The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 80: Carpe Jugulum Pt. 1 (Let's Get Liminal)

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

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 “Carpe Jugulum”. One Magpie! HaHaHa! Two Magpyr! HaHaHa! 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:Tom Parker obituary | Pop and rock | The GuardianCarpe Jugulum - Colin SmytheThe Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Carpe JugulumPratchett on the title - alt.fan.pratchettMating Pandemonium - Elephant VoicesWhy are we so superstitious about magpies? - Country LifeThe Folklore of Discworld - Sir Terry PratchettMagpie (TV series) Intro - YouTubeWhat is the Mysterious Rule of Three?The Triple - TV TropesThe Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase by Mark Forsyth“Blue Beard” | Fairy Tales and Other Traditional Stories | Charles Perrault | Lit2Go ETCThe Bloody Chamber - WikipediaLancrastian Army Knife - Discworld & Terry Pratchett WikiMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

Today, I was doing linear interpolation, which means I had to learn what linear interpolation was. No, I don't know. I'm not going to explain it. I was deciding whether I was going to ask. It's maths, Francine. It's dangerously close to physics. And we know what happens if I go there. Newton didn't. And that's the problem. I'm rereading Rivers of London right now, which obviously gives me a very different perspective on Isaac Newton, secret wizard. Isaac Newton, secret wizard. He would have been if he could have been. He was an alchemist,

that's for sure. Yep. And you know what they say about alchemists? Linear interpolation. Run the guilds exploding again. But yeah, I forgot how good these were. These are because I haven't read like the last two or three. I've only got up to the hanging tree, so I'm rereading them all. And then I'm going to grab the last few I don't have. I haven't read the last one yet. I've had it at home for ages. And then when I start, it'll be gone in like a day. Yeah.

Unput. Downable. God, I hate that. Unput. Downable. Yeah, sorry. That's an awful word. I can't say that. Yeah. Well, I couldn't think about, I couldn't think of pick what to read next. I know I've got books on my shelves that I literally haven't read that I should read. And there's just millions of things I haven't read that I should read. But I decided to just start at the beginning of my bookshelves and see how I feel about wandering through them, which meant starting with Aranovich, because he's got two

ways at the beginning of his name. The Crafty Bugger. Yep. That's how they get you. I've changed my name to Ardvark. Please, please change your name to Ardvark. So in first and last name, please be Ardvark. Ardvark. Ardvark. What's your middle name again? That's what A.A. Milne stands for, little no fact.

Ardvark, Ardvark, Milne. I think so. Can you dispute it? No. No. I mean, I could. I could literally Google it, but I'm not going to because I'm enjoying it. I appreciate that. As opposed to Jolkin, Rolkin, Rolkin, Tolkien. Oh, yeah. Rolkin, Rol.

It's J. Rolkin, Rolkin, Rolkin. Ah, yes, of course. And crazy saxophonist Lewis. Right, we're going to run out of these soon. Now, now I've run out of them. Desperately staring at. George. No, I can't think of any other good R words.

Randy Renaissance is good. George Randy Renaissance Martin. It fits. Yeah, no, we'll go with it. Cool. Okay. So the world's awful. Yeah, that's that's the thing. Winter came back after a week of spring and we've had snow and hail and things for the last two days, which is lovely as the energy prices shoot up.

Yeah, the tabloids have gone for such cheerful slogans as April Cruels Day. Yeah, beautiful. Oh, it's April Fool's Day. It is April Fool's Day. That's a less depressing thing. Listeners, we're becoming a Harry Potter recap podcast. This is works. This isn't going out on April Fool's Day.

Yeah. I might have edited that there, but I don't, we can't afford to lose like the 5% you wouldn't listen till we, we revealed the jokes three seconds later. I don't think anyone's going to believe us for a start. We're very convincing. I'm not. You're an actor. Not anymore. Gave it up.

Oh, does that mean you just forgot? Yeah, completely forgot. Yep. Can't lie. Cool. Have you seen me decent April Fool's stuff? No, it's been, there's not been a lot of it. I think everyone's too busy being horrified to really do the April Fool's thing this year.

Normally there's some quite funny corporate ones. Yeah. Well, we haven't had California properly wake up yet, have we? No, true. And they do it all day in America. Americans go all day. BBC used to occasionally do some funny ones, things about pasta farms. Yeah, but then they spent the next 20 years going on about that one time they did the pasta farms.

Oh yeah, good point. It was quite a good one in our local paper one time where they claimed that there was going to be a Barry's-Nedman's version of the London Eye. I'd have enjoyed that. Just looking through the BBC now and honestly, if they've done one, I couldn't tell you. I think at this point, nothing's really credulous. Oh, the Will Smith hit Chris Rock. Maybe that was just a long con. I feel like that probably wasn't an April Fool's joke.

God, that was a fucking weird 24 hours. I woke up on Monday morning. So this is obviously going to be a week ago from when this came out. So I woke up on Monday morning after the Oscars, quite looking forward to, oh, I'll look through the outfits because that's the only bit of the Oscars I'm interested in now. And since I no longer work at a cinema, I don't have to feign interest in the rest of the shit. And then saw, because I obviously look at my phone as soon as I wake up because I am a broken person. The first thing I saw was a Guardian News headline about Will Smith punching Chris Rock.

So obviously, I didn't read the Oscar. I just went to Twitter and God, the takes for the opinions. It was so much deeper than I thought. I just thought, oh, that's really funny. Dude, the Oscars, what the fuck? And then it was like, no, this is about racism in America. This is about toxic masculinity. This is this is about ableism.

I don't have the energy to personally have an opinion on it. I don't know if you formed one. I have an opinion. How do you feel? Everybody involved is a twat. But also it's really quite fucking funny. I quite enjoyed the little discussion we all had earlier about obituaries. Wow, that's a depressing thing to say.

You and I and our other friend in the group chat were discussing the nature of the obituary. Yeah. And whether it should be sugarcoated or even handed or the particularly bitchy obituary that we read. The one that's passed on to brain cancer. Yeah, that was the problem. Someone posted on Twitter, what's his name? It's Tom Parker. You made a very good point.

It's as much about being a decent journalist as it is about being a decent person. Yeah. And I think one in theory should lead to the other somewhat. I'll link to it in the show notes listeners. If I don't edit this bit out, the obituary of Tom Parker by Caroline Sullivan is just the shittiest thing I've ever. It's not the shittiest thing I've ever read, obviously. There's a really bad obituary.

It reads like a low-grade interview in troves. It just got recycled for this because they can't pay proper writers to do obituraries anymore. And now she's one of those really awful, arcy, sarcastic fucking entertainment writers I hate. There are so few entertainment writers I don't hate. I'll tell you that, Joanna. I have a couple of entertainment writers I'm a huge fan of and they're basically the only ones I read. And by a couple of, I basically just mean Joanna Robinson, who pretty much only podcasts now. Oh yeah, obviously, Mark Burroughs.

I feel like it goes without saying that the podcast supports Mark Burroughs. But now I can't think of any more that I am. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure there are a few I don't hate, but it's just, do you know what? Yeah, I'm going to read the first paragraph of this. A manufactured boy band has two objectives. In the short term, it is to sell as much product from albums to dolls as possible. The longer term aim is to achieve the kind of fame where the wider public can put names to the members' faces,

thus spoozing the way for post-band careers. The wanted British Irish quintet, who helped revive the stagnant boy band sector in the early 2010s, did not quite reach that point, blah, blah, blah. This is the start of an obituary. The man's name isn't mentioned until the third paragraph. The fact he's died isn't mentioned until the fourth paragraph. And it's kind of weirdly put in in an awkward subclause. Yeah.

The writer's like boring take on boy bands is not more important than what the fucking guy's life was. He was 33 years old and died of a brain tumour, and that's how you're going to, yeah. Also, I did a shit ton of charity and a raising awareness work, which I only found out about because of the comments on Twitter, under the obituary, not the obituary itself. Oh, exactly. Well, there was a deeper point I didn't get into in the group chat because, as I said, I was finishing a sock, but I started thinking about was this weird idea of parasocial relationships, and especially when it comes to celebrity death,

because it feels like it's almost the opposite when it's a minus celebrity, it's not a fair way to say it, but like I couldn't have told you who Tim Parker was, and I forgot the one that existed. Of people like almost wanting to show how little they care, it's the same people who comment over fuck's sake, this isn't news under literally every celebrity news article. It's very much that's attitude. As opposed to the weird obituaries of the famous people that we all feel like we had sort of a claim on or a stake and like David Bowie passing away, those obituaries like were held to a much higher standard because everyone, not everyone, obviously.

Yeah, Caleb Moran's was fantastic. Caleb Moran wrote a beautiful piece, but people felt more invested. Yeah, I didn't have really much more to go with than that. Well, to bring it back around to Terry Pratchett was a very weird thing when, you know, people felt felt a genuine sense of grief that they had lost something like a distant family member when Terry Pratchett passed away because he'd been such a big part of his readers' lives. Yeah, I'm not being funny.

I cared more than I would have if a distant family member passed away. Not me. I'm not meaning to sound terrible. Not meaning to sound terrible. That's just my default state. Actually, that's vaguely relevant. We recently passed the anniversary of his death, don't we? Yeah, it was a few weeks ago and we didn't tweet much and stuff because I think I was probably still vaguely in the grip of a fever at that point.

I was ill. This is why I should have passwords to things. When you're fever dreaming. That was a great week. I was off my tits for it. I can't remember any of it. Oh, good. Yeah, good fun. Anyway, we've talked enough, Boloch.

Do you want to make a podcast, Francine? I guess we can make a podcast, yeah. Don't have to, if you don't want to. No, I want to make a podcast. Yeah, let's make a podcast. I mean, if it's OK with you, no worries, if not. I am worried, either way. I am always worried.

I fucking love ridiculous anxiety tumblr memes at the moment. I'm very into tumblr text posts at the moment. It's it's far too late for me to be getting so into this niche genre of comedy, but it's here now and now it's been melded with my brain. I love it. Right. Podcast podcast. Hello and welcome to the Two Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Joe Pratchett's Discworld series,

one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan and I'm Francine Carroll. And we are here to talk about Carpe Juggulum. Yeah, the 20 Carpe Straighten the Juggulum. Yeah, we're going to seize that throat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, as well as the more you think about it, doesn't it? Yeah. No on spoilers before we crack on.

We're a spoiler like podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book Carpe Juggulum, but we will avoid spoiling major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown until we get there. So you dear listener can come on the journey with us. In a carriage in the dead of night with many black plumes. Plumes. Plumes.

I'm going to keep the lifting to a minimum, I promise. Yes. It doesn't pick up well on the microphone, find you noise reduction. So. Damn it. And I was going to do the whole episode in the start of ego. Follow up. We got stuff to follow up on Francine. Yeah, Steve Jeffrey replied about bromide in your tea.

So we were talking about the reference to putting something in tea. Having something to do with libido was probably a real thing. And indeed, the earliest use of bromide was in medicines. Some bromide salts, notably potassium bromide, were found to be natural sedatives were prescribed in the 19th century as remedy for epilepsy. However, they had a curious side effect. They dampened the libido, which only reinforced the common misconception at the time that epilepsy was brought on by excessive masturbation.

The side effect also lies behind the urban myth that bromide was added to the tea of prisoners in World War One soldiers in order to reduce sexual urges. Ah, that was an urban myth till it started the research and I hadn't even heard of the urban myth. I'd heard of the urban myth, but I'm not sure if I thought it was a urban myth or a urban fact. You remain one step ahead of me, Joanna. I was myth taken.

I saw that joke from Buffy. I'd have never known. I know, but at least one listener. All right, fine. Other follow up from Andrew Broadford emailed us. First, a reminder that you're great and your podcast is very good. Thank you, Andrew. I might just leave it there. Yeah, no. No, quick theory.

And I like this. We're told Mrs. Rinswin ran away before Rinswin was born, but never where she went or why. And then the last consonant, we meet Bill Rinswin, Archchancellor of the University in XXXX. What if that's where she ran away to? They could be half brothers. There's more than enough magical interference

and timey, whiny nonsense involved to smooth out any issue. So without a compelling argument, to the contrary, I am adopting this as my personal headcanon, says Andrew. And I agree. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, she climbed a bit of driftwood with some camels. Obviously. She was on the camel on the driftwood.

It's the only way to travel alone. Driftwood, Camel, Mrs. Rinswin. Then Turtles all the way down. Yeah. And Paula on Twitter confirmed for us that Cal Gauley is where it is, which is the middle of nowhere with no water, because it's Australia's fifth most productive goldmine. The giant hole in the ground is three and a half

by one and a half kilometers, and it's called the Super Pit. Oh. And it's the biggest goldmine in Australia. The Super Pit. Goodness me. Super Pit. My nickname. But enough of the last consonant. Let's talk about copy jugular.

OK, back to the first consonant. Yes. Introduce us, Francine. Introduce us to the book. Well, Joanna, this is the 23rd Discworld Book. By the way, we missed marking the halfway point. I feel like we should have done that. What? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. Also, this is our ETS episode, which is a nice round number.

And there are 41 Discworld Books. We're now on the 23rd. So listeners, if you could retcon it so that we said something notable, a couple of episodes ago, an episode and a half ago, I suppose. Two and a half episodes ago. If you could generally retcon that we ever say anything notable, actually, that would be great. It would save us a lot of work.

Yeah. Anyway, it was released on the 5th of November. Very memorable date, of course, of 1998. I can never remember the 5th of November. It was adapted into a play by Stephen Briggs in 1999. Yeah. Lovely. The title. I've had today, as Joanna knows, because I've sent her a few screenshots,

I spent a happy half hour to an hour digging through the alt.fan and alt.book.pratchit forums from the late 90s, because Pratchit was quite active online then, and found some useful bits of snark. And he was talking about the title at one point. He's so grumpy on the internet. I love it. It's great.

Somebody commented, why isn't the title of Carpe jugulum? Carpe... Oh, fuck. Eugulum? Or lugulum, maybe? The current convention is to use v for the consonental u, but to keep consonental i as i and not j.

Did the period in which the old way was still taught intersect with the period when Pratchit took Latin or was the j adopted in order to dumb down the title? Question mark. Smiley face. Pratchit's head. Who gives a damn about a current convention? There will be another one long soon.

I've just pulled a couple of books off the reference shelf at random and found plenty of j's in Latin. Passions come and go, and importantly, non-scholars. Pratchit's status, most people, lag well behind, if indeed they're even aware of the changes. The important thing here is that someone whose knowledge of Latin is only average

will have a much better chance of getting Carpe jugulum because of the jugulum jugular resonance than they'll have with Carpe eugulum, which, depending on the font, will get most Brits thinking about ears, lugulum. There we go, see? He's right. It's hardly a case of dumbing down.

It is, worse, an acceptable, if brackets, arguably, archaic usage for clarity, as opposed to say, fabricate, DM. PVNC. PVNC. And he's ended with a smiley face. Notably, I would say,

Pratchit puts a little nose in his smiley face, which the original commenter did not. Old fashioned. Remember the days of a nose in a smiley face? Yes. Now, I may have said this on the podcast before, but I think it's important. I don't think that the current thing

that all software seems to do of turning the, apart from signal, which we use, which is good, of turning the little colon bracket into a round circle, yellow smiley face. A emoticon. An emoticon.

I don't think that's acceptable. No, I don't like it. If I mean a yellow emoticon face, then I choose one, and I choose the correct one. However, it doesn't convey the same emotion as colon bracket. And definitely not the same emotion as colon hyphen bracket.

Yes. So if whoever's in charge of these things is listening, could you please fix that for me? Thank you. Yeah. I mean something very specific if I use the colon bracket as a smiley face. And normally what I mean is that I am being a dick.

This is not relevant to the book Carpe Giacomo. Is it Francine? No. Which isn't Joanna. So perhaps we should... Should we keep talking about the book Carpe Giacomo? Yeah, okay. Would you like to read the blurb?

Okay. And then a point that I could be... I don't remember actually, but I'm not going to. Carpe Giacomo is Terry Pratchett's 23rd Discworld Novel, but the first to star vampires is not the first to feature vampires. We had vampires in Witches Abroad. But I'm not going to be able to think about it because the vampire in Witches Abroad

didn't exactly have a starring role. It was a brief bat that Griebo ate. Did I say something about it being the first one with vampires? No, the blurb did. Right, right. Yes. This is the first one to star vampires. Indeed, indeed.

And I'm going to allow it because it says star and not feature. It's got a couple of similarities to Lords and Ladies, isn't it? But I think as you noted with the last kind of echo one, it's not the same as Pratchett redoing it again, as he kind of did. It's these plot works for this setting. It does. Just take the bones and rebuild it.

I'm going to go out and say, I think this is a kind of an underrated Discworld book and an underrated Witches book. I never see this one in people's top 5s or top 10s, including my own. But I'm also going to come out and say, on this read, I've decided it's actually the best Witches book and going up into my top 10, if not top 5.

Okay, okay. I will make my decision on that by the end. And I will be continuing to present this unifying theory as we work through the book and write that down. Joanna, Unifying Theory, Rackets, 10. Cool. This section goes up to page 129 in the Kofi paperback

and ends on the line she reached into her sack and took out a thick pair of socks and set off onwards and upwards, handily followed by some little asterisks for a nice break. In this section, a star or similar falls specifically as something small and blue enter Lanker Valley

unsurreptitiously. A black cult rolls in with a bickering family within and changes in the air as a posh invite leads Nanny to prepare. Agnes, now resident in Magretts Old Cottage, drives a witch's hat on for size, watched by two magpies. That's the extent of the rhyming.

I was going to see what you'd rhymed with cottage then and I'm very upset, but carry on. The only thing I could think of to rhyme with cottage was frottage and I don't want to put that word in our podcast. That's both cottage, but that's me. Anyway, Brani is definitely not looking for anything at all when she gets a knock on the door

and flies out to a difficult birth and an even more difficult decision to be made. Fire flickers in the castle muse while Nanny and Agnes head to the castle proper to celebrate the naming of Magretts New Baby. Mytaleoats, an Omnian priest, brought to Lanker for the proceedings, steps out as Agnes chats to Queen Magretts.

Meanwhile, a highwayman becomes a handy snack as the coach dwellers discuss the country's witches. Flying home and not to the party, Granny spots the mist rolling in from Uberwald. Magretts frets that Granny may have missed her invite to be a godmother. Nanny steps in as a placeholder as Varence tries his best at kinging and politicians gather

for the naming at midnight as Magretts hopes for a dramatic entrance at the last minute. She gets her wish, but it's not Granny bursting through the doors. Agnes and Nanny meet the Count and his family, though Perdita, Agnes' inner voice, is steadfastly unaffected. As Oat suffers a headache,

Agnes and Nanny head home, meeting centaurs on the way. Back at the castle, Magretts meets a young man who seems to know her name. Nanny spots vampires in the throng and steps out to interrogate their Igor. After the handsome Vlad appears to enjoy a delicious garlic canapé,

things get fuzzy around the edges as Agnes and Nanny meet the Count and his family, who are the first centaurs on the way. Back at the cottage, Perdita takes over and fills Nanny in who's suddenly determined to take down the mind-altering magpies and wonders where Granny might be. As Hodgzar chases a lost phoenix,

Nanny and Agnes storm the castle only to become incredibly reasonable around the charming vampires, and plan on making Lanker their own personal duchy. Vlad notices Agnes' resistance as Perdita gets violent and they storm back out the way they came. The next morning, Granny's cottage

is infinitely granny-less, and magpies watch as Nanny and Agnes arrive. The inventory's in threes as there's been a shift in hierarchy and Granny takes to the woods. I like the roaming start. Yeah, I wanted to keep it going, and then I realised that there's only so many minutes.

Yes. Helicopter and loincloth watch. Helicopters? Very few helicopters, but optimistic about phoenix, representing eventually. Granny did fly on her broomstick. Which is definitely a form of helicopter as we've discussed many, many times.

Loincloth? Hints of loincloth implied around the troll. Sure. I imagined him in some kind of guard's uniform. Well, no, they didn't have a uniform that could fit him apart from the helmet that's tied on with string. Quite right, yes. I assume he's got some sort of official loincloth.

Other bits that we keep track of. Deaths here. Hello, Death. Hi, Death. We're sort of open on the disk in that we've got the star flying over. Yeah. I'm going to allow it. And keeping track of when we are,

it's the end of the century of the fruit bat. Got it. So we're going to be dragged kicking and screaming out of it. Yes, that has been confirmed. Quite. We've got to be kicked and dragged kicked and screaming into it before we can be dragged kicked and screaming out of it, of course. Can't I just saunter towards it?

Do I have to be dragged kicking and streaming? Yes. If you will exist on dribbling those candles everywhere. I like the aesthetic. Quotes, quotes, quotes, quotes, quotes. Me. You can go first. Thank you.

This is when Granny is thinking to herself about some of the hard decisions she's had to make. Mm-hmm. And after the time she made the decision to have a murderer hanged. Yes. The villagers had said justice had been done

and she'd lost patience and told them to go home then and pray to whatever gods they believed in that it was never done to them. The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed. Ooh, that's a good line. Isn't it?

I think it almost... Yeah, I think it's the same kind of attitude as when we were talking about how well, if you want justice so much you throw them off the cliff kind of thing. But, you know, that... I didn't mean I should throw them off the cliff,

just they ought to be thrown off the cliff. Yeah, it's the same kind of along those lines of taking joy in justice instead of seeing it as a necessity. Prachi, I think, gets some of his best rage at humanity out with Granny. Yeah, oh, for sure, yeah.

It's so well done. Yes, unlike Vimes, she doesn't have to put a cork in it to go and have dinner with her wife. Yeah. Mine's a much shorter quote than poignant, I feel. I didn't know boys had glass

balls. I'm sorry. I didn't want to shatter that silence. There's going to be so many big heavy things to talk about. I really needed the ball stroke in there somewhere. Now, here's another example of when

there's going to be a bit of a drawback, because I didn't know buoys had balls, doesn't work as well, does it? Yeah. I'm always still mildly confused by the American pronunciation buoy. It does make sense if you look at the word.

It does. Well, I feel like I'm not sure either of them makes much sense, but it's buoyant. It's buoyant. I feel like it's the country. Yeah. I feel like as a country that has Worcestershire, we just can't judge.

Oh, for sure. Jack's playing the Assassin's Creed that's set in England now that you play a Viking. Yeah. Yeah. No, East Anglia. Quite enough. But when the characters are saying

the county names, you start to see what the fuck happened, because they pronounce them still in full and they're slightly different, because they pronounce them back down and it's like, oh, god. Our languages are a mess. Let's talk about characters. Sure.

Talking of messy language, or at least only a cousin to ours at best, the Knackmack Fiegel and their particular brand of Scots. Yes, yes. In case listeners haven't guessed that this was meant to be a bit Scots, ask to keep your trackings.

I forgot they were introduced in this book. If you cast your mind back to Feet of Clay, a small, short, very angry Scottish no, I assume is something of a precursor to bringing in the Knackmack Fiegel. Yeah. Well, while I was looking through

the forums again, I found commentating on this saying the genesis of the Knackmack Fiegel meant something like this. I wanted some background to we mad Arthur of Feet and Clay, and so they'd be small. I'd been listening to Lorena and the Kennet singing The Stolen Child

since Racket C1, the tribe would be Codd Scottish, and Braveheart and Rob Roy were natural targets, which meant that they would be blue. They're small and blue. What am I reminded of? No, give up.

But it seems somehow seems so right that they have just one female. Can't think why. Small, blue, nope. He seems like he's really heavily hinting at something if I don't know what it is. Oh, do you actually not know? It's the Smurfs. Oh.

Smurfette. Okay, yes, I did know that I suppose my brain was just not making that a connection. And five, a group of small creatures with just one female reminds me of social insects. So the color of the queen would be bigger and in some way in charge. After that it was just a matter of style.

Excellent. I do love them. They are good fun, although they're only just introduced here. But also since reading this, there's a song we are the Knackmack Fiegel from the Winter Smith, the disquelded album that Steeleis banded. If you are reading for the first time,

don't go listen to the album because spoilers. But it's a very good catchy song and I know because it's been in my head for the last week. If you're at Winter Smith or Further in your Disqueld Adventure. I should wear Midnight, although the album's called Winter Smith, definitely.

Oh, no, yes, quite right. Yeah, it goes a bit further, doesn't it? Anyway. Igor. And Id. A delightful character. Yeah. Is he your first eagle?

I think we've had little hints of eagles around the edges, but I think this is the most established eagle we've had. First eagle on the spotlight. What a delight. I'm going to talk more about the vampire lore and vampire tropes next week, but I do love the eagles, the tropes of version

of the words they're doing and eagles, like strong determination to stick with the old traditions. You've got to have plumes. It's traditional. Yeah, for sure. I think some of these themes are so spread out through the whole book that we're going to do

a bit more jumping back and forth than we usually do listeners. So we'll be calling back to section one and section two and so on. And the proper billowing curtains. Oh, yes, it's very important. That in whatever it was, lords and ladies. I want to point out now I put all these characters

in a really weird order. I meant to reorganise them and then I got distracted. So let's talk about Agnes. He's back. I didn't want to say at the end of Masquerade because spoiler, but we get to see Agnes again. I'm very excited about this. I think you did anyway.

Oh yeah, probably. Spoiler, she didn't like die at the end. But yeah, no, she's back and Perdita is more fully formed, I would say. Yeah, Perdita is almost a whole character now, as opposed to just some bitchy background lines. Still some weird stuff about fatness.

Not as bad. Not as bad, but it's better without like a Christine next to her. Yeah, I feel like here it's more referencing the fact that people are shit than just being shit. But there's still some lines like the outlying regions.

He just can't seem to let go of saying movement in the outlying regions about fat people. This is the third. Nani Og is meant to be on the more generous side as well, and her outlying regions are rarely mentioned, which is excellent. There's also I'm irked by the lack of Nani's outlying

regions. Sorry. And her outlying regions are rarely mentioned. There's my new favourite line about Nani Og. It's like geographical, you know. The lesser known outlying regions of Nani Og are good by sea.

I'd say they're quite well known around Lanka. I'm sorry, please continue. There's one weird Agnes fat phobiary moment that rubbed me up the wrong way, and I'd probably reacting to it more than I should. It's when they're outside

the castle and looking at the food, and there's vats of roast potato swimming in butter, which is... God, I love that line. And Agnes says, do you think I could get a salad, hopefully? And it's this weird thing of like, it's okay that she's fat because she doesn't

want to be. She knows that she wants a salad, so it's okay. Yes, I think that is the kind of tangent, not tangential, but like micro... Is that... What's the word for you trying to compensate too much? Anyway, I don't think

people are aware of it in the 90s very much. That doesn't mean it's not annoying to read. So, like, I feel like, and this still happens really then, it was like, look, I'm doing a nice thing. Yeah. I'm not just saying she shoved her hand in the potato fat. Yeah, look, but it's weird, like...

Like, saying that that's a nice thing rather than... Because it would be mean if the fat personated much potatoes, whereas everyone else there is eating a bunch of potatoes. It's this weird, like, moralising, like it's only okay to be fat if you know it's bad and that you don't want to be and you want a salad. And...

That said, and I know this isn't... Well, I'm pretty sure this isn't the drive behind this. I have also read and heard a lot of people say that they just... There isn't a correct way to act in this situation. If you ask for a salad, then people think like that.

If you load your plate up with food and people are like, of course, she did. Yeah, that's fine if you're talking about being a fat person, but when you're talking about writing a fat person... Yes, that's what I mean. Yeah. It's not a huge thing. It's just something that always rugs me up a bit

the wrong way. I feel like Pratchett has gotten so, so much better at writing women at this point that when he does it badly it's just a little bit more obvious. Yeah, this barely would have stuck out as... In fact, I doubt we'd have waited a post-it note on it in the first

five books, but... The first five books would not have had that many women that weren't blonde and tan. I think Harena, the henna-haired harridan, might be the only one. I don't even know what colour Agnes's hair is. I don't know, but it's very good and there's a lot of it. But it's great, isn't it?

It's big and it's good. I very much imagine Brunette. I feel like most of the people I know with big, good hair are Brunette. I feel like I relate to Agnes enough that I might look a bit like her and I'm very happy with that in that I've got a giant amount of

Brunette hair. You do have a giant amount of Brunette hair. It does eat comb, so I found that line particularly relatable. Fingers crossed I'd grow up to be Nanny Og and her Outlying Regions. I did then enjoy the immediate answer to that, though, which was I hope not, so that I might get a salad.

Oh, yeah. Nanny Og has some fantastic one-liners in this. Oh, I love Nanny Og. Before we get to Nanny, though, brief shout out for the cameo from Kassanenberg. Yes, you're right. This is a very odd order. I love it. It made sense when I was drawing it out.

No, it didn't. Yeah, Kassanenberg is aged nearly. Yeah, kind of. Well, I actually know. You've jumped around. Okay, no, it's fine. Anyway, Kassanenberg, yes. Hello, Kassanenberg, hello. Nice to see him, isn't it? Yes, it is. I'm glad he's there. And then we have... Does he turn up again or is this it? I think this is it.

Ah, what a shame. Nanny Og could do with a nice date after the day she's had. I don't even think... I feel like he might be there because there would have been like a subplot somewhere with him and Nanny and then there just wasn't room for it. Yeah, but he's a handy-dandy witness. But he is a handy-dandy witness.

It's nice to see something through the eyes of a familiar character, even if you've got to look up to see it. The elongated confusion with the highwayman was quite good. What, the death scene? Yeah, yeah. I'm not here to take your money. No, you don't.

Just to be very clear about that. I love how polite death is in that situation. Well, very clearly being furious. I don't have time for this. And then we have the quite reverend mightily praiseworthy i.e. who exalted oaths. I did not practice saying that.

I quite possibly should have done. Oh, that was good. I wonder if he's a formidable visit. Maybe they went on one of those missions together. I like to think when they were teenagers, they were knocking on people's doors with leaflets. I like to think maybe they write to each other every now and then. He's not quite hit the point

of giving out explanatory pamphlets. He's just sort of optimistically preaching to an empty forest. Now, would you say becoming a priest is slightly past the point of handing out pamphlets? Quite possibly, actually. That's a higher level of devotion, I suppose, because Constable visit the infidel

with explanatory pamphlets. He does it on his days off from the police force, doesn't he? True, but then that means he is just devoting all of his spare time to it. Whereas oaths has kind of made it his day job. It's a bit like, I don't know, being really into cooking at home versus being a chef, I guess. So oaths is the chef

of Omnianism. Omnianism? Yeah, sure. Omnism. No, fuck. Let's carry on. Omnism. Let's talk about Granny. Granny's having a time of it. One of my points for

saying this is one of the best, if not the best witches' book is that Granny actually isn't really there interacting with the other witches and isn't in the action that much until we get to the final part. Everything she's doing here is

not really part of the main action. It's establishing the mood she's in. And I know it's a bit counterintuitive to say, oh, it's actually a witches' book because Granny's not around as much. But Granny does her best work in Act 3 in all of the witches' books. Yes, she's there when they're moving

the kingdom in Weird Sisters, but it's really the big face-off at the end of Weird Sisters. It's facing off against her sister at the end because it's controlling the bees in Lords and Ladies. Granny's the best part of the action when she knows when to take herself out

and obviously she's not actually sentient or real because this is a fictional book. So Pratchett is best at writing witches because he knows when and where to use Granny and not to just keep her there because she's good fun to write. Like the luggage. Not that I would wish to compare Granny

to a murderous suitcase. Who do you think would win in a fight? Granny. Because the luggage would know not to fight. The luggage would sit down and allow itself to be tamed on the end of a pair. The luggage in this case is a unicorn. But the luggage would beat Grebo in a fight.

Yes. But then let him out again because Nanny looked angry or upset. I also think that having Granny on her own gave her space for the kind of

intermadness slash crondom. Yes. Which is one of the best written bits of Granny those few pages. I love her waiting. The rest of them sort of speculating about her definitely waiting for the most dramatic moment when to the christening because she would.

Oh yeah. And Margaret's little side thing of actually caught her waiting for a dramatic moment. Yes. You or I would be leaning against a wall in a corridor. She just knows when to walk in. And Agnes having that really great realization

when she's watching Margaret and Varence wait to enter and she's like this is the thing, it's the dramatic moment when you enter. Why are you standing there waiting for a moment? You've just got to do it. Which Agnes sort of being almost the best witch at getting into Granny's head.

Understanding things the way Granny understands them. Understanding that you make your own dramatic moment. Yes. I'm going to be out of my lane here and switch around Margaret and Hodja because this is a good time to talk about Margaret. Oh yeah, let's talk about Margaret.

I think that Agnes kind of shocks Margaret with how open she is about her speculation about Granny. Yeah. And Margaret has kept her mouth shut about so much of this for so long and Agnes must surely be echoing a lot of what she's thought but still

somehow she's like no you can't say it. But I also think Margaret's gone through a lot of character growth especially from like weird sisters Margaret to now like when she's sort of quite happily like winking at Agnes as they're trying to get ready for the naming ceremony

in Gribos on the throne. Yes. And I think Margaret's grown enough to know that there's no point saying it, it won't make a difference. Whereas I think Agnes is still with this kind of balshy youth to her she's a very different kind of young witch

who Margaret was. Yeah, that might be part of why Margaret seems a little unsettled by it as well. Yeah, it's the speaking. There's so many similarities and so many differences. The speaking before thinking thing and Nanny's reaction when Perdita says something really bitchy about Granny

I can't remember the page now but Nanny immediately just smacks a one. But then he's very much like right well that's that settled. Yeah, it's very near the end of the section. The fact that Margaret still clearly cares about the witch's talk about it like she'll give up queening one day

and come back to her proper job. Yeah, it's a really nice little section. She's open about it which is interesting having to settle that about her not being open about. She's sort of, I want to be treated as queen all the time but not you know I want them to know I'm queen but I don't want them to treat me as queen. It's nice that she's still

you know she really came into her queendom at the end of Lords and Ladies it's nice to know she's still got her weird little bit about it. There's an interesting gendered word that I never really thought about it's still a kingdom if one is a queen and I don't like that.

No, I mean either. Let's fix that. Let's call everything queen. The United Queendom. Yep, calling it that. Right, now let's talk about Hodgesar. Ah! Hodgesar! Ah! He's so sweet. We've met him.

We didn't really need to talk about him. I think I only put this in because there's one line that I love which is he was like a man with a big dictionary who couldn't find the index. Which makes less and less sense the more you think about the sentence because dictionaries don't really

have indices that's the point. Yes, but ties in nicely to when he's looking for Phoenix under F. F. Yes, and yes this is a nice little flag, Phoenix flag planted in the ground for later isn't it as well. It's worth mentioning him.

He's got a very good setup and payoff in this book. And then King Varence. Yeah. He's working hard. He's kinging. He's trying to put Lanker on the map which is a terrible idea. He means well.

Interesting that he's one of the only people who's visibly fighting against the vampires. Yeah, he's got a very strong will kind of combined with subservience. If you think about his journey, the fall has to be the fall for whoever's

in charge and sleeping at the door of the master and Magretts realising in lords and ladies that now he sleeps at the door to his kingdom because the kingdom is his master. Like he means so well. And so I think he's really, really caught in this, you know, as much as he can comprehend what's going on,

what he owes to his kingdom and this sort of full subservience thing he's got that makes him quite susceptible. I do like the, as he's having that little rant, he says if Clatch sneezes, Ancmo catches a cold which considering we're only two books off from

Jingo. Yeah. It's quite nice to think about how the events of Jingo were affecting the wider world. Yeah. Interesting that Verrance was probably fretting over his news and with news scrolls. Yes. Pigeons.

Yes. Pigeons, thank you. His daily news pigeons and the kingdom had no fucking idea. No. He probably told Magrat and Magrat was like, oh dear. Anyway. Let's put on this ridiculous fucking rough.

And then yeah, going into the vampires. Vampires. Yes, it's vampires. I suppose it is vampire. It's vampire. I'm just trying to find as many stupid ways to say it as possible. I think they deserve that. Vlad. Says the line, I like a woman with spirit

and forward deserves anything that comes to him and more. Absolutely. But I want to know where he got his waistcoat embroidered with peacocks because I want one. Yes. And I'm not going to embroider peacocks on shit myself because I have a life.

I was about to say, I can do that. I can't do that. No. Francine, do not embroider peacocks on anything for me. No. I mean, you don't, even if I wanted to, you don't want me to. I'm struggling at the moment to forget mean arts down. I feel like it's a few steps up from that. I'm embroidering my denim jacket. Oh, cool.

So Vlad, yes, he's a little sleazy fuck. He's a sleazy little fuck. And Perdita fancies him and then hates him. I like how mercurial Perdita is because it's very relatable to the teenager. He's that teenage girl. But he's cool. He's got a cool waistcoat.

But he's a dick. Yeah. Still like his waistcoat. Kill him. I went through that emotional journey many times at house parties as a teenager. Yes, fuck, yes. Oh, it's lucky we weren't at balls. The count, the count, as you say. Ah, ah, ah.

Such a good description. One for sorrow. Ah, two for joy. Ah, ah, ah. Alright, carry on. No, that's the best thing that's ever happened on the podcast. I think we should just stop now. I think we're done. No, no, I'm good. I can keep going.

The count gets a really good description because Agnes has like gone into kind of pod people mode but has still got that little bit at the back of her brain. So she's expecting a somber man with an exciting widow's peak hairstyle and an opera cloak.

But she's not sure why she's expecting that. He said he looks like a gentleman of independent means and inquiring mind. Perhaps the kind of man who goes for long walks in the morning and spends the afternoons improving his mind in his own private library of heiroments on parsnips. Never ever worrying about money.

Like an English country vicar, of course. Very much so. I think another part of the description is something like and he had the heir of a man who'd just read a very interesting book and was going to tell you about it. Which is possibly our vibe at all times. Are we vampires?

I hope so. We might be. You know how I'd like to be immortal. Lacrimosa. Lacrimosa means... Shit, where have I put it? Fuck. Right in the bottom. There we go.

It's a Latin for tearful one. Ah, of course. Well, I suppose she should be careful with all the eye makeup. Oh, I don't know. Smeared black eye makeup is the correct look for her. It's a good aesthetic. No, it's fair. Agnes hates her on first sight.

Good. Which is fair. She's kind of a bitch. And then we have Nanny, obviously. Who's having a lovely time until she isn't. Yes. I'm trying to remember the exact moment she isn't. I think it's... Obviously she's stressing about the vampires,

but I think it's the moment she realises Granny's gone that's her real switch. Especially when she realises this whole thing of the hierarchy, which is such a good plot point, this idea that Granny's taking herself out of the equation because there's a new mother, which means

there's a new other one. Yes. No, that's it. The moment Agnes realises that she's kind of out of herself, not the glass balls, but when she just explains to Agnes what she's thinking instead of vaguely alluding to magical powers and letting her

ask more questions. And Nanny gets the really good line of she's been herself lately talking about Granny Weatherwax, which is one of her most perspective. Perspective. Perspicacious. Thank you.

Because Nanny is so often this comic relief who really does know what's going on is being very clever behind the scenes and understands what's happening with Nanny. It's nice to see her kind of thrown off her axis a little bit. There's also some just

beautiful Nanny one-liners in this. Repent me cheek. I can't start repenting at my time of life. I'd never get any work done. Anyway, I'm sorry for most of it. Agnes trying to explain Perdita and saying, you know, part of you that wants to

all the things you don't dare do, like maybe rip off all your clothes and run naked in the rain. Perdita is that part of me. And I said, really? I've always been that part of me. And finally, now off you go and look conspicuous added Nanny, a lady wearing a two foot tall pointed black hat.

I hope she's worn her red boots for the occasion. It does say she was having one of her many daughters-in-law polish them, was she not? Ah, they were polishing something. They were taking lint off the hat and ironing a petticoat. I know that. Why ends a fucking petticoat? Well, if you've got three spare daughters-in-law,

why not, I suppose? I guess so. I believe life is too short. Location-wise, obviously, we are firmly steadfastly boots down in the Kingdom of Lanka. Red boots. Yeah, you're good.

Red boots down in the Kingdom of Lanka. The good thing about having e-book version is you can just search for boots. That is a lot better than my frantic flicking, but I enjoy it. But not as good for Foley. It adds verisimilitude. Well done, after we couldn't say perpicacious.

I'm trying to make up for it. I'm trying to make up for it. And you pulled it off. Good job. Lanka gets established really kind of cinematically. I don't really remember talking about that fantastic week, kind of getting like the strings as the disc is introduced and the turtle slowly swims into view

done with varying degrees of success in the different TV adaptations. Yes. The PS1 animation of the turtle at the beginning of the soul music adaptation being my favourite life quite some. Yes, yes. But because you have the star

as it kind of crackles over the mountain slopes and it says, under it the land itself began to fall away and the fire was reflected off walls of blue ice as the light dropped into the beginnings of a canyon. Like you can see it. It's such a good way to do this

and come into this network of valleys and patchwork of forests and land on this tiny kingdom. It's great. And then there's kind of a throwback to it right at the end of this section when Granny's looking down and seeing that the mist has puddled in this valley.

Yes. It's like mist. From Ubevold. Is it Ubevold, by the way, should we try and be dickheads about this? Ubevold. She's trying to be the little German boy. No.

Don't go to Ubevold. What is this? In Magpai. No, little German boy. Magpai. In Magpainen. Right, we need to stop, Francine. We need to stop.

We are a sensible intellectual podcast talking about the book Carpe Juggulum by Terry Pratchett, the 23rd Discworld Novel. Yes. Thank you for rooting me back in reality there. Speaking of being rooted in reality, actually, the philosophy of the people of Lanka is great, especially coming off this beautiful,

big cinematic opening coming in and then the people of Lanka have heard of the turtle and the elephants and sounds about right. The turtles can shift a fair load, elephants are pretty strong, no major gaps in the thesis and quite happy with it. I enjoy that type of philosophy.

Relevant elephant, relevant elephant. Yay. There was no such thing as a fish, the latest episode of that that came out today had a whole section on elephants in which they mentioned a website about all the various things that elephants can do with their trunks communication-wise

and there's hundreds of them and I will link to that website. They mentioned a lot of elephant facts and I think you'll understand why only this one's stuck in my mind is that one of the rituals, one of the communications that elephants can do with their trunk

is after a female has had sex if she stands there and the sperm I think falls to the dust some of it, then the others might touch some of it to their trunk and then hear a wet away from her in some kind of celebration.

It's not a sentence that kind of goes away easily and yet it never makes any more sense. I don't have words. I'm going to have to let that one. Yeah, just let that one. Pirouette.

Pirouette away, yes. Shall we take a quick break? Do you want to talk about the philosophy? I just interrupted you. No, that was pretty much all I had. I like the line that philosophers only said this kind of off-in-the-air stuff if they were really sure where their next meal

was coming from. Which is correct. Anyway, let's just pirouette to the kettle. Good idea, Francine. Sorry. It's beautiful. I love it. Never changed. Right. Little bits we liked.

What did you like? What did I like? I put myself first rather presumptuously because I don't have any page numbers. Francine, black and white motif. Yeah, I just like Pratchett's doing that cool thing where he just threads the entire book with... Yeah, it's a motif, isn't it?

Yeah, he mentions black and white thinking a lot. The invitation and the black and white and gold and everything's all very colour coordinated. You say it's quite cinematic this one again, isn't it? It is. I don't think this will ever get adapted for screen because it's

a weird one because it's the fifth in a story arc. But it would be so good on screen. It would be so fun. Yeah, apparently the play was kind of oddly received by a lot of people because of that because it's really hard to find the balance of how much you explain from the previous.

What was the other...? Of course, you have the magpies and the... Yeah, that's right. The magpies. There's a couple of magpies landing on this hat in the moonlight and when she's flying back from the midwifery job, she's thinking to herself, and any midwife out in isolated costas

on bloody nights would know all the other little secrets never to be told. Yes. From the rhyme. Which will come to letter. Yeah. I'm going to be taking that to a lot of this later. I like all of the... It's not quite foreshadowing. It's not quite flag planting.

It's just theme, Marie. It's really weird as well because obviously the magpies are intentionally quite sinister. The vampire family are the magpies. And they are obviously not the good guys in this book, but I have a weird attachment to magpies because it's the nickname for Newcastle United, which is my football team because my dad was from Newcastle.

How do you do like your corvettes? And I love corvettes. Although the crow I feel like was compared in a favourable light to the magpies when Miley Oates was compared by Agnes to a ragged little crow. Yes, very true. And from a serious discussion

of clever use of motifs to an imaginary pole which made me laugh. You've just written here, imagine a pole and I'm doing my best. Please imagine a pole. It's stripy. Unfortunately, it's not available at the moment, which is why we're imagining it. It's when the vampires are coming into Lanker

and the trolls on the bridge waiting for people to come in doing things properly. And there's this sort of metaphysical conundrum as it's described. Before we go, this guy decides to play the stupid servant of the troll saying, well, I have to stamp something where you can't come in. I won't lift the pole.

That is definitely there. It pops up in a few books, doesn't it? Where, practically, it just highlights the kind of absurdity of bureaucracy a lot of the time. It's like, yes, it's imaginary rules. We're going to get stuck on them. But it's the way the

troll is just takes it so seriously. Look at you. I'm lifting the pole. Here it goes. Look at it pointing up in the air like that. What's his name? Beef something? Big Jim Beef. Which Nanny describes as, you know, similar to a guy, a human

calling himself Rocky. Speaking of the names, actually, Thomas Peerless is in a book that highlighted all the stupid names specifically. I liked Thomas Peerless, who was mentioned. My vote goes to James. What the hell's

that cow doing in here, Portick? Oh, yes, more of a classic. That's fair. If things left behind an address, oh, yeah. So when Agnes is thinking to herself about magra. Yeah, I've seen the things you left behind in the cottage. Yes. The woman had left

echoes of herself in the cottage, an old bangle lost under the bed, rather soppy notes and some of the ancient notebooks, vases full of desiccated flowers. You can build up a very strange view of someone via the things they leave behind the dresser. I was wondering what view people might build up of you.

I wonder what view people will up of me other than doesn't hoover that really. Just looking around my desk because I can't see my dresser. I mean, obviously we've got too many post-it notes. I've got a book here about limpet, pie, because I never told you that way after last week.

We've got paintbrushes. I feel like it's somewhat cheating looking around this because it's also in my sewing table. I can see four notebooks in my laptop because I use that along with a computer when I'm studying. A small blue duck

which I will lift up to the webcam or the patrons. It's a lovely little blue duck that you made me so I can bitch about coding to him. Does he work? He does work. He's a very good listener. There's five pairs of scissors. A token bag for

a board game that I need to fix. Assaulted bobbins. I think it's almost parallel to the podcast. Or just in the group chat of the five items you would use to summon you. I think it was in the podcast.

Five items you put in the circle to summon one of us. In your case I'm just using five cups of coffee. We need the smints in there and the... All right, three cups of coffee, a packet of smints and a biro. Thank you. What have you got there? I thought red wine

was thematically appropriate. Perfect. Oh yeah, and flat being like no, don't have the white wine, have the red wine. Ah, dick. What a prick. Like I know it's because he's a vampire and shit, but like don't order my fucking drink for me, dude. Yeah, he's being

one of those dating gorey dick ads, isn't he? Yeah. The playbook. Yeah, I don't like it. I bet he really likes Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for life. I bet he does. Sorry, Vlad is now

every fuckboy. Although he won't subscribe to the Alpha Theory, of course, because we don't get along with wolves. That is the best renunciation of wolf. Well, if you're going to go mental, we're mad for you. Vampire. No, vampire is something different.

The Royal Society for the Betterment of Mankind, France, in that's better ourselves. Please. I just rather enjoyed that Sean is taking upon himself a birthday afternoon to be asked any spare time to better mankind and has so far invented draft excluders, which

has earned him a small medal and I think deservedly so. Yes, draft excluders are a godsend. I've sold a couple of myself this week. I'm very proud of you. I got rid of a bunch of clothes that were past donating or fixing a few months ago, to be fair.

And then I needed a bunch of scraps to go inside my draft excluders. Oh, you should have said. And another bag full of clothes under that. But I had to look for them. I have a basket for fabric scraps because obviously I end up with quite a lot from trimming things and bits that aren't big enough

to use for anything else. Watch out, that's how the Triangles Shirt Waste Fire happened. I don't think that's likely. Okay. I'm quite good at disposing of it. Because I often smoke cigars around my fabric scraps. I don't know what you do.

Actually, that's a fair point. I'll allow that. Anyway. I like the sort of reference back to the young witches and how the attitudes to witchcraft have changed in the country as things go on. Being a witch was an honourable trade in the mountains.

Only the young ones invested in real crystal balls and coloured knives and drivly candles. The old ones stuck with kitchen cutlery, fishing floats, bits of wood. Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an Apple Cora. Which is just such a nice throwback to the previous books from Magret Learning

that a bread knife in the boot is the best. Yes. Granny's Face-Off with the Young Witches in Lords and Ladies, which is where we first meet Agnes. And this kind of idea that Agnes has somewhat graduated to the more serious school of witchcraft. But also just as a world-building thing,

knowing it's still happening. Can we go with the Young Witches in the future? Yeah. And a theme that plays off, I think we've said before, haven't we, that Magret likes everyday objects being tools. Like the peasant weapons and the...

It's also quite nice if you compare it to the tropes of version stuff with the vampires. They're trying to give up these old-fashioned drivly candles that the Young Witches are embracing. Yes. Fucking blad. Fucking blad.

Speaking of vampires. Magpires. Can we talk about magpires? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Okay, so magpirems. And this is reference. I did actually note down which page they were talking about it.

When Nanny and Agnes go to Granny's Cottage. It's page 124 in the Coggy Paperback. Magpires is turning up and chattering them. And Agnes is saying, one for sorrow, two for joy, and Nanny says, two for mirth. And they have these conflicting magpirems.

So the one I know that I grew up with and that I think is sort of the most common one that most people know. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret, never to be told. I think there's also a much more of a kind of English superstition.

So if people are broad that are listening, I don't know if magpirems are a thing where you are, if there's folklore around them. Yeah, I think I mentioned before one of my few practising superstitious things is that I'll morning Mr. Magpire. Yes, if you see a solo magpire, it's bad luck. And counteract by wishing him good morning

or asking after his wife. So I wanted to look into partly the version that Nanny says and other versions that exist. So just a brief bit of the history of them. The first sort of magpirem was recorded around 1780 in a note on John Brand's popular antiquities.

But only the first four lines, one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a funeral, four for birth. Slightly later in publishing the longer version, Michael Aslebi Denham's Proverbs and Popular Sayings of the Seasons published in 1846.

Golly. This is considered the first proper one in print. One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a funeral, four for birth. Five for heaven, six for hell, seven for the devil, his own self. That's Nanny's, isn't it? That's Nanny's. But

I was stupidly spending a while googling all of this shit before I realised where Pratchett would have probably looked for an alternative magpirem and that I also happened to have a handy copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable which I should have probably looked at

first before I spent so fucking long googling. And under magpire the old rhyme about magpires in Brewer's Phrase and Fable Phrase and Fable. Yeah, I also didn't think to look at the fight glory of disco. I probably should have done. No, it's cool. I'll just, I'm pretty sure he'll have just referenced Brewer's

but just in case. Yeah. And this is an older Scottish rhyme it's considered and it's not quite full on Scots how it's written but close enough. One sorrow, two's mirth, three's a wedding, four's a birth, five's a christening, six a dearth, seven's heaven, eight is hell and nine's the devil,

his own self. So, again, sort of variation and from the Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions which was published in the 90s we have one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for rich,

six for poor, seven for a witch I can tell you no more. I can actually find the origins of that going to further back than the Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions but that's obviously another version. It's very regional but there was a

TV series run from 1968 to 1980 called Magpie it was a kids magazine show but like Blue Peter but a bit more poppy and the theme tune for that was the Magpie Rhyme the one that's now most commonly known one for sorrow, two for joy

it ends on eight's a wish, nine a kiss and ten is a bird you must not miss and the sort of theory around Magpie Rhymes and regional ones falling out of favour is that that was such a well-known show that that became the one that people knew in the one lexicon but it seems like

the sorrow mirth may actually be kind of older but listeners if you've got like a weird region specific one or you've heard different versions of it please let me know because this is really fascinating. Yeah, I have I have read something about

Practit or someone associated with them spending a long time researching these and asking everyone about Magpie Rhymes in fact I think Practit might have asked this might be in his slip of the keyboard where he was asking everyone in the queue what Magpie Rhymes they knew

but yeah the folklore of Discworld you've come up with exactly the same stuff I have one thing to add, apparently another way you can counteract the bad luck of a single Magpie is to recite this charm I crossed the Magpie and the Magpie crossed me Devil takes the Magpie and God saved me Nah, I think I'm going to stick to

Sounds less polite than just saying good morning Kaz, you how's your life? The thing is normally I, you know if you're on your own and you're walking along and you sort of you know very morning with Magpie you're not going to be able to know that you're doing it but I taught it to my little nephew

who's six so walking anywhere with him and seeing a Magpie means an exuberant scream of morning Mr Magpie I found it, it's in this book it's the introduction to this book it's the by Tray Practit not long after I did this

I did a book signing on the south coast where I took the opportunity to ask practically every person in the queue to say the Magpie Rhyme every single one of them recited with greater or less accuracy the version of the Rhyme that used to herald the beginning of the 1960s and 70s TV program Magpie it wasn't a bad Rhyme

but like some cookie in the nest it was forcing out all the other versions that existed around the country then a distinguished looking lady was in front of me with a book and I asked her with some inexpressible hope in my heart how many versions of the Magpie Rhyme she knew after a moment's thought she said about 19

and that is how I met Jacqueline Simpson who has been my friend an occasional consultant on matters of folklore and is the co-author so that's from the intro to the Folklore of Discworld oh amazing fantastic and yeah so you came up with exactly the same research as they did so well done

we're all asking many people in a queue because I haven't had a handy book signing they wanted you to write a book first these days I suppose we did just ask for our listeners this is the thing we have an audience for yeah that and leaning out the window and yelling

I feel like this is more efficient than that you there boy recite via the Magpie Rhyme why it's one for sorrows there why am I doing a bad English accent I was going to say I'm from this tree god damn it yes but you're not from a Dickens novel

I might be I'm a vampire I might be you're sewing draft excluders to stop you from getting chill blames you might as well be in a fucking Dickens novel anyway the rule of three Francine oh fuck right okay are we going into deeper folklore

no I've skimmed over folklore on this because otherwise you're going to take fucking fat ever okay so the rule of three we kind of touch upon here and we go into a bit later as well Granny has left everything out in threes and obviously we're trying to symbolise the fact that

a coven comes in a three yes it's the hierarchy shift everyone's got to move up one now Margaret's had a baby yes that's so which by the way we do have a mention of Nanny's outlying regions don't we because she says I can't be a hag at my time of life my bras won't fit ah yes that's a lot

but it's not specific no it's just geographically yes so rule of three it pops up in fucking everything it's in art and photography you've got the rule of thirds it's mythology

and religion you've got the holy trifecta you've got in lots of different religions you've got the rules of three you've got the three fates and folklore everything's in fucking threes you've got three daughters, three sons three magical items, three billygoats gruff whatever

comedy rule of three comedy rule of three known as the what's it called the triple and marketing and copywriting comes up a lot music you've got the triads, the chords all of this stuff for art purposes today obviously we'll focus

a little bit on rhetoric and literature because that's kind of a practice thing so things coming in threes are just more memorable and I was hoping to find a definite reason for that and there are theories but there aren't like a this is why it's

it's the smallest amount of things you need to make a pattern there's two lines, two dots make a line not a pattern yes in literature you have three acts of a play any story you have to start middle and the end and they are

rising action, falling action and denouement thank you the three parts of a true shall make you frapped podcast recap is a classic example of course that's why we split the books into threes we split the books into threes and

the rule of three is used in just so many different contexts and it's so effective in all of them so if you think about the most memorable lines like safety things, if people want you to remember something safety we still remember

stop, look and listen to cross the road, we remember that no one's yelled that at us since we were little stop, drop and roll if you're on fire we all know that I'm not sure it's what I actually have done when I've been on fire but I remember it on fire like ah the rule of three

ah even just repeating like the same thing three times in a row is more memorable than doing it other way so like location, location, location yes there are two in Rhetoric two main segments of the rule if three likes that so you've got

hen dietrists which is three successive words to express one central idea you've got liberty, agility, fraternity yes for instance and then you have the trichodon or the triad which is three parallel elements which is what we're looking at here

so it's veni vidi veterinari it's the father the son and the holy ghost it's the maiden, the mother and the other one as a writing device the third is often unexpected

you set up a pattern and then you break it and that works because surprise works in comedy, it works in drama it just it engages your mind to see a pattern coming along and then go oh yes for that reason

a lot of tricholons set up in Rhetoric and especially speeches the third one is the longest if they're not all exactly the same lengths you put the longest one at the end yeah the father, the holy ghost and the son doesn't quite work and you put the surprise at the end

another great example is from God's guards the three rules of the librarians of time and space are one, silence two, books must be returned no later than the last date shown and three do you not interfere with the nature of causality?

quite right and you remembered it I'm really glad you did otherwise I'd have had to wear it I interfered with the nature of causality once, got away with it and then you hit the orangutan creep up behind you and so in this one they bring it back a little bit from the

realms of everything else ever, the main the mother and the crone and the other one which is the longer one but even the crone although it's shorter it gets rid of the alliterative action it's a little bit of a shock because main mother

safe nice rolls and then you throw in there the crone or the hag and the syllable thing as well the maiden, the mother, the crone the other thing I wanted to find out is how international it is how universal it is it does seem to be

obviously it's a bit harder to look properly at all the examples you could like copywriting and things but certainly things like folklore like Japan's three wise monkeys was one that sprang to mind and a lot of fairy tales have been translated

I'm going to have to assume I haven't been translated so much that the numbers were completely changed but yeah from all over the world it does seem to be three and I like that and I like the three witches and I like that Pratchett has a natural

flair for the triads and I liked also that one of the things I was reading about it I think it might have been in the elements of eloquence and a wonderful write up on it and I will as always recommend everyone go read it

was talking about how three makes a list but two that is two sides of the coin is a pairing is perhaps something a little liminal Joanna? Yeah, should we talk about the liminal so I'm going to preface all of this

by saying that I am not a fucking scholar of Gothic literature I did half an A level, I did not finish my A level but I've refreshed my memory somewhat to talk about this because the thing is he finally read Gormungast I said I'd buy it this year

and I did not promise to read it and I haven't had time to read Gormungast or reread Frankenstein, Dracula or North Anger Abbey but so what I love about this book one of the things that's great about it is that it is not doing direct parody or homage

the way like masquerade is this big you know, it's Phantom of the Opera with a bunch of other opera and musical references thrown in this is a much less direct parody but it is very much an homage to Gothic literature and a really specific part of Gothic literature which is where the use of the liminal comes in so like a very brief overture

of the like Gothic novel tradition you can go back to like the 1790s and the reason it was called Gothic is because the settings were often these big medieval buildings and ruins it's kind of considered like a pseudo-medieval idea of mystery and terror this atmosphere

and then it kept going through these different resurdances and some of the biggest ones that you can think of, Frankenstein also, you know, shout out to Mary Shelley for inventing sci-fi to get away from Byron and Percy because we all would, like I'll invent a genre to get away from a fuckboy

Oh, at Psygno Bridgeton series 2 Byron Slander, everyone should tune in Yep, support it, very much support Byron Slander and Dracula which is much later Dracula was written in 1897 Oh, that is much later Yeah, and it's I really ought to re-read it, especially talking

about this book, there's some Dracula references It does not deserve my hatred I hate it because I had to study it with a particularly bad teacher Another good one though that came up before either of those is Northanger Abbey which was a Gothic satire this was Jane Austen taking the piss out

of the Gothic novel tradition She wrote it in 1803 but it wasn't published until 1817 so I think it kind of lost a bit of its bite as a satire Right But if you read it with it as a satire in the back of your mind it's very funny and it shares its DNA with Carpe Giaculum

that's where it's getting it from but one of the biggest ideas in pieces of rhetoric used in Gothic literature is this idea of the liminal I am going to bring this back to the book I don't care, this is very interesting But you're talking here especially more in later Gothic literature and Frankenstein is such a good example

to hold up for it, this is a quote from a guy called Manuel Aguirre in the rules of Gothic grammar and he's talking about the later Gothic Gothic dwells on the liminality of the human condition its potential for change change not only on the moral plane but also

and increasingly so as the genre develops psychologically change which in the 18th century debate on cherished identity is all too often seen as degrading or annihilating caught in the threshold region Gothic characters are if not destroyed then transformed they acquire numinous features

and come to resemble such denizens of the limin ghosts, monsters, demons as exhibit a non-rational compulsive, excessive, repetitive mindless behaviour so Frankenstein is a great example of this, Frankenstein is a character that stands in the liminal

he's not quite human but he is very much alive and throughout that book you know it's really hard to remember what Frankenstein is about there's a reason it's got the subtitle of modern Prometheus because it's been used in the Hamer horror a guy going uh with the screws in his head

but the actual book is a beautiful kind of treatise on what it is to be alive, what life means, what it is to be human and this I know we should be talking about Dracula more than Frankenstein it's a vampire book but it is it's an homage to that kind of era of

Gothic literature that really embraces the liminal as this human being stuck in the middle this brings us back around to your point about black and white running through, this is Matthef, the whole idea of Granny is that she is straddling that line going way back to right near the beginning and something we talked about

at I think quite good length in which is abroad Granny flew high above the roaring treetops under a half moon and we talked about enjoying the half moon and she distrusts the half moon balancing so precariously between light and dark it could do anything

and it goes into this thing about witches living on the edge of things and very much always being on the edge of things but you can think about being on the outside looking in which is very true but also it's this precipice always ready to flip one way or the other and there's a little bit about Granny having one foot in shadow is there

yeah very much so and it goes into it in much more in more depth but if you think of it as you know this idea of liminal spaces that comes through in Gothic literature which it's really embracing especially like I said the existential aspect of it you go into her little secrets

all the witches knows and would know and would never say one of the really dark moments of the book like considering this is a book about vampires one of the darkest moments is Granny she had to make the decision around whether the mother or child is going to live and the midwife that was there saying

she should have let the father choose and Granny saying why would I want to hurt him why would I want to do that to him it made me love Granny very much that he said that like she was like no the man has nothing to do with this yeah this is not but I was very angry watching any

any period drama really or even some modern things where the woman is in trouble in childbirth and they're like to the father what should we do should we save the child or the woman save the fucking woman if she's not conscious to answer then the answer is

save her it's such a big book but what would happen it's accurate it absolutely is it makes me cross forget I've told you I'm not sure if I've said on the podcast one of my things I hate, hate, hate, hate watching I hate watching it as women dying

in childbirth and on TV like it's my I will turn the episode off I'll skip over it that's my trigger warning thing I can't deal with that yeah that's fair this bit of the book kind of gave me that same little heart grippy moment except less because Granny was in charge

so that was kind of cool it just reinforced reinforced my love for the character I think it's so so well done and this is just in the first third of the book to do this is a really subtle homage to an iconic genre that is a weird genre that kind of ate itself

over and over because it kept resurging but it was always a bit more tongue in cheek or went over towards this little existential because there's only so many times you can run someone running away in a medieval castle Bluebeard kind of did that that

that sorry weird old fairy tale woman marries a guy he says you can go in every room in the castle apart from that one so she goes in that one and it's full of his dead wives do I mean Bluebeard? yeah because Blackbeard was the pirate oh no I

I never liked the trope of that I didn't know Bluebeard was it yeah I think that's the name of the story which also I'm going to send all the listeners to read the bloody chamber by Angela Carter which is a kind of updated very gothic take on not quite fairy tales but old tales

old horror tales things like there's her take on Bluebeard in there but yeah but in this book it putting Granny in that position she is the one who is despite being a step back from the action and on the edge of it in that way also putting her

literally standing half in light half in shadow when he did it in Witches Abroad it was about there needs to be a good guy to offset the bad guy she's the good one because her sisters chose to be the bad guy but think she's the good one speaking of her sister actually I thought it was

quite nice that Oates had the little moment with the mirror my practice kind of pointing to the well A making fun a little bit of religious schisms but also pointing to the potential dangers of a mirror yeah I didn't go into the Omnion schism stuff but it's very funny especially considering

we got to see the birth of modern women in in small gods but Oates is quite an interesting character to put across this because where Granny is never sure that she is doing the right thing she is always stuck in the middle of it wondering if she's being human enough

and she's like I said she's doing it a really different way to Witches Abroad he manages to take Granny's innate graniness and apply it to the genre he's doing like Witches Abroad was a story about fairy tales this is a story about crumbling castles like curtains

Lawson Ladies was very Gothic as well but in a in a more tropey way I think it was more like early British dark folklore like King of Alphalons daughter that kind of what's it no there was a lot do you remember

we did a whole section on the Gothic literature parallels oh yeah of course I suppose there was all the running away in the castle but it was kind of all even though it was really tense like stressful moments it was kind of obvious yeah it hit the trope a bit harder this is more like a long running thematic thing

of you can't write about vampires and not do it like that and if you're going to do it like that then you're going to be a bit liminal and wonder about the human condition you're going to put Granny in between the light and dark and to do it by one of the first scenes

you have with her is her flying under the half moon I just think it's so beautifully done nice yes anyway that's enough of my unhinged ranting Francine do you have obscure reference finials I do you'll be pleased to hear eventually

I found mine yes so back to Sean Ogg as we should always be going back to Sean Ogg eventually his Lancastrian army knife is obviously not an obscure reference towards the Swiss army knife one reason for the slow progress on it was that

the king himself was taking active interest in the country's only defence project and Sean was receiving little notes up to three times every day and Sean diplomatically added some of them and lost as many as he could and I saw I can't remember it wasn't annotated practice file I think it was one

of the other sites that has annotations pointed out that this could be a little bit of a throwback reference to Prince Albert who was very like that micromanagy of his military stuff like in a really unhelpful way

always sending little suggestions little notes really trying to be helpful and that and like the military I think took up his suggestion on like helmets design of helmets and that was enough to keep him happy and they just kind of lost all the rest of the suggestions and I thought yeah

that sounds possibly like this a little bit I love it I now can't remember if it's in this section it's not a major spoiler for the other sections but one of the tools on the Lancastrian army knife is a small tool for winning ontological arguments which ah no not in this bit

but I liked a device possibly quite small for finding things that are lost just recommend that for me a device possibly quite small the ontological arguments one seems more practical let's see if we can do that mallet

I haven't had an ontological argument for a while I assume a mallet will do the job right well I think that's everything we are going to say on the first part of this book there's much more I could say we will be back next week with part two

two for joy sorry battle the sorrow let's start with page 130 on the quaggy paperback with nanny scratched her nose and ends on page 254 with he slid gently to the ground and then six inches above ground level

was carried off into the night in the meantime dear listener you can follow us on instagram at the true shall make ye fret on twitter at make ye fret pod on facebook at the true shall make ye fret you can join our subreddit community

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for bonus nonsense such as Francine's recent rabbit hole on medieval bestiaries which was a delight and a recipe for something which I will think of this month I like the one you put off already the caponata thank you

and in the meantime dear listener don't let us detain you magpirek victory can we make something of that give me a minute