The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 75: Bromeliad Pt. 2 - Diggers (I Need My Therapy Cube)

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, our Terrific Trilogies season continues with Part 2 of our recap of “The Bromeliad”, as we talk “Diggers”. Syllables! Synonyms! Existential Dread!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:The Picture - RedditGrace Petrie gigs listThe Centre for Computing HistoryInside “The Rings of Power” - Vanity FairTolkien fandom - Tolkien GatewaySpace Storm Knocks Out Latest Batch of Starlink Satellites - Sky & TelescopeJCB Song - Nizlopi - YoutubeThe Four Yorkshirewomen - The Secret Policeman’s Tour - Youtube“Let em starve,” said Churchill - On This Day in GuernseyFlower FairiesLady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book - GoodreadsEvery Car Is a Pinto - TV TropesAmbiguity (semantic and syntactic) - WikiWord sense disambiguation - ScholarpediaBread-and-cheese | Plant-LoreMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

Sorry, my chair's creaky today. Yeah, I'll try very hard not to move or shift my weight even slightly. It's about the best I can offer you on that one. I think that's atmospheric. Disagree. Make sure you only move during tense moments, then we'll get a creek. Yeah, okay, that's good. Settlers of Catan apparently sounds dirty to you, not the

word settlers of Catan, but half of the moves. That's because we kept saying would and I am a child. Yeah. Listeners, I am very bad at settlers of Catan as it turns out. Or as Joanna put it, I'm not bad. It's just that I'm not as good as the other ones. Okay, I worded it badly. He didn't. I'm wording it worse every time I quote you. There's no nice way to say that I'm much worse at it than you. It's

true. And I don't really mind, because it means that I get to chill and have a nice time building my silly little wall across my silly little hexgons, while you and Sterling fight to the death over would her. It was fun winning yesterday. Speaking of board games. Oh, yeah. Our listeners are the fucking best. Yeah, specifically this week, Bex, who works at Big Pateo Games, and sent us each

email us and said would we like a copy of What Next, which is a fun, like choose your own adventure RPG game that I've been wanting to play. So obviously I said yes. And we got our copies. And there's a tote bag and a little cuddly toy potato and stickers. That's very cool. It's very cool. Lovely little swag bag. And although we haven't had a chance to play the game yet, I am enchanted by the box art. So I'm going to go around to Anna's in

a couple of weeks and we're going to have a session. We're going to play. It should be fun. You get to build a tower of peril. I do that every day. That's my life. That's my schedule. It's like the Tower of Babel, except no one here has organised. It's like my laundry. Fuck, I didn't get the washing out. It's too late now. It's dead. Goodbye. Goodbye flannels, goodbye towels.

Goodnight moon. Goodnight moon. Goodnight stars. Goodnight washing, getting moldy and why. Damn it. I was trying to find a rhyme on the top of my head and it wasn't happening. Yep. No, we'll leave that one. Have you seen the little, the tiny, tiny short story from Pratchett's school apparently going around all the Facebook groups? Oh, is it the one about the painting? Yes, the picture, which is a fun little thing that he he

wrote at school and there's literally a few paragraphs and I'll link it in the show notes. And I thought it was rather nice. I would be extremely happy with that if I were teaching the young Pratchett, say that like, oh, God, I'm old now. Instead of associating myself with the teenager, I associate myself with the teacher. Fantastic. Well, we are 30, more or less.

Yeah, give or take. Average is about 30 right now. No, not 30 yet. Well, no, look, you've got a big birthday coming up. And it's got to happen at some point. And at least it means this year, you get to look forward to lots of really nice attention. True. I do really like attention. Turning the February and I'm already planning your presence,

which means it's a big birthday. That is quite exciting. You need to tell me whether you're going to be in the country or not. So I can plan a party or not. I haven't decided yet. Oh, no, I know. I know. Just like when you know. Grace Beatrice playing in Dublin a couple of days before my birthday. So a bit of me is tempted like to do a little

holiday in Ireland. But I feel like that's spending lots of money. Won't you going to go to America? Yeah, but that's like spending lots of money for a bunch of like massive new experiences, whereas Ireland is like spending lots of money and like, don't get me wrong, it's not the Irish today, are we? No, we're not. Who was it last week?

I'm just making a list of people we might have a vendetta against us. I'm not slagging off the Irish. It's just if I'm going to spend lots of money to go abroad, then like the big Vegas trip sounds more, especially since Grace Beatrice is also playing much closer to us in May. Oh, yeah. Where? Norwich, if you want to go.

Maybe, maybe. I'll be to Norwich tomorrow. I'll think about it closer to the time. But listeners, go see Grace Beatrice live. She's touring in spring and she's amazing life. What was I going to go to then? Oh, I was going to go to the National Archives. That's something else entirely, never mind.

We do keep saying we're going to do little museum trips, which we should do at some point. What's the one we're going to go to near Cambridge? I want to go to the History of Computing Museum, I think it's called. Yes, that sounds fun. It does. We're very into retro computer aesthetics as much as the tech, let's be honest, but it does look fun. It's got lots of, like, interactivity things.

How is it, how is it that the 80s are so aesthetically pleasing coming after the 70s, which was a desert of vibe? And brown. Yeah, a lot of brown in the 70s. I like the beige, though, although I am coming to realise that a lot of what I think of as cool beige things are in fact just yellowed white things. Yeah, that's fine.

The Centre for Computing History, there it is. Awesome, let's go to that. It looks very cool, got all green text, black background. I agree. I'm very into that. There is still something about every time my little terminal window comes up when I'm coding or just typing the code in or it's like, I'm a cool hacker and I'm a hacker, I'm a hacker in a movie.

You could have put a hoodie on, you could have put a hoodie on in your hoodie app for my Too Much Eyeliner. Do you think that's not what I look like when I study 90% of the time anyway? I feel like usually you've got too much eyeliner or a hoodie. Sometimes I'm wearing yesterday's eyeliner and a hoodie. This eyeliner is really, like, I do wash my face. This eyeliner just doesn't come off when I wash my face.

The answer is it's liquid eyeliner, there's got to be a coal eyeliner for going grungy, computer hacker. We'll work on my hacker aesthetic. I think technically I need like three nose rings as well, but I cannot pull off a nose piercing. No. I'm glad I learned as a teenager after a small amount of experimentation. Did you have a nose piercing?

I had a nose piercing for a bit, gone by the time I knew. I had my belly button pierced for a while. So did I, I still got the scar. Same, I never had my belly button out. I was like, I got it, I cut it, pierced it, download like a twat. See, at least with most of my piercings, because my mother was very much like, I don't care what you do, but tell me you're doing it and I will pay for you to go and have it done somewhere hygienic within reason.

Like you're not getting a tattoo at 16, but she told me to get my nose pierced when I was 14. She told me to get my belly button pierced when I was 16. And then still, because I wanted to rebel as a teenager, I got flesh tunnels and just kept my hair over my ears. And she didn't notice until I was up to a 10 gauge. And then I was really stressed. So I went and got my castleage piercing done at Clairs with a gun, which

helped like, fuck, yeah, they shouldn't do that. No, they shouldn't. Oh, wow. I don't think they can, technically. I mean, obviously, they shouldn't, they may not. This was, this was obviously over 10 years ago as well. And again, I let that piercing close up because it's really uncomfortable with big kind of phones.

Yeah, it is. And I guess like four years ago now, it fell out without me noticing. And because I used to have some all down one ear. Yeah. And I got one of them re-done and then I accidentally let it close up. And I'm not doing that again, because it took fucking forever to heal. I keep thinking about like getting second low piercings and maybe wearing earrings more often, but.

Oh, I've got three in each still. I've still got one in each. And to be honest, I barely ever remember that earrings are not. I'm so used to not being allowed to wear jewelry because I worked in the kitchen because I'm really fancily dressed most of the time. It's very difficult to do like a, I am dressed up, dressed up. That's not like a full ball gown. So my one thing is like, I will put dangly earrings on

and that will make me feel extra fancy without literally wearing a ball gown. No, no, I mean, extra fancy like, like out, out. I had a big necklace on. Yeah, last night, again, we went to a ball game cafe. Very cash. I wore black jeans and a flannel shirt because I did wear that. And Joanna turned up in a velvet dress, full jewelry. Well, not full jewelry, apparently.

One off. No earrings, but I had a necklace and a bracelet. Oh, actually vaguely, not Pratchett related, but more nerd related. There's a really good Vanity Fair art school that came out yesterday. That's a first look at the new Lord of the Rings series, Rings of Power. I was particularly hyped about this article because Joanna Robinson is one of my favourite culture writers has left Vanity Fair, but was like doing this piece before she left. So it's got released.

But it's really cool. There's lots of interviews with the creators. There's lots of looks at the actual actors, including the women they've cast for Galadriel looks amazing. I'm now actually quite hyped for the series. Nice. What is it? Prime? Amazon Prime. Yes.

Massive budget, like they think because the plan is for it to be, I think, five series, well, because it's sort of supposed to cover the entire second age of Middle Earth. They're looking at it will end up costing over a billion. It'll probably be the first billion dollar. Yes, like over a hundred million for the first series, like bigger budgets than Game of Thrones. I guess Jeff Bezos is like actually super into Tolkien and was very willing

for like a lot of money to go into this project. Now, this is an interesting topic, side topic. Yeah, I know that Tolkien was baffled and slightly disapproving of the fact that so many hippies were into his work. Yeah. He did not expect to be like flower child central as a fandom. Like he just didn't get it at all. I do wonder as a like because he was pretty small, small sea conservative.

I don't think he'd have thought much of the Silicon Valley lot being very into him either because they're all break things for progress, aren't they? And he was very anti that. I don't think he would have liked Jeff Bezos because Jeff Bezos is like massive Sauron vibes, massive Sauron vibes, not as far as I can tell a human person. Also, definitely not a human person. More human than Mark Zuckerberg, maybe because horrible bar though, isn't it? Yeah.

And the bar is that's where the bar is. And it is I'm in the first floor flash. It's way below me. I I wonder how Tom's doing. Tom. Space Tom. Oh, good old human Tom. You know, Tom, human Tom.

Yeah, human Tom, definitely human Tom. Suspiciously, suspicious, specific nickname. Suspiciously, human Tom. You know what, Tom didn't have to plant tactical bottles of condiments around trying to sway people. He was indeed a human person. Hang on, what? Mark Zuckerberg, do you know the whole the the metaverse launch he was talking

from his weird minimalist office, but he'd left a bottle of sweet baby raised barbecue sauce on the shelf somewhere. So everyone was like, haha, look, he's left a bottle of sweet baby raised on the shelf. He's human too. He likes barbecue sauce. That's his human attribute. He likes barbecue sauce. Yeah, he really likes barbecue sauce, he says.

And so that worked quite well. Whatever PR person came out with that, congrats, I guess. I mean, congrats. Definitely, I suppose, apart from the fact you do evil on this earth. Yeah, you do evil on this earth, but like, you know, good work. That was, yeah. Objectively speaking of huge evil on this earth. It looks like Russia's about to I think you're going to say you want to make a podcast.

That's probably a better link, actually. There's nothing we can say about Ukraine. No, me neither. Speaking of huge evil on this earth, Francine, do you want to make a podcast? I guess, yeah, yeah, I do. And I mean, comparatively, it's not that evil. I said, I should feel really insensitive. It's not that I don't want to talk about you, Ukraine.

There's nothing helpful we can say. So we'll just make the world a little bit worse with our musings. It's kind of nice to know whenever I'm worried I'm being a really shit person that I can just look at Russia and go, well, I'm not that bad. I don't think that's, I don't, I don't think there's any philosophers that'll agree with you on that. It's a bit like looking at Mark Zuckerberg and going, well, at least I'm not that deep into the uncanny valley. Yes. Oh, the first stop in the uncanny valley.

I want that as an album name. Cool. Let's make an album. Shall we make a podcast first, though? Yes, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The Tree Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Brouchet's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan.

And I'm Francine Carroll. And today we are continuing our terrific trilogy season with part two of the Bromeliad. We are talking diggers. Come between truckers and wings. Note on spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book diggers, but we will avoid spoiling any major events in the Discworld series, past or future, in case you're joining us for the first time.

And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Uncontrollably backwards towards a railway line. Tighter than my autobiography. Absolutely. Francine, what happened previously on the Bromeliad? Previously on the Bromeliad, a group of rural gnomes hitchhiked to civilization and find themselves on the floor at the store, alongside more of their kind than they knew existed.

Just as they're getting comfortable, they learn of impending destruction and a star-studded history. The other gnomes, ignorant of the outside world, take a bit of persuading, but they're eventually rallied into a journey outside. To achieve this, our original troupe of troublemakers upgrade their criminal activities from stowawaying to grand theft auto with a side of arson. We left our lila-pution louts in a quarry. Who knows what damage they'll do there. And now, we have Diggers, which was published the very next year.

In 1990, all of these were published in very quick succession, as he must have been written all at once, more or less. And a fun fact for Diggers is that in the American edition, Jacob is called Big John. John Deere being an agricultural machinery company. I thought I'd mention that right at the beginning in case we confuse any American listeners. Ah, yeah. So if we say Jacob, we mean Big John.

Yes. Shall I tell us what happened this time? Yes, do. Awesome. Summarize. This time, during Diggers. Ideas linger as winter looms and in the quarry, now home to gnomes, the council of drivers gathers.

Masculine updates a dormant thing on recent events, including the passing of old Toret. His terrible attempt at proposing to grimmer has left him feeling lost and looking again to the stars. A truck arrives at the gate to the quarry and as one piece of paper drift through the air, another is posted to the quarry gates. It's due to be reopened by order. As the council plans to maybe make a move to the barn over the fields, the paper lands and the gnomes read the news.

Arnold Brose descendant, grandson Richard 39, is due to visit Florida in the launching of a satellite. Gerda wants to find Richard and Masculine wants to find a way into the skies. They agree to head to the airport and find grandson Richard 39, with Thing along to help with satellites and Angelo along for the ride. Meanwhile, the rest of the gnomes make plans for the barn until Nicodemus, the spiritual leader in Gerda's stead, takes things to extremes. As humans begin to poke around,

Nicodemus tells the gnomes to simply rebuild the store in their heads, drawing old lines across new beginnings. Dorcas visits his dormant monster, Jacob, as grimmer starts to break down and snow begins to fall. With Masculine gone for eight days, Dorcas finds purpose and plans to immobilise the human's lorry, cannibalising it for parts. Unfortunately, in the process, he finds himself and his acolytes trapped in the cab as the lorry sends itself down the hill to the train tracks.

The gnomes think the worst and as grimmer tries to get them running, Nicodemus disastrously defies the humans and loses his life. As one human lingers in the quarry buildings and violent poisons are left for vermin, the gnomes take matters into their own hands, tying up the human. From his newspaper, they learn that a satellite sending the wrong signals has the world in a panic and Masculine must therefore still be alive. One of Dorcas's acolytes returns just in time and informs the gnomes that the rest are alive nearby.

After a brief bit of despair and a fox fight, the gnomes return home ready to revive Jacob and make their escape. Grimmer leads the drive as the gnomes make their escape on the monstrous digging lorry, running down humans and sheds alike until they find themselves surrounded. All seems lost as darkness suddenly falls and gnomes look up as something looms. A lift comes down from the large looming thing and hope arrives in the form of a frog-filled flower. I wish hope always arrived in the form of a frog-filled flower.

I don't have enough frog-filled flowers in my life. Find you a man who will lower a frog-filled flower from a UFO for you. That's all I want, ladies. It's not too much to ask. Or men. Or men. Yeah, it's not going to get your normative francing. All right, I'm sorry, I was just doing a meme.

Of course, by doing that, I am perpetuating the heteronormativity of memes. Yes, memes are inherently heteronormative. Anywho, before we go too far off, all right, yeah. Totally. How am I still disappointed every week? If it helps, I had nothing for loincloths this week. I tried, I really did. It helped a bit, yeah.

But I'm going with planes and escaping trains as our helicopter representatives. Not the big thing of this guy. No. Okay. We've got another week to go on this francing. I'm trying to eat things out. That seems fine. But have we even seen any planes?

Though there's an airport. Cool. I feel like planes are somewhat implied. So we've got a not a helicopter implied. Well, no. Masculine watches planes taking off and stuff. It does. You're quite right, yeah.

Yeah, no, so there are planes. I just thought airport implying. Plane. I think the pot with the frog-filled flower could be a helicopter. It's hovering. It is hovering, actually. You're very right. Okay, cool.

There's loads of helicopters in this. Yeah, I'm sorry. Provided you really broaden your definition of helicopter. And I think we've had to do that for almost two years. But whenever you would introduce this, over two years now. Yeah, okay. Yeah, over two years. What was it like this fucking third episode or something?

You didn't give me long before you. Loincloths came first. I know that. What came first? The loincloth or the helicopter? For anyone who hasn't listened to us from the beginning and is wondering at the origins of helicopter or loincloth, watch, we're not really sure.

I'm glad I put that disclaimer at the start of last week because the listener did write in saying that they'd listen to us up to good omens and then it'd skip forward to the bromeliad because they're very into that. And that we still had all the same in jokes, which luckily they were delighted by, but I'm a bit horrified, to be honest. Well, it's 50-50.

If you disagree with me, I will either panic backtrack and immediately agree with you or I will double down to the point it becomes a bit of two methods of coping with conflict and this has become a bit. Should we do quotes? We shall. Sorry, I was just opening the email to make sure we hadn't lost any, but we haven't.

We're good. We're fine. Awesome. Everyone's going to be okay. Don't panic. Damn it, I was going to panic. The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along

and trying to put things in it. One of the much quoted, practical quotes. And I always forget it's from this. Me too, which is why I was delighted to come across it. I always think of it as being from small gods or something. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure something vaguely rewired like this was in there. Yeah, quite possibly.

Delight. I think that speaks for itself. Yes. And you, Joanne? It is mine. You have a quote. 69, her, her. You know, I didn't even put her, her in the podcast notes.

I know. I know. So I did it for you. I'm supporting you. Thank you. It was magnificent. I'm sorry, I should have clearly put you off now. Magnificent.

Excellent. It was magnificent in its way, that plan. It was like a machine where every single bit was perfectly made, but had been put together by a one-handed gnome in the dark. It was crammed full of good ideas, which you couldn't sensibly argue with, but they had been turned upside down. The trouble was there were still ones you couldn't sensibly argue with,

because the basically good idea was still in there somewhere. Yes, troubling. Partly troubling and partly everything I try to do ever. Like the Tower of Peril. Like the Tower of Peril that is my life slash laundry. So going on to characters, Joanne, should we start off with not the originator of that quote, but the inspiration of that quote?

Yes, Nicodemus. I've got a lot to say about Nicodemus, and I'm going to save some of it for later in the episode, because I want to talk about it in the broader sense. But it's good character work for a character that's not even alive for the entire book, and it's only about 160 pages. Yeah, yeah, mine's about 150. Yeah, it's mad, isn't it?

It's not a lot of work. How much of an arc he gets in. It's an incredible arc, so... In the B-plot of a short book. I mean, as much as there is a B-plot. I'd say it's more A-plot, actually. I feel like Masculine going off to the airport's the B-plot. I was thinking because the other names are elsewhere.

I guess there's two A-plots, isn't it? Two parallel lines. Yeah, so he was introduced on my book in page 24, and he's introduced as unlikable immediately, or at least Masculine doesn't like him. He'd never liked the young gnome, and the young gnome had never liked anyone as far as Masculine could see. He kind of thinks as he talks,

and somehow convinces himself of whatever he's saying. Yeah, which is something with kind of fanatical people I've noticed, is they can just keep arguing themselves into a point. Yeah, yeah, we'll both come back to this later. So let's swiftly move on to grandson Richard, comma, 39. Grandson Richard, 39. The hero of the piece, clearly. Yes, the main character, I would say.

The globetrotter. The protagonist, the antagonist. The romantic interest. Grandson Richard, comma, 39. A hero. A hero for our times. I'm the poster of him in my wall. On the page that grandson Richard, 39 is introduced,

I have also noticed the joy of trying to understand headlines, if you don't know what a headline is, which I forgot to put in little bits we liked. Oh, gosh. I was reading through the Economist's concise style guide trying to find some good comparisons, and obviously, because it's the Economist, I couldn't really, I should have gone for some sun ones,

but there were some good examples of general use and everything like that. I very much recommend the, my recommendation of the week, which I always forget to do listeners, is buy yourself a copy of the Economist's style guide. I don't think it's available online anymore, so you'd have to buy it.

So grandson Richard is, of course, the grandson of the Arnold Bros. Est 1905. Yes. We as the audience understand this, I'm not entirely sure how well the gnomes understand this. I mean, they understand what a grandson is. Yeah.

They seem to think he's the grandson of Arnold, which is close. They're not far off. He's grandson of one of the Arnold Bros. But yes, grandson Richard, comma, 39, is apparently off doing a bit of globetrotting, and he's going to witness a satellite launch in Florida. Oh, my God, he's Jeffrey Pazus.

No, wait, Elon Musk. Did you hear about all those Starlink satellites getting burned up? Did I tell you about that last night? No, I missed that one. I think like 40 Starlink satellites that had just been sent up got dragged down into a geomagnetic storm, basically, burned up.

Nice. Yeah. I mean, yes, nice, because you don't must care. But also, poor people who need that internet. Oh, OK. Yeah, good point. I always feel bad for people who don't like internet. I'm mostly reacting nice,

because I don't know about geomagnetic storms, but now I've got something to Google when we're done podcasting. Oh, yeah. There's some really like poetic Reddit comments on the R news story, incredibly. Just like something like that. Ship sailing through space will encounter storms,

things like that. Just accidental poetry. Is there an accidental poetry subreddit? I bet there is. There's almost definitely. There's no accidental ICO, but that's not the same. No. Anyway, sorry.

Sorry, who else have we got? Sacco and Newtie, who I've sort of put in as stand-ins for. Sacco and Newtie are definitely syllables. Noot, noot. Say what you like about them, but they are syllabic. That's another one you can say in a really weird British accent to sound a bit homophobic. Is he a bit?

Is he a bit syllabic? Yes. Oh, my God, I've got some great innuendos for that later, then. Euphemisms. You wait till we get to website. You have to remind me, because that wasn't in my head while I was writing them down. But yes, they're the stand-ins for just the next generation, are they?

Yeah, they're the sort of next generation. Dorcas's acolytes, Newtie Kitty's clothes. It was a plump young gnome who wore trousers and was good at engineering. Volunteered to guard instead of staying home and sort of learning how to cook. Things were really changing in the quarry. I wanted to be a plump young gnome who wears trousers

and as good as engineering. I feel like I'm close. Jakob. Jakob. Which, did you get it before it was explained? Yes, because it was called diggers. Yeah, no, see, it went over my head and I was trying to work out what it was called.

Jakob for the entire book. I got it possibly slightly quicker than you because I live with a farmer here about JCBs. And I'm really glad it went over my head and I was trying to work it out for the entire book because as soon as right near the end is explained that it's a JCB, I had the fucking song in my head. I'm Luke, I'm five and my dad's Bruce Lee

drives me around in his JCB. It was like everywhere like 15 years ago. I wasn't very online 15 years ago. It wasn't even just online. It was like hugely popular in England. Like it was constantly on the radio. Yeah, like the music video was constantly on the music channels. This may be when I came in from the Parallel Universe

a little after that. Yeah, maybe. I don't remember that at all. I can't believe you don't know the JCB song. It was huge in the UK anyway. Like it was number one for ages. What? Yeah.

How old am I now, 30, 15 years ago? I wasn't even drunk that much at 15. No, I have no idea what I was doing. I'm not sure if it was 15 years or longer. I'm just going to google it quickly. Released 2004, so nearly 20 years ago. Yeah, no. 18 years ago.

I guess I might have known at the time. Yeah, how long? I would have been 12. I was pretty unaware of everything at 12. Yeah, I had the music channels on a lot and all radio one because we always listen to that in the car. So maybe that's it. I'll link to it in the show notes.

Anyway, it's really irritating. But yes, I got that it was a digger. It just my brain didn't make the connection to JCB. I've been trying to paint a small portrait of Everard Digby. Don't ask why. But it's gotten the song Eleanor Rigby in my head a million times this week. But hang on, who's Edward Digby?

Everard Digby. He was one of the gunpowder plotters. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Wait, wait. It's that there are five of them. It's the thing. Yes, the one I was painting was the gunpowder plotter.

He was hanged drawn on courted. Awesome. Are you painting the portrait of him before or after he was hunged drawn on courted? Before. I couldn't find a good reference. I'm only doing his head. Anyway. Well, look, he was only 27 or 28 when he died.

He looked so much older. Plotting gunpowder makes you look old. Well, like oil paintings also make people look older than they are. That's true. I run it considering the phrases she ain't no oil painting. Yes. Maybe the person who originated that phrase liked creepy looking wax and faced women. That's what I meant to.

Yeah, the Mona Lisa had her eyebrows removed accidentally during cleaning. Yeah, this was like a whole thing because when they figured out a restorative process and it proved that the Mona Lisa had eyebrows, someone like tweeted like, oh my God, the Mona Lisa had eyebrows and someone else was like, oh, it's all women care about. And she was like, I'm a fucking art history scholar. It's been like a topic of debate in circles for centuries about whether or not the Mona Lisa had fucking eyebrows. Fuck off, mate.

All right. Well, now I feel really bad because what I was going to say was I would be fuming if somebody put a picture of me up with no eyebrows. Oh, no, I would be too. God, Francine, you're so shallow. I'm so scholarly. You're so shallow, Francine. We are talking about the book.

I'm so tired. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm tired. I'm trying my best. I'm not helping. Normally, I can rally if one of us is tired. Fuck me with four bullet points in Dorcas.

I love Dorcas. He's one of my favourites. I love him so much. I think he's my favourite character in this book. He's so gentle. Yeah. Yeah, he is. And the way he looks after the machines is really interesting.

Like, he humanises them. What was it? Oh, yeah. He was always at a loss when people acted like this. When machines went funny, you just oiled them or prodded them or if nothing else worked, you hit the wither hammer. No, he didn't respond well to this. And then the other little quote I just found really charming was,

nah, he said, eventually, I've looked at the colours on flowers. They're definitely built in. I love that line. I just like the idea of like licking your thumb when you're rubbing on the flower. And I think, I reckon that's in there. I reckon that's hard-coded.

I don't think that's a skin. He gets a lovely moment near the end when they're taking apart a truck and he says, you're killing a truck. And Gribba says, well, it's just a machine. It's a metal. He says, someone made it. It must be very hard to make.

I don't like the idea of destroying made things. Oh, yeah. I hate destroying things that are hard to make. You can make more gnomes easily. You just eat them. And yeah, and like right, right at the end, when he's like cleaning up Jacob and feels really bad about

he's been left all covered in litter with footprints. He's cleaning them up all his UFOs hovering ahead. I know I just love him. He patted Jacob again. Well, I care. It's so sweet. He is lovely. And he's so nice to Gribba.

He gets his sort of final moment right near the end, literally the last page. He was still tired enough to go to the standing up, but he felt as mine fizzing with ideas. Of course, there were a lot of questions, but right now the answer didn't matter. It was enough just to enjoy the questions. Yeah, actually, that ties into like an earlier quote.

He stared at his feet. I'm still very ignorant, he said, but at least I'm ignorant about really important things, like what the sun is and why it rains. So it's something you've picked up on as a theme in Fracture books before of like the becoming aware of the ocean, not just the pebbles. Yes, a bit like way back in equal rights one

after Simon's lecturing. The wizards are very proud of themselves because now they're unaware about really huge universal things. I couldn't think of the, yeah, yeah. Which is always one of my favorite Fractuity themes. And then Granny Morky. Much better in this one. Much better in this one.

She's fun. I like how much glee she's sort of taking in things, being a bit doom and gloom. Yeah, she's definitely more in her element now. And I think that now she doesn't have turret to gripe at. She's having a bit more fun as well. Yeah.

Weirdly. It sounds like she didn't really want to get married in the first place. Yeah, I like her sort of, I mean, I've got a lot to say about grimmer in general in this book, but I like her sort of thing of, good. Women should do more of not doing what they're supposed to do.

Yeah. Like wandering around happily in the snow. You can see it, can't you? Like, we're going to be that, aren't they? Absolutely. And when the big digger reveal, when the big Jacob reveal happens, and she's like, I said digger.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see one of them. I heard about them. Also, and grimmer's realization that, oh, this person has actually like had a whole life. This is a whole person, not just this old woman, I know. Yes, yes. I only want to briefly mention the thing,

because I will talk about the thing a bunch when we talk about the next book. But I do like when masculine's talking to it while it's still dormant, and they're just aligned, the black cube managed to look sympathetic. Yeah, I was thinking I still can't afford therapy, but I might just get a black cube.

The whole reason we have this podcast is because neither of us can afford therapy. Yeah, but sometimes we can't manage the sympathy, so we'd better get a cube each just in case. Good point. There, there, Francine. Don't be cry. Don't be cry.

Oh, we're a little bit like Dorcas. Yes, but we've never hit each other over the head with hammers. No, no, we did. We did manage that much emotional development as youngsters. Yes, I'm very proud of the two of us. Unlike Angelo. Angelo, I'm a bit pissed off at Angelo. Right.

Right at the beginning. He was married in the spring to a young lady. They've already got a fine pair of youngsters, two months old and talking already. And then he sort of fucks off with masculine and girder. I know. And I get it. Like, I understand that, you know,

it's very within Angelo's character to really hope he can nick one of those aeroplanes. But it just, did he not think to bring his wife and kids along? Oh, God. You know not to bring young kids on an aeroplane to him. Yeah, good point. Or at least, like, I would have liked to have seen some stuff. Grim is sort of so frustrated waiting for masculine to come back

and you see her it really being a driving force for her. I would have liked to have met Angelo's wife and seen how she reacted to her. Yeah, even just a half sentence of like Angelo going and saying to the kids, I'll bring you back a alligator. Whatever. I'll bring you back a Florida juice. Yeah.

Yeah. Something. Yeah. Yeah, good point. Yeah, they're acknowledged not at all. I feel like it just the book would have been somewhat improved without that detail. Yeah.

Yes, I just noticed that he'd buggered off from his family, but it didn't even occur to me that they never mentioned them again. Oh. Yeah. In that case, I'm blaming the narrator. I'm blaming the narrator. Well, I was going to blame Terry Pratchett, but I suppose we shouldn't do that.

Well, he is the narrator. Oh, yeah, good point. God damn it, Terry. Anyway. I guess Terry Pratchett's all of these people. Maybe we're all Terry Pratchett. Oh, no, no, I'm getting an existential crisis and that's not till the end of the plan.

Okay, no, carry on. Yeah, no, we scheduled the existential crisis, Francine. Oh, fuck, I haven't got my cube. Got a ball of wool. I need my therapy cube. Can I offer you a ball of wool in this trying time? Oh, thank you. That'll cushion my ball from the tower of peril.

Anyway. Therapy cube. Masculine is obviously out of action for most of the book because he buggered off. Oh, in action elsewhere. In action elsewhere. Well, we'll find out possibly, will we? Oh, I hope so.

I was kind of assuming we would. Well, he went to an airport on the next book is called Wings, so I feel like we're in with a good chance. I'd like it. No, though, that wasn't it. No, that's not it. No, this book is kind of weirdly paced, though. Like, Masculine doesn't leave till like a good third of the way through

and then the entire plot happens. Yeah, yeah. It does seem more like this is a sequel rather than the second part in the trilogy, does that make sense? Yeah. But then I wonder if, because the second and third books are significantly, I would say, shorter than the first,

not like half the length or anything, but I wonder if it became too long and then it got split up and that's why the pacing ended up a bit odd, like if these scenes got taken out and per the end. It feels like this is like a B-plot to the plot of the next book. Yeah. But yeah, quite possibly just too long, so it ended up being split into two books,

so it's only got the set up. That's going to last. Yeah. Yeah, that might be an interesting question. But yes, I do like a rant he has at the things. The thing sort of tells him, this isn't the time to leave, you're all prepared. And Masculine's reaction is, I'll never be well prepared.

I was born in a hole. Life is being badly prepared for everything, which just, obviously I wasn't born in a hole, but it's still very relatable. Were you born in a barn? Barn? Luxury. We lived in cardboard box in middle of the road.

When I was young, we lived in a hole in the ground and only me, it's got eaten by Fox. We were killed for hole in ground. I love the four Yorkshire men sketch so much. I didn't sound so offensive when I did the impression. You're wearing a flat cap. I can pull it off. Or I'm somehow being extra racist in Yorkshire men.

That sketch always makes me think of your father because he will respond to almost any comment by saying it back and following it up with a luxury. Yeah, he can do the accent though, so that's something. B, there's a really good version of it. Guilty Feminist with Amnesty International did The Secret of Policeman's Ball. Like they kind of brought that tradition back,

which is what the four Yorkshire men's sketch is from. And I will see if I can find the episode and link to it. They've got a really funny, like kind of feminist take on the four Yorkshire men's sketch with like Ashley B. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, I wouldn't see that. There's also a great revival of the famous Going for an English Sketch,

which is just one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Fantastic. It's the same show. Yeah, yes, we'll link to that. Anyway. Anyway. Let's talk about grammar. Shall we talk about grammar? Yeah, I expect you have more to say than I do on grammar.

I was just, like, infatuated with Dorcas, so. Yeah, that's fair. I like her a lot more this book, similar with Granny Morky, though, in different ways. She's not doing as much of hand on hips. Well, okay, I'll jolly well do it then, so much as, like she's flawed in this, which is better. Yeah, she's a full character.

Yeah. It's like, once you take Maskelin away to play her off against, and she's got Dorcas instead, who is a very different sort of character, she gets to be more well-rounded. Yes. And she gets to kind of get to know other people better as well. I don't know, Maskelin seems to have taken up, yeah, this huge part of her psyche.

I do like her sort of last line to Maskelin, where, you know, she's almost going to say that she'll be upset if he doesn't come back. And she, you know, it's a silly idea. I have a terrible job explaining things to people. And I like the response of Maskelin, looked disappointed but defiant, and says, well, I'm going to try anyway, sorry.

Yes. Yes. It's very sweet. But then watching her sort of build up into her righteous fury over the course of the rest of the book. Yeah. It's like, it's not frustration as it is. It's like desperation. It's not quite pure anger, is it? Yeah. A bit of Dorcas is in a monologue where he thinks about the difference between her bad temper and actually furious.

Saying her bad temper seems to be, because her mind works quickly and she's impatient with people not keeping up. Whereas now this was fury, especially at the humans. And her sort of the Pistak Churchill speech. Yes. We'll fight them in the lane. We'll fight them at the gate.

Yes. Small scale world war. Small scale world war. I feel like I want to make the statement that as a podcast, we do not endorse Churchill. As a resident of the Channel Islands, where there's pretty mixed feelings about him there, anyway, even before people were like, oh yeah, and he starved like a whole bunch of people.

Yes. Because, you know, well, anyone, anyone he fancies looking into, what Churchill said about the Channel Islands. Because we're trying to be positive. Are we? Oh no, I'm so sorry. We're not doing well. Again, my big point today is existential dread.

Yeah. No, that's fair, mine too. But before existential dread, actually kind of existential dread with Grimmer and part of her fury coming from this fear of what humans would do with them and becoming this sort of flower fairy little pet. Yes. Yeah.

Oh, I don't want to go and paint flowers. I don't want to fix shoes. Yeah, it's like she's trying to think of making the best of a bad situation, but she just keeps going. She's like, I don't want to do that. No, I can't. I can't subjugate myself.

No, yeah. Yeah. When finally, Dorcas has enough with her, and I guess there's as much a Dorcas point as a Grimmer point for him losing his rag and saying, like, just stop shouting. Say please and thank you. Yeah.

Yes, it's the grease again with his machines. It's like greasing. He put it where it didn't sound dirty. It's greasing people up. People are a bit like machines, and words like please and thank you are just like grease. They make them work better. There we go, thank you.

Yes, the word lubrication wasn't there, but I couldn't think of how to say it. And very after he has explained why he's telling it to shut up, he sort of ends with, is that all right? And Grimmer, I would note, did not apologise. She didn't. But became a little easier to work with.

I think it's a... I really like her relationship with Dorcas in this, because I think they're bringing out the best in each other. Yeah, absolutely. And they didn't need to have like a whole argument about it. Dorcas made his point, Grimmer fumed for a minute, and then got better at it. Got better at it, yeah.

And she gets this kind of late stage self-awareness bit, where she's thinking about, you know, the fact that masculine isn't there. And she sort of goes, oh, I mean, I went on about the frogs and the flowers, and I didn't really think about her, think about him. And it's this sudden, like, as caught up in masculinities with, you know, the bigger picture for the gnome,

she is so caught up in what she wants, and also how she's been treated unfairly, which is fair, because, you know, if you think about how women have been treated as members of the gnome race for so long. Yeah, I mean, it kind of sounds like they were expecting... She was expected to be the supporting character anyway. I feel like a few months of not thinking about masculine

wasn't that much of a sin, but... No. But obviously, like, even if she didn't think of him romantically, they were clearly, like, best friends, or very close. It's more this awareness that she didn't have to be her main character the entire time. And it's a bit like...

It follows on from what Dawgson's saying to her, is that she's thinking about other people. Yeah. And at this point, she's actually thinking about other people in a productive way, and not in a, I'm fucking tired, do what you like way, although I do like that reaction of hers. Yes, although it was a bit disheartening.

It was disheartening, but it was relatable. Why are all our relatable things disheartening? It's the world is a terrible place. Anyway, location-wise, we're at the quarry for, like, the whole thing. I didn't really take any notes about that. We're on a quarry. I quite liked the continued theme that the gnomes are still

pretty fucking agoraphobic. Yes. The idea of not looking out the fourth direction, and then the uttered herra, and not being able to say the word field, and they're so scared when they're up on top of a hill. I thought it was interesting, like, he didn't just drop that. Yeah, no, that was good. I also like the fact that they refer to the field as corrugated earth.

Oh, yeah, that was great. And the air con blows the snow that way. Outside, it's called wind. Oh, thank you. Newtie's parents seem nice. Newtie's parents seem nice. I like Newtie and Sacco. I know I didn't say a lot about them,

but I'm pleased for them. Yes, I'm glad they're not crushed by a train. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked. Holy utterances, that man. Holy utterances. This is when they're trying to interpret the newspaper message as a holy utterance from Arnold Brose S1905.

Ah, yes. Gerda sort of very, very solemnly saying holy utterances are often difficult to understand, saying, well, this must be really holy then. Yes. That tickled me. That made me chuckle. And then on to the title of the name of the thing and the thing. The things in the thing.

We get the name of the thing and the thing. I'll probably talk about this more next week, partly because I started looking at Wikipedia pages about tree frogs and nearly bought a bromeliad as a houseplant, so it turns out you can get small ones as houseplants. Also, I did tell you I was doing research on that. Yeah, which is also where I gave up. Yes, that's no point us doing it twice. We've tried this.

But yes, Grimmer mentions these great big flowers called bromeliads, and there's pools in the flowers. And tadpoles grow in the pools and become frogs, and all they know is that flower. But the little idea of not little, but the idea of there's so many cool things, and I didn't know the world was that big. And now I've learned that I've got to stay here in a fucking quarry. Yeah, it was that proper outburst, and I got it very much. It's kind of a cousin to the thing we were saying,

where the more you learn, the more you realise you don't know. Yes. All I must say, Dorcas seemed to have more of an optimistic take on it. Yes, I think I'd prefer Dorcas's take to Grimmer's, but I understand Grimmer's at that particular moment. Flower fairies. The thing that Grimmer did not want to be, as you quite rightly said. They found a little book of fairy stories for kids and like how...

Is it a gnome who repair... It's an elf, isn't it? It's an elf who repairs people's shoes in the fairy story. That's right. Elf who repairs people's shoes, and then like the flower fairies are a lovely thing. And I was looking at some old Victorian illustrations of flower fairies recently, which are linked, which are very sweet and then less sweet. Did you ever have a copy of like that pressed fairy book?

Lady Cottington's Press Fairy Book. Yeah. And literally it is like almost within arm's reach of me right now. Oh, awesome. Oh, cool. Can I look at it next time I'm over then, because I was about to shell out for like way too much money for one, just because I wanted to see some of the pictures up close again.

Yes. Because they're like... Oh, actually, then... Oh, that's all right. That's not so bad. I can go on these. I must have looked at the wrong place. I thought it was like 50 plus quid, but it's not.

But yes, anyway, Lady Cottington's Press Fairy Book. Somebody bought that for me when I think I was too young to have it. Okay. It's actually quite rude in places, but you don't realise. It looks like just a sweet, funny little flower fairy book, unless you look closely. And it was, the premise is that there was a little Victorian girl, or not a Victorian, Edwardian girl who found fairies and pressed them

in her book like you would press flowers. And yeah, it's all very gory and just very cool illustrations. And that's what this made me think of, even though I had nothing to do with it. I actually had a big book called Flower Fairies growing up. I don't know, I must have got rid of it at some point. I bet you had the illustrations, I'm thinking of, because there was one really famous one. Yeah, I think that's the one I had.

And they were all fairies as different types of flower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so sweet. That the lady who did those, her friend, was also an illustrator who also did like flower fairies as like an homage to her sometimes, that's all. Oh, that's really lovely. Yeah, I'll dig out what I was looking at. And she, but yes, this was a little bit I liked, and not even in a silly like,

ha ha, Naked Flower Fairies, Pressure in a Bookway, I do also like flower fairies. No, that's fair, I agree with you. I enjoy many levels of fairies. It's fairies all the way down. Now we sound homophobic again, Francie. Yeah, it's your turn to talk about the weather. Yeah, I even had to put a note in next to this note saying, have you got any of these as your quotes?

Because if so, I can... No, for once I thought I'd actually give it a rest, so I'm glad you picked it up because I was feeling a bit sad about it. There's some really, really good weather descriptions in this book. Right at the beginning, the sky blew a gale, the sky blew a fury, the wind became a wall sweeping across the country, a giant stamping on the land, small trees bent, big trees broke, last leaves of autumn word through the air like lost bullets.

It is beautiful. I think I still prefer the rain just because it was so grim. Oh yeah, hang on, let me find that one. It rained dismal. That was my quote last week. Oh yeah, no, there's a good quote about rain in this one. Oh, there is it, sir. Sleet, it was soggy, not really water but not quite ice.

Rain with bones. Ooh, yeah. Isn't that a good line? That is a good line. I think I must have skim read over that bit, but yeah. Winter for me is very much the memory of sleet hitting you sideways in the face. So it's always a nice surprise when it's something else. And it's always sleet hitting you sideways in the face

when you're not in the mood to be walking, like you're walking to work or to school or to somewhere you don't want to be. Well, you're walking home but you're tired and you don't want to be walking, it's that. But this idea of the wind stomping across the land and breaking trees, because you've got these gnomes who are such a tiny part of the landscape that's not designed for them. And it adds this extra level of almost violence to the weather because the snowflakes are the size of the names faces.

Can you imagine a snowflake the size of your face? Yes, I want to be dead. I want to wear it like a flannel. So yeah, it's kind of like a brief veering into anthropomorphizing the weather and just like just enough to make it make his point. And then it goes back to just beautiful metaphor. And yeah, no, he's very, very good at weather. I've always said so.

Or I have certainly said so for several months. Yes, rain with bones. Rain with bones, yeah. Rain with bones. Rain with bones, that's our metal band name. If by some horrible twist of fate, we start a metal band. Not anti-metal, just anti-us doing metal. Quite anti-metal.

No, that's not fair. I'm anti-the kind of metal that gives me a headache. I'm anti-people who insist that it's the only genre of music. Yes. I'm also anti-heavy metal in drinking water, just so we're clear here. Not a fan of mercury poisoning. No. Right, sorry.

Workman like burning. Oh yeah. I've given up on segues for this episode. I don't know if you've noticed. I think that's fair. Yeah, I just quite like this again as just a little throwaway line that describes it perfectly, which is behind them, the truck burst into flames.

Not spectacularly, but in a workman-like way, as if it was going to go on burning all day. Just like, boom. You know exactly what that is, amazingly. One of my favorite tropes is something crashing into something not very hard and setting on fire. I think I've mentioned that months and months and months ago on the podcast, and this is exactly the kind of burning that I imagine when that happened.

Yeah, it's not a womb, it's a one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, is that talking points? Let's talk stuff. Let's talk about some points. Let's talk about some big stuff, big overarching theme of this book, or sort of two overlapping overarching themes

with some existential dread thrown in for fun. Yes, I've put a little nubbin of existential dread on the end of your big talking point, because I think that makes more sense. It does. But yes, you do tell me about new class systems. New class systems and old extremes, and it's just this overarching thread I saw from the book,

as they sort of adapt their life in the quarry and masculine wants to go and find bigger stuff, and they start, when things are hard, they start slipping into the older things. And it kind of starts with the Council of Drivers, which is introduced right at the beginning. And this is the new hierarchy that's formed post-store, because obviously in the store,

the hierarchies were all formed around the departments. Yeah. And the stationery had control of reading and knowledge, and Deli Catesin had the control over food, whereas now the hierarchy is kind of split into the drivers, and the people are in the back of the lorry on the long drive. It's very post-remolition, isn't it? Yeah.

The people who were part of a short burst of action find themselves at the top of a political system, which is not necessarily ideal. Yeah. But obviously neither was the hereditary class system. Yeah. Point is, all class systems are bad. Everything is awful and always will be.

Everything is terrible. But I find it's an interesting way the hierarchy develops, and how much masculine, like who is our protagonist, at least for the first part of the book, are really uncomfortable with the role he's got, and the fact that it's not done for him to go and hunt, which is kind of what he's good at, what he knows and what's familiar to him.

But that he can't go back to what's familiar is what drives him to go out and do something massively unfamiliar. It's interesting because at the end of the last book, he was very suited to being a leader for that situation. But it turns out that he's not necessarily the right leader for a static, you know, you need old Torrid back, maybe. Exactly. And it goes into this whole thing about his sort of really

shit proposal to grimmer of, I suppose we should get married now. Yeah. And I say, but I don't. Clearly neither of us want this. Yeah. Is that really what we should do? It's time they got married like the store names did

with the Abbott muttering words. It's this idea of he'd done lots of changing, he'd made change happen, but he was also dead against things not staying the same. Yeah. That's very human, isn't it? It is. I, of course, I want change.

Of course, I want adventure. I want progress. But if you break my routine slightly, I will crumble into a tiny little mess. Yeah, that's very relatable. And then you go into the like the religion of it all. And I like this idea of the conflict between Angelo and Gerda being the fact that neither of them were confident enough,

either in their belief in Arnold Roses, 1905, or in the atheism. And that's why they argued so much, because they were all so sort of trying to convince themselves. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think somebody who's so secure, in their opinion, doesn't keep going on like that, do they?

That's it. Yeah. Although I suppose that might be slightly different if you're trying to persuade somebody for the good of the whole society, but... Yeah. Well, that kind of brings us neatly to Nicodemus. Yeah.

Good old Nicodemus. But again, it's good fucking writing. It really is. And it's scary to read. The power vacuum that's created by Masculine and Gerda leaving. And he steps in. It's really hard to read because you see this happen. In real life, you see versions of this and this intense,

powerful belief and this insistence of, you know, well, things were better than they were, weren't they? Yeah. And so many people being drawn to the fact that somebody's sure of themselves. Yeah. That's like, well, we don't know what's going on, but he looks like he does.

So... Yeah. Yeah. And it goes into that whole thing of this, okay, well, let's return to the old ways. The new ways clearly not working. Yeah, that's it, isn't it? Let's not keep trying to find a...

Let's not find a solution. And by the way, let's go back to, yeah, even though in this case, it's impossible to return to the old ways. And this idea of building the stores in their heads and what he's really doing is he wants to bring back departments and not just class divides, but this idea of this really, really insular people not getting along and pulling together

quite so well as going into their own departments. Yeah, it is odd, isn't it? It's like somebody arguing for the return of feudalism. Yeah, very much so. I mean, it's this thing you kind of see in, obviously, I'm not calling Nicodemus a fascist, but in fascist ideologies, this idea of... It might be a bit of a fascist, I don't know.

It's a bit fascist around the ears, but one thing I find interesting about his extremism, I feel like you get two different kinds of extremist rising to power. You have a grand overarching political theory. I love it, tell me. I'm not sure how much of this is just fueled by the fact I watched Viva Vendetta again last weekend.

God, I love that movie. Well, if it is, then I'd like it even more, please tell. Great movie. Not so great comic book. Movie is kind of better. I've never read the comic book. Not worth it. Oh, no, I mean, it's fine.

It's a good comic book. It's just written by Alan Moore, who is an amazing comic book writer that really likes young women having sex with much older men. Stephen Fry's character is not gay in the comic book. Yeah. Also, as Pratchett notes in here, sometimes you do need a score.

Yeah, oh, absolutely. And the score of Viva Vendetta, I mean... Love a bitch. More music needs cannons. Sorry, please carry on. I'm going to stop interrupting, I promise. I was in a car with a couple of mates the other day, and I had control of the Orcs Court,

which you know is a mistake. You know this, Francie. No, it's not a mistake if I'm in the car with you. I would say you do it if we were trying to impress anyone else. Yeah, I didn't know one of these people very well. I obviously knew the driver well. And I was like, what do you want to listen to? And it's just like, yeah, whatever.

I was like, don't say whatever to me. Like, give me an idea. I was like, no, yeah, whatever. Fine, I'm putting the full 1812 overture on then. You can listen to 16 minutes of build-up and then a minute and 30 seconds of cannons. Anyway, moving on from my sex life. Anyway, right, no, grand overarching political theory

about fascist thriving to power. So sorry. Two types of these people rise to power. Again, moving on from my sex life. Sorry, okay. Right, yeah, two types of people. And one is about using the ideologies, playing on people's nostalgia and desperation for things

to be the safe old way to gain power. And then the other is the Nisidimus type, where I mean, he kind of has the power by default because he's looking after things on Girdis' behalf. But who really, really fucking believes what he's saying. He genuinely believes they need the store back. He believes it's so hard he is willing to stand in front of a moving car.

Yeah, it's not just posturing. It's not political maneuvering, like you're saying. Yeah, it's just as dangerous, but it's not disingenuous. It's what makes him an antagonist rather than a villain. Yes, yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And not even really an antagonist, but he's an opposing force.

He's a brief antagonist, I'd say. Yeah, for most of it, he's an opposing force. I'd say for about five minutes there, he's an antagonist before he gets squashed. Again, it's a weird pacing thing because he's kind of not present. They're in the background, takes advantage of the power vacuum, becomes an extremist for a bit. And then you still got another 50 pages of the book.

It is a weird pacing bit, but I quite liked that as a weird pacing thing because you knew what was happening. You knew what was going to happen, and it was quite nice to get it over with in a good way. I didn't want to read the rest of this book with that going on as a plot. Yeah, now I'm glad the plot dies off when it does. It's not a bad choice to have the weird pacing, but it is still.

But it is surprising when it suddenly ends, yeah. You can imagine if this book was being written in a more spread out way that the Nistima stuff would get a slower build-up and maybe a wider pay-off. And actually, if he was writing this for adults, maybe Pratchett would have written more of the political build-up. Yeah. Maybe it's simplified as much as it is squashed, yeah.

But for that, it's still incredibly well written because like I said, it's a relaysable thing. We've seen things like this happen over and over again in the world. Who among us has not risen to power on the back of a power vacuum on the back of a firm belief in Arnold Bros. That's 1905. But you compare it to Grima's almost leading from the back thing she ends up doing, especially in the sort of later third of the book,

where she's somewhat despairing and she's saying, okay, well, I can do it or don't then. And how it kind of works better as leadership and it gets the gnomes doing what they need to do a lot faster and with less dithering. And some of it's the fact that what she's suggesting is better. I think one of the best moments when there's a second power vacuum because Nesodemus has gone

and they've tied up the human and someone's suggesting that they torture it. And Grima's like, well, go on then. Oh, no, I didn't mean I would torture it. Don't sit there and say, yeah, if you want him tortured, torture him yourself. Which, you know, or don't torture also kind of a no-no on the true show, make you proud. Yeah, I think that's a very obvious, it's not even a reference as in a reflection of something I'm guessing

practically was very bothered by which is this calls for punitive justice from random members of the British public like, oh, they should all be thrown in the sea. Okay, go on then, try them and see. No, I'm not going to throw them in the sea. They're all behind. Just should be done. Yeah, should be done.

Should be done. Someone should be throwing them in the sea. Yeah, I think if you don't want anyone in charge, you would throw someone in the sea. Apart from Black Lives Matter protesters throwing statues of old racists into the sea, that we can approve of. Yeah, yeah, thumbs up for throwing statues in the sea. Almost all statues, because even cool statues in the sea put there deliberately. I like the idea of, I know they'll get eroded quite quickly, but I'm very, I'm not very,

oh, what's the word? It's not the last phobia for massive objects under the water. It's mega-lasophobia, something like that. The kind of combination of massive man-made objects and being under water. But I don't have that. I just love the idea of coming across a giant statue under water. Yeah, no, very much so. I meant to put more giant statues in the sea.

That's the political platform I'm running on. Yep. And I'm right behind you in a JCB. Cool. I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's three, three. That's going to get my head when I look at it. I can't click that long, can I do it? You've got to.

All right, I will, fine. You're very persuasive. I am. Speaking of So Is Grimmer, again, her sort of leading from the back thing, when she's trying to sort of chivvy some people to go along and rescue Dorcas, and 15 people came along mostly out of sheer embarrassment. Yes, well, I can't not then, can I? And it's, you know, as much as this book is sort of quite scary and that you see this extremism

rising so quickly and then falling so quickly, partly again, because obviously it's written by, it's about the gnomes and they do live these faster lives. So you will see those power things ebb and flow so quickly. But this idea at the end of people stop complaining when it's really bad. Yes. Yeah, at that point, you just kind of try and survive moment to moment, don't you? Yeah. And that being kind of what unites the gnomes much more efficiently than either Nicodemuses

wanting to rebuild the store in their heads or Grimmers. Right, just, can you fucking do it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. It kind of ties into, like, I had some notes on existential dread, as I foreshadowed plumsily, but kind of existential dread slash anger. So, like, briefly Nicodemus had a very different reaction to the rest, kind of, he couldn't conceive of their unimportance.

And so he kept moving the goalposts in his head. And so when it was, oh, here's the signage we will use to stop that lorry. And then it didn't, it didn't. So it was because you cut the chain, because I can't be wrong. So I will, we've talked about it before as a circular reasoning kind of thing. We must always come back to this conclusion and I'll work backwards from here. And eventually believed it so hard he got squashed, yeah. But then from that kind of comes this real existential dread for the rest of them, because

I love the quote, the name sat in the noisy darkness, not even daring to speak, and felt they're well vanishing, not because the humans hated names, because they didn't notice them. And this is, like, proper existential horror, it's like a peeve at that genre. So it's almost sort of crafty. And it pops up a lot in the Magnus Archives as well. It's the idea that the world or the universe is populated with these gargantuan forces that won't kill you out of spite, but just because they didn't notice you.

And so there's just no chance of reasoning, of bargaining, of escaping, whatever. You are insignificant, you are nothing. It's like the other side of the pale blue dot. It's the terror of perspective rather than the joy or the comfort of it. And I loved it. And then Grandma just gets angry about it. And she's like, notice me, you know, fuck you, notice me. And like, I saw, I liked the parallel between her getting

super angry or super despondent and then angry at the fox and hitting the fox, and then the fox didn't come back. And then she thinks she can not necessarily consciously, but she tries to do the same thing with the humans. She gets really despondent and then really angry and tries to kind of metaphorically hit the human on the nose with the stick by driving JCB at them, which didn't quite work. But you can see what she was doing there.

See what she's going for. No, I respect it. Yeah, absolutely. And luckily there was a bit of a Deus ex machina at the last second there, but I liked what she was going for. As it was more masculine, ex machina. Nice Deus ex masculine. Anyway, sorry.

You were having a really good moment there. I interrupted you. No, no, I was actually coming to my trailing off, so that was good. Now it looks like it's your fault. Excellent. But you know, the existential dread idea and just the weird, like Jesus, what is our place in this world thing is a great theme to this book because, because again, keep him back to Nicodemus, but he is so determined that he knows

that they're placing the world. Their place in the world is the world is for them as written by Arnold Bros. S1905. Yeah, it's like the centric. What's it called? Helio centric is the sun one. That's the correct one. What's the one where they thought the earth was the centric, as they say.

Terra centric? No, that's Latin. Fuck nice. Could be. Let's call it Terra centric because that works. But yeah, yeah, it's the, yes, we're in the center of the map. We're in the center of the universe. Of course this is ours.

And it motivates them in different ways. Grimmer is frustrated and comes to that conclusion right before the DSS. Masculine comes down of they're never going to give us peace. And I'm going to be stuck in that fucking flower fairy outfit soon. Whereas Masculine's got this hang on, we are tiny and insignificant in this world that was not built for us. Let's go and find the world that was built for us. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess I didn't actually make that connection between the very last bit that, yeah, when she realized she wasn't going to get peace. It's like, oh yeah, it turns out you didn't want to be noticed, I guess. Or they did, but like it turns out the consequence was not good. Stick to existential dread. That's the message of this book. Speaking of messages, do you want to talk about some word stuff? I do, I do.

I'm going to make so many jokes about things that sound homophobic in this section. Yes, you are. But before we get to the proper section, actually, I just want to make sure I put this in. The phrase, it's going to make noises in the telephone made me very happy and it didn't fit anywhere else. I know that's fair. So now I think of our podcasters.

We're going to make noises in the microphone. I literally have a microphone in front of me and still for a second, I thought you were about to say microwave. I don't know why. You don't even have a microwave. Oh, no. Right, sorry. Anyway, should we make noises into the microphone?

So doing a slightly better job of explaining what I meant last week, it's semantic ambiguity, which is my euphemism also. It's a bit semantically ambiguous, you know? It's, you know, semantically ambiguous. Exactly, yeah. But anyway, obviously, as you can work out from the phrase, it's when a word or a phrase or a sentence taken out of context can mean one thing or another.

So an example from Richard Nordquist, we saw her duck. The words her duck could refer to either the person's duck, that person owns a duck. Oh, fuck, it's in the other room. Yeah, it could refer to something she did. She could duck and there's really no way of telling when it's completely taken out of context like this. And when it's taken out of context, for the names, obviously,

they don't have context. They don't. Yeah. They've got no context. And then that made me think about word sense disambiguation, which I think we might have mentioned briefly before, or I've just talked to you about it. But it's an ongoing problem in AI and computer linguistics.

So it's trying to teach computers to identify when a meaning of a word would be used in what context and how to identify that. And because they don't, yeah, they don't have the same context with you. So the solution to that, finding it or not finding it, kind of affects search engines, obviously. That's a big one. Google's improved quite a lot on that. And I think I talked about it in terms of Google Translate

or something before. But yeah. So that's quite interesting and all to do with like AIs and stuff. And then I decided to look for ambiguous signage because that sounded more fun. And I found lots of collections of them, unsurprisingly. And I just, a couple of my favorites, yield when occupied. So where does that mean?

It means you have to yield if you're busy. Oh, these are funnier in a science shit. I haven't tried to read them out for, or there's a science thing pet area with a man sitting next to it, petting the ground. And then finally, if your dog does a poo, please put it in the litter bin. In the dog.

Yeah. Anyway, listeners, you'll enjoy that much more in a picture format. So I will link a few of those pages. And I do apologize for not realizing how bad that would be in audio only. Ah, I still liked it. But the interest, I got some interesting bits in first. Remember that. Don't remember this bit.

Okay, good. Shall we do some more interesting bits? Do you have an obscure reference for Neil? Yeah. Although it's a very brief one because I've decided, I decided as I was reading it, that you'd probably like to do some of the research for this for a rabbit hole.

I know you're going to plan one day. So it's about horse horn. Yeah. And horse horn has a lot of folklore surrounding it, which I didn't realize I was looking at horse horn berries because I remembered something about their medicinal use. And yeah, apparently they're meant to be good for heart, health and stuff.

But yada yada. So it was actual medicine. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, I don't like to just shit all over. I mean, yeah, there's lots of like, a herbal cures that work. And interestingly, there's like a lot of research being done into that at the moment of like really old books

that we just completely dismissed. And there's something they've done with cow bile recently, which is like a new antibiotic they've now discovered that they found a recipe in a really old book. Wow. Because yeah, the thing is, a lot of this was written down because it worked. Yeah.

And then obviously a lot of it was written down because they thought women were always haunting things or whatever. So it's kind of picking it apart. Anyway, point is, horse horn's folklore is interesting. It's considered like a fairy tree and like a gateway to the underworlds. It's very bad luck to cut it if it's not in bloom. And in the Victorian language of flowers, it represented hope,

which I think might be what he was doing there. Right. Yeah. And then just a little trivia about it. Young shoots and unopened flower buds of horse horn used to be known as bread and cheese. No. I'm not sure why.

They do not taste like bread and cheese. Yeah, well that's just... So yeah, just a fun little nickname for them, I guess. Yeah. That's that. Amazing. Horse horn berries. Well, I think that's everything we can say about diggers,

part of the bromeliad. And a lot of things we can say that have nothing to do with diggers, part of the bromeliad. Happy Valentine's Day, by the way, listeners. This is coming out on Valentine's Day. So we love you all. We do. And same Valentine sends you bees.

And plague. Look it up. Don't, if you're a patron, because... Oh yeah, no, don't look it up for you. I'll be looking it up for you in this month's rabbit hole. Speaking of... I did... No, I did put that out.

Okay, good. Yeah, sorry. Yes, you did. I just had a sudden moment of like, oh, fuck, I did release the last one, didn't I? Yes, I did. Well done, Francine. Anyway, sorry.

So yes, we'll be back next week with the final part, Wings, before returning to the disc next month. I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky. You wouldn't be able to resist. Sorry. Now I will shut up. Of course I can't.

Thank you. Until next week, dear listeners, you can follow us on Instagram at the true show, Makey Frat, on Twitter at Makey Frat Pod, on Facebook at the true show, Makey Frat. You can join our subreddit community, r slash ttsmyf. Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, albatrosses, and Valentine's,

the true show, Makey Frat Pod, at gmail.com. And if you want to support us financially, go to patreon.com for the true show, Makey Frat. Exchange your hard earned pennies for some bonus nonsense, which this month may include the origins of the Valentine's Day. And there'll be some stuff about bees and plague victims. Spoilers, in the meantime, dear listener, I'd very much like to know

what masculine has been doing these past few weeks. I will die before I follow that advice about sleep hygiene. And that advice is right. All right, I'll see you later. All right, love love, bye. Love love, bye.