like that we were joking about, you know, there's the fair every Soul Cake Tuesday, regular. There's the ghost of a man who might have fallen down some stairs, regular. The ghost tour that used to, still does, I suppose now, the pandemic's off, I guess. Go around our town, used to stop outside the, this is the listeners benefit, the pub where my husband used to work and talk about the boy who drowned the bar still upstairs and maybe we've got a grey lady or something, I don't recall.

But Jack used to like to go into the cellar because the, the grey door. Yeah. The hatch that goes down into the cellar from the outside. Yeah. He used to stand underneath that, wait to the kind of quietly working up to the crescendo bit from the ghost tour and kind of bang on it and scare everybody off. He tells me that there are, as far as he knows, no ghosts upstairs, even though we've had quite a lot of ghost hunters in.

Do you know I still not watched the bloody video of that? Oh yeah, we had like actual paranormal people. Yeah, a few times, apparently, and one fairly recently, which unsurprisingly do find things, but. Yes, I'm slightly too cynical for things like believing in ghosts, but I enjoy the stories nonetheless. Yes, absolutely. I kind of, I find myself believing when, when it's people I know who tell me,

like they've had this or that experience, I certainly don't think they're making it up or exaggerating or whatever. And I find myself a lot more convinced. But when it comes to. I think there is a logical explanation. I believe that it is something their brain has done, because there's a lot we don't understand about how human brains work. And that's, I think, where a lot of paranormal activity comes from.

Yeah, no, absolutely. But my point is I'm a lot more generous with that than I am with people who make a profit from going around beeping. Yes, absolutely. I agree. Anyway. If we did have ghosts, The Theatre Royal would probably be a good spot for them. It is a beautiful old Georgian building.

It is. It was very nicely renovated. It's the oldest working Georgian proscenium arch theatre in the country. Because that is a lot of clarifying words. I don't mean clarifying words. What do I mean? Qualifying. Qualifying words.

Thank you. A lot of qualifiers. Anyway. Anyway. We drifted away from sociology there, didn't we? An on-to-moveable type. Yes. I briefly referenced this in the last episode.

It's the moveable type was known in Ancmoorpork. But if it was heard about it, they moved it when no one could find it. They put the pointy foot down hard. So engraving is the method of printing in Ancmoorpork. This could easily have been a rabbit hole about engraving and printing methods, especially in the 17th, 18th century. But maybe we'll get to that another day. Maybe we'll get to that in another book.

But I wanted to point it up here. It's a little bit of fun. Yes. Types of opera. Yeah. Again, I know nothing about opera. So you're going to have to enlighten me entirely here. Also, Nanny explains there's two sorts of opera.

Your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign. It goes like, oh, oh, oh, I'm dying. And then there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign. And it basically goes beer. I like to drink lots of beer. And that's all of opera, really. Mostly stout or stabbing. So I did look it up.

And I then learned, I'd already learned a term from Twitter. This comes back to the conversation we had last week about the difference between opera and a musical. Right. And we can thank Mr. P.D. Ethel, one of our regular Tweeters. Tweeters who are. Better than Twitters. One of our regular replyers who has spent most of their life.

Singing opera. And the general definition is that opera is all sung. Operetta is a script with songs. And musicals are essentially modern operettas. Oh, well, that's good to know. Because I've got something about operettas later. Thank you. Excellent.

And so operetta is your light opera, where they're singing about beer. And when I was looking for examples of operetta, as opposed to opera, opera being things like La Triviata. And one of the best examples and the precursor to the Monday musical is of course Gilbert and Sullivan. Oh. And thanks to that, I've now been walking around

for the last two days singing in my head. And the very muddle of a modern major general, which I don't know the words to. Oh, do you know what? I've tried so many times to learn the bloody words for this. And yeah, and no. The problem is there's so many parodies that use the tune. That every time I try and learn the words,

I start also trying to learn. I can't remember which Animaniacs, whether it's states or capitals or. I think it's this. I can't remember whether it's countries or states or capitals. And the element songs, the same. Yeah, that's what always comes into my head when I'm trying to remember the modern major general.

Yeah, we don't have enough Tom Learer on this podcast, do we? No, more Tom Learer. Listeners, go and listen to some Tom Learer. I'll just, I'll link to a random one for fun. Yes, I know it's the wrong time of year for poisoning pigeons in the park, really, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Oh, and the dress shop.

I love the dress shop. Oh, yeah. This is when Nanny and Granny aren't looking for something suitable for Lady Esmeralda weatherworks to wear. And the shop is described as the apparent absence of anything so crass as merchandise. This is not a shop where things were brought.

It's an imporium. We had a cup of coffee in a chat. Maybe four or five yards of exquisite fabric would change ownership in some ethereal way, and yet nothing so crass as trade would have taken place. Oh, I've never been able to shop in a shop like that. I think it's quite an old-fashioned thing, and as well, this is how dress shopping

would have been done in ye olden days. I'm aware that ye would never have been pronounced ye, and it's a thorn before we get an email. Yes, it's more fun to say that way, though. Yes, where there would be fabrics, and people would go in and choose. But it's also kind of how like... Last place you then invoice the house, wouldn't you?

Because you're a known client. But it's also kind of how couture design houses work and purchasing couture garments. You go in and you have the designs that you've sort of seen on the runways, and it's made for you. Yeah, I went into a deep rabbit hole of reading about couture fashion

because there's obviously good advice on how to actually... I've got lots of books on couture and couture sewing. Oh, yeah, cool. Yes, mostly. That's like a whole different type of sewing, is it? Yeah, it's difficult, and most of it's done by hand. I'm never going to be making full-on couture garments. Yeah, no, that sounds...

Annoying. But it also goes on to the fun class thing we've talked about before, which is that once you're up a class, you're considered differently. Like the shop owner understanding that... Sorry, I've got to post it in the way. She was enough of a snob to confuse rudeness

with good breeding. The rich can never be mad, they're eccentric, they can never be rude, they're outspoken and forthright. Absolutely. Quite right to. Thinks of nanny orcas, not nanny orc, but Lady Weatherwax's salt of the earth, obviously, salt of the earth.

There was a really good line about cockroaches as well that I can't find now. It's Madame Dawning had a manner peculiar to her class in upbringing. She'd been raised to see the world in a certain way, and it didn't act in that certain way. She wobbled a bit, but like a gyroscope, eventually recovered and went on spinning,

just as if it had. If civilization were to collapse totally and the survivors were reduced to eating cockroaches, Madame Dawning would still use a napkin and look down on people who ate their cockroaches the wrong way round. I love it. Which way around do you think one should eat a cockroach?

Where the fuck are you getting a napkin in the apocalypse? Any bit of scrap fabric, I suppose, if you've got the sewing skills could be neaten up into a napkin. But it's that fun, that upper middle class thing that takes class much more seriously than upper class thing. Madame Dawning being the proprietor of the shop

takes the class issue very seriously. Yes, well, she would as both would have to work more to be seen as worthy of talking to these fine ladies. The description of the dress is beautiful and I want one. Yes, black as a Starling's wing is black. I've got some gorgeous black fabric, but I don't think it's that gorgeous. No, I think perhaps it might have already,

but certainly does, again, talk about Starling's wings. He's clearly got a fondness form. The Starling's lovely birds. Yeah, they're beautiful, beautiful wings. There's a certain type of material in a Starling feather that makes that color that can't be reproduced or hasn't been in nature or something. Oh, marvelous.

No, I'll try and track down where I read that. It's the one that gives it that kind of iridescent petrol sheen. Yeah, yeah. It's something to do with the way it's just the very fibers of the feathers are built, I think. Marvelous. Right, expect a Starling's wing rabbit hole, immediately. Well, that would be really satisfyingly specific, wouldn't it?

Be a rabbit hole-ette. Yes. Sorry, bigger things, bigger things. Should we talk about the bigger things? Yes. As I mentioned earlier in the book, the main thing I really want to talk about this episode is how good the character dynamics are and the way everyone...

It's this, you know, going back to my point from last episode of This Is Just Really Good, all the characters, new ones and established ones are so comfortably lived in, not just that they are so of themselves, but they are so perfect in how they interact with each other. And these fantastic dynamics are built, in some cases, really quickly, like with Christina Agnes, who fall into the sort of friendship you know you do fall into,

I think especially women to a certain extent, and like when you're a sort of teenager and you're forced into, I know you work with someone and you spend so much time together you immediately fall into a best friend relationship that's much closer to being sisters, where you don't have to like each other. Yes, and quite often with one person being the main character. And accepting that sort of about your life and your relationship to each other.

And the Christina and Agnes relationship of Christine just very sweetly expecting Agnes to sort out these flowers for her when they're in the bedroom together. And as I reward, I shall drink this lovely drink you have made for me. Just safe in the knowledge that it is her approval is reward enough, reward enough for anybody, surely. If I was a different person, I would kind of ship this, or at least point to some kind of romantic dynamic between them.

I don't know, they're too young, I don't want to ship to you now, does it? Oh yeah, I said if I was a different person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I was reading this as a younger person, but also you can imagine these two sort of having, like to go back to the George and Nicholson books, there's a similar fun dynamic there as to those two. Yeah, yeah.

And everyone is constantly getting on each other's nerves and being completely ridiculous. Yes Agnes dear, you were perhaps singing a tad loud. Christine's total obliviousness, but also the fact that Agnes really does seem to be her only friend in the opera house. Yes, I wonder if it's because she didn't feel the need to make another friend once she had Agnes. Yeah, she's got her dear little pixie and that's all she needs,

because everything else is about her performance. I think that's definitely part of it. And the way she's so ready to sing and perform this role with her Questa Maladetta. And Agnes does seem like, even though she's, you know, being, obviously it's not great to be drugging your friends, kids, but she does, would still seem to be quite fond of Christine. That's the thing, I don't think Agnes dislikes her.

She sort of thinks bitchy thoughts about her, but in a very accepting way that this is just who this person is. Yes, yeah, she's not attributing malice where there is malice. No. And she's very patient. And you do have to be very patient with that sort of friend. Yes, I'm putting the cold water on her head and just about to be called on stage. And then she wakes up and smiles a little too bravely.

Can't disappoint the dear public. I know I did that bit once already, but... Yeah, I know, it's still good. And Agnes' relationship to Perdita, her inner... Oh, that's an interesting point. Yeah, that is a character dynamic, isn't it? There's a fun dynamic between the two of them in this especially, because Agnes is the calm and logical one,

and Perdita is sort of her wistful and romantic side. Yeah. And we were talking about finding the secret passages earlier. Perdita said he'll have a vast cave somewhere under the opera house. And there'll be a dinner table shining with crystal glass and silverware, and of course you will have, yes, a huge organ. On which, that is to say, we'll play in a virtuoso style, very many operatic classics.

Agnes said it'll be damp and there will be rats. And it was, I know her. And Agnes is frustrated because she feels like if she was Perdita, if she truly was, then she would have had this glittering romantic lake. And if it had been Christine, of course, there would have been a lake. Of course, there would have been samples. Exactly. Perdita is sort of her inner Perdita is a bit Christine-ish.

And I like the way that Agnes and Perdita share the disappointment of finding a very ordinary book of matches. Yes, it's that I think most teenage girls have that, and probably teenage boys have that side to them, the kind of romantic, this is what will happen, and this is the narrative arc, and the fact that she's been kind of forced to suppress that because of reality. Yeah. Whereas Christine has been encouraged to develop that.

Well, again, it's the point I was making last week of where Agnes is somewhat, she wanted to be a singer, but she somewhat stumbled onto being an opera singer, whereas Christine has trained her entire life to sing at the opera. Yes. Which is an inherently nonsense thing to do. Absolutely. In a good way, no shade to opera singers, but as far as I am learning, opera is wonderful nonsense.

Yes, absolutely. But still go ahead and dedication. And would surely only encourage that side of your Well, yeah, I mean, I think we all do still have a bit of that wistful, romantic side to us. Yes. Not romantic as in necessarily, you know, romance, marvelous things happening to you and coming across glittering caves full of candle lights.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's how I deal with long walks. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Either that or imagining I am somehow a guest or being interviewed on one of my favorite podcasts. Oh, that was a fun one. I might try that. Yeah, occasionally imagining myself on The Guilty Feminist when I'm on a really long walk. This is how I will eventually figure out my stand-up set as I keep imagining I'm doing

stand-up specifically on The Guilty Feminist. Oh, I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, who else was I wanting? Oh, yeah, Granny. Nanny and Granny, surely? Nanny and Granny.

I love the two of them together. We've already talked a bit about the social politics and Granny very willing to adopt Nanny's fortune and getting a bit carried away with herself in the process. I think she sees it as definitely hers as well, because Nanny, of course, wouldn't have got it without her. If Granny hadn't been there poking her from behind the whole time.

And doing her glaring. Yes. But there's also, sorry, where are we? Oh, Granny needing convincing to go to the opera. That was very nice. Whereas before, you know, I was saying in the last section with Nanny has a different sort of cleverness to Nanny and really knows how to manipulate her and it's subtle, like getting her to go to rank more pork in the first place

and sort of kicking her heels a little bit. With this, they're both so aware of it. This is just them playing an old routine together. It's a bit like when you, I don't know, when I've popped in for one point and I'm obviously planning on staying for three and I do the little dance with the bum and maybe I shouldn't. Yeah. I like that when she storms into the opera house, she's like,

old Crohn's, are we? Well, it's like, you do this as well, where you have an entire argument with someone in your head. Oh, yes, I often. So by the time you actually come face to face with a person, either you've resolved the argument, you've won it already and then you're fine. Or you're still halfway through the argument and you will start with old Crohn, am I? Yes.

And they will have absolutely no idea what's going on. I sit with work a lot. I'd burst in and sort of be ready to scream at my head chef and he'd immediately go, no, you're right, it's fine. Do you need the day off? I'm going to start bursting into work with old Crohn, am I? But it's a good way to start something if you want to just really confuse someone and hope they'll give you what you want.

Yeah, for sure. I don't want to play into any cliches, but I do this a lot more when I'm hormonal. Yeah, so Nanny's prank, attempted prank on Granny was quite good as well, I think. It was sort of telling them that Lady Esmeralda is a bit saucy in her younger days and trying to give them this very specific idea of her and then doing the stuff with the chocolate sauce. Yeah, yeah. And then Granny quietly boiling the water. Which is a broad, haven't we, where she transfers the pain from the fire?

Yes, that's right. May you be forgiven, give it up. I really loved the whole luncheon scene. Yeah, it was just really sweet seeing Basilica or Henry Slug or whatever finally get the meal he wanted and how far they went out of their way just to make sure he got that, even though it wasn't really important to what was going on. Let's make the man happy. That's a lovely part of the story.

But also, especially with Lady Esmeralda being brought in, obviously the big thematic thing in this whole book. To present my central thesis and episode earlier, and the reason I want to talk about the character dynamics is that the character, the idea of character is really so at the central of this book and who a person is. And the masks that they wear, obviously, the ghost is masked. There's this constant, because we don't know who the ghost is, people not being who they seem. And some people being more dubious than others.

Yeah, Granny not being able to work out Solzalla and André being very quiet in the background and Cling's listening to the music in the walls. Yeah. It's really, really fun thematically to then take that theme and give it to Lady Weatherwax, the person who is so sure of who she is. But give her just enough of, oh, well, actually, I'm going to enjoy this, that she started not to lose herself, but to find maybe a little different part of herself. I was about to say, because she doesn't really change who she is at all, does she?

She doesn't act any differently than she would do at a normal dinner, I'd say. No, but apart from playing the part she needs to play of trying to buy Box 8. And finding a man if she needs to. But putting Granny's unshakable confidence hand in hand with $3,000 and the need to pretend to be a lady is a very fun way to watch her put on a mask, even as Nanny goes into her version, which is always being Nanny, but just being able to be Nanny wherever she is. In a completely different way, almost. Yeah. Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble. I like it. It's good. Good rambling. Nicely done.

Building up to next week's proper central thesis of the book, which is fat jokes are terrible and masks are cool. Okay, noted. Sorry. Spoilers for the next, not spoilers for the end of the book, just spoilers for the next episode of The True Show. Make you fret. That's what I'll be rambling about if you want to prepare yourselves. Good to know about. Thank you. But the other little sort of character dynamic that I like is the dynamics between the whole company when Dr. Rundershaft's body is found, which is who gets the line? Oh, yeah, Bucket saying poor Dr. Rundershaft. He was always so highly strung and salt seller responding with never more so than tonight. Yes. That tastes that man.

Poor taste. Agnes is the fact that Agnes is shocked, but by her own reaction, not by the death itself. Yes, again, she's kind of standing outside of herself. And ends up being the calm, competent one who is bathing Christine's brow. Stepping outside the self back to Nanny and Granny just for a second. The mirror trick. Oh, using Nanny as a mirror. I had a friend who did that, not obviously not quite like that, but I had a friend at school who was incredibly talented. She could draw in mirror writing. She could write mirror writing quite easily. She's a fantastic artist. She was obviously just very ambidextrous, and she could put on her makeup by just looking at you and using that as a reference for where her face

would be. Wow. Yeah, amazing. That's really cool. I mean, I can just about manage mirrorless eyeliner if I practice. I can't imagine what I would look like. I'll try it later and send you a picture. Excellent. Thank you. Anyway, sorry, I interrupted you there because fun. No, it's fun. And that, you know, it's a nice thing where Pratchett is so good at well building and establishing his characters, especially at this stage in the disc world, that Granny can partly have an extra little bit of uncomfortability about mirrors that's probably a holdover from which is broad. Yes. Yeah. Just as she's attracted to spaces like the theater, she's not gonna stare at herself in a mirror if she can just use Nanny for a second

instead. Yeah. And it does kind of add to that Nanny being put upon a bit dynamic, doesn't it? When Granny just thinks it's fine. She doesn't need to ask permission to do all these things. She just does it and Nanny accepts it because she's like, you're probably right, but also I'm going to get you back for this. Yeah. And because she just doesn't mind that much. I also just the last on the dynamics of Christine versus Dame Timpani, who also faints, but doesn't, it's not noticed because everyone's fussing over Christine. So she has to pointedly come around in the face a couple more times. I always found it interesting the references that I know it's a trope now, it's a joke. The people just passing out women, especially just fainting all the time. You know,

they will fainted in the theater that this play was so shocking that it was in Victoria newspapers that three people fainted or we've all got smelling salts in case somebody faints. It's like the closest I've come to fainting is when I've really not been paying enough attention to my blood iron levels and sound up too fast. I can't imagine, well, I suppose if I was very, very shocked, I might faint, but it's more of a swoon than a faint, isn't it? I don't think it's quite full on unconsciousness so much as, oh, I'm overcome. But yeah, no, I mean, I have fainted a couple of times in my life, but it was generally when I wasn't eating very much and that's a long, long time ago. Yeah, blood sugar stuff. Yeah.

Physical reaction to physical things. I've had some very surprising things happen to me in my time and never once have I swooned. Yeah, I suppose we just weren't brought up thinking it was an option. Yeah, I suppose so. No one's ever had to fetch the smelling salts for me. I'm quite disappointed now. Admittedly, when I'm overly anxious or emotional, especially when I'm anxious, if I get my anxiety gets too high, I just get really sleepy. Like, basically, if I get very stressed, I have to nap. I'm pretty much a toddler. I cross if I get sensory overwhelm, I just get cross, which is fun for everyone. Yes, fun time was had all around. Anyway, that's all I had to say. Character dynamics are fucking fantastic. This is such a good book. Yes, it is. It's very entertaining

throughout. I picked up a few, I don't know if this is really a talking point, I just picked up a few little references and things that I thought would be nice to shovel together rather than trying to have a massive list of little things. Yep. The idea of kind of understudying, of singing for somebody else as they lip-sync. Yeah, this ghosting thing. Yeah, has quite a lot of grounding in reality. Pratchett, I think, said that, sorry, fuck, where's my bloody? Should I not print that one? Here it is. I'm sorry. Yes. From L Space again, the concept of it, Terry commented on saying, the idea of an understudy, doing all the work for a star is probably a common film cliche, but the basis of the Agnes-Christine thing, like it's not in any movie, but in real life,

it has happened. My sources tell me that stars have gone on stage jet lagged or stricken with a sore throat and someone has been put behind them in the chorus to sing the role. I believe there's been at least one case where the prompter has tried to jumpstart the dumbstruck star, that's a good tongue twister, with the first few words for song and ended up singing it all the way through, which, yes, has probably happened a lot of times. I found some very modern examples of it. There's the obvious and scandalous one that immediately came to mind when I was reading this, which was the child singer at the Beijing Olympics, the opening ceremony. There was a nine-year-old who sung Ode to the Motherland at the Beijing opening ceremony and

kind of became an instant star from it. And it turned out that she was mouthing along, or singing along possibly, it doesn't matter, I guess, at that level, to a seven-year-old and even younger child who was singing it and who was not considered photogenic enough to be in the ceremony. Yeah, I know, but because she had uneven teeth, I think. And when it kind of came out, the officials were very, very much like the people in this, just like, well, yes, of course. I mean, we had the child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression. And Lin Mayoki is excellent in those aspects, but in the aspect of voice, Yang Pei Yi is flawless, he explained. I think it is fair to say that both children,

we have a perfect voice and a perfect image in our team, so you combine together. And it was quite a thing at the time. And interestingly, nicely, I suppose, because the kid was so young, the seven-year-old didn't seem to be particularly fussed by it. Yang appears to have taken the snub in her stride, this is from the Guardian, asked by a journalist whether she was sad to have missed the opening ceremony, she replied, no, my voice was there. And then research by Daniel Hammamesh, an economist at the University of Texas, has suggested that the beauty premium in parts of China is far more pronounced than in the West for women. His work shows that ugly people and below the average income while beautiful people earn more. In Britain, attractive women

enjoy a plus 1% premium, but in Shanghai, the figure was plus 10%, which is a very vague way of writing it. This was his new story from 2008. I think people are slightly better about what they mean by this or that. Yeah, I'd be curious to see how that data was collected. Yes, yes, absolutely. So that was quite interesting. And then an even more modern example was this year at the proms. When the nephew of the late boxing legend, Sir Henry Cooper, who I've never heard of, but it was Neil Cooper, replaced the lead tenor who lost his voice midway through a performance at the BBC proms. And you step forward when Simon O'Neill was unable to continue in act two of Wagner's Wagner, Tristan and Isold. Mr. Cooper had never performed at the Royal Albert Hall before,

but was called upon at last minute to sing from the side of the stage as Mr. O'Neill mined the words in front of the audience. Oh, interesting. That was just happened very recently. Is it bad that my first thought was of various lip sync dramas that have happened over the years, such as Ashley Simpson on, I believe it was Saturday Night Live, but I could be wrong. Yeah, yeah. Just a couple of other bits. The man with 1,000 faces was mentioned as a vulgar name for the thing that would be performing. And the man with 1,000 faces, of course, was the nickname I think we mentioned last week, given to Lon Chaney, the actor who played the Phantom of the Opera. In the silent movie version.

Indeed. Which actually another reference to that movie was in this part when Granny was saying that they beat him to death in his room in a river. Which is the ending to the silent movie version, yeah. Sorry, spoilers for anyone who hasn't managed to catch that in the last hundred years, including me, I suppose. I feel like we're allowed to spoil 100-year-old movies. God, the 1920s was 100 years ago. Yes, I'm sorry about that. And then the last thing I looked up was the phrase, the show must go on, as we were using it quite often. And where it comes from, if anywhere. The dictionary of phrase, phrase and allusion that I have by Nigel Rees, has it down as related to send in the clowns.

Hmm. Because the show must go on apparently came originally from circuses, which Wikipedia's citing the dictionary of catchphrases, agreed with. The phrase and allusion dictionary says, whatever mishap occurred, the band was told to go on playing and the cry went up to send in, slash on the clowns, for the simple reason that panic had to be avoided. And panic being avoided was more relevant in circuses because if something went wrong, it was quite often with the animals. And you'd want to avoid panic so the animals don't stampede. Yes. And so the audience didn't stampede as well. So if something's gone wrong with the lions, you don't want the audience trying to get out in a crush. You want to calmly deal with that and

send in the clowns in the meantime. Yeah. To get eaten by the lions. Which shows just how circuses came from Roman gladiatorial days. Exactly. Yes. I thought I would mention it as you rather enjoyed your circus research. It did. Sorry. But nobody seems to be able to turn up a written reference much before 1930, but it was kind of referenced as something established by then. But also this book is quite old, so someone might have turned one up by now. Interesting. Yes, I thought so. Excellent. And that is all of my random shit that I passed off as a talking point. Excellent. Speaking of random shit passed off as talking points, have you got an obscure reference for me? Yes. Of course, really. My obscure finial comes from

when Nanny Og sees Granny Weatherwax in her full regalia and rouge and all of that. After the makeover, as we mentioned, all of her normal expletives of shock and surprise fused instantly and she found herself resorting to an ancient curse belonging to her grandmother. Well, I'll be Mogadord, she said. I went Mogadord. Mogadord, eh? Never heard that before. So I looked it up and it was a tricky one. It was a tricky one, Joanna. I don't know is the conclusion to this spoilers, but it is very muddy origin. It seems to be, seems to be, it makes sense to be cockney rhyming slang for flawed. That certainly it's used to mean confused at a loss. It's quite old fashioned, but apparently still used occasionally.

The Oxford Dictionary of modern slang said origin is uncertain, perhaps connected with the Irish Magat, which means mock or jeer. Worldwide words has a good post on it, which I'll link to suggest it might be Romani in origin, from Makadi or Makodo, which means something tainted. These Romani words also provide the root for yet another slang phrase to put the mockers on something or to jinx it. A port in Morocco, which is now called, God damn it, Esawira, maybe, was once called Mogadord and Hamlet in Surrey, now bears that name, although worldwide words didn't find any connection. Tentatively, I might suggest it might have come from there only because Mogadord did lend its name to the local telephone exchange,

which means it would have been slightly better known than you might think around the London area, possibly not. Then I found in the next strike from a book about Humphrey Jennings by Kedavid and Jackson, when talking about Mary Lou Jennings' daughter, she recalled that as the years went by, she became increasingly glad that her name was not so nearly so outlandish as those of her contemporaries, who I think were Irish, who would be forced to go through a life siding themselves, Yancy, Bix, after Bix Baidabek, or Mogadord. Apparently that was a nom du plume, I guess, and just keeps going, yeah? There is, which I think is probably the most likely knowing Pratchett, and I can't find a reference to it anywhere else online,

but I think he might be making the connection that there's a theatre Mogadord in Paris, which I wonder if it's a double reference as it was used for operettas, and so he would have been picking out a nice bit of archaic slang as he liked, but then also happens to be the name of a theatre at the same time, like I don't think that's where the word Mogadord came from, but it's possibly what Pratchett put it in there. Exactly. And then, scary spooky bit, um, on 26 September 2016, so quite a long time after this came out, a fire damaged several parts of the theatre, including the stage and props that would be used in the French language production of the Phantom of the Opera. Because of this,

the show's French premiere was indefinitely postponed. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Right? Sposibli, exclamation points, lots of them. Many of them, not too many, listeners will think we're weird. And then a possible might be reaching a bit bonus reference is that the theatre was financed and initially run by Sir Alfred Butt, who, while he was quite involved in theatre throughout his career, was also the director of food rationing at the Ministry of Food during World War I, so I wonder if, you know, founded by or financed by similar characters with similar, like, blunt names, bucket, butt, yeah, butt, like a butt of water, bucket, like a, you know, yeah, maybe. Bit of a stretch. Bit of a stretch. But, you know, sometimes practically,

that's weird shit. I like my random reaching. I enjoy your random reaching. Anyway, see, I had a whole page on that, which I thought was going to be a sentence. Excellent. Love it. Well, I'll be Mogadord. Indeed you. With that, I think that's all we can really say about part two of, uh, Masquerade. It is, because my throat hurts. I completely forgot the name of the book we're talking about, just as I needed to outgrow it, so we're both doing very well. Excellent. We will be back in your ears next week with part three, which opens with the line, the voice was muffled by the half-dismantled mechanism of the organ, and goes to the end. Good. Good. In the meantime, until we return to your ears next week, you can follow us on Instagram

at The Truth Shall Make You Freight. On Twitter at Make You Freight Pod, you can go to our Facebook page at The Truth Shall Make You Freight. You can join our subreddit community, r slash ttsmyf. You can send us your thoughts, queries, questions, castles, snacks, albatrosses, and arias to The Truth Shall Make You Freight Pod at gmail.com. And if you would like to support us financially, head over to patreon.com forward slash The Truth Shall Make You Freight, where you can exchange your hard or not so hard earned pennies for bonus nonsense. And it is so bonus and so nonsense. I am quite looking forward to doing this once down the rabbit hole though. Yeah, no, me too. Well, looking forward to listening to it.

Shall we go? Shall we go? And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you. Also the entire plot to the Lizzie McGuire movie. I haven't seen that, sorry. What? I don't feel like I have to justify myself. I've seen this is what brains are made of.