The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 63: Feet of Clay Pt. 1 (I Think It's The Bones)

Episode Date: October 4, 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 “Feet of Clay”. Couchant! Not Rampant! Couchant! 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:Feet of Clay - Annotated Pratchett FileThe Fast Show - Ted & Ralph - Episode1 - New Shoes - YouTubeAre veterinarians deemed more likely to survive the apocalypse? - TumblrNoble Blood | A history podcast by Dana SchwartzNeil Gaiman - Jump - YouTubeRoyal College of Arms - WikiJoanna Hagan Inktober thread - TwitterMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I've decided to channel my impotent rage into something smaller and more personal, which is the fucker outbidding me for the board game I want on eBay. Which board game was it? It's the Guards Guards one. It's the hardest Discord one to get because it can't be reprinted because of weird write stuff. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah.

How much was it going for? Well, when I first saw it, it was only at like 25 quid, so I put a bit up to 40 because I normally see it going for like close to 100 or over, like the shiny, really good condition ones go for over 100. And this looked pretty good condition, not perfect, but I'm going to play it anyway, so I'm not like just giving it for collector's sake. Yeah. But yeah, it went up to over 40, so I tried increasing my bid to 45 and 46, so someone's

obviously put a much higher bid limit on it than I have, and I'm not going to sit there and hop in increments. I don't want it that badly. I wanted it because it was a steal. We live in hope that one day we'll find it in a cow boot sale, but otherwise. We should play the other Discord board games at some point. We should do that. Yeah.

I would figure out a way to like live stream it to our poor listeners who don't deserve this. I think YouTube has a reasonable live streaming option now. No, I've said that. I'm not sure I want to live stream a board game because that puts us under quite a lot of pressure to keep playing the fucking board game. Look, it cannot be as long, dull, and frustrating as some of the board games I've played recently. I don't believe you.

It could be. No. No, it really, it really can't front scene. All right. The alien game I played was so big and I had no idea what was happening and it took like five hours. That is an accurate representation of the video game as well. No, no, not alien is in alien.

Oh. There's some kind of alien board game where you're stuck on a spaceship and trying to get out and everyone's got a different wind condition and I didn't understand it. And it took five hours. I have been listening to the odd episode of RPG games that the people who, what they could, Rusty Quill, the ones who did the Magnus Archives, they do a lot of gamey stuff and they've released a few on the Magnus Archives feed. And if I'm in the right mood, it's quite interesting to listen to.

It absolutely can be. Like, there's a reason Crisco Roblo is so massive, but, uh... Yeah. Oh, dearie me. I don't know what else to talk about that isn't incredibly depressing because we've both been reading up on stuff connected to the Sarah Everard case and I'm just low level, angry and sad. And it's cheer you up, don't I?

The Narcic. I can't start. I can't do Crotchless Underwear again. I need a new bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crotchless bra. It was the shock the last time. No, we can't have Crotchless Underwear every episode.

We don't want to spoil the listeners. Absolutely. Yeah. I just need to chug a tiny bit more coffee before we manage the full on. I had to try and set up an Outlook account yesterday just because I needed an email account that wasn't attached to anything else so I could use it to test something. And I didn't want to do it on Google because conflicting Google accounts and confusing logins and stuff.

And it was, God, it was a bore like to shuffle through the entire Microsoft ecosystem just to make an Outlook email address. I hate so much about tech companies and I shouldn't start on that because it's a relative. That's not even one of the things I'm angry about that's relevant to this book. To be honest, it's a nice distraction for Anger. You can bitch about Spotify if you want. I mean, this is still going to come out on Spotify, but you can bitch about it. Well, yeah, I mean, Heavyweight, which is one of my favorite podcasts by Jonathan Goldstein,

had an announcement at the start of its latest episode, which is the first in the new season, that from at some point next month, they're going to be exclusive on Spotify. And that made me cancel my Spotify subscription. I just don't understand it. Well, I understand it's because it's going, it's, you know, it's Spotify is trying to quarter the market. They're trying to do podcasting what all of the streaming services have done to television. But I don't know if you ask me if you don't have an RSS feed, you're not a podcast.

Like, yeah, it's a show, it's a Spotify show that they've got. And I don't know, I think what Spotify are trying to do to the podcasting space is despicable and will probably work. And I hate that. And the fact that you have to pay it like premium subscribers to Spotify still have to listen to ads in the middle of Spotify owned podcasts. Yeah, there's like another little bit of, you know, ad creep, all companies do this. They start with their like, oh, and if you pay for this, others, you don't have to watch ads.

And then slowly over the years, like, you notice that Amazon Prime has a few more adverts that you can still skip for now. But, you know, it's really, really hard to conflate my whole thing of I do my best to pay for everything I watch in some way. Admittedly, I don't support every podcast I listen to on Patreon because. Yeah, we have a budget. I have a budget, but I support quite a lot of them. And I do little co files and things when I count for other ones.

And obviously with TV, I pay for like five different streaming services because I want to pay for the TV. I watch and not pirate it. But trying to conflate that with, fuck, I hate all of these massive corporations trying to fuck people over. So they've got to pay for five different streaming services. And yeah, and in a, in a general sense, not in a way that I would do this myself. I don't mind it so much either.

If there's no UK release date for something like, tell me it'll be in a couple of months and I'll watch it in a couple of months. But if I want to watch it and he won't tell me like even vaguely when it's going to be, I'm just going to watch it in theory, allegedly somewhere else. Well, yeah, that was, I thought about doing that with the watch and then thought I wanted to wait till it was out in the UK. So we could discuss it for the listeners to watch. And I knew I probably wasn't going to watch it multiple times.

I'm 50 50 on whether we should cover it in January. I'm not sure I can be asked to talk about it again. Yeah, I have thoughts on that, which are an entire month on something most of our listeners hate might mean a bad shower. Yeah. Listeners, give us your thoughts. Would you like us to do a two episode per episode discussion of the watch or as in one episode of the podcast per two episodes of the watch, not two episodes of the podcast per

one episode of the watch, because no one wants that. No, would you like a full month of coverage on the watch or would you rather we talked about anything else? If you ever loved me, tell Joanna to cancel that month. We've probably babbled on enough nonsense. Yeah, I can probably pick some sentences out of that for the soft open. That should be fine. Just leave it exactly.

The two minutes soft open listeners, you'll know I worked very hard. 20 minutes. You'll know I left editing till the last second. Either is entirely possible. Do you want to grab another coffee before we better worry about waking up this dog again, but and then should we make a podcast podcast? Hello, and welcome to the two show make you fret podcast in which we are reading a recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one this time in

chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan and I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of our discussion of must not masquerade feet of clay. We could start masquerade again. That's fine. My brain's still in September, clearly. Anyway, feet of clay, a very good book. Feet of clay, the 19th Discworld novel.

Indeed it is. Note on spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler light podcast. Obviously heavy spoilers for the book feet of clay, but we'll avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any inaudible 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.

Jumping out of a window after having committed an horrible murder and running away across the surface of the bank. What a handy solid river that is. Oh, yes. I believe we don't have anything to follow up on because we're disorganized. Correct. But thank you for people's lovely comments and such what on our masquerade episodes and do remember to send in your dispatches from the round world.

Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get some postcards on an albatross to the usual address. Exactly. So. So Francine, would you like to introduce us to the book feet of clay? Certainly. Feet of clay was, as you quite so correctly did say, the 19th Discworld novel published in 1996.

Well into the nineties now. Feet of clay is quite an interesting title. It is as the annotated practice file pointed out, a biblical reference. The Babylonian King, who didn't try and practice this verse, Nebuchadnezzar, maybe had a dream in which saw a statue whose head was gold, but the lower you look down the like crap other materials were until the feet were part iron part clay, the statue was shattered and destroyed by being struck on the feet. Hence colloquially, the expression feet of clay has come to mean that someone

regarded as an idol has a hidden weakness. So it's like, I know, like the weakest link within a person kind of thing. The Achilles heel. Yeah, that's a better way of putting that is a cool little reference, I think, for a title at the blurb. There's werewolf with pre-lunar tension in Angmorpork and a dwarf with attitude and a golem who's begun to think for itself. But for Commander Weim's head of Angmorpork city works, that's only the

start. There's treason in the air. A crime has happened. He's not only got to find out who done it, but how done it to not even sure what they done. But as soon as he knows what the questions are, he's going to want some answers. Excellent. Josh Kirby is done as usual. Fascinating job with the cover.

Yeah. The consistent depiction of Angwer as a certain sort of busty armor clad wench. In fairness, that is pretty much how Pratchett describes a lot of the time. Yeah. But I feel like there's busty armor clad, which I would wear. I know you would, but probably not while out on the beat. Depends on the beat.

I was about to say on the job, but then that opened a whole door. My future career is a seamstress. Exactly. But yes, what's good, but this is a weird one for me, actually. This is one I haven't reread as much as the others, because it's one of the last of the watchbooks I read, because I read everything out of order. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I've read this one a fair amount of time.

So I said, but I'm always with the watchbooks and things. I'm always surprised by which bits are in which. So the bit about the assassin hanging by his ankle. If you ask me, I would have told you that was in Thardor or something. Yeah, I could have sworn that was Fifth Elephant, because I read, like I said, I read all the discord books out of order. I read, I think Men at Arms was the first one I read, and then I went back and read Guard's Guards, but then I kind of moved on to the other ones, because this

was one that I didn't have in the house I lived in, or the person that was borrowing them from a lot, borrowing a lot of them from didn't have it. Right. But he did have the next, the following three, sorry, minor spoiler that there are more guards books. It's not a spoiler, Joanna. Anyone can see the book list. I'm going to sit you down and explain what a spoiler is.

At this point, it's almost become a bit, and I'm aware that you will murder me in my sleep one day. It's easy to assume I can ever be bothered to drive round if coffee is not involved. Yeah, good point. I'll wake you up. We'll have a coffee, then I'll murder you. Oh, thank you. Politely.

Have I got to make you a coffee before you murder me? I can make the coffee, that's fine. Okay, good. I feel like I draw the line of putting a little biscuit on the side of the carpet for murders in imminent. I think that's a good boundary to set. Yeah, I'm trying to set you growing as a person, not sharing my bisque off with a murderer.

Right, sorry, so we're talking about the book Feet of Clay. That's right. That's a good idea. Shall I tell us what happened? Yes, you tell us what happened in part one, which went up to page 132 in the Corgi Pay for Vacation. It did indeed. So we begin on a warm spring night as golems knock at the door.

They have a new white golem to sell for cheap, and they give the profit to a beggar. Spring becomes summer, becomes autumn as the disc spins. And on a chilly autumn night, the bookish priest Father Tupelke is murdered. Samuel Vimes, commander of the City Watch, begins his day with a shave and an assassination attempt before checking his appointments, planning on a visit to the College of Heralds at 10, followed by veterinary at 11. Over at the Dwarf Bred Museum, a second elderly man is murdered, as Mr.

Hopkinson finds himself inconvenienced. At the watch house, Vimes interviews cheery little bottom, an alchemist, and hires the diminutive dwarf. Carrot and Angwer enjoy a lovely breakfast and interrupt a robbery before embarking on an exciting visit to the Dwarf Bred Museum. A mysterious meeting takes place with the white golem's owner in a panic over poison. Vimes visits the College of Heralds, meets the vampiric dragon king of arms, learns he's not entitled to a coat of arms thanks to his ancestors' trees and

his axons, and receives the surprising news that corporal Nobby Nobs is descended from nobility and might just be the rightful Earl of Anke. As Vimes leaves, a polite dragon inquires after the welfare of Captain Carrot. The captain in question arrives at the museum with Angwer and receives a short, sharp shock as they find the body of Mr. Hopkinson. Dragon looks at records and discards Carrot's careful descendants in favor of planting Nobby's tree.

Vimes, on the scene of the late Chubble Keck's murder, spots white clay on the floor and ponders paper left in the late priest's mouth. Detritus looks for clues as cheery arrives, eventually finding wax under the victim's nails and taking a close up of the dead man's eyes. Meanwhile, at the Dwarf Bred Museum, Angwer gets on all fours to sniff out the murderer but is stumped by a distinctive scent, although there's something strange near the oven. Vimes heads to the palace to meet Vettanari, who appears to be running late.

He lets himself into Vettanari's office and finds the patrician passed out. Poison is suspected as cheery finds himself summoned to the palace and Vimes brings in a veterinarian for Vettanari so the city's medical community can't be trusted. Guildheads gather as an exaggerated rumour spreads of Vettanari's untimely demise and Vimes sets out to find the would-be killer as Colin suggests Carrot as a temporary ruler. Vimes sends Nobby to the College of Heralds to learn of his new

nobility. Cheery points out the glowing red dots from the dead priest's eyes. Carrot and Angwer inform Vimes of the latest murder and Vimes sends Carrot to run the watch houses before sending Cheery and Angwer out to detect. Angwer offers to keep Cheery's hidden femininity a secret and smell something from the museum in the clay clue to Tubal Keck's murder. They visit Igneous, the pottery troll, and discover the clay is badly baked.

Cheery and Angwer go for a drink and after a brief eager or interrogation, Cheery admits to a long-running dislike of lycanthropes. The murders get more mysterious as Vimes learns that the paper left in Tubal Keck's mouth contains the commandments of an old religion. Cool. Things and stuff. Good setup. Good setup.

It does, as I think I said for whichever last watch body it was, does remind me of the start of like an Ian Rankin novel or something. It's clearly a detective-y, um, clearly written by someone who appreciates detective-y novels. Yes. Which is a nice treat. Uh, so helicopter and loincloth watch. Oh yeah.

Um, the golems clearly don't wear loincloths, which is appalling. Not sure how. And I don't know, Igneous, the troll, I'm going to, I'm going to again say loincloth implied. I'm starting to worry I'm being kind of weirdly racist about trolls though. Yeah, I know you are. Actually. Yeah.

So a bit problematic. Uh, as for helicopters, the marvellous sweeping shot of the disc as spring becomes summer becomes awesome. Could easily have been filmed from helicopter. You can't have that because they do it in almost every book. Speaking of four things we're keeping track of, although it's not the first bit of the book, we do get the nice big disc world opening. Yeah.

Nice one too. Death is present. He is. He is. Librarian's not been explained yet, but. Hey, he hasn't. Has he been around? No.

Librarian? No. Cool. Yeah. The sweeping shot of the disc thing also ties into the weather thing I was talking about, was it last week? Oh yeah. The lovely depictions of autumn and things.

Very enjoyable. Uh, so it's quotes, quotes. I think mine's just about first, um, we've picked reasonably close together and similar things, I think. Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees. That's a good line. One of those very quotable, uh, subjects is practice on rulers.

But it doesn't work at all out of context. Hmm. Well, obviously the point it's making about humanity being slightly too willing to be subjugated is very good. Yes. But if you just take that sentence out of context, it just sounds like knees are a bad thing. I suppose so.

Yes. I like to think people would give it a thought if you were saying it in like a sage manner. Have you met people? Yes. All right. Fair point. What was your quote, Joanna?

Speaking of, I'm just going to start complaining about my tricky knees. Oh, they do click in the weather. Um, sorry, one was a few pages later, but on the same theme, he said to people, you're free and they said, hooray, then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant. And as soon as he'd been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn bread chickens who've seen the big world outside for the first time.

And then they went back into the warm and shut the door. It's interesting. Um, I would like to know what Pratchett thought about from well as a whole. I expect he had a pretty balanced. Yeah. He doesn't really state an opinion here so much as think about how the masses react to things. Yeah.

The, um, yeah, we should talk about Cromwell at some point during this book. We should save it for the last bit. Yeah. I don't remember enough about the civil war. I'm not going to lie. I haven't really studied it since it was a while ago. Um, I know enough about it that I will bullshit about it when we get there. So excellent.

That's all we need. You know me in history and people just don't seem to correct me as much as you in music. So it's fine. I feel like we probably should be able to do that. I feel like we've probably got more music nerds than historians listening to the podcast. Oh, I don't know. I reckon it might be about 50, 50 or some overlap.

Might do a demographics poll on Twitter. Yeah. Which do you most associate with? Um, or we could do like an undercover one where we both tweet something inaccurate and see how many. We just plant really inaccurate things in the episodes and test the reaction. Oh, okay. Right.

Stop mystery shopping our listeners. Right. Commanders, Samuel Vimes. Commanders, Samuel Vimes. I thought I'd start with the characters we kind of know already. And obviously we've got a Vimes-y book. We're with the watch. We're with them.

We're with him. And Vimes and Sibyl now were happily married. She's talking about curtains. Yes, it does happen to women of a certain age. I need to order curtains. Yeah. I would really like to, uh, say that it's not the case, but actually I've been trying to sew a curtain.

So you're trying to sew a curtain? Well, I have a curtain already, but it needs altering to fit in one of the windows that doesn't have curtains. Oh, you should have said, I can do that for you. Um, yeah, I should have said, I've nearly hand sewn it out. You're quite right. I should have said. Next time.

Remember this running joke on the podcast about how I'm a seamstress front scene? Yeah. No, I forgot that it wasn't just an insult. So I'm joking. I wore a dress you made me the other day. Also remember that you've got dodgy hands, stop hand sewing things when you've got a friend with a friend with a sewing machine. Um, I refuse to stop doing things just because it causes me a lot of pain and

I don't need to do it. Thank you. That's all we show when we go bowling again. God bowling. It's been a very long time, hasn't it? My hands absolutely hate me for doing it, but God, it's fun. I'm so bad at it. Yeah, me too.

There's just no reason for me to keep doing it. Um, sorry. So Sam, yeah, nobbing about struggling with the nobbing. Not a fan of the nobbing. Yeah, that says too many meanings that word. Yeah. It's, um, well, which book was it that we talked about class consciousness last? It was, uh, it would have been the last Vimes one, wouldn't it?

I think it probably was men at arms. Cause that's where we got the, the Vimes boots theory of economics. Yeah. And yes, that's right. When he had to go at the people during the dinner party. Yeah. And he has very much not lost the chip on his shoulder here. He's trying to avoid, he doesn't like the fact that the world has devolved into

the shaved and the shavers. Absolutely. When he tries to go into the, um, or when he was recalling, when he went into the servants room to sort of try and join in, in a game of cards, that's such a good line. Um, the universe crystallized around him. Yes. Like becoming a cog wheel and a glass clock. Yeah.

It is very good then. And it also reminded me of one of Jack's favorite, uh, sketches from the fast show, um, which is Ted and Ralph, and it is basically a very posh man trying to get in with his groundskeeper and be mates. And the groundskeeper does not fucking have in it, right? It's a well-known trope. I think I'll link, I'll link to one of the sketches. But yeah, poor Vimes, poor Vimes, poor Vimes, but he's doing well.

He's still policing, which is what he enjoys. Yes. Yes. That's what he wanted. That's right. Yes. He was going to retire and didn't. I remember now.

Yes. He's very joyfully not retired. I'm not being assassinated. Yes. But dealing with the odd assassination attempt, which I like that he's, uh, very comfortably just set traps up everywhere. Yes. There's a bear trap in the shrubbery.

Yeah. I, it's something I like about Vimes is his, because obviously the whole point of the watch books is kind of to see if I'm struggling against something and kind of pushing against the tired and trying to solve the big murders or find out how they're all connected or what have you. And it's very nice to see him have moments like with the assassination attempt where he's just aggressively competent. Yes.

Yeah. It's, um, Vimes' ability to kind of dodge all the assassins and that it's almost like a, a, a bit in that obviously it's like unrealistically competent around all this stuff. And like, if you think about it too hard, the fact that he could have ended up with a crossbow bolt through the head is horrific. Like, like we were talking about the tone thing in the watch series, like watching an assassination is actually quite horrible on screen.

But, um, somehow in a book as a joke, it's fine somehow. Yeah. And it's, it's quite a fun running joke. And yeah, I'm sad that we don't get to see more of Lady Sibyl, but I'm glad she's happy. Yeah. So I'm glad she's happy in curtains. I'm glad she's happy in curtains.

I must order curtains. I'm not even of that certain age yet. I just, no, you just need some curtains. Yeah. You do, you do need those. Captain Carrot. Captain Carrot is now my captain. Was he captain by the end of the, I think he was sergeant last time, was

he? I think he became captain at the end. I believe it's been too long. I don't remember. Men at arms. I've always thought of him as Captain Carrot. Anyway, it's suits him. Captain, as I think I've said before, is the most dashing of ranks, I feel.

You, one can't help but imagine him somewhat mustachioed. Yes. Yes. Anyway, he's doing pretty well, exercising his charisma. Being as lovely as ever, writing his letters home to his parents. Very kind. Oh, that's very sweet. Very kindly taking Angkor to horrible museums.

Running around like a fly with a blue bottom and no mistake. And no mistake. It's the one thing, you know, I understand that the joke is that he drags people to these museums that no one would find entertaining. I love weird little museums. Me too, but I'm not sure I would like to go with somebody who is very earnest about the whole thing. And therefore I had to hear about it all at length.

No, I even enjoy that. I like getting a huge amount info dumped on me about something obscure and completely fascinating to someone that I will forget as soon as it's over. I often like that, but I really do prefer it at my own pace. Yes. And I can't be talked out for very long before I completely zone out. So how will you cope with me? I don't understand.

Um, it's okay because I'm allowed to reply. You're allowed. Yes. Yes, I am allowed. Um, anyway, so yeah, Angkor, who is now in a relationship with carrot, but a bit concerned about it. Yeah. She's sort of thinking about running away.

Um, because of the whole werewolf thing. She feels like her time in Angkor book has got to be somewhat temporary. Yes. It's interesting. She doesn't feel like she can communicate that really, but I suppose carrot would very much brush it off. So yeah, he's slightly too confident in that everyone's a good chap underneath. So she doesn't need to worry.

And I think it's also combined with she's not used to having someone who would listen. So she is generally used to just sort of pushing it down and not thinking about it. Yeah. I like the kind of, uh, the extra little insight we get into her werewolf kind of synesthesia almost. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

That was such a good moment where she's witnessing all the colors moving around. Yeah. That's quite cool. I also like, um, cool way to portray something we can't, as humans, possibly understand. Yeah, yeah. Um, I really like the sort of tiny insights into her background as well. And you get, um, when dragon's looking at the sort of carrot family tree and her

side of it and going back to the baronetsie and uber wall that she's kind of descended from because it turns out wolves track this sort of thing. And then the little, the little moment in, uh, when she's in the beers, buyers, the pub. Yeah. That's called it beers. Yeah. Where, um, someone says, I, you know, I'm hearing there's a baron who's

very angry at you and we've learned that her father is a baron. Baron von uberwold. Is that right? Yes. And a marvelous name. It is a wonderful name. Uh, so more about, uh, a little later, I think, um, detritus. Detritus.

Now he was a sergeant already. Actually, maybe I don't remember. He's a sergeant. He has his own proper armor. I'm happy for him. I love detritus as a character. I think I mentioned in masquerade when he gets his brief cameo that I just think he's very sweet.

He is very sweet. Um, unfortunately, he's also the vessel for little jokes about police brutality in this one. Yeah. It's very hard to find this. It's really annoying. Well, I don't know. Yes.

Police brutality is really annoying. It is. Yeah. It's irksome. It is on the surface, a very funny scene because you can imagine that very deadpan at each other. Obviously. No, I don't know anything about this, but then you actually think about the fact

that it's police brutality. Yeah. The thing about, and this is like various jokes throughout the watchbooks. Um, it. The whole thing kind of hinges on us trusting vimes. So. De, detritus is the one carrying out this vigilante work, which is, it is. Um, but he has police protection, which makes it not vigilante work.

It makes it government thuggery. Um, but we think that's okay because vimes trusts that detritus is carrying out something morally correct and we trust vimes cause he's a moral compass on likes, um, but yeah, it doesn't really stand up to any scrutiny. And like a lot of things don't in these books, like it's funny, a lot of it. Um, and that's what it's meant to be. And that's it. But, and, and in this case, it is following a trope, you know, it's, it's a

detective book and this is how police, police mentor can detective books. But yeah, it's, yeah, it's always a bit jarring to reread these, this, um. As we've become more and more aware of the real date, real life, police brutality, brutality in our world, we're both particularly. Closing police today. Yeah. The kind of closing ranks thing. But, um, yeah, we were going, we had a little conversation about this before

the episode as to whether we were going to turn it into a talking point and decided that, uh, I don't know, no, they're really got all thoughts on it down quite well enough to make it anything other than a sad rant. So yeah, and I think we can spare the listeners our sad ranting on this subject only, but I think what's also frustrating is, um, that it's trying to hold up to try to say somewhat morally right in this situation because the person who is threatening to nail up by his ears is someone who's dealing drugs to kids. Yeah.

And obviously that's a bad thing. Yes. But this is not the way one goes about it. No. Um, especially as it rather suggests that nothing would happen to them if they would follow due process. Well, exactly. Um, yeah, anyway, not, not a massive fan about that in the watch

books in general, and, um, particularly sensitive to it at the moment, but I don't know, maybe we'll talk about it again later in the book. I'm not really sure. For now, shall we move on to, uh, the noble lobby knobs? Oh, yes, who is really quite upset to be. So he's not particularly pleased about his newfound nobility. He doesn't sound it. I believe he said, as carrot said in his letter, knobby is still knobby only

more and now, now he's having to face an entirely new set of circumstances. I kind of like Vime's is speculation on this, which is that actually it kind of works for knobby, um, in that his problem was thinking small. If he just sidled into the land's masses and stole an entire country, which is a fair point. What happened to Malaysia? There's, uh, there's also some very, very good bits of description about him. It's a special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways.

It should not be possible for a knock to sound surreptitious. Yet this knock achieved it. It had harmonics. Oh, good old knobby. Yeah, he's a, um, Oh God, what's she called? Like a still point in a swirling mass of chaos. He's one of those an anchor. No, not quite what I mean, but, but you know, the thing, he is one of those.

He's like a touch point, a lodestone. Yes. No matter what else happens with the books, knobby will always be exactly the same level of slightly grubby. Yeah, there's no need for character development with him really. No, I mean, he goes through some heroes. He processes what it might mean to be an ability and what have you. Yeah.

Um, and then we have that Nari, that Nari in what order have you put these in? Uh, God, I don't know. It made sense when I was doing it. All right, cool. Um, oh, I see. You know, it's the ones we know already and then we'll go on to the new ones. Got it. Yes.

There we go. Like knobby to veterinary to cheer. Um, who doesn't go from knobby to veterinary? Um, I think it's kind of interesting because this is somewhat formulate now with the watchbooks and that this is the third watchbook in a row where. Kind of the big plot hinges on the fact that people might want a king in Angkor pork. Yeah.

Um, but what this book does differently is by removing kind of the equilibrium of the previous two books by taking out veterinary with this. Obviously he's not dead, but taking him out with this poisoning thing and he can't take the active role of being, yeah, and being what vimes is pushing against. Yeah. Uh, men at arms works because he drives vimes to distraction. Yes. And guards, guards, he's locked up, isn't he?

Yeah. But he's still very much manipulating everything from his prison cell with his army of rats. Yeah. So I think the way he fell over was like death when he fell over in that bar. Good collapsing in this series. Folding up a joint at a time. I like a good collapse.

A slow, terrible collapse. There is something about a very tall person falling over. Yeah. I like that he's very, very ill and compass enough to go on a little screed about poisons. And it's sort of him almost drifting into some flashback from his days at the Assassin's Guild. Hmm.

It's, and what would we do with this young veterinary? He's imagining himself having a conversation with a teacher. Yeah. Which shows just how ill he is, I suppose, isn't it? Grip on reality is usually pretty good for veterinary. And it's this idea of him, uh, doing the stability thing. He's, uh, just more useful alive than dead. Yeah.

The idea of stability being more important than anything else is a very interesting one and how, uh, you know, perversely, often things like fascist governments get into power because they're the ones offering stability to start with and then, you know, very much so. Then out comes the fascism. Hey, fascism, bad, thumbs down on the tree. Thumbs down for fascism, of course. Cake's still good.

Cake's still good. Yeah. We're still good with cake, but not canceled cake. All right, good. I nearly canceled it after last weekend. Good. I hate icing cupcakes. Do you?

My back gets very sore icing cupcakes. Oh, yes. I suppose when there's an awful lot of them in my head, I'm still like icing six or seven as a child rather than. Oh yeah. If you're talking cupcakes like I've got my nephew over and we'll make some little butterfly cakes and drown everything in sprinkles. That's great.

But when it's like, I'm slightly punched over my kitchen counter, not so much. Anyway, uh, cheery, cheery little bossam. Whose name we also used to because we are such Discworld fans, but I do remember laughing at the scene quite a lot at her introduction. Yes, I think because I read other Discworld, but other books where cheery had already been introduced first before I read this one. I never really fully giggled at it. I think I do.

I think I've probably read most of the watch ones in order, which is good. But yes, she is, well, yes, yeah, we'll go she should, there was a small part where the in a monologue bit was he, but that was just because they wanted the reveal with that. Yeah, I think the pronouns in the book all switched to she as soon as that conversation with Angra happens, which, you know, guys, if Terry Pratchett can get pronouns, right? And cheery in 1996, yeah.

Cheery's considered a really iconic character in the Discworld fandom because there's some elements of the journey that a trans person goes through with coming out and being seen as female and presenting as female. Yeah. And I think a lot of these, a lot of the things she's saying about gender in this book can also, you know, apply to people in non-binary. Um, anyone who's just got a problem with the binary gender, um, kind of rigid roles and yeah, it is very interesting.

And this grass is greener idea as well with the dwarf thing is that yes, doors can do whatever they want to do. They're not stuck in these feminine roles provided whatever they want to do is not a feminine role. Yes. It's like the whole sort of weird thing with feminism of, oh, we've got to cast off makeup and heels and it's like, oh, maybe we don't. And it turns into a whole horrible circular argument about why you're

wearing makeup and heels. Yeah. Which in my case is that I look pretty in my ass looks good. But for whom is the, yeah, blah, blah, blah for the world, it all deserves a treat. Yeah. Actually, by being bisexual, do you just get out of that argument? Yeah. It's like, what are you dressing for?

Like the male gaze? Like ideally that particular female gaze, actually. Thank you. Yeah. I am dressing for all of the games and none of the heteros. Anyway, um, yeah, gender's ridiculous. God, it's nonsense. I don't want to have anything to do with it.

What about Constable visit the infidel with explanatory pamphlets? Do you want to have anything to do with him? Ah, big fan, big fan. Would hate him in person. Would absolutely punch him in the face, but in the context of the book. Getting a bit annoyed, honestly, just in the context of the book. In the context of the book, it's funny. Constable visit the infidel with explanatory pamphlets is omnian.

So lovely callback to small gods. Omnianism is apparently no longer quite so. Sword and torch about it's evangelism. It is now basically the Mormon church or Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses are the ones that knock on doors and they're very culty. It's pretty much all evangelical. Well, there's knock on doors too. Don't they?

They do missions. Oh, yes. I suppose so. Yeah. The book of Mormons that musical not as all the knocking. Oh, yes. Hello. My name is Zelda Price.

Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry Mormons do knock Jehovah's Witnesses are famous for knocking and very culty. And evangelists just come in through the window. Yeah. Rude. Sometimes down the chimney. Now that's Father Christmas.

Oh, I always mix up evangelism and Father Christmas. God, no, I really, I really, really hate it. I don't think anyone likes evangelism, but there's a specific rage for me having grown up in Catholic school. I remember a particular intense, particularly intense teacher telling us we had a natural right to evangelize when he was going to be off for a few months. And the teacher who would be replacing him was still Christian, just not Catholic. So we were going to have to teach you the proper versions of the prayers.

And he wanted us to try and convert this woman to Catholicism because being Protestant wasn't good enough in the Catholic school. I hate evangelism. Yeah. But visit is so polite and quite sweet about it. It's just very nicely giving people pamphlets. He's just so affronted. I mean, he's annoying me not because he's evangelizing, but because he's

bothering Vimes about not having read something he gave him. And I relate too hard. Yeah. No, it does always annoy me. You read the thing yet? No. Yeah. But seriously, have you read the Ray Bradbury book?

I got you four years ago. But I downloaded it on Kindle. Why? Because I sometimes really struggle to focus on actual books. And I find if it's on Kindle, then I'll just do it when I'm procrastinating on my phone and end up reading, especially with new stuff. Say that. I just reread every book by Trudy Canavan over the last two months, because

I finally got the edge to read again, but I'm still very much on a rereading fantasy books kick. That's a good kick to be on. If you want to get through vast amounts of material quite quickly. Yep, I do promise to read some Ray Bradbury before I start rereading all the Robin Hobbooks again. Anyway, I don't believe you, but okay, we should mention that Constable visits Fensis days off in the company of his co-religionist, smite the

unbeliever with cunning arguments, which as irritating as evangelism is, at least they're not strapping people to turtles and setting fire to them. Yeah, that's a, that's a nice low bar. It's a very low bar. We have Father Tubal Keck, Tubal Keck. Our first murder victim of the book. I tried to look up whether his name was etymologically interesting. I couldn't find it very briefly if I, if it is.

I tried to practice saying it. It didn't go very well. Cool. Yeah. Didn't we do well? Poor Father Tubal Keck though. All he really cares about was his books. I know poor sod.

I do feel bad for him as Mr. Hopkinson also. Oh my God. So relatable. What? I don't have time to be dead right now. Tell me that's not exactly how I'm going to react when I die. Yeah, no.

Oh, poor Mr. Hopkinson never got to use Excel. Couldn't you have arranged? Yes. Being really, really enjoying categorizing things and being marvelously inconvenienced by death and asking him to turn up at a better time. That is extremely us. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Mr. Hopkinson is a personal attack. And then, yeah, so he's dead too. I'm death, not taxes. I turn up only once. The reference to the famous Benjamin Franklin quote, the only two

certainties are death and taxes. Yes. Anyway, yes. Then we have the dragon king of arms. Excellent job title. Terrible vampire. Terrible vampire. But I like how he's, he's very creepily written.

There's the lovely horror vibe. I do love how Pratchett manages to put, give characters little vocal tics. Yes. Yeah. This is almost like the little humorous laugh in soul music there. It is the music guilty. I am the, the hat, hat, hat, hat, hat. Aha.

Yes. Dragon king of arms, very eugenics. See, if you ask me, he's got eugenics vibes. I feel like he's probably into chronology. He reminds me a lot of a death, death, death. What was his name? Edward, yeah. From Men at Arms.

Yep. Very into people's profiles. Yes. The ears of a clamp that Vines apparently has. Oh, that old song is of a clamp. I think we will be hearing a lot more from dragon king of arms later. We will be. Before that though, let's talk about donut Jimmy.

Yay. Our favorite force doctor. He's certainly my favorite veterinarian. Well, like is completely unwilling to at any point acknowledge the fact that his patient is not a horse has eaten his bedding. I don't, I don't think so. How's he pissing? The usual way, I suppose.

It's still like staring at a definite human being and saying, well, walk him around a bit on a loose rain. Don't give him any oats. I saw an interesting, God, I can't remember if it was Tumblr or Twitter thread about why you always seem to meet up with a veterinarian in the post-apocalyptic drama rather than a surgeon. Oh, yeah. I think I read that one as well.

Yeah. They're generally away from patient zero. Yep. They are trained in not being bitten. Yep. They know the basics. And I get like from a less jokey point of view, I guess it's like you get to have the medical expertise without having the deus ex machiner of a fucking heart

surgeon. I don't know. Yeah. Not that the heart surgeon would necessarily be all rounder, but I don't know how medicine works. Do I know is that not abundantly clear by now? You need to get your humours looked at. Yes, absolutely.

Oh, do you know what this nearly made the cut for an obscure reference, but I didn't really have time to do all the research it would have needed. The idea that the human body being a microcosm of the universe. Actually, I think that was cheery rather than Jimmy, wasn't it? I think was ancient Greek and I've definitely read about it before, but I can't get to it without quite some reading. You're dead to me. You did a very good episode on ancient Greek medicine.

Noice. Oh, they also very recently just did an episode on medieval science that I highly recommend. Oh, I like me some medieval science. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, natural philosophy.

Natural philosophy. Speaking of natural things, we talk about Icneus, the pottery troll. Hey, that was a segue. Yeah, I like him. Nice low level criminal, good at his job. Always found the general denial was more reliable than the specific reputation. General denial.

I like his very, very blatant, well, it's just clay. And then explains that crappy clay is just good enough for them lady potters with dangly earrings, what make coffee mugs, what you can't lift with both hands, which feels like a really specifically 90s stereotype as well. It does, doesn't it? Yeah, all the potters I know now are very, I guess, access to proper equipment just must be easier now because I'd really love to have a go at pottery.

I've looked at the little wheel at home wheels. You can get a couple of times, but I think you'd be very good at it. You're good at things like, you know, the fiddly making jewelry stuff. I think I'd be very bad at it and get very frustrated. So I have, I've spun pots a few times before and it is a really satisfying pot in my time. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, everything I say sounds filthy today.

Stone face vimes. Stone face. You did get them in here, sorry. I mentioned Cromwell earlier because I thought we hadn't got Stone face as his own character. Oh, yeah. No, I thought we'd talk about him, this lovely bit of Ankhmore pork history. Suffer not injustice vimes.

What a good name. Interesting. Obviously the parallel here is very much with the English Civil War, the round heads and the Cavaliers. Vimes is clearly meant to be a bit of a Cromwell type, but, um, he was commander of the city watch since 1688 and 1688 was when, uh, a different revolution took place in England, but I can't remember the name of good for them when power was handed over to someone.

Good, good, good work, Joanna. I forgot to write this down. Good. Yeah. I see that the point is there are two different revolutions. I think it was called the bloodless revolution or something because it wasn't a civil war. Interesting.

It was very uncivil war. Yes, Aaron was very rude. How dare they? I liked Carrots, Carrot and Anguished comments on the civil war actually being, um, why are we celebrating 300 years of it? That because we won, but you also lost the glorious revolution of November. 1688 was the deposition of James second and seventh King of England, Scotland, Ireland and replacement by, oh, by Mary.

The, yeah. Okay. English history. Very much recommend noble blood for a look at some of this stuff. Uh, noble blood is a very good podcast. Fantastic podcast recommendation of the week. But yeah, I thought it was interesting that, um, no one wants to be stone face. Everyone in the society says he shouldn't have won because he was outnumbered

10 to one and had warts and he was a bit of a bastard. Correct. Yes. Um, and the, uh, yeah, the very strange way history looks back on these things. Uh, especially like with the English civil war, people often remember, you know, how, uh, the pure attack, how Puritan Cromwell was. Yeah. Um, and, you know, a twat to the Irish and stuff.

Well, yeah, I'm not saying I'm not defending Cromwell. No, no, I know you're not. Um, but on the subject of things, we never get taught in the very brief look at the revolution at school. Um, I feel like generally how twatish the English have been to the Irish is not something really taught in English schools. I've learned quite a lot of it from Derry girls, from Derry girls, from it just a lot of Googling.

Whenever something comes up in a historical drama that seems like weirdly vague. Um, yeah, that's all I've got for character. Should we move on to locations? Yeah. Um, we're in Angkor Pork, obviously, but within Angkor Pork, where are we? Uh, a couple of new places we visit. Of course, the Royal College of Heralds. Love it.

Love it. So I love that they've got all of the animals and paint it from life. Very into that. Big fan of, uh, Roderick and Keith, even if it's not natural for them. Gay rights for hippos. The Moorpork, we have a Moorpork, we have a little Ariel, which is fun. It, uh, mentions that Moorporks from the other side of the disc and the actual Moorpork Owl is from New Zealand.

Oh, is that so? The other side of the world. How nice. That's a lovely little thing. I love that the idea puts his canvas on his evil, shouts, Huplah. And the, the hippos reared rather arthritically and the owl spread its wings. I like when nobody makes things up. I may imagine, imagine having animals that sat still for things like being sketched.

Do you know? Sorry. As soon as she sees me drawing her, she moves. She can sense it. Good. She's such a lovely dog though. I love her. Oh, she is.

It's her marvellous ears. And we also have beers. The, uh, from ears to beers, from ears to beers, uh, the marvelous pub for the undead that Angra takes cheery to. So I think Angra makes a bit of a mistake in threatening the barkeep, but, you know, it's their own. Yeah. I wouldn't start with threatening the barkeep, but there are some fun characters

that obviously beers I'm assuming is meant to be a play on the word beer. Also, uh, beer is in like the old word for coffins. Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that was the thing. And, uh, or a play on words. Beers is in cheers where everyone knows your name. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yep.

Is that the name of the pub in cheers? Cheers. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I thought it might be like cheers, like, you know, the place is called cheers.

Cool. I've never actually watched cheers to be fair. No, me neither. Uh, clearly. I like to point out one of the characters is Schleppel, the bogeyman who he's met already. Very nice to see him again. Uh, Violet, one of the tooth fairies.

Yep. As opposed to Clint Cabell, who is not a legitimate tooth fairy. Can be. That's discrimination. And this is what the children left onto the pillows, flesh their little parts. I like that one. Oh, some of the little repeating bits, very cute. Listen, very good.

Oh, Mrs. Gammage, lovely Mrs. Gammage who drinks at beers and has done ever since it was, uh, the crown and acts. Every pub has a lovely old woman regular. I'm looking forward to being one when I grow up. Absolutely. There was a lady called Murphy. He used to drink at the pub I worked at in Sydney and she would come in every

morning, I think maybe early afternoon. I used to do the day shift anyway. And she would have a champagne glass full of cider, uh, hard cider for our American friends and, uh, the rest of the schooner would be set next to it. And she would sit and maybe have a total of two, three points over the entire day and would hold court and tell great stories. And she was ever so lovely. I mean, she wants to say goodbye to her, especially when I left now.

That's exactly the sort of old woman I want to grow up to be apart from with the cider because it gives me a headache. Champagne only darling. Champagne only doesn't come out of the tap in Australia. Unfortunately. How rude. Um, yeah, beers is good. I like also the old man trouble reference.

Don't mind, don't mind him. Um, don't mind him. Uh, the bogeyman getting a blanket on his head. Yeah. Excellent. But a subter, subterfuge, no, not subterfuge, uh, specific weaponry. Yes. Blue, fluffy blanket for preference.

I wonder what it is about the blue, fluffy blanket. Blanket. Blanket. I think, I think it just kind of refers to the fact she's clearly been experimenting, which is nice. And we would definitely have a spreadsheet of results of. Oh, yes. Causing existential crisis needs spreadsheets.

What a shame. They might have spreadsheets. Of course, spreadsheets did use to just be sheets of paper. Um, very true that we were, one would spread out. It was a revolution in accounting. Well, I've, I've read about that at like, do you know what? I'll send you that one day. It's not something I'm going to talk about.

Like, it's good. Drop the paper because it's very boring, but, um, not to us. Anyway, those are the only locations I noted for this episode. Beautiful. Little bits we liked. Francine, he wrote. I've lost my book. That's my book.

Oh no. How's this happened? That's quite important. I need that. Uh, I've got my notebook. How have you misplaced your book? Sorry. Yes.

I took it through with me when I was making coffee. Uh, okay. Let's try that again. So little bits we liked. Little bits we liked. Francine, he wrote. Did he? He did write.

Yes. Um, this is when Carrot is writing home, which is quite sweet little bit anyway, we've talked about it. Um, but what I thought I'd point out is how it starts. It goes, he took the end of his pencil for a moment. Well, it has been an interesting week again. Square brackets. He wrote, and I thought that was a very interesting choice on Pratchett's part

that highlights how much he values the flow of dialogue and how he structures it in particular. So the non awkward way to do that would have been he chewed the end of his pencil for a moment and wrote colon or full stop. He wrote colon. Um, but because Pratchett likes doing the sentences, like something, something, something, something, he said something, something.

He's put that in the middle of a quote, a piece of writing, which is incredibly unusual, but I rather liked as it's, you can tell Pratchett's got that kind of editors eye and I guess kind of the journalistic background as well. He writes as if he's describing the actions of people as if it was the opening salvos of an interview. Yeah. Yeah. Huh.

Anyway, yeah, it's been a while since I've had a little editory nerd bit. So that, um, your bits, your bit is next. Oh, language with writing. Uh, it's just a comedy moment. And it's another one that only is very, very rule of three. And it's all on one page. And this is when, uh, Carrot and Angra are confronting the robbers and the iron crust, the dwarf being robbed is obviously furious in dwarfish.

So we have come on that as let's hang them up by the, uh, Barraza car and then the asterisk, uh, town hall. Ah, yes. And then Carrot replies, we don't practice that kind of punishment in Inkmore pork and the, uh, footnotes because Inkmore pork doesn't have a town hall. Footnotes are back in great use in this book, aren't they? They really are.

And, uh, then you have, they bash beyond tripe, uh, type Richard census. They kicked Olaf strong in the arm in the bad ducks, yeast bowl. And it's the final bit of yeast bowl. Yeah. In a yeast bowl, which I'm not sure what he, as a baker, I'm not sure what one would call a yeast bowl. Uh, no, that's not speculate. I say, um, and there's, uh, when carrot and Angra are introduced to

cheery and, uh, carrots, dressing cheery and dwarfish, the translation for little bomb sounds a lot like short ass. Yes. Also thought carrot was a little bit mean to Angra there when she was trying. And yeah, I'm growing up with your mouth full of gravel. Yeah. I'm going to talk about heraldry briefly. Uh, I resisted the urge of going down the coach of arms rabbit hole because I

know myself and how many hours I have available in a day. And the rabbit is too busy posing for us code of arms anyway. Exactly. Um, but listeners, if you have any fun coach of arms facts, or indeed, if any of you have interesting family coats of arms, cause I know they are a thing, do tell us. Yeah. I'm gonna do less is no wonder if any, either of us have any in our,

you know, possibly because Clifford, which is not my maiden name, my mother's maiden name, and we know there was a Clifford that came over with the Norman invasion. We're not sure that the family line directly traces back that far, but they're probably as some sort of Clifford coach of arms. Nice. I'll try and design you a code for arms one day. Excellent.

Thank you. If there could be a rampant hippo, that would be marvelous. Of course. Cushant. Cushant. Does that mean sit? I assume so. Not rampant.

Cushant. Uh, yeah. So the Royal College of Herald's College of Arms is a real thing. Um, it's part of, it's part of the Royal household of the sovereign. Uh, there's lots of things like this. Uh, they accompany the Queen on various state occasions, like the opening of parliament and, um, they're present in things like, uh, when succession is read after a royal dies and monarch dies, they attend the coronation, that sort of thing.

So they're like the official contributors to Burke's period or whatever I guess. Somewhat. Yeah, they're the actual, and obviously there's lots of things about how you end up with these positions. They're generally it's a somewhat secondary ceremonial position. Although it does pay. It's very rarely someone's full income. They're often historians as well.

How interesting. Uh, and look at the backgrounds of Heldry. So I didn't go too much into their function in Royal society now, but I did look at the titles. Uh, so at the very top, so Persuivant means, uh, yes, Persuivant means an assistant and assistant Herald basically. It's, uh, comes from old French back when England, England had France, I guess. Um, so at the top level, you do have the Kings of Arms.

Uh, so we have the Garter King of Arms, the Clarenceau King of Arms and the Noroy and Ulster Kings of Kings of Arms. So these are somewhat location based. Obviously Noroy and Ulster is like the Northern Ireland type area. Uh, but then, then you have the Heralds of Arms in ordinary. And then you have the Heralds of Arms in ordinary. And then you have the Persuivants of Arms in ordinary. Sorry, I love that word, Persuivants, like a weevil.

It's very satisfying, isn't it? Uh, so you have the Rouge Dragon named for the Welsh Dragon. Uh, you have the Blue Mantle, which is a reference to the blue of the Royal Arms of France. Edward III created this particular position. So England had France at the time. And I assume this is where we get the character name in the Angkor Pork Royal College of Arms, uh, Podesus Chartain, which translates as

brown overcoat. Blue Mantle, brown overcoat. You have the Port Cullis, which is named for the Port Cullis badge of the Tudors. And the Tudors have the Port Cullis badge because as a play on their name, Tudor. Sorry, Shima has always been that bad. And then you have the, uh, Rouge, Croix, Cross, named after Saint George's Cross. Obviously, but I'm assuming this is where we get the Croissant Rouge again in the Angkor Pork College of Arms.

There is no Dragon King of Arms, but, um, something pointed out in annotated Pratchett is that the name Dracula comes from Dragon. Oh, yeah. So there's a fun little vampire connection there. And do you like their code names? And it's obviously, it's a nice reference to guards, guards with, uh, the dragon briefly being the King of Angkor Pork, or Queen, as it turns out. Yes.

She can be King if she wants. Yep. True. I really don't think she cares. It's the century of the fruit bat. Is it? I wasn't keeping track. I've got no idea, mate.

Yes, no, dragging and screaming into the century of the fruit bat, but we're nearly at the end of the century of the fruit bat. Yes. Well, we're quite behind. Whatever book that's from. I'm not even sure we've got to that book yet, but it's one of my favorite bits. Uh, so yeah.

So that's where we get, uh, Podesta's Chateau and the Brown Overcoat and, uh, Croissant Rouge, the Red Croissant. Beautiful. Beautiful. And please enjoy my terrible French pronunciation. Hopefully I won't have to do that again. This episode. Persuival.

Persuival. We more Persuival. You could say that in any kind of voice. It works. Oh, we more Petit Choufleur. Uh, how fragile the future. How fragile is the future, Francine? Reasonably, I would say, uh, very.

Really in England, yes. Very from the perspective of somebody who's more or less immortal. So this is when, uh, Dragon King of Arms is reflecting on the fragility of the future. It says men things, men said things like peace in our time or an empire that will last a thousand years, less than half a lifetime later. No one even remembered who they were, let alone what they'd said or where the mob had buried their ashes. What changed history were smaller things.

Often a few strokes of the pen would do the trick. Hmm. It's a very good line with two interesting to be paralleled quotes, considering who they're from. Yeah. Um, and I, yeah, it's something I go on about, well, actually, often in the group chat to the dismay of both of you, which is like, you know, from a historian's point of view, all of these many events and World War one and two, and the

hold for and everything that's going on now, pretty much one on the same. It'll be in a paragraph when they're finished picking for our bones. But, um, it's probably because I phrase it like that, that he gets upset. Yeah. I think it's the bones that do it. It's the bones. Yeah. All right.

Anyway, I find that quite interesting, a historical compression as a historical compression, yeah, we've talked about this in the podcast a couple of times, like weird things, like what Cleopatra was contemporary with. And, uh, yeah, not so much that because that's just a, like, oh, this thing happened at the same time as that, but just a, uh, you know, everything seems so big while you're in it. Yeah. I think a better example of Cleopatra is we think of ancient Egypt as this

thing when actually it spanned. Yeah. Yeah. Thousands of years. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Anywho, I won't go on about that for much longer because I can and I shouldn't.

The organizer, speaking of being organized enough to get on to the next point in a timely fashion. Oh, the organizer. This is a purchase little imp organizer. Bingley, bingley, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Which I now hear is I keep hearing it as the Apple text tone. Ah, yes. It's not quite, which the problem because I never have the sound on on my phone, but I

usually have the sound on my laptop and I've still got it set that messages will come through to my laptop as well because I very rarely use text messages. Yeah. But yes, the organizer just makes me laugh. I think it's very sweet and earnest and terrible and relatable. Is it the, uh, I read it in the annotated practice bar, but the pocket Newton or something like that was the thing he was probably parodying. This is one of the pocket organizers of the early days of these things.

Yeah. Practically it was like always very having the latest tech and the latest computer. And I'm assuming I'm finding the humor and how bad they sometimes were. I'm assuming was probably given one of these as very well-meaning gift and had to jump through the hoops. Like, uh, sorry, you should have said memo first. Yes. Considering how much I struggled with using Siri at all on my phone, relatable.

I enjoy it. Recognizing handwriting. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's definitely interesting. You want me to read it in fairness. OCR can barely cope with my handwriting now.

I've never actually tried using anything that needs to try and comprehend my handwriting and I can't imagine it would go well. Uh, some of it's surprisingly good these days, but yeah, much as my voice does not get on well with automatic transcription, my handwriting doesn't get on well, even if it looks, you know, it's readable. I love how much Descript refuses to understand you and tends to understand me very well. It's quite offensive.

Um, I can only assume it's because I don't know. I talk quite fast and I'm not as well-spoken as you. As in I don't annunciate as well. Yeah. You and your theater kiddery. I mean, I was a theater kid as well, but it's just been a very long time. Yeah. With me, it seems to have stuck like a bad smell.

And the organizer takes me straight to the next little bit I like, which is the clock in the Snari's waiting room, the slightly irregular TikTok. Against all horological tradition. God, I love the word horological. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I mean, clocks fascinate me, like the inner workings of clockwork and things. Yeah.

Clocks are pretty cool. Clocks. We'll probably get into clocks in another book. We will, but also God, I hate the sound. I am just that whole dimension. Well, no, it's really weird. Like I need noise constantly. You know what I'm like for the whole input thing.

And even when I fall asleep, I prefer having a podcast or something on. I got the best sleep. I had nages the other night because of the way my flat's designed and the flat roof and the fact that it's all windows. If it's hammering it down with rain in my flat, it's very loud. And that noise knocks me out. It's really, really soothing for me. Raining when you're in a tent is very good as well.

Oh, yes. But yeah, the sound of a ticking clock. No, I had to crash on my sister's sofa a couple of weeks ago. She has a clock that ticks in her living room. And it's, it makes just the tiniest little word before the tick. Oh, oh, no. Yeah, I know what you mean. No, that's no good.

It drove me mad. Yeah. Um, I always have a pair of airplugs with me. But then I wouldn't be able to fall asleep because it'd be too quiet. Oh, sure. Um, I'm telling all myself here. So I do use airplugs to go to sleep, but as you, I cannot be in line with my thoughts for a second.

So what I do is I have my phone on to my pillow playing a podcast, but I have airplugs in, but I could just about hear the podcast. Excellent. Luckily, Jack is very heavy sleeper. Yes. Sleeping alone has its benefits. Uh, yeah, I think that was all the little bit. Should we talk about the bigger things?

Yeah. See, this is almost a little bit as well, because I think a lot of our big talking points were saving for, um, Second and third. Yeah. Cause lots of cool stuff about golem law and history and robotics and all kinds of unlikely stuff, but there was just so much set up in this one. So I've just kind of noted as I was going along, just how many like niche

specialists this book has, like speaking about, you know, being info dumped about the most obscure stuff. This is the book for that. And you can tell that Pratchett did quite a lot of just very niche reading for little lines and things. Um, so we've got Chubble Keck, the religious expert, uh, and book specifically. Yeah. Uh, his holy texts.

Yes. And his dying wish, his dying wish was for the golem to tidy up the books, not like tell my sister, I love her or whatever. Um, tidy the books up, please. Please tidy up the books. And then he could die reasonably content, which was nice. Um, Mr. Hopkinson, the dwarf bread expert, uh, again, concerned only with bread when

dead, but, um, he was cool with his like experimental historical cooking, which is actually a whole like field of specialty, which I'm sure you know about. Oh my God, I know it's one of my favorites. Yeah. See, that's a rabbit hole for you one day. Um, now I, now you can tie it very tenuously to the podcast, but I mean, that kind of thing is how we rediscovered Roman concrete recently. Um, obviously not cooking, cooking, but that kind of stuff.

So that's very niche. And I'll bet practice did a lot of reading about. You know, bread and weird weapons and stuff for this. Then you've got a croissant Rouge, Bill Swiband, the heraldry expert. Um, who I like very much almost entirely for this line. Laugh, I nearly started. I love that, especially because it, um, it's obviously a play on laugh. I nearly something else.

Yeah. Uh, but there is, sorry, this is a mild tangent. There's a very silly Peter Cook and Dudley Morsong that Neil Gaiman covers on the, um, an evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer album. Okay. And it's, um, a very silly song about a man falling off a roof, but it's something about Neil Gaiman singing the line Laugh, we nearly shat. We had not had so much fun since grandma died or auntie caught her left

it in the mangle. Goodness me. I don't know this song. And now I really feel like I must link in the show notes. Still, I will link in the show notes. It's, it's, I mean, it's a very funny song. Anyway, obviously it's Peter Cook and Dudley Morsong, but there's something about Neil Gaiman singing it in like a beautiful old church.

Deary me. Um, anyway, yeah, but anyway, yeah, sorry, I finally started, but yeah, question Rouge is very, again, he's very niche specialist. Uh, he knows all about these various animals and what they meant to, and you know, the ridiculous language of heraldry with the rampant and the Couchant, Couchant. Thank you. I was about to say, I was like, no, that's not quite right.

And then, you know, in the same buildings, you've got King of Dragons who like Edward Deeth is the linear jackspert, the class snob, the, um, Oh, I can trace everybody's family tree back a million years. And yeah, again, that's very special. Genealogist, that's what I'd, um, very special kind of nerd. And, uh, yeah, a bit eugenically around the years. And then we've got Igneous, who's a clay expert. Like, again, we've just got this very niche, like tradesmen who can tell us

all about crank and like, you can look at a bit of clay and say, oh, yeah, this is that the other, um, which by the way, I think it's another Sherlock reference. Um, it is a different types of dirt, right? Yeah. And there's the whole thing with cheery and, uh, you know, if I'm saying, I want someone who can look at the astray and tell me what kind of cigars I'm smoking and cheery names them. And so that's, well, I mean, they're there.

Yeah. Um, and yeah, it's just for the like niche speciality, special mention, uh, Nobby is historical reenactor cause of course he is. Nobby's hobbies. Sorry, I didn't even think about that rhyming until I said it out loud. Becomes a bit of a thing throughout the book. I'm not sure if we've already had him Morris dancing or if that comes up in a later book.

No, but we've had him getting very passionate about weaponry. Yeah, we have. Oh, yes, it's better to light a flame thrower than curse the darkness. Exactly. So, um, the fact that Nobby always has some sort of fun little background life outside the watch, which also special meant to colon studying animal husbandry considering life on the farm. Yes.

Again, it's something I didn't know. According to annotate Pratchett, that means like life on the farm means killed in the course of action. So it may have been a slight threat from his wife. Oh, no, I'd never heard that as a slang thing. I'm guessing that was that from a safe practical. That might have been the fandom dot, whatever. Um, yeah, anyway, yeah, uh, yeah, I'm assuming that's a somewhat

historical bit of slang now. I guess so. Yeah. Um, yeah. So what did you have down as a talking point? Oh, um, how amazingly cinematic this book is. Um, and I don't know if part of it's just obviously I'm kind of bearing it in mind because there's recently been an adaptation ish.

Who's the inspired by with the watch that I think about how I would adapt this book. And if I was going to do my brief pitch for the BBC of if I was given the watch to adapt, please give me a TV show would actually be to start with feet of clay as the first series and throughout throughout it kind of flashback to the events of guards, guards and men at arms to give some context. Um, especially anguish showing cheery around the city. You could put in a lot about how anguish started out in the watch.

Yeah. Um, so little things like that, but just looking at how great this would be as a screen thing. I mean, you have, we've already talked about the, uh, amazing disc world opening, but if you can imagine that as a thing and watching the seasons pass by on the disc, that's such a unique way to look. If you can imagine it done well and not the cheap CGI, yeah. That's all from the Cosgrove Hall adaptations.

Yeah. And you've got, it made it hard to write the summary because I tend to bullet point everything as it goes along and then try and put it together into a summary, but around, uh, the time carrot and angua are interrupting the robbery and it's going back and forth with, you know, the sort of, um, cheery being introduced to the watch and the weird little meeting with the person who owns the Gollum and Vime's going about his day and going to the College of Heralds and all of it into Spurs, going back to that robbery thing.

It's this really snappy back and forth that you can see that almost exactly as is in the book going on screen. Yeah. Yeah, no, we're trying to play really well actually. The center's vision thing as well, the werewolf synesthesia you mentioned earlier, like if you can imagine how you would try and communicate that on screen and the amazing visuals of it and the patches of color you'd use around carrot to try and give off this smell of soap.

Yeah. And then also the little running gags that we were talking about, one of the, the, the vamp, the background vampire, like if you can imagine that as an Easter egg, if you did, this is like an eight episode series and these once per episode, you walked through the watch house and that vampire is there again, because he's been working at the pencil factory or been sunglasses testing for the optician. Bless his coltons.

And what I'm really saying is it's, once again, it's a very well written book, it's really well paced, but specifically this, these background site gags, the way it snaps back and forth, especially because I think I mentioned, I can't remember if it was on mic or not, I'm rewatching Archer right now and it does that thing for almost every scene change. It starts as if it's the conversation continuing on, but it's different characters and it's usually, and it becomes like very funny because it's obviously implying terrible things in these scene changes, but it's kind of

almost happening here and you have carrot and Angra and then you cut to vines and carrot and Angra and you cut to something else and you can see it doing that. So, I don't know, it made me really enjoy the book more because I was thinking about how much fun it would be on screen and how well paced the comedy is. And yeah, so there's some fun, uh, like visual through points as well, like the fog I really enjoy and the other thing that perhaps in the weather, the fact that the fog coming and going and people referencing the fog and

everything would be very cool and cinematic, couldn't it? Yeah, you can kind of do this bleak detective, not quite film noir because a lot of this actually takes place in the daytime apart from the murders. Yeah, yeah, which is a nice change for the watch. Yes, but yeah, it works as a nice kind of tone shift, doesn't it, adding this, the, you know, what I'm saying, Joanna, no, I understand what you mean. Also, like, I just want to see the Royal College of Heralds on screen. You want to see the little, little, not elephants, what do I mean, hippos,

don't do the hippos and the two little eye and, yeah. Roderick and Keith. Yes, the one bit I wouldn't enjoy very much, I think, would be seeing people's had stov'd in with Dwarf bread, but what can you do? Well, I feel like you'd carefully shoot it so you're not actually seeing any stov'ing. Okay, yeah, and that would be not like full CSI gore. Oh, and you can have like little flashbacks to like the revolution and

things when they're talking about stone face. Yeah. Oh, yeah, like a reenactment thing, but you could do it with Nobby playing the king, so he's supposed to be playing the king in the reenactment. Oh, no, yeah. No, I was thinking that, yes. Well, you know, when you get shows, when you get flashbacks, but you get the actors playing the characters in the flashback, I'm now trying to think of an

example and absolutely can't. No, I know what you mean, so it must have happened at least a couple of times, yeah. I know Scrubbs did that kind of thing, a lot Scrubbs did all sorts of nonsense. They did. Anyway, that was, that was my point. It's just that this is a really, a book that would translate to screen incredibly well because it's so well paced and funny and I enjoy it.

And do you have an obscure reference for me, Francine? I do. The bit where Cheery is taking lots of photos of the dead gentleman's eye, which I quite like. The imp was implying she was some kind of pervert like for it. You fucking weirdo, all right. Anyway, this is like in Discworld, this piece of fantasy, I guess, obviously is true, that they can still see the red

points of light in his eye. But in Round World, on Round World, there's a common myth, I'd say myth, a common belief that in Victorian times, especially, that the last image a person saw would be recorded before dying would be recorded in their eye. And therefore, you could use it for, you know, finding out what happened to somebody. It does have a surprising root in science. So, quoting from Wikipedia here, I apologize, much of the

scientific work was performed by the German, oh, it's called optography, by the way, much of the scientific work on optography was performed by the German physiologist Wilhelm Kuhner, Kuhner, whatever, inspired by Franz Christian Boll's discovery of Rodopsin. Why don't I try and read these aloud first, which is like a photosensitive pigment in the rods of the retina. So, similar kind of chemistry to how we get photographs. Under ideal circumstances, that can be fixed like a photographic negative.

And in rabbits, for instance, under really ideal scientific circumstances, they could like shine this bright light through a window, like a barred window into a rabbit's eyes, and then like behead the rabbit right away, and then develop this eyeball cut in half, and like you could see the bars from the window. Wow. Yeah. But obviously, this got massively simplified in like popular myth.

And it never did work on human eyes because the size of the fovea centralis, which is the focal point at the back of the eye. Yeah, it's much smaller in people, but it was used even in the police in England, for instance, in 1888, Mary Jane Kelly. Mary Jane Kelly was the victim of Jack the Ripper, who got her eyeballs. Eyeball was looked at. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Didn't work. Unsurprisingly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that was a obscure reference, finial. I enjoyed that. People believed that, policemen used it. It was, I think, never very widely adopted, but it was enough in the folk culture of like, yeah, this happens, and it still kind of is, isn't it?

Like, I think we've all heard it. Yeah, I don't think we'll think of it as completely factual now, but all little rabbits. You'll never believe what scientists have done to rabbits over the centuries Joanna, I can imagine. It wasn't too bad, that one. Anyway, I believe that's everything we have to say on part one of Feet of Clay, possibly everything that could ever be said ever.

Yes, definitely. And some things that couldn't. Oh, no. We will be back next Monday with part two of Feet of Clay, which goes from, starts on page 132 with too late, Angwer remembered why she avoided this Lordhouse district at this kind of, at this time of month, and ends page 256. We can push off back to the yard, job done and dusted. Okay.

We'll remind you of these start and finish times on the Twitters. Will we? Speaking of, if I remember. Speaking of, until next week, you can follow us on Instagram at the true shall make you fret on Twitter at make you fret pod on Facebook at the true shall make you fret. You can join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castles, albatrosses and snacks at

the true shall make you fret pod at gmail.com. And if you'd like to support us financially, head on over to patreon.com forward slash the true shall make you fret and for a cheeky bit of self promotion for all of October, I will be writing and releasing a poem a day. So follow me at Joanna Hagen, if you like poetry. They're good poems. I like poems. Yeah, they might be good poems.

I'm not making any promises. Hand in the meantime. Hand in the meantime. Dear listener, don't let us detain you. Why can't you be conscious and entertaining yourself ever? Are you talking to me or the dog? Oh, both. No, not you.

You entertain yourself pretty well. You just need three inputs.