The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 82: Carpe Jugulum Pt. 3 (The Abyss Is Tapping Its Watch)

Episode Date: April 18, 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 3 of our recap of “Carpe Jugulum”. Alligators and allegories on allegories!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:Kaja and Kelod - (Bali navigation) ResearchGateWhat larks! - TwitterTales from the Disc (Discworld music) - TumblrThe Lincolnshire Shepherd - Mainly NorfolkmyNoiseHorror and terror - WikiGiant Phoenix captured in stunning aurora borealis Iceland show - Caters News AgencyMythology of the Northern Lights - The Aurora ZoneDark Side of the Auroras – Meanings and Myths | Visit Finnish Lapland Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

The Buffy mug was originally from Mini Strig. Oh, that is appropriate for today. All right. Yeah, we're doing a vampire podcast. I'm going to have Buffy present to keep an eye. That's fair. We've done evenings the last couple, haven't we? So we've not had Buffy. You should paste Buffy's face onto your wine goblet.

I'm not going to do that. Okay, laser engrave. I might get a specific like Buffy wine glass. Yeah, I guess like ruining crystal for the sake of a bit. That will be out of date next week. Yeah. I'm not sure this really goes in follow-up because it doesn't correspond to any book in particular.

So I'm just going to say it now. I learned and I must have learned this before, but I learned again recently that, you know, Barley, their method of navigation is hubwards and rimwards. Oh, really? Not called hubwards and rimwards, obviously, but they've got a mountain in the centre of the island and their directions are based on towards or towards the round and towards the sea. Oh, cool.

That's quite cool. Oh, sorry, really not podcast relevant, but this trip to Vegas, I may be taking this somewhere. I'm almost definitely taking now. Not that I plan on gambling a lot in Vegas. No, I mean, yeah, do a sensible thing. Put a budget aside to gamble away, assume that's going to be gone. I basically want to do a slot machine once, so I've done it and go play

like a hand of Blackjack, so I've done it. Yeah, I'm going to picture of it now. I'll try and get a picture of me near a Blackjack table and obviously like a slinky dress and you can learn to count card count before you go. And I'm a bit about card counting. Yes, but are you going to learn how to card? I know a bit about card counting. I can't card count.

I can't do mental maths that quickly. Okay. I would assume you're like a super hyper fast mental maths person because you're a super hyper fast mental maths person because you're a super hyper fast mental maths person because you're so much better than me. I'm really good at maths, but I have to take some time to do it. If I was card counting, I'd be sat there like, hang on. Yeah, no, hit me.

Like I could not be subtle. Have you ever read, you know, there's a movie 21 about like a group of college kids from MIT who were card counting in Vegas. Have you ever, the book is based on, because it's based on a true story, is really good and goes into like massive detail about their card counting system as well. Oh, that's cool. I've had like a podcast episode on the story of it, obviously, because that's how I consume facts. Yes.

Which is the best way to consume facts, of course, listener. Yes. But always fact check, because... We don't. We talk nonsense. I do. Oh my God. I've been writing about Ash Dieback this week.

It's just, this happens anytime I want to write anything that involves statistics. It's trying to find like the primary source for statistics. You'd think it would be a lot easier than it is. And also because places like the BBC now have just gotten in this terrible habit of like putting some statistics in and implying that this means this. And careful not to say that it does. I'm like, well, that is shitty science writing, BBC. I'm not going to put that in my own much less prominent little article on it,

because I've got a principle about this. Especially... I've got principles. I've got at least one. I'm sure I can find some more, but... No, I hate it when people don't look at... When you can't look at the sources of statistics, because sometimes it's like a really shitty sample size,

or it's just a badly done survey, or it's presented to be misleading. Yeah. I mean, in this case, it's literally just... I wanted to find out how many tree work accidents could be directly attributed to Ash Tree. Yeah. Because it is which is depressing and the whole thing. And by the way, I really don't recommend reading through a bunch of these case studies when you've got a husband who plays with chainsaws.

So you're a normal level of stress right now? Actually, I wasn't stressed by it because I really like writing in-depth articles about this stuff, especially if it's like for my job job, and not just maybe someone will pay me for this as a freelancer. It's like, yeah, I'm getting paid to do this. For sure, I don't even need to win voice. Nice. Yeah.

So that was my Thursday, Friday, whatever. We get a long weekend here, by the way, listeners who aren't English, we get four full days. Yes, it's nice. Because it's Good Friday today that we're recording, so R.I.P. Jesus. I'm sure he'll be back, that's fine. What larks? What larks?

Oh, I didn't. Oh, fact, I meant to watch that before we started, but I was putting on too much eye makeup. Sorry. It was necessary. I did not put on a lot of black eyeliner, so I'm still on the side of Good. I put on my usual amount of black eyeliner, which I feel like it's morally neutral. No, it's good.

You can do proper liquid eyeliner, which I always struggle with. My teenage days, obviously, I would have put on a lot of coal eyeliner on the waterline, which now I'm 30. I feel like it just doesn't look as good. It's not a whole, oh, you shouldn't wear this if you're over 30, but I've got quite hooded eyes. And obviously, that gets more so as you get a bit older, and it's just, it makes my eyes look too small.

I also have quite dark shadows under my eyes, which is why I wear a ton of concealer. And if I put coal eyeliner on, it just makes me look tired if it's on the lower lash line. I'm leaning into my eye bags now. Apparently, Gen Z's all about eye bags, so whatever. Gen Z can be about all about whatever the fuck they like. I want to look like Dieter von Thies, except, you know,

wider and shorter. That's not a criticism of myself. It's just, I'm never going to know that. No, I know it's just wider. It was an interesting way of putting it. She can lace her waist down to like 16 inches. I think wider is fair. Well, let's skip it.

Yeah. I don't think she does it like regularly. I know. That's just a silly thing to do, though, isn't it? Broader. There we go. I'm a broad Dieter von Thies. Oh, no.

Have we got anything Pratchett-relevant to talk about? I said a thing. Yes. Yeah, no, I don't know. I've not really been on Pratchett-related social media this week, so if there has been any news, I've not heard it. What's the latest audiobook that's coming out soon? Is it this one?

I think it's Carpe Jugulums coming out in the new audiobook format, isn't it? Oh, Small Gods. Oh, is it? Yeah, because Andy Serkis is reading it, which is pretty cool. That's cool. I probably won't get around to listening, to be honest, because I try to keep my Discworld listening-slash-reading

to the book we're doing each month, and I can't listen to the audiobook of a book as well as reading it two slash three times for the podcast. I don't take enough information in if I listen to it as an audiobook. It's fine with podcasts. Podcasts, I retain information from listening to them, but audiobooks just kind of zoom through me. I'm pretty good with the Discworld audiobooks,

but my problem is that if I'm listening to it in the car, which I often do, obviously I can't take a note there and then, so I need to remember when I stop the car to make a note. Like at the end of my journey, I don't like stopping traffic and make podcast notes. Siri, take a note. Sorry for every listener who's listening to this out loud and just tap their series at all.

Alexa. Hey, Google. Right, we've got all of them now. I should probably grab another coffee. And then, do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to the Two Shall Make Key Fract, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book

from Terry Brouch's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part three of our discussion of Carpe Juggulum. The throats have been seized. They have. They have several times.

Many throat seizes. Yeah. Many throat seizes. They came, they saw, they saw, they saw it. They came, they saw the Vennie Vitty Carpe Juggulum. Vennie Vitty Vampire. Come on. Oh, God, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Clearly not on it today. Now on spoilers, before we crack on, we are a spoiler light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book Carpe Juggulum. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any and all discussion

of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Slowly, painfully, through knee-deep mud with an ungrateful witch slung across your shoulders. We've all been there. Usually at a festival. Actually, that whole bit just read a bit like a festival.

I'm glad you've said that after I've read it, so I could enjoy it more. Thank you. I'm glad we got through that without just painful download flashbacks. That's fine. That's fine. I assume he had access to expensive lager, so.

Very true. Anyway, anyway, Joe. Joe, what do we do next, Joanna? We do follow up, Francine. Have we got anything to follow up on? Yeah, I've got a shit ton, actually. Oh, cool. Do you want to go first?

You've got a listener email, haven't you? We got a really lovely email from listener Ellie, which thank you. It had a line in it that made me a bit emotional when I read it at 7 o'clock this morning, which is probably a sign I should stop picking up my phone at 7 o'clock in the morning. I feel like if you're going to do anything

on your phone at 7 o'clock in the morning, checking the podcast emails, probably. Yes, they're usually quite nice, actually. Lovely story of visiting London and popping over to Wincanton in the Discworld Emporium. Popping over to Wincanton. Which is really gussing, because you and I never managed to go

and have our little pilgrimage to the Discworld Emporium, and it's unfortunately close to the public now. Yeah, maybe it'll open again one day. But also meeting Bernard Pearson of Discworld Emporium fame, who apparently inspired a particular character that we haven't met yet, so I'm going to save that bit of the email for a future episode.

But thank you, Ellie, for writing in. That's a very lovely message. Very cool. I've got a listener comment from the Reddit. Harp Maldi, who we've mentioned before and played some of her lovely music, in fact, for some time ago, mentioned that we were talking about where Granny has no romance in herself,

but has a flair for the dramatic. And Maldi pointed out that one of her favourite grannyisms, and one of the many terriers, she's adopted for you some real life, is from Lords and Ladies, where Granny brings the wounded Diamanda into the castle dining room, sweeps the crockery off the only occupied part

of the huge table, because there's no point in making an entrance if you're not prepared to make a mess. Perfect. And that's quite right, of course. Maldi is very right, though. That's Granny. I'm Terry.

I've also got our one Tumblr correspondent, Luxa, message me with a link to some cool music based on Discworld, because I think you mentioned SteelEye's band last week. Yeah. And it's some really nice instrumental stuff, and I'll link to that in the show notes.

It's very cool. And completely coincidentally, I was looking through the Buy It For Life subreddit, like the top posts on that, which, by the way, is just, most of it is just antiques, so that's annoying. But I came across a pair of Russian

Valenki felted wool boots made entirely out of hardened wool. And it's like two-inch thick hard wool socks, basically. And traditionally, they're worn inside boots, but you can just wear them out. And that's like the wool. Yeah. Yeah.

The anti-gall socks. Yeah. Yeah. I'll put it in the show notes. Awesome. Steve got the gold star for reminding us that that James Bond line is from Goldfinger. Goldfinger, is it?

Yes, and saying, yes, it was 1964. So quite some time before. Yes. All right. And Nathan came in second with Leningr's Note and got the center star. Ah, nearly, nearly close. Steve Geoffrey also said,

on becoming a God in Central Florida, was a highly entertaining comedy drama about being enthralled for pyramid scheme, starring a fabulous Kirsten Dunst. Yes, I remember seeing that comment, and I need to watch that, because I am deeply, deeply in love with Kirsten Dunst. And apparently, Ken Russell's Gothic

is a dramatization of A That Weekend, where the Shelleys went to Byron and is deeply bloody bonkers, eyeball nipples and all. So that is two for the watchlist drama. Ah, definitely yelling those to the watchlist. And also, it's not really follow-up, but shout out to Stacey,

who tweeted us a good picture of her hot cross buns, because the first attempt came out as dwarf bread. Happy Easter. Happy Easter. I didn't make hot-ocked grand buns this year. Oh, yeah. There's time. There's time.

I don't have any ingredients. I can't make hot cross buns here, Jack, I need raisins. I don't have any dried fruit in the house. I could use some apricot ones, I guess. I may have some dried figs as well, actually. But no. Anyway, let's talk about the third part of Carpet Juggernaum,

because I feel like we've actually got quite a lot to talk about for a second. Yeah, we do, actually. I feel like we're just kind of teetering on the verge here, knowing how deep the abyss is. The abyss is looking back at me, and it's tapping its watch. So, Francine, would you like to tell us

what happened previously on Carpet Juggernaum? I would. A mini bit more effort to put some of the plot in it this time. Oh, cool. A bit more. Three witches set out to find a fourth, navigating gnarly ground and coming to a cave. Within, they find a witch of stone,

guarding an aggrieved granny weatherworks. Try as they stalagmite, they can't persuade her to come back to Lanka. She can't beat the bloodsuckers, she said, and sends her friends home. In need of allies, Nanny makes nice with the resident pixies and comes up a crowd of local pitchfork wielders.

She and Agnes are on the verge of violence when Granny finally returns. Only two, seemingly, lose without much of a fight. Nanny and the Queen Leggett. Agnes and the Bishop are thrown out the door, and in the chaos some wee free men make off with the king. Who'll pick up the pieces? So it's chess, you get it?

Yeah. Yeah, cool, thanks. I was going to put something about a board in there as well, but it didn't really fit, and I was like, I'm not sure this is obvious enough. Yeah. It was black and white. No, it's black and white.

It's not the desperately sad thing about this podcasting position, as opposed to where I was recording on the sofa for a while, as I don't really have room for conspiracy flailing anymore without hitting a bookcase or part of my desk, I've got ample room for conspiracy flailing. So if you want to come up with some kind of signal for me to conspiracy flail,

I feel like this episode is going to end on conspiracy flailing. It is, yeah. I've got some conspiracy flail points for sure. Awesome. But do you want to tell us what happened first, and then we'll get into the flailing? Yeah, let's talk about what happened. Okay, so in this final section of the book,

as Nanny and Magra escape through the kitchens and into Eagle's coach, Agnes notes take seemingly slumbering Granny to Hodges Muse. Fiegel's fighter Fox and Granny steams as she wakes, and a phoenix feather burns as Granny grabs the iron, sending Agnes away and oats for a sharp axe. Vlad finds a lonely Agnes and offers to show her the world,

shining, shimmering, splendid. Tell me, Agnes, how would you last let your heart decide? I had to google the lyrics and check I had it right as well. I don't believe, I think you've got it right the first time, and then doubted yourself. I don't believe you don't know that song off my heart. Oh my God, I'm getting better at singing in like tenner slash alto now.

We could probably do that. Not now, but... Yeah, okay. Sorry. I'd say that could be Patreon bonus, but I think we choose to Patreon. No, no, no. You can do that in the car.

Anyway, he's showing her the world. As they fly over Lanker Gorge, Granny wakes in the black sands and deals with death falling backwards into the light. As Nanny and Magra head to Uberworld, Lacrimosa and pals join Vlad and Agnes and suggest a pit stop in the town of Escrow. Down the rabbit hole and into the barrow,

King Verence meets the Kelder and a shadow shot removes the fluids over him. Meanwhile, Hodges explains the loss of a firebird to Granny and Oates as a second phoenix waits in disguise in the muse. Hooded bird in tone with the help of Oates and his mule, Granny sets off to follow Nanny into Uberworld. As Verence chugs a mystery brew,

the cold takes Granny out until Oates makes a great light and Agnes and Vlad fly on to Escrow as Nanny and Magra's corpse arrives at the vampire's castle. Eagle takes them into his own quarters as he reminisces over the old master before Nanny finds an awfully big organ. In Escrow, as the people queue calmly, the vampires find themselves almost impotent

and the villagers rise up. Vlad makes one last desperate lunge as Agnes loses consciousness. She wakes to find herself almost staked and strangely craving and mob at her side goes to follow the vampires to their castle. Meanwhile, an overexcited King Verence

feagles in tow, storms Lanker Castle with the existence of the Oaks and Granny finds herself bogged down as she talks books in faith. Sulking vampires find themselves sullied with superstition as they head for safety, Igor can't say that sentence, and a storm comes as Igor fights back with holy water.

As the count craves tea, he plans to start killing. Oates carries Granny as the firebird burns ahead and a knock at the door comes with phoenix flames as Granny finally makes a dramatic entrance. Holy symbols are everywhere and the vampires are almost running scared when they claim Magret and the baby as hostages. Igor can't be having with this

and Agnes arrives with the mob as Granny makes tea and Magret fights back. As Granny reveals that the vampires have in fact been weatherwaxed, the old count wakes and Oates finds faith in a sharp axe as he takes out the nouveau magpire. The young account finds himself locked away with time to learn as the old master

remembers an older weatherwax and offers Vlad and Lacrimosa to the mob before agreeing to teach them. Magret makes the tea and later, as a new day dawns, Verence arrives excited. Finally, the witches go home. Oates gives one last even song, well attended by Lankrastians,

before deciding to head to Uberwald. Agnes says goodbye with a phoenix feather and back at the castle, Igor performs a sloppy resurrection. And finally, an owl flies overhead. Granny's still late and dead. Yeah. That one did go over a page. That's understandable.

Mostly because I needed to put the Aladdin lyrics in there. Also because the third section of the book was nearly 50% of it. Yeah, like most of the action did happen in the third. I mean, by page as well. It was quite a big chunk, but it just seemed like the best place to break up the story. No, I think you were right.

Yeah, but it's just a really long third act by Patrick. It's quite a long book as like Discworld books go. That's true. Most of them are around the three to four hundred. This is over four hundred pages. Do you go in by the Corgi paper, Matt? Yeah. But that is what I usually go by.

Anyway. Helicopter and loincloth watch. Go on. I'm going to go with Flaming Phoenix for the helicopter this time. And I don't know. Fuck it. The Kelders Equator marker thing is the loincloth. Yeah.

Also, as always, death is here, but we also get a little cameo from the Grim Squeaker. Bone Rat, whatever you want to call him. Love him. We also have a little mention of B.S. Johnson. Oh, Birkhold Stevele. Birkhold Stutley Johnson. That was the entire reason I bothered putting the organ

in our little bits we liked. It's just as nice as B.S. Johnson's wreaking havoc everywhere and not just an Angkor book. Indeed. I wonder if so. This organ must be a twin to the university's organ. Anyway, should we do quotes? We shall.

I think mine comes first chronologically. Chronologically. Chronologically. Psychochromat. What was it? Psychochromatic. I really liked that as a word. Yes.

That comes up later. Sorry. This is one of those discworld quotes that has become its own thing. Yes. It is. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things, including yourself.

That's what sin is. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they mean they're getting worried that they won't like the trees. People as things. That's where it starts. It's a good line. Yeah, it is. I'm glad that one sort of got legs of its own

and sort of run off. Especially because back when I used to get into arguments in discworld Facebook groups, I ended up using that line quite a lot. Shall I do my quote if it's a bit longer? Now, if I'd seen him really there, really alive, it'd be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care

two hoots about people who watched him like a father and cared for them like a mother, but you wouldn't catch me saying things like there are two sides to every question and we must respect other people's beliefs, you wouldn't find me just being generally nice in the hope that it would all turn out right in the end. Not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgiving sword.

I did say burning Mr. Oates because that's what it would be. You say that people don't burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that's what true faith would mean. Sacrificing your own life one day at a time to the flame, clearing the truth of it, working for it, breathing the soul of it. That's religion.

Anything else is just being nice and a way of keeping in touch with the neighbors, which is such a good little speech. And then was it Oates's kind of internal response to that? If she ever finds a religion, what would come out of these mountains and sweep across the plains? Anyway, should we go on to the character stuff?

We shall. Everybody's had some interesting moments. Let's start us off with everyone's favourite f**k, boy. F**king Vlad. F**king Vlad. So we get kind of an acknowledgement that he... Vlad in. Vlad in.

Vlad. F**k, boy Vlad. We learned some more about what happened to his ex-girlfriends. We still find employment for them in the castle. So that's gross. And there are skulls hanging around, sort of some failed relationships, I guess. Yeah. I mean, like, if it's going to fail that hard,

keep a skull as a memento, I guess, but like... I don't know. Maybe don't get to the point of there being a skull. Do you think he, like, walks around his display of skulls of ex-girlfriends and, like, alas, poor Yoricks and monologues to them? Absolutely, he does, yeah. And I bet he thinks they appreciate it.

I bet he writes really bad. Like, I think he writes, like, a trocious poetry. But, like, they all have to listen to it and pretend it's good. More interestingly. And there's a few interesting bits he gets. And there's one bit that's going to go into another possible rant about the fat phobia thing in this book, which is...

So when he's thinking, talking about turning Agnes, he's talking about the fact that she's going to lose weight. And it's really frustrating because it's presented in a way that's like... He's clearly a dick because he's telling her to lose weight. Like, him being fat phobic is part of why he's a dick. But then, like, less than 10 pages later, the book is saying, oh, she's the right shape for falling. And it's just like, don't show the character

is a dick by making him fat phobic and then be fat phobic. Like, you can do one or the other. You can't do both. Yeah, I get the feeling that with those comments, practice almost considering themselves like just being matter of fact about it and, you know, blah, blah, blah. But as you said, it's kind of... It's one thing to write that if you are a fat person.

Yeah. It's... Yeah. It's annoying. And then, I guess, at least fat people exist. Yeah, at least fat people are in the books. Like, the bar isn't bad to see books. The bar's in the ground again.

That was all I really had for Vlad that doesn't tie into a lot of the bigger plot stuff we're going to talk about later. Same with Agnes and Podita. There's just a couple of moments. One of them being Agnes having an introspective moment. She loathed Vlad, but Podita merely hated him, which is the opposite pole to love and just as attractive. It's quite interesting the Agnes Podita kind of journey of this book.

Podita gets quieter, especially in the last third. But there's also the boundaries between their different morality is a kind of blood and almost sometimes swap a little bit. Yes. And I think it's good writing. I think it's, you know, Agnes kind of coming into her own more and more and needing Podita as a separate identity less and less. There's also, she mentions Podita as the voice over her shoulder.

And after a certain point in the book, she has another voice over her shoulder. She has Granny in there. Yeah. So she doesn't need as much Podita. I feel like acts as a kind of scaffold while Agnes is building her own confidence. Yeah, which works really well. I really like it as a development thing. And then going on to Granny, who I'm going to talk about at great length.

This is basically just the bullet points. I couldn't really fit into later, which is mostly that I just fucking love how her stubbornness is written. Yeah. She's aware of it. Yeah. I also really like what she's like. I didn't ask you to come along.

Acts slipped into a bit of rural. I liked that the essence and illinguistic sense of Granny seems to be the word reckon. Yeah. And the phrase, I can't be having with this. Yeah. So like the first little tinges of Granny come up with the word reckon. Yeah.

The whole build up is everything about setup and playoff and this is great. And her stubbornness, again, when she's talking about faith, which is interesting because she's always sort of this insistent on, you know, there's no shades of gray. It's black and white. Mm hmm. When she is always kind of somewhere in these boundaries of shades of gray. She can handle the shades of gray, she says, but yeah, not she thinks, but nobody else.

She's arguing with Oates and he's like, oh, would you like me to leave you on the mountain? She's like, it's not my mountain. I wouldn't be one to tell people where they should be. I know she's being a twat for a good reason, but still. It's great. I love it. And you had a lot to say about Oates, didn't you? I do.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is kind of my talking point, which I'm front loading because we've got such a talking point at the other side. It kind of makes sense. But so Oates' journey, sorry, journey, journey is just one of the best things about this book, I think. So I like to start off with one of the most memorable quotes from this book for me,

apart from listening, is he tried praying again, more desperately this time, fragments of childish prayer, losing control of the words and even if their direction, so that they tumbled out and soared away into the universe, addressed simply to the occupier. And that is just that's just one of those quotes that I couldn't again, couldn't have told you which book it was from, but I just loved it so much. But I like the thematic callbacks to small gods with Oates. I like that he's doing his own journey across the desert, except it's kind of the opposite. Journey across a very rainy, what is it, more swamp, whatever, mud.

I like that he kind of invokes brother in his head and brother was this infinitely patient comparatively to almost everybody else character and saying, even brother might have, if he had to deal with someone like Granny might have given a sigh, like, because obviously he doesn't like what a dick I'm was. I mean, Granny compared to Om is quite an interesting. She's heavier. She's definitely heavier. Oates and his acts as this religious symbol, I find fantastic because it starts off as this invocation of practicality over symbolism. And he's still got that when he's lost all of his

accoutrements. But actually, had a little look, it is a religious symbol as it happens in many religions. Ancient Crete and Harrier and Thrace invokes storms a lot of the time. So I guess that there might be some somatic ties there. It's also been political. Sorry. I just I assume it's probably crops up in Norse mythology at some point as well. Oh, I didn't see the Norse one, but quite probably it was a long list. Yeah, I just picked three ancient civilizations. But yes, it's also political. It's been used by a lot of feminists and lesbian movements. Also, and sadly, in fascist movements, especially during Marble 2 era, it's fine. There's only so many symbols. Yeah, yes, exactly.

I like that he is being mentored by an atheist, basically, and being made to be better in his faith by somebody who doesn't believe and that Granny's very aware of that whole time. And the Prophet Brother said that Om helps those who help one another. And a bit later, I reckon Om helps those who help themselves. So that scene and Granny's kind of not saying it out loud, but acknowledging the book burning. And like that whole scene of him holding the book and trying to work out what to do and actually taking that practical route. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like this moment of, oh, I'm wasting my matches looking for answers in the fuel source. Yeah, yeah. And of course, yeah, of course, for a lot of people,

they wouldn't occur to you straight away. And it takes a second. But that then going on to that speech of Granny, as I was talking about the face speech and that fire as a metaphor going through it. And then the phoenix flying through the castle, burning the vampires. He had to find that fire. And he partly found it by getting rid of the dogma, so he could focus on what he actually believed in. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He kind of, although the fact he thought in shades of grey was to his advantage with like tackling the vampires, or just not being charmed by the vampires. I feel like being able to find the black and white through Granny was very helpful for him. So finding

the simplicity, like hearing the nature of sin, the sin quote, kind of learning the nature of goodness through what she said and also what she was doing. So he had to carry her through the wilderness while she was so ungrateful about it. And he was a good enough man to do it, even though she was so ungrateful. And I feel like a lot of charity, including religious charity, kind of comes with this undertone of, and if you're not the right kind of recipient of this charity, then we're going to withdraw it. Yeah, very much so. And that's not charity. That's not, you're not being a good person if what you're doing comes with, and if you don't thank me. I'm holding back on doing my full rant about faith versus religion, because I think the listeners

have probably had enough of me doing it in the past. Yes, maybe later. We'll have a little taste of the rant later. I think that would be a nice way to see us out. And yeah, just to have just some beautiful quotes about it. There's something pleasing about simply getting on with simple tasks and listening to his own breath, his own meditation. He's when he loses his holy symbols, as you say, he can then find faith, because yeah, it's just so beautiful. And then I'll just stop this in the slightly rambling section with another amazing quote, I thought, which is, the world is different. Oats as gaze went out across the haze and the forests and the purple mountains. Everywhere I look, I see something holy. And then Granny

smiles for the first time properly, says, that's a start then. Oh, no, sorry, one more thing. Two more things. So also, I really liked that it was by seeing holy in everything, there's kind of a mirror to the vampire's pattern recognition, which was a massive problem for them. And then I also like just returning to conspiracy flailing with the small gods callbacks, right at the end where he raised his eyes upwards a mid song, and there's an eagle. Yes, the eagle far ahead. And this vector rating across the darkening sky, possibly hunting for lost lambs, which again, very religious symbolic, whatever, but it's granny. And it's also a phoenix matter, matterful, whatever, because it flashes into the light as it disappears.

Yeah, but it also is granny, but also it's religious. And it might pick up. Flailing just in the start. Flail up, flail up. It's like sailing up. You flail up, I'll flail sideways. I'll be in Scotland for you. Fantastic. Anyway, so Oats actually takes us quite neatly onto Nanny's, the favorite thing I noticed about Nanny, my favorite little line about Nanny that doesn't go into a bunch of the other stuff is right at the end when she's dragged everyone along for even song. And Leavers thought Oats and had a fleeting vision of the pictures in Nanny's parlour. She controls the levers of lots of people, but someone pulled her lever first, I'll bet. No, sorry. Well, it is a word though,

because it's Nanny. There's always a bit everywhere. Yeah. My two Nanny things that I particularly loved, and that's why she's fantastic throughout, she really is. Where the just the quote, oh, we're always all right. You remember that we happened to other people just seemed so genuinely reassuring in that really fraught moment. And I feel like it did actually help a lot. And then right at the end of the magpies, yes, turning the three to two, three for funerals, she began, stone word up. It was an indignant squawk and a shower of feathers. Two for mirth, said Nanny, the self satisfied voice. I was cheating, which is always cheap.

I think Nanny is the one who's just, she's the most honest about what it is to be a witch. She is. Yeah. I think in this one, it would be difficult to argue your podcast spanning theme that she's more powerful, simply because the sheer impressiveness of what Granny's doing throughout, but she's definitely, she's definitely showing her human power through. Yeah. This is probably the least convincing book for that theory. Yeah. And yet she's still fantastic. So and yet she is still one of my favorite favorite, the character I probably most aspire to, which I sent you a funny take-talk about. And I might throw the link to that in the show notes

as well. Which was that? That was after the stupid Kira and Ily one, but I think I sent it just to you, not to the group chat. Oh, I didn't watch it then. Sorry. I'll watch that during the next coffee break. How rude. And then Nanny goes on to, my favorite, Magret at the moment is with her and Nanny. Nanny says, I really don't think I could be going out with a man with a limp and Magret responds limp. What? Isn't Magret great in this section? Magret is so great in this section. It's like I'm running between the door and her baby. Like it's like dealing with vampire and then being like, look at that money. Throwing the countess in the river.

There's a woman that has it all. She's doing it all. She's a girl boss. No, I hate myself, never mind. But it was there just enjoying me up to shock Nanny by making a dick joke. And it felt good just wants to place a small tintak in the path of Nanny's carefree amble through life. What is a tintak? I'm assuming it's like a thumbtack kind of thing. I think that must just be an old word for it. Yeah. I made a note to look it up and then didn't. Also the exact definition of escrow, which I'll try and do during the coffee break, because I did say I'd do that. Yeah. And Magret gets almost all of Nanny's jokes now, but not the one about the priest, the old woman and the rhino.

Yeah. I don't think we ever learned that, do we? I feel like we're better off not knowing. True. We are not. Well, she didn't get it till she was 40. And if she didn't get it till she was 40, I mean, we'd probably better wait a decade before we go looking. Yeah. At least a decade, I would say. But that was an enjoyable moment. And then you get on to the Verrant stuff and Nanny advising Magret on how Verrants could rule better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is nice. They're taking some time in the coach. They're chatting. And she's just explaining, make him a bit more kingy, a bit more belchy and shouting,

bit of carousel and quaffing and such. She does it in a really nice way. Like she doesn't criticise anything Verrants had done. Like if Nanny was doing this, she would focus on Verrants being a massive white blanket. But Nanny's like, no, yeah, I can see he's like, this is all fine or just skimmed over the bits. She clearly doesn't approve of. But how about a little bit of bellowing? A little bit of carousel belching optional. But you know, crown that fits. People need something today, but they generally need something else tomorrow. Just tell them to concentrate. That's such a good line.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's like the fracture kind of saying about the benefit of tradition for once, isn't it? It's like having this through line in this kingdom of just a king that's pretty much always the same. I also just kind of continuing the theme that I'll go into more deeply later, but I ended last section on, you know, this metaphor of humans as cattle and the Fiegel's like stealing cattle and they steal Verrants. And then he rises up stronger. Snafling king beastie. Snafling king beastie. With the help of big Aggies Bruin. He's got herbs in, so it must be healthy. Is to you the Fiegel language a lot hardest to understand in this than in subsequent books? Yes. Okay. He does simplify it later, doesn't he?

I think he does. I think it's, they're characters in this. I don't know. I think, I don't know if he planned to use them later on, but I think when they are used later on, they're in books that are originally aimed at slightly younger readers. I think it needed to be stripped back simplified a bit. I don't think I mentioned it in the last episode, but I found it interesting that Nanny kind of looked at their tattoos and went, ah, MacFiegel kind of implying that there are other clans out there here with different colors. I enjoy that. Maybe different colors as well, like some little orange ones. I know obviously the blue is the Scottish and the Braveheart and whatever. But we're in a different

world, which probably has a different... Completely off topic, but the new series of Dairy Girls just started and there's a line where one of the girls picks up a Braveheart video and says, this is about a drag queen saving Scotland. Good. Yes, I like that. Which is my favorite. So looking at variances, like a micro version of the macro escrow rising up when they're... Macro escrow. Macro escrow. Yeah, that was the point I was trying to make. And now I'm going to just move us on to the Kelder. We were talked about right in the first episode, Inc., with Nanny Fiegel being introduced to a Pratchett, what Pratchett had to say about them. So the Kelder is like this queen bee type figure who gets a few interesting

descriptions. One thing I did notice is the Fiegel's shouting yin ton tetra. It's not like there's a counting system. It is. So thank you, Annotated Pratchett. I nearly didn't bother putting this in notes because I thought you may have ended up being your obscure reference finial. So once I'd seen you'd filled one in, I grabbed this and put it in my notes. It's Old Northern, not Scots. So Yorkshire, Cumbria type area. And it's a counting system specifically for counting sheep. Yeah, it's like yin ton tetra. Yin ton tetra, methora, pit, sethora, lethora, hovora, dovora, dick. Yeah. And I think it used to like a bit like the magpyrite, it used to kind of change a little

bit depending on which village you're in. According to Annotated Pratchett, according to folklorist A.L. Lloyd, the words were traced to a group of Romanian shepherds brought to England early in the 19th century. And the words were thought of as a cult and mysterious until it turned out they were just for counting. Anyway, yeah, so Big Aggie, the Kelda, we're a fan. She's very supportive. She means well. She does well. She does very well. A little too well, perhaps. Faithful a haid. Oh, Verince doesn't really get much to do in this book. He wanders round being confused. He gets kidnapped. And then he runs around with a sword. He has a lovely time, though, and we're very happy for him. But it's not the kind of possessed by fighting spirit

moment in the Lord's and Lady's, didn't she? And that Verince gets a actually spirit. But it's not very like character growthy for Verince. No, I don't think he can use it. No, he's fine. I love Verince's character, but like it's once it's the one subplot I could see kind of losing from the book if you had to cut a subplot. Like you could keep the feagles but leave Verince and Lanker Castle for the whole thing and it wouldn't affect the book at all. Yeah. Yes, it certainly didn't subtract here. Yeah. And then Igor. Igor, who's got a bit of a crush? I know. Igor's got a bit of a crush on Nanny. It's quite sweet. It's very sweet. And Scraps. Scraps. I literally when I read that scene where Scraps gets killed, Scraps being

Igor's lovely Frankendog, the first thing I thought was Francine is going to be furious. Well, I was and then I thought, perhaps it doesn't kill dogs for no reason. He'll come back to life. Yeah. And the scene with death. Yes, that is adorable. I was very nearly crying. Especially when Nanny was so unsympathetic for a second there. Yeah. Well, I feel like Nanny did have quite a lot going on, but I feel like she was a bit unfair to Igor in general. True. And then finally, the old master. Yeah, good old, I guess. Count that fear. Better. I like the comparison of this sort of comfortable monster as opposed to the weird psychopathic vampires. Yeah, for sure. He's like that. The theoretical monster almost,

doesn't he? He turns up and he's monstrous of it. And there's like, oh, I'm a monster. Oh, no, I'm dead. Okay, see you again next decade. Yeah. The old master, I'm not going to do that, Igor voice. The old master used to say, Igor, the day vampires win all the time, that'll be the day we'll be not back beyond return. But he did get annoyed when people pinched his socks. Fought that with silk. Which is nice also because it's foreshadowing, obviously, the big return, like 60 pages later. Yeah. And it kind of shows that he's got a higher estimation of humanity than the new lot because he thinks that if we don't treat people as things. Yeah. Yes. He thinks if we push them, they will fuck us up.

Yeah. Like, if we keep it sporting, it's kind of a game for all of us. The reaction from the escrow citizens, they're sort of going, oh, you know, we don't mind, he doesn't expect us to like him. Yeah. It doesn't expect us to be grateful. I just quickly Googled escrow, etymology, by the way. It's from the old French word escrow, meaning a scrap of paper or a scroll of parchment that indicated the deed that a third party held until the transaction was completed. So I guess it makes sense that they've got the contract going on, haven't they? They've got some kind of weird agreement happening. But yeah, I kind of quite like the old master because he's got a bit of the, I mean, Verrance gets to do it in the Barrow as well, but he's got a bit of the Prince

Charles politeness to him. Yeah. Yeah. So how long have you been a vampire hunter? Jeremy, and it's a sort of, oh, good man, killed me stone dead 75 years ago. He should be proud. Yes. So I've got the stake hanging over my thumb, please. And that's the memento they want, not a special little badge when they join the, get the next thing. Yeah. We'll talk about escrow more later, aren't we? Yeah, I'm going to talk about it a lot more later. I'll save my thoughts then. And yeah, lastly, locations. The only one I was going to talk about here was the Fiegel Barrow, because I really love the description. Oh, yes, do. Under the rabbit hole down below the bank was a wide low roof chamber. This is just these ancient burial chambers lying around in Lanka,

because they just sort of leave them because they reckoning in their uncomplicated country way that it was bad luck to have your head torn off by a vengeful underground spirit. Weird little bits of folklore like living your own should horse at one of them places expense in the morning. The six months have begun and you'd never see your horse again. Magic, which ties into a couple of bits of folklore, doesn't it? If you leave your payment and then a pixie will fix your shoes or shoe your horse or yeah. Well, a pixie's never horse my shoes. And dust as well. Goodness me. Freshly horse shoes are incredibly uncomfortable. Well, yes, they tend to have minds of their own. Yeah, so I just very enjoy that as a location.

No, I like that. I very enjoy this. I very enjoy it. I use the big words. I need more something. I don't know. Okay. Anyway, podcast, podcast, podcast, little bits we liked. What did we like? What did you like? I wouldn't have picked up on this if it wasn't for you pointing it out to me, actually. I was just going to give you that. Nanny threatens to flog Eagle with a scented boot lace. And it kind of completely went over my head because I think I'm just used to it as like a bit of a patriotism. But you pointed out, I guess, because you re-edited our first ever episode the other day that I pointed that as a

little bit I liked out in colour of magic when being email's right hand man, I was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces. So that's just a that's a fun little callback. Yes, other months, I understood it, not the other day. So listen as if you thank Father. Which also I did very little. I just tried to sort out the equalization of it, which is a bit of a lost cause with the shitty audio. Yeah, that was painful audio. We got better. We got, oh my God, it's so awful listening to these old episodes because we peaked. We fucking peaked just before lockdown. And then we had to go through the whole like, trying to make the at home audio work. And then we had a couple of shit episodes where your audio

equipment was bad. And then we had a couple of shit episodes where my computer made that hissing noise for some reason. Yeah. Honestly, the listeners who've like come in late and binge listened to us and got to this point having listened to the first episodes, like we're grateful that you you stuck this. I mean, also the listeners that be with us to the for the beginning. Yeah, no, anyone who's got here having listened to a terrible early audio. We love you. Also just fun little side note that I went because I had to go back to my old set of notes to see if I could find a reference to the scented bootleys, which I couldn't. That was my first podcast notebook. And I've now with this one finished my second. Technically, it's got like one empty page

left, which is annoying. But sincerely, you should do four all together. Yes, because we're about halfway at this point, aren't we? Okay, so yeah, so scented bootleys callback. I like that. You like the storms? Oh, yeah, more storms for sonification. I just like that as a thing. There was even a bit of sullen thunder now, not the outgoing sort that cracks the sky, but the other sort which hangs around the horizons and gossips nastily with the other storms. I enjoy that. For this book, actually, I did redownload one of the apps I had on Android. Although I've had the free version, it's gone my noise. And I've had it on iPhone forever, just the free version. But I had the paid version on Android, and I redownloaded the

paid version here so that I could have storm noises on in the background, as I because I usually have some kind of like white noise is going on in my headphones. Usually it's just rain noise. But I was like, this rain is too gentle for what I'm reading. You need storm noise. I need storm noise. So yeah, I respect it. I like that. We briefly revisit the Lancas with the Lanquerami knife. Oh, yes, yeah. Which I think I mentioned back in the first episode, some of the things I enjoy, such as the adjustable device for winning on to logical arguments, which works if you twiddle it properly, and the tool for extracting the essential truth for a given statement, which apparently is useful to a soldier. Because

when the other side is shouting, we're going to cut your tongue, sorry, your tongue off, you can tell if they're going to be right. We're going to cut your tongue off being referenced in, I think Jingo was a good example of psychological warfare. Yes. Yes. Well, there's a lot of callbacks in this book, isn't there? Practice having a nice, good callback, a nice time with callbacks in this. There's a nice, a comfortable amount of world to draw on now. Yeah. Yes. So the callbacks can go back to so many different books and be relevant without it being like heavy handed. I am referring to this book. Yeah. And then yes, with large organ, large organ. I mentioned it earlier, but it's just nice to have yet another BSJ organ in the mix. Speaking of mixes, those sound effects

sound fantastic. They do. I need some horror effects on my keyboard. Should probably reference that Children of the Night is one of Bella Legosi's famous lines from the original Dracula movie, which is nice. We tried, we talked about it. I read a couple of pages of that vampire story one. It's a bit of time and not bad. The other reason I was looking at annotated practice, sorry, is that it's because talking about the organ as the century of the fruit bat has its compensations. This suggests that BS Johnson was active within the past 100 years, which only the second solo queue we've had about his lifetime after Sibyl mentioning her grandfather shooting him. So it's just nice to place better called Stutley Johnson. Yeah,

he's like it to us would be a 1910s kind of fella organ or to practice at the time, her Lake Victorian. Yes, Lake Victorian, very silly. And then there's another fun reference when the Speaking of Dracula, okay, when the Count and Countess are reminiscing about their honeymoon in Grige and Skonvidge. Well, I'm glad you tried to pronounce that. I nearly put it as one of the locations just to try and make you pronounce it. I also did. Aren't we nice to each other in the end? Grige and Skonvidge, where they met the lovely Mr. and Mrs. Harker, which I assume is a reference to Jonathan and Meena Harker of Dracula.

Oh, okay. Well done. Allegory. And this time I mean it. This is not a deep look at allegory. It is just the fact that I enjoy Granny winding up boats about allegory. And to think I thought it was an allegorical creature, it says. Well, even allegories have to live, said Granny by the way. And a little later on, is it a true bird or something exists within her? It's a thing that is, said Granny sharply. Don't go spilling allegory all down your shirt. Was it Granny who was like talking about an allegory being a type of reptile at some point

in an artwork? Or was that you? I think it was somewhere in which the broad and Granny Trenetel her. And do it quickly. Yes. Don't be long about it. Oh, no. I'll have a, sorry, I'll have a crocodile sandwich whenever you're ready, but no worries if not. I forgot to put this one in. I wondered what your goth name and what your norm core name would be. My goth name. Oh yeah, of course. So if you're Agnes being a Perdita, what would you be? And if you're Lacrimosa being a whatever the fuck she's calling herself, what would you be? I think I'd go with like a Margaret for my norm core name. It's like quite like the idea of shortening to Peggy. Peggy's nice. Yeah. I love that as a nickname for Margaret.

Not sure about my goth name. I think we may have talked about this before slightly, but I think I'd have to go with Sasha still because that was my like tween. I wouldn't be called Sasha. So I think that was great. I can't remember my various teenage dream names. I think they've all been released rumored by actually reading a bunch of fantasy and wanting any of the names from that. Yeah. I really wanted to be Natalie at one point. I really love the name Natalie. Yeah. And I knew bitchy Natalie's, but I don't know why I just I really wanted the name. I thought maybe I could become like a more powerful bitch if I became Natalie. No offense to any Natalie's that are listening. I'm sure you're lovely.

But I think I'm going to go with Eulogia. Eulogia. Eulogia. Nice. Yes. What did you say your norm core name would be? Margaret. Margaret. Yeah. I think my yeah, Peggy. I didn't I should have thought of mine. I thought of my goth one. I think I would be, is Dolores? Is that a bit much, isn't it? That's quite yeah. And there's like bad Harry Potter connotations. What? Oh, no. Fuck that. West Broad. She can't just steal. No, you can't just have connotations with all those names. No. Okay, fine. Terrible. So Albus then. Yeah, obviously. Classic. No. I think Deirdre in that case. Oh, I like Deirdre. Deirdre is a good one. Deirdre stands on a front step and tuts at the neighbors. Yeah, she does. Sasha has so much out there. Sasha has like a really

good coat. But you know, one of those coats that's just almost a cape, like it twirls really dramatically. Yeah, should we go on to the big stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Staring into the abyss. Let's get a Bissell. So my grand arch overarching thesis of why this is so good or how I crammed four talking points into one, because there's just a lot to talk about really, isn't there? I like how that's like a subtitle from an old fashioned book. I was thinking of a, I can't even remember that or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb. Dr. Strange Love. It's sort of the most famous and how or how subtitle things Stanley Kubrick from. Anyway, all right, the hat's annoying already. But we put the hat on for the thesis. It's there,

in spirit. Starting with some of the foreshadowing and the set up and pay off. Foreshadowing is a good place to start. Foreshadowing is a good place to start. Just the build up of the, to the reveal of the vampires being weatherwaxed. And like we mentioned earlier, it starts off really subtle, like Vlad saying, I couldn't be having with that. Perdita noticing something off before Reignis does because Perdita would. And the vampires arguing amongst themselves as well. It starts coming out with just odd little sort of graniisms. When that cremator implies something about Agnes and she does this, did I say Agnes? Did I refer to her in any way? It's so grani-ish.

I wouldn't put myself forward, I'm sure. There's definitely, oh yeah, there's, the counters gets, you know, oh, I've never been one to put myself forward. Yes, yeah. The most sort of blatant bit. And the first time I read this, I didn't, like, I genuinely, I couldn't see what was going to happen. I couldn't see how granny was going to win. I didn't pick up on it. Once you know to look for it, it's all there and signposted really well. But I genuinely, I think I was a less observant reader at the time and I just didn't notice. In fairness, I think we go a little above and beyond trying to be observant with this read through. So also you read, yeah, fuck me. Are those more pastoral than they used

to be? For the listeners, Joanna just held up a book full of post-it notes, chopped so full of post-it notes that it may be more post-it note than book at this point. It varies because I use different colors. I can't always use the same colors because so many different colors are in a pack that I'd end up wasting a bunch. They look nice and Easter themed as well. They do look a bit Easter. Maybe it's just like next to the dark lipstick you've got on. I don't know. When Agnes wakes after being bitten with a brothel of poppy seeds and feels this I can't be having, who hasn't woken up with a brothel of poppy seeds? Actually, I used to work as a chef, so you know, it's happened. Well, no, it's before she woke up with can't be having with

this. It was the, there were the words echoing as she managed not to go towards the light. Yeah, this person falling into hot suffocating darkness and she felt the desire and the hunger and feeling the voice saying I can't be having with this. Yeah. And the tea cravings. Oh, yeah. No, that's a key bit. That's where it becomes like that's what's happened. And I love it because it's this huge confusion about the hot leaf juice. Yeah. I also wonder where there's little exchange with Perdita where Perdita was horrified. It'll give them nightmares that being killing the vampires in front of the children and no thought Agnes. It'll take the nightmares away. It was very granny-ish, but it's harder with Agnes when you've got her in a monologue

because you don't know what's her being weatherwax and Elblad's tried to turn her into a vampire and what's just Agnes has learned from granny. Yeah. And Agnes is a lot more granny than Magritte is. So it's a lot more, a lot more granny than Nanny is. Yeah. She's the one who picks up on, you know, granny not having the romance in her soul. She wouldn't put herself in the baby. Yeah. Yeah, you can see Agnes one day going a bit maybe not being that powerful, but having that level of just grounded headology going on. Grounded confidence. I think once she completely no absorbs Perdita integrates. But yeah, I just I think it's so well done in this book to set up the ending because there's so much doubt and there's so much how can this not end terribly

that to get there the way it does and to foreshadow it so subtly is really great. And then a couple of bits I wanted to just put a pin in for the future. One of which is Granny putting her pain into the iron. Yeah, we'd like to put pins in Lacrimosa just in general, bitch. Although I will say out of them as they get more granny-ish like Lacrimosa changes the least. She's the most granny-ish of the vampires almost because she is the least. She's a bit Lilithy maybe. Bit Lilithy. She's the least leashed out of all of them I'd say. She's the one in escrow who snaps and says this is how we feed.

Yes. And that's it's good writing because I think she that means she gets to demonstrate some of the granny-ishness like I said when they all break down and start fighting with each other. She gets to say some of the stuff that granny would say in a fit of peak because she is a bit of a peak-ish granny. Yeah. But the moment where granny puts her pain into the iron. It's good, isn't it?

And it's not really explained until I've seen also later in the Black Sands that that's what she was doing. No, but earlier in the book she took the pain from the mother. The woman in labor, yeah. So I think the fact that she can move pain has been explained but I think we do, we come to that again, don't we? Yeah. That's something I'm putting a pin in a bit for the future.

But again, it's nicely set up at the beginning of the book. That's beautifully done and just the descriptive work in this is fantastic. It's like the little bits of corrosion moving away from her fingers and as she then puts it, the dramatic scene is fantastic. Oh, someone's put a kettle on it, fuck's sake. But that's what Hodges would do. Oh yeah, absolutely. We didn't mention him, did we, but I think he's fantastic.

He gets to be so practical in the faces. And I think he really gets to, he gets to tell Oates what he needs to hear in that moment as well, isn't it? But it's like Oates seems to be quite patronizing towards non-academic people. And like that includes like Nanny and Agnes very stupidly but then Hodges is the one who manages to go, do you know what happens when Falcon makes a kill and still flies back to my glass? No, okay.

And I don't know what the fuck's going on here. So would you like a cup of tea? Thank you. Yeah, respect my expertise and I'll respect yours. Absolutely. And one other thing I'm just going to put a pin in for the future is the interaction stream vampires and werewolves in and everyone inuble. Let's put a pin in werewolves.

Not all werewolves, not all werewolves. Okay, and now let's go on to Granny just as I didn't really segue this very well, but Granny is a liminal character. This is kind of two things. Also, Granny working best when she's separated from bits of the action. And what I mean by separated from bits of the action is really separated from the other witches. Yes, she's making her own action. She does her own action and it's a separate subplot.

Her choosing, this thing that's been built up throughout the book of her needing to choose between actively choosing between dark and light every day, not like Nanny, who I just don't think could do anything bad. Nanny never thinks about choosing the good. Nanny just is. Absolutely. Yeah, it's in her bones. Like when somebody is bad, she reacts immediately.

It's like when she slapped Agnes like in the first section. It's like, yeah, it's all, it's reflex for Nanny to be good, for Nanny to care about other people, whereas Granny has to think about the fact that to treat other people like things is a sin. She has to acknowledge that within herself. Yeah, there's a moment where she's arguing with herself and the callback to Lilith as well. You know, Lilith Weatherwax did. Alison Weatherwax did, which is great because she's always lived with the shadow of her sister

and her sort of grandmother slash great aunt. It's not really clear. I think grandmother. Yeah, when she realizes at the end that Alison didn't go along with the count, like she didn't go bad. Black Alice was a massive exaggeration. Yeah. It's like that's been a kernel of why she's always been worried about the dark

behind her and she gets to kind of set that free. And like she basically gets a nice little bit of therapy from the old count. Yeah. And she's like, right. So Alison would have been older than I am now. They're still like, yeah, I can hold out. This is fine. Yeah.

It's going to be all right. Yeah. And yeah, just that. Have you got the scene where she's arguing in front of you? Yeah. Can you read a bit? Uh, the dark pulled at her sleeves. You killed.

No, I showed the way. That's just words. Words is important. You took the right to judge others. I took the duty. I'll own up to it. I can't see such a fucking good scene. It's such a fucking good scene.

Like when you were reading it as well, I was like, going towards the lights wrong, isn't it? You can't go towards the light. That's what I think you go towards the light as you die, but it's practice. You're not sure. Maybe that is the right way. And it's like, it's like, it's like with Granny and the mirror.

She always gets this moment of metaphysical puzzle. Yeah. You get to see her make that choice in the bigger metaphysical sense, as well as in the really literal sense. Oh, and then that wonderful bit where she can hear mightily oaks as second thoughts. Yes. And then obviously from that, I guess learns what to do with him to

turn him into a, an effective good man. Yes. There's a complete twat. Slightly off topic, but she does also get a great line about burning witches. And it's a sort of, oh, you don't mind that, that the Omnions used to burn witches. And she was like, no, they didn't,

they probably burn some old ladies who can run away, but I wouldn't look for the witches being burned. Yes. I think I've, well, we've both went on a round about that and a previous which has worked, didn't we? Yeah. It's like, yeah, this isn't like a good evil, whatever, or we like witches because we've got a modern interpretation of them.

And it's like, no, this is just like misogynistic murder. A lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I like Granny's point of view. I might look for witches doing the burning. We aren't all nice.

And again, it's this awareness that she's straddling this boundary way more than anyone else. And I think she's also trying to provoke him a little bit there. Absolutely. And as she builds in, she talks about choices. She talks about judging. She talks about, you know, it's human to need to make the best choice. It's human to choose between good and bad.

Yeah. I know it's asked if she's so sure she makes the right decisions and she says, no, she does for the best. And she doesn't want, she's not hoping for mercy because judging has to come first. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, is her really carrying the weight of everything

she has had to do in her time as a witch? Yeah. And it's an interesting look at, I think what we were saying earlier about how she thinks she can deal with the shades of grey and other people can't. She can make this choice every day, other people can't. And she can make the judgments and it's definitely a, and probably justified, but kind of, I can do this.

So I have to do this. You can't cope with it. So I will cope with it. And maybe other people could more if she gave him a job, but maybe not. And who would take that risk? And this idea of her needing someone to beat and sometimes that someone is herself

that's been such a huge part of her character. It's really good to just see it pointed out. Is, I'm sorry, this is a really obvious question. Is the fact that she's so weak the whole time, like going up to, going through the world and that, because she is having to kind of almost use borrowing power in all those different entities at once because she's got herself in other people?

I feel like that's contributing to it. I mean, she got bit by a bunch of vampires. Yeah, she's lost a lot of blood, she's or whatever. But I also think like on a thematic sense, it works because Granny is usually such this big, powerful figure that making her weak and physically reliant on another body, if not reliant on another body. We don't get to see Granny like that.

And when we do see Granny beating down in other books, this really comes right back around to my theme of it working best where she is, you don't see it for long. You get a, you get a snippet in Lords and Ladies, you get that moment in which the broad, like, Oh God, what if she's dead, but it's never really believable. Yes. But here it's, you know, it happens two thirds of the way

through the book. It's incredibly well-paced. So then you have a whole third of almost, of almost outing Granny. You have a section where, you know, maybe she really can't win this time. Maybe that's the lesson the witches have got to learn, even if it's not what she intends,

because she's not romantic enough to do what Margaret suggested, which is, you know, stepping away. So they all have to pull together and learn. I know I'm a bit obsessed with this whole like Granny and oats dynamic thing, but it just occurred to me as well. You've got the really well-spaced out rule of three with him having lost his book and then his necklace. His book and his hat, yeah.

It's like his bell book and candle. Yes, thank you. Oh God, fucking good book. Such a good book. This is the point I'm making. But to come back to the kind of the gothic literature parallels and the liminal, that's the space that Granny has had to reside in, and no more so than when she has been bitten by the vampires,

because yes, they've been weatherwaxed, but she is, that's a push and pull. Yeah, it's a push and pull between her and the vampiric nature and what I said about, you know, La Cromosa being the most believably Granny-ish of the nightmares. Like Granny could do that. Granny does, and this kind of goes into my next point, which is this humans as castle theme.

Granny doesn't not think of people like that sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, she does separate herself and somewhat put herself above. I think she is kind of admitting to her own sin when she talks about it. How she knows she has to make an effort not to be. Really creepy bit, and I can't think very well to put this, but it was just such a good horror bit, was the every hooded head was turned towards the little bird on Granny's

Granny Weatherwax's wrist. Every blind hooded head was just such good. That was just such a good moment. To quickly kind of round out my Granny as liminal before we go into the humans as castle though, one thing I do love is one of the last paragraphs of the book. The year was past the edge, heading away from the dark. Oh, yeah.

Which is a really lovely, it's almost like, right, I've put this tradition down for this book so we can do something else next time. Yeah, we've talked about this with the solstice at length, haven't we? Yeah. That's the turning point. It's the coming out of the dark, and this is the idea,

it's springtime, this is really coming out of the dark, the way the solstice kind of isn't, because this is when it actually warms up and life comes. And it's a nice finishing for Granny as well, like it's almost like she gets to step out of that push and pull a bit, with learning about Alison and going through everything she's gone through in this book. She's kind of forgiven herself, some of her own humanity.

Gets to snore loudly all the way home. Yes, her untrained snore, which is such a great idea. But yeah, so jumping back and going forward, this idea of being... Jumping back, going forward. Being above and separate from other people. And this human's castle idea, and there's these horrible bits where Agnes is pointing out that the domestics,

that the vampires have brought are pretty much mooing. Vlad's like, but they have such sad lines anyway. What does it matter that we've enslaved them? Yeah, and that horrible bit, but then followed by the accurate as per D to put it. But I think it's harder for Agnes to be watching that, because she did get out, she did run away, she went to work more pork, she had a whole life there

until she got dragged back. Well, that said, isn't it? She got dragged back. So I think it's her existential crisis a bit there as well, because I think she's feeling the push and pull in the same way that Granny is to a lesser extent. It's like she's got the teenage version of it with Vlad while Granny's push and pulling with the count.

Yeah, for sure. Going into escrow slightly later in the book, when they actually arrive in the town and there's the queuing, and the children running up and down the queue playing, and three children have just turned 12, and they have a little rite of passage before the main lottery. Yeah. Have you read the lottery, the short story?

Yes. Very that, yeah. Very, very that. I forget the author's name, sorry. No, it's quite a well-known one, which confused me for a while, because I saw lots of people referencing it, but there's like a bad teen book I read called The Lottery. Shirley Jackson.

Shirley Jackson. Well, not bad, actually. There's a teen book I read called The Lottery that kind of takes inspiration from it, but for a while I didn't realize that's not what people were talking about, by an author called Beth Goodie. Oh, yeah. And it's almost like the high school picks one person to shun for the year.

And it's interesting, it's quite fucked up. But anyway, yeah, I know this scene when they arrive in escrow and circle back around to the got the literature parallels, it's the terror. Agnes felt the terror rising around her, and it was wrong. They're on kind of terror, a numbing cold sick feeling that froze her where she stood. And it's helped that's so much more horrifying

than even the vampires like fighting and feeding on granny. Yeah. It's the facitness. That bit and the description of the expression on the mayor's face both rung very lovecraftian to me. The kind of existential horror on top of the gothic horror. Literal horror, yeah. I saw a good, I think it was a Tumblr post the other day

about the difference between fear, terror and horror. And it was like fear is that there might be a werewolf chasing you. Terror is knowing there's a werewolf chasing you and horror is realizing your feet are stuck to the floor. Yeah. And that's such a good explanation of it. It's such a good moment. And yeah, you mentioned the line about taking the nightmares away,

which is very the GK Chesterton fairy tales tell us that dragons can be beaten, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. But then again, the moment the shackles are lifted, even the tiny bit, they rise up and it parallels variants, except in this time it's not that the feagles have stolen the cows that are the people of escrow.

It's that they've just, they've claimed it back for themselves. The, it's very socialist, I felt. It was a little bit socialist all this, but the line, the people of escrow watch the vampire stagger back, bleeding. The mayor raised his head. It was like this man who looked so incredibly beaten down the moment he raised his head. And then of course, that was the incredibly dramatic,

strangling him with his chain of office, which is very symbolic. And the fact that he was killed doing it, and he's very martyred, then that's very good, very good, very good symbolic. But in general, I thought he leaned a little bit more heavily on the whole vampires as bloodsucking aristocrats, not just bloodsuckers, like with the, well, the family has always owned land. The money mounts up, you know, over the centuries, which is also true, if you just, your family name lasts forever, not just you.

And then they don't have to bar the windows or hide in the cellar, which I have to admit is what people do in the less well regulated areas of our country that exchange fear for security. And that's very surfed and that's very imperialist almost as well, not just aristocratic. And what's it, this kind of totalitarian thing of, you're safe as long as you're with the regime. The regime is best for all.

So we'll put a lovely, twinkly badge on it, and everyone's going to be polite about it, and there's an agreement, and we're going to ignore the fact that the mayor is a mask of terror, and that we're giving up children. And it's interesting how different in tone it is to when the Angloporkians were giving up Lady Sybil as a sacrifice. Yeah, they were. I think the people of Anglopork that practice feelings on people being dickheads are protected on them a bit more than they are on these guys.

I think they're more this kind of city folk and willing to take the easy way out. Whereas escrow, you don't feel like there was a choice to take an easy way out or not. Yeah, and everyone knows everyone, it is different as now. Yeah, there's a great conclusion kind of to the escrow thing when the old count's offering Vlad and Lacrimosa to the mob, and Vlad kind of pleads with Agnes and says, you wouldn't let them kill me, would you? And Podita's sort of having the, yeah, we can back on it, maybe. You're still kind of cute.

Agnes thought about escrow and the queues and the children playing while they waited, and how evil might come animals sharp in the night or grayly by day on a list. Vlad, she said gently, looking deep into his eyes, I'd even hold their coats. Beautiful. Which is fucking savage. Mic drop, done. And I feel like that's also Agnes really putting Podita to one side in that moment. Yes, I feel like Podita didn't believe it that much anyway.

No, but there's no doubt in her mind in that moment. Yeah, that's a good, I kind of, I skipped over that one a little bit, but about the evil coming. That was nearly my quote. I have so many, so many lines in this book. So quotable, it's very quotable. It's very quotable. More so than small gods even, I'd say. It's very quotable because it's the best of, at the very least, the witch's books.

I think, yeah, finish your argument, but I feel like I'm leaning towards your conclusion too. Rounding out my theory, first of all, Granny, as I said, she has exactly the right amount to do, and she's removed from Nanny and Magra. If she's with Nanny and Magra, too much of her time is dealing with Nanny and Magra, which is very rarely what the story needs to move on. Also, the villains, the vampires, they're believably unbeatable, partly because they're so similar to Granny in a lot of ways. There's so many parallels between them.

It's a culmination of the witch's books that have come before it. With a couple of different themes, one of them being this people-as-things idea that builds up to the vampires somewhat being the best villain. You can start with Weird Sisters. The Duke and the Duchess do not give a fuck about the people of Lanke. They're parody. They're parody. They're power above everything, but it starts to sink.

They're the evil. I'm so evil, evil. Especially the Duchess, which is abroad. Lilith, who treats the people of Genua like very good villain, treats the people of Genua like Barbie dolls. But do you ever read Lilith and really think she doesn't? A, really deep down in her nose, she's probably actually a bit evil. And B, of course Granny Weatherwax can beat her, not because she's good and Lilith's evil, but because she's better,

because she has not taken the easy way. She has learned a lot of tricks that Lilith hasn't had to. Yeah, she takes the path of most resistance. And then you go on to Lords and Ladies and you have the elves, who are completely separate and away from humanity. They're psychopathic and they're complete disregard for people. That's what's terrifying about them. It makes them really good villains, but you compare it to now, the vampires.

They're almost like tea time villains, aren't they? They're like a different plane. They're the clockwork orange kind of mad. That is all, enjoy the terrible, terrible matters. Yes. Whereas to now, the vampires who are just introspective enough to actually believe they're doing the right thing, like the elves don't give a fuck about whether or not they're doing the right thing. They're just little chaos gremlins.

Whereas the vampires think they're doing something polite. They're bothering to persuade themselves. Yeah, they're making the effort and that makes them more terrifying. It makes them a better villain because it makes them more terrifying to Granny. In a verbacy kind of way, they've drunk their own Kool-Aid. They've drunk their own Kool-Aid. They believe they're doing the right thing. And they know that they're not.

They know that they're vampires. They know they're not good, especially the kids. But they do kind of care. They do want to make it work in a way that works sort of for all of society, even if it means all of society is cowed. Whereas, yeah, but in a way that they have to convince themselves that the rest of society is so inferior. It's very, again, it's very political as a matter of fact.

It is. And again, too specific because he needs to get that crossed on Friday. No, absolutely not. But yeah, this is a combination of the previous witch's books and what makes it really peak as well. The witch's dynamic and how that grows. Magra's character great, the lone going from wet hen to throw the counters in a river. Little bunny.

Right, fuck you. You're not coming in. I know you're not, Nanny. You can't tell the joke about the priest and the rhinoceros. But what's the password? Dirty, dirty jokes. What's the password? Dick jokes.

Nanny doesn't need to learn to be more like Granny, but she gets to work on more than just manipulating Granny in this one. As much as when Granny is there with Nanny or Magra. And I'm thinking of Witch's Abroad as probably one of the better examples for this. Two thirds of that book are then getting to Genua before the action fucking starts. I love Witch's Abroad. It is a great book. I love the fairy tale theme.

But you could cut like a chunk of that journey out. Yeah. And if we hadn't had Granny separated in this one, we would have had to rehash the same arguments. Exactly. It works better because she's taken away from them. And Nanny gets to do more because Nanny's not just manipulating Granny, which is what Nanny has to spend a lot of time doing.

Yeah. It's pushing Granny's levers and kind of setting her up and pointing her in the right direction so that she can go and dramatically pass through some doors. And you can see Nanny's kind of vicious practicality in a different, which is a different set of vicious practicalities to Granny. She's like, marry him. Yeah. Yeah.

Marry him, run away with baby, whatever. The point is her like ultimate black and white, which is the reflex of one, as we said, is very people-oriented. It's very people-oriented. It's like, we will save the people. We will save our loved ones, whatever that takes. I don't care if it goes against your morals, whatever. It's about surviving.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nanny is like survival first. It's very sustenance society. Yeah. You know, this village grew up on the side of a fucking mountain. Exactly.

Yeah. And then you have Agnes, who gets to completely come into her own in this one. She gets taken away from the other witches. So she actually gets to learn what it is to be a witch for herself, as opposed to masquerade, where she's kind of running away from it. And I don't know how much shoulder she's meant to be in this one. I don't think it's any couple years, isn't it? She's going to be like 17, 18.

She's like still fairly new to Margaret's Cottage, yeah, which she's invited to move into at the end of masquerade. So yeah, she's. I don't know how long she held her. I don't think she held her. Not long to be. You've got to give it enough time. So you're like, oh, I came back on my own accord.

Yeah, I've done all the things I wanted to do. Definitely not sitting, twiddling my thumbs, not that. Yeah, she gets to grow. She gets to be her own witch, and her own witch is, like I said, a lot like Granny. Yeah, with a very obvious version of the voice over Granny's shoulder, except her version is still a fucking teenager. Yeah. It's almost like Agnes gets to grow up before Perdita does.

Yeah. Because Perdita hasn't had to physically experience quite as much of it. That's, yeah, that's a good point. That kind of ties back into the whole gnarly ground thing, doesn't it? And it's like, if you are physically separated from the, well, in this case, the trauma. Yeah. Then you are a different person. It's not as traumatic.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So my big overarching theory, this is the best one, because it takes everything the other books did and then does it better and more terrifying with better pacing. Okay. I agree.

You win. I mean, I was never going to argue that hard, but I think that's a really good summary for all of them. I am going to also just caveat this with four listeners who might be reading for the first time. That doesn't mean it's all downhill from here when it comes to seeing the witches, like no spoilers, but it's still fucking good. Oh, yeah. It's just a bit of a...

It's a different flavour of witches books. But definitely out of these, I'm going to say it's the best. And one of the best books overall, because I think it deals with some of Pratchett's best themes in a way that a lot of other books don't get time to interrogate. Yeah. And I think right at the beginning is that it just doesn't pop up on many lists. And yeah, you're quite right. I don't know why.

I don't know why I'd forgotten it was so good. I don't know why I'd forgotten the whole fucking liminal scene, which I had. I think some of it's because of where it comes. Yeah. You know, I think the last continent has a lot of hype around it because of where it is. It's the Rincewind arc, which is, you know, it's very energy. And there's another watchbook next. Yeah.

And it's a very good... I love the next... Yeah. More fantastic pacing in the next discos, yeah. Yeah. The next one's very action-y compared to this. This isn't... Like, this takes place over a few days.

There's not a ton of action. No, but yeah. I mean, a lot of the metaphor in this and a lot of the action that is symbolism is that it's just... It's a slog. Yeah. Without spoiling a bunch without future books as well, I'd say one of the reasons this doesn't come up in like top 10s a lot is someone sort of thinking about like a top five or a top 10 and then they go, okay, so I need like something from this arc.

This isn't the first... You tend to go earlier in the arc because sometimes the introduction of the characters, like reading Nani or getting set up as a character is so much fun. That's true. And also, I think this gets written off a little bit as just a vampire book parody and it's not... Like I said, it embraces all of Gothic literature. There's not really that many Dracula references and the ones that are a much more like Hammerhouse of Horror, like the organ is in that.

That's all better. I'm going to get to cast her in for you going. What is that from? What do I think it is? Doom. Like that's it. That's the chain particularly. Oh, fuck.

I don't know. If you text it to me. Yeah, I don't know. You text to the words dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. You did that and I worked out you meant Carmen. Oh, yeah, you did. Yes, I forget some of your magical powers. They're really specific.

So anyway, yeah, so this is the best witches book. Okay. You got anything to add? To this bit? No. Have you got an obscure reference for Neil? I do. Good, because we've been talking for over two hours now.

Okay. The... Oh, only a bit over two hours. This is pretty on schedule considering how much we had to talk about. Yes, true. I just worry I spouted too much bollocks. No, no, it was all very good. It's all very good.

Give me some bollocks. That sounded like I was just being like bliesly reassuring, but I do mean it. It's just I'm trying to read at the same time. So at one point, Oates... Well, both of them are looking at the Aurora Borealis, whatever it's called, I forgot. Aurora Corialis.

Thank you. And Granny says, ah, yes, Phoenix is dancing. And Oates says something like, oh, I think it's caused by this and that. And she says, I don't care what it's caused by. It is Phoenix is dancing. And I was like, I wonder if there's any folklore that is that. And the answer is, I don't think so. However.

OK, so two. However, first of all, I'm just putting a link and signal for you. Cool. Yeah. Cool. So when I googled Aurora Borealis, Phoenix having come up with nothing in the folklore books. Giant Phoenix captains stunning Aurora Borealis Iceland show.

So there's these awesome photographs of where it looks like a Phoenix is captured in the lights. And I'll link to that in the show notes. That's not really a Mipskia reference finial. That's just cool. So there is like so much folklore from around the world about the Aurora Borealis unsurprisingly. And the other one, the Southern one, whatever that's called.

In the UK, because in a lot of Western and Southern Europe, it's seen so infrequently that it's more ominous. It's very ominous, bad luck. So apparently it flashed red for a couple of days before the French Revolution, which I love the idea of, I'm sure. But so I'm going to go to some of the people who see it more commonly. So they've got some nicer folklore about it. But I'll link to a page that has just a bunch of fucking from all over the world.

Nice. So in Finland, the Finnish fire fox Tuliketu is a mythological creature, a fox with radiant fur. And this is from Lapland site, quote is, as it runs along the fells, the fox's flaming tail whips crystals of snow into the sky. And the first scratches the trees, setting the skies on fire. Nice.

Very nice. Still in that part of the world, the Norse and Sami world for Aurora's Gwavsahasat, obviously I've got that wrong, is derived from the same body as Gwavsu, also meaning morning, evening, glow. And that same word means the bird Siberian J, which has colourful feathers and a lively character. And ancient Finns believe that the soul of a hunter passes on to a Siberian J, which with us regarded as soul birds, killing a Siberian J,

would bring bad fortune to a hunter. Aurora's like the Siberian J have also been thought of as spirits for the dead. So I thought that almost tied in with the Phoenix theme. And then in North America, many Inuit tribes considered the Aurora to be spirits of dead humans playing a ball game using a war skull as the ball. I include that for obvious reasons. And because the site goes on for reasons,

we will doubtless never fathom the good people of remote Nunavik island told the same story, but the other way round. So for them, the Norse and lights were walrus spirits playing ball with the skull of some unfortunate human. Ah, well, that's a nice bit of variation, isn't it? Yeah, just... Could go either way. Could flip reverse it.

It's like they change ends at half time, except they change omens at half time. Yeah, but it's just, yeah, if you get to see it that commonly, you start looking at pattern recognition and say, oh my God, the sky is a flame! The pheasants! What are the pheasants up to? Let me get an eye on their sides. And like southern, southern Europe, so Greece, etc.

I would have seen it so infrequently that when it's written down, it's like big omen, big omen. Sky was on fire. Sky fire, omen, similarly, China. Beautiful. I enjoyed reading about all that Aurora folklore, and I hope you all will too. I think at this point, we can't really say anything else about...

I think we can. But I do need to cut. The book Carpe Giaculum. And the listeners probably have finite patience with how long I leave these episodes. I'm going to go make crab and ricotta ravioli. Ah, you fuck. I'm going to have burgers.

Okay, so thank you very much for listening to this episode of The True Show. Make you frat. We are going to have a little break. We'll be back in May. We're taking a break from the disc next month. It is May next month. Which means it's time for our next installment in the terrific trilogies,

and we are going to be talking about the Johnny Maxwell book, starting with Only You Can Save Mankind. So we're doing a book pair. As with the Brameli Abbey, doing a book pair week. Um, I don't know whether we'll cover the TV show or not yet. I haven't thought that far ahead. And we'll also be on Patreon at some point next week with a lovely rabbit hole episode,

and I'm not going to tell the listeners what it's about in case I change my mind. Well, I did, and I changed my mind twice. However, in the meantime, dear listener, until we come back into your lovely ears, you can... Get delicate shell-likes. And your delicate shell-likes.

Like all... Dear little listeners, with your dear little ears. So many ears. Dear little lids. Sorry. You can follow us on Instagram at The True Show. Make you frat. On Twitter at Make you frat.

But on Facebook at The True Show. Make you frat. Join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y s. Send us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, albatrosses and phoenixes. The True Show. Make you fret pod at gmail.com. Support us financially on patreon.com

forward slash The True Show. Make you fret. Exchange your hard-earned pennies with bonus nonsense. Rate, review, subscribe. Tell everyone you know about us obnoxiously, please. And in the meantime, dear listener. I'm going to quickly throw in another not really obscure reference.

Because I meant to mention it earlier, when I was talking about Yintan Tathara. Because I was trying to look up something in Brewers every episode, so I looked up in Brewers, but there was no reference to it. So I was just going to read a random excerpt from the Yorkshire section. Sure.

And I've gone with the Yorkshireman's toast. Here's to us all on us. May we never want known on us, nor me now, though. What does that mean? Please note. Fuck knows. Yay. Yorkshire.

Yorkshire. Brighton.