The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 85: Johnny and the Bomb (Escher Spaghetti)

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 3 of the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy - “Johnny and the Bomb” When? Where? Whortleberries! Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:The Museum of Curiosity: Series 1-4 - Audible [reminder: Pratchett is ‘chapter 13’] The Amazing Maurice | Official Trailer - YouTubeThe Rasmus - In My Life (Official Video) - YouTube The Boss series (writing as Abigail Barnette) -  Trout Nation Long comment from Pratchett -  alt.books.pratchettBehind the Bastards: Part One: John Wayne: A Dude Who Sucked - Apple Podcasts Clytemnestra - Wikipedia This Is England (2006) - IMDb No Such Thing As A Magnetic Skateboard - No Such Thing as a FishDracula Daily | DraculaDaily - Substack  The Exmoor Whortleberry - Edible Exmoor ---Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Good morning, Joanna. So you're homophobic about coffee. All right, try again. Good morning, Joanna. Good morning, Francine. And how are we doing today, class? Good morning, Miss Francine. Has everybody remembered their homework?

No. Slash episode plan? No. I did it, I literally, I said last week I kind of was struggling with planning because I couldn't focus and I kept getting distracted by the book while trying to take notes on the book. It was even worse this week. My focus has just fucking gone to shit. Happens to me once a month or so.

It also, it doesn't help with where I'm at with the studying because I switched over to doing Unity 2D because I don't know if I'm from real five. But I kind of hit a point where I did a section of the course this week and thinking should I start the next section because then I've got to finish it next week and I don't want to be part way through a section when I go on holiday. But then they announced they were doing a game jam, the same company who made these courses. And everyone who submits a game gets like a free course out of it as well, which is cool because I wanted to do the 3D Unity course.

So I'll get that for free. But so I thought I'll finish the section I'm on, probably on Thursday, and then Friday the game jam starts. Then I finished the section I was on on Wednesday, which left me with a weird blank Thursday. And then I hit Friday and realised the game jam doesn't start till 9pm, so I don't even find out what the theme is till then and I can't really start working on anything. So I've been digging me wrong, I've done a ton of sewing, I made this, which is more impressive.

It's good, it's a nice dress, it's just for listeners especially. I did also make, because you and I have been talking about what I'm going to wear for my birthday priorities. So I made the dark orange silk top that I will potentially be pairing with a gown that I'm going to turn into a skirt because I can't wear the top part of the gown without flashing everyone whenever I move my arms. Which is the gown I wore to the HB Lovecraft bar in Portland. Did you flash everybody? No, I used a lot of double-sided tape on one of those weird strapless and backless bras and I still couldn't move my, I still had to kind of t-rex myself the whole way and had to get people to feed me drinks, but some drag queens fell in love

with me and said I look like a movie star and fed me drinks. I've got one of those bras and I feel like I would have been on the top end of who that would work for. It's better than nothing, but it's sort of better than nothing. Slightly more of a better endow than I am. Slightly. Gravity was not 100% on my side. Oh, I was trying to say but I can't. Have you watched the Amazing Morris trailer yet? No, I haven't watched the trailer yet. Me neither. I thought maybe we could watch it on our first cigarette coffee break and come back and talk about it fresh. Yes, we probably should. Okay, cool. Also, I listened to Pratchett on the Museum of Curiosity episode which she did back,

I think it was in 2013, which you can't get on BBC Sounds. You have to get it through Audible and there's a whole fucking bunch of them. If anybody does get the Museum of Curiosity, which by the way is a Radio 4 show, which brings on interesting people and the conceiters that they're giving some item, nebulous concept or person to this ridiculous eclectic museum, run by John Lloyd, the host of my John Lloyd, who is also behind QI, fun facts. And sorry, also co-wrote the meaning of LIF, which is that very silly dictionary of words for things we don't have words for that are all stupid place names. Indeed, yes, I'd forgotten that connection. Yes. But anyway, if anyone does get the audiobook version of it, it is

checked to 13 because they're not properly labeled because, oh, God, I hate it. Anyway, point is, the point is, I can't go too much into his entry because it concerns the thief of time. Which we haven't got to yet. Which we haven't got to yet. But he did come up with a, he did say a fairly what I thought relevant quote for this episode, which I wrote down, which is, I always thought of time as a recording mechanism going on and on, and you would go back and you would find it there. History unwinds behind us, but it's still there. Amazing. Anyway, it's good episode. Also, Neil Gaiman has an episode on that. Oh, cool. I am speaking with the thief of time. I was having a look at our episode schedule because obviously, as it's May, and I've got a million

things to do, I'm starting to overthink how we're going to schedule the next two years of the podcast. I do understand this compulsion. Yes. I've been editing a book I started working on two years ago and forgot instead of doing my workload. And God, we've just got such a good run of books coming up for the rest of the year. Oh, yeah. We've got Fifth Elephant Next. Fifth Elephant Next. Yeah. Then The Truth, which I'm so sorry. Listen to that. I like my old spoiler, I guess, if we've got any first time readers that the book The Truth somewhat inspired the name of the podcast, but we're going to say the name of the thing in the thing a lot so much. Maybe there's an actual term for that. I don't think we should discover it if there is. God, no. Definitely not learning

anything. And then we've got The Truth's Thief of Time, I believe is after The Truth. That is coming up, is it? That is coming up. That's why I thought of it. We've got The Last Hero and we've got Amazing Morris. The movie is coming out. I don't know when the movie is coming out. I don't know if that was in the trailer. Oh, maybe. We'll get back to you on that very shortly, listeners. I'm basically just trying to work out when we're going to talk about Nation, because I really want to talk about it. When is it? I haven't decided yet. It'll be next year. I'm trying to work out how we're going to fit in all of the science of discworld. I mean, if the worst comes to us, we can just do it after we've done the rest of the books.

I must say, actually, probably the very last one we'll end up doing is some kind of addenda, would be the full discworld companion, the complete one, the last one. We can't really go too deep into that moment. Also, we've still got the long earth to talk about it. I'm trying not to think about what will happen when we get to the end of the discworld, because it makes me really sad. You're like a completionist. No, I'm a total completionist. I'm just scared that we'd have to win the podcast and I don't want to. I'm just getting obsessed with something else. It's fine. I can do that. I know. It's not helpful. I know. Which has really annoyed me. I've reread most of this whole series in the last couple

of weeks or so, just because I keep just randomly staring at my phone doing that instead of what I should do. And then it's like, it's a series called The Boss. They're dirty, kinky romance novels that kind of started as a bit of a piss take. Jenny Trout, who I think I mentioned on the podcast, she did these amazing 50 Shades of Grey recaps like tearing the books apart and was like, I can do better than this and then did. There you go. That's your inspiration. You keep doing that. Now you need to publish some of it. Fine. I'll write a fucking romance novel. I've been bullying Joanna to actually publish some of her worklessness, because we get the odd, oh, I could do better than this thing. And I'm like,

you have. All right. I'll just publish it like that. You have to take some steps before it happens. That's my point. I vaguely thought about it. You can't save it to your hard drive and then say, but I don't understand. It's not been published. But this game gem I'm doing. So yeah, the aim is to make a complete game in 10 days. So I've got to submit it by 11pm next Monday, not this coming Monday. But the theme for it is death is not the end. So I'm quite enjoying what I'm going to do with that. I'm just going to do like a text-based choose your own adventure. So the focus will be on writing the story, the actual programming of it should be pretty simple. I still need to figure out some of the mechanics. There's a way to do it where I don't have to just make an entire

doc of if else statements. If else, thank you. Amazing. But yeah, so it's going to be like, I'm just going to do a very simple, but I want to get familiar with using twine, which is like a kind of rough streak. Oh, sorry. It's a browser-based program thing designed for writing, like branching narrative stuff. A lot of game studios use it as like an early drafting tool. I'll see that. Looks fun. Oh, there was something fun I was going to do. I have this handy because the last is the unseen university challenge book. Okay. Because the last thing I did on my Unity course was like a quiz game. So I just grabbed this out and grabbed a few questions from that to use from it. But I thought I would ask you a random question. Okay.

Which is great because there are a lot of them are really difficult and I don't know the answers. Okay. I didn't actually pick a question beforehand because I want to be running with it. Oh, these are ways people died. Faculty of Adhesive Ultimates. Plenty of discourse people and other entities come to sticky ends. Here is a selection of lethal agencies named the victims. A barking dog. I just specify that that's all capitalized. Oh, fuck. Some dude in interesting times. Yeah. Lord Hong and Mr. Savile. I will take that. 1000 trumpeting elephants on improvised bobsleds. Some dude in moving pictures. Two unnamed Yetis. All right. Well, I feel bad about that one.

Speaking one's own name as a route to suicide. Auditor. Vincent the invulnerable. Who? Who walked into a Tuff-Anke-More-Punk pub and announced his chosen name aloud. Oh, what looks that from? Soul music. Being so stitched to a wall. Unnamed opera house seamstress in masquerade. Oh, I genuinely don't remember that one. Okay. I don't remember most of these to be fair. Give me a couple more. I can do it. That was the only vaguely funny one. I'll go with one of the more simple ones. Answer this question posed by Archchancellor Ridcully. What kind of sad, hopeless person needs to ride wizard on their hat? Oh, Vincent.

I can't. It's the 21st of May. Sorry. I just looked at the date. Fuck off. Fuck off. When did that happen? I think I'm guessing around midnight. I am going to see my chemical romance tomorrow. Oh, you are. Yes. I'm very excited. All my little emo dreams come true. That will be very fun for you. And guess who's supporting? Who? Placebo. I'm going to be in the same room as Brian Mulco. Yeah, yeah. You're going to flashy tits again. No. I've never flashed Placebo. Oh, who were you flashing when I was with you? System of a Down. That's right. Yeah. And that wasn't really intentional. My top fell off. Oh, well, you know. I'm not saying it was totally unintentional. I wore a large sequined butterfly

with like two straps on it to the front row. That's a great top. I love that. That was very 2000s. Oh, I used to sell it for a fortune on Depop now. No, I'm not going to flash anyone because I'm taking my friend's teenage daughter to this gig and I don't want to set a bad example. Okay. I would very much like to see my chemical romance. I mean, in theory, I would. In reality, I'm not sure how well I'd cope with a gig like that now. I've got seated tickets to be fair. This was originally meant to happen in 2020, but it got postponed by two years. So at the time I bought the tickets, the teenager I was taking wasn't going to be old enough for the standing area. She is now.

When did we record the last episode? Was that before or after Eurovision? Have we talked about Eurovision already? We talked about Eurovision in the context of it hadn't happened yet in the last episode. Cool. I watched Eurovision. I watched all of it in the end because Becky came up. Lovely. We watched it the next night, but it reminded me of that just because the Rasmus played for Finland. Yeah. It wasn't great to be honest, but they look exactly the same, which is very uncanny. The first gig I ever saw was the Rasmus gig and it was in the seating area because, yes, we were 14 and not allowed to go in. Mosh. I'm still amazed the Rasmus had more than one song because I know exactly one song. Well, the thing is one of our old mutual

friends used to be extremely into the Rasmus, like extremely and kind of by osmosis. I got pretty into it. And so I know quite a lot about catalogue and I was going through some of the old videos and showing Jack after Eurovision. I was like, look, look at him. He's got all feathers in his hair. Look at him before. I was watching some of it like, all right, this isn't quite as good as I remember going back a bit, but we all had a big crush on him. So. Yeah. I just remember that one song in the shadows that was like everywhere for six months. I don't think I wasn't close enough friends with that mutual friend to get absorbed in. Yeah. There's still one on regular rotation I've got on my playlist actually, which is in my life.

In my life, I decide and it turns me on. You must know that one. No. No. That's good. That was my really bad Rasmus impression. Beautiful. We do need to make a podcast. Oh, yes. Do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Quick thoughts on trailer or do you want to throw that somewhere in follow up? Let's just do that. Yeah, that looked fine. Non-spoiler thoughts, which makes it harder to talk about. A, coming out at Christmas, yay, because that's when we've scheduled to talk about it. Super. So I'm glad my psychic powers were active for that one.

Less so for Good Home and Series 2. It looks like they're kind of doing in earnest a lot of stuff that the book takes the piss out of. Yeah. That said, a lot of trailers for especially for like kid films seem to just fuck up like that. Yeah, yeah. It's like people who write the articles don't make that don't write the headline. It's a very similar thing. But I don't think it's going to be as dark as the book. The book's quite dark for a kid's book. I think they'll have jollied up a bit. That's fine. It'll be fine. It looks very Pixar-y in the animation kind of thing. It looks like it will be a fun film. I may not like it for the same reasons I like the book, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it nonetheless.

Yeah. It just looks like a nice kid's film, doesn't it? Yeah. Sure, it'll be fine. Anyway. Anyway. Let's do the actual podcast. Okay. Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one as time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today we're talking about the third part of the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, Johnny and the Bomb. Yes, we are. There'll be explosions. At least one. Spoilers. Probably more. Speaking of spoilers, heads up to listeners that we are a spoiler light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book,

Johnny and the Bomb, and the Johnny Maxwell trilogy in general. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're 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. Running as fast as you can down a moorland in the wet weather. All right. Follow up, you follow up. Shall we do some follow up, you follow up? If you've got any, then let's. So a listener, for some reason, the Reddit comments not visible at the moment, but a listener made apparently made an account to explain tacky ons to us. That's dedication saved me a Google. I'm sure this isn't the case, but I like the idea that

they've done that and then deleted their account. So we don't have any chance of tracking down who illicitly described physics at us. So what I'm going to do is read this comment out. So listeners know, but try and not take anything in while reading it out. So I don't learn anything. Thus sticking to my rule of not learning about physics. Good. Because I'm still in my experimental place. So from tacky on explainer on Reddit, tacky ons in physics are simply particles that travel faster than sea, the speed of light in a vacuum. Their name is Greek for swift thing. It is normally impossible under the laws of special relativity to accelerate a particle up to or past the speed of

light. Normal particles are therefore separated into two broad categories, ones with mass, which always travel below the speed of light, and ones without mass, which always travel at the speed of light and cannot go slower. Tacky ons are a general term for particles that fall into the third possible character category. They are always faster than sea. In order to make this work out in the equations of special relativity, they have imaginary mass in the sense of being an imaginary number, not in the normal everyday sense of the word. The standard model of particle physics does not have tacky ons in it, but some possible extensions of the standard model, for example, some versions of string theory predict their existence. But tacky ons are a big problem.

Anything that can travel faster the speed of light is capable of also traveling backwards in time. If you can carry information backwards in time, you can quickly create paradoxes. Physicists say that it violates causality, and this is generally considered a big no no. That bit are retained. Don't violate causality, kids. Yes. And then comment wraps up. It is this time traveling aspect that presumably gives Miss Tacky on her name. So there we go. Yes. And to give full background here, listen, we just called up this comment and it said it had been removed by moderators, but we're the moderators and we did not remove it. Maybe we did in the future. So I think there's some causality nonsense going on here. Maybe time travel exists, but only on Reddit.

Oh, God. Isn't that awful? Yeah. The last people we should be allowed to do anything, honestly. And I say that as a Reddit user. Do you want to introduce us to this book, Francine? I do, yeah. So this is Johnny and the Bomb. This is? Yep. It's the final installment in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy published in 1996. I found quite a long quote from Pratchett, which I'm going to read out. It was on the altbooks forum. Johnny appears more passive in Bomb, but if you look, you'll see it's his constant nagging and reminding that forces others to do things. In other words, he's the conscience of the group in the two earlier books he personally has to take and lead. One of the things that makes the

books both harder and easier to write is that both Johnny and Kirstie, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the gang have indeed got a sophisticated vocabulary of weirdness. They've read the books about kids having adventures. They see the thousand reruns of sci-fi movies and all the current blogbusters and all of the TV sci-fi soaps. So when they end up somewhere adventurous, in a sense, they know the script. Kirstie knows about men in black and probably read 40 in times. I know from talking to people last year that young kids had no trouble at all with the paradoxes of time travel or the concept of parallel universes or coming back to where you never went because Trek and Doctor Who and Back to the Future and inferior copies have

made it all familiar. So when a certain mysterious elderly character was introduced early in the book, I knew two things. The readers would instantly start guessing because of their familiarity with the nature of the genre and that Johnny himself is like the reader. There's no point in pretending it's some major shocking plot point because it can't be. But what was then fun was introducing these sophisticated kids to real things which were outside their experience. They're not shocked by time travel, but they are by the casual unthinking racism and sexism in 1941 and the fact that real streets with real kids in them can get blown up. As an aside, I think Johnny probably is a 90s version of Just William, although I make

no claims to write as well as Richmond, Richmond Crompton. I mean that William as William can be brought into the 90s. In the 30s and 40s, he was a lovable scamp and we see him through Crompton's eyes, but in the 90s he would be a suck. All those robust practical jokes and broken windows. In fact, there was sometimes an edge to William that grated. Anything cerebral was automatically pretentious. And if you want to get really uneasy, read William and the Nazis. To William, a tramp was a guy in a battered top hat and old boots in the familiar environment of the countryside. But Johnny knows about street people, places you shouldn't go, dangerous town centres after dark. He lives in a much more complicated world and a state of almost perpetual bewilderment.

I thought that was reading out because I haven't seen anything else that long about writing about this book. And it was just buried in a not even the more popular forum. Interesting. I love that so much of his writing about his own books is around on the internet. I know, yeah. It makes it really fun to dig for it. That brings me joy. I should probably try and archive these elsewhere because there's always a chance that Google's just suddenly going to pull all this. Francine, don't give yourself another project.

It was also then adapted into a midi series in 2006, which we can always watch one day if we feel like it, which practice seemed to like. He didn't mind that they took some stuff out. He didn't mind too much, rather. They've moved Blackbrew a bit further north, which he said was fine for the bits they added to the plot. And they added scenes that he laughed at. Ah, nice. There we go. That's all I have to say as an introduction. I've had to do a lot more digging for supplementary bits because there's no previously ons. Yeah, sorry about that.

Yeah, it's your fault. Yeah, it is entirely my fault. I suggest, I'll tell you what, you're getting better at not apologizing for everything because I notice it now when you do. It's because I just sort of feel like lingering guilt that I made you make a podcast with me. I know you really, really hate spending this much time with me. Oh, Joanna. We used to just have coffee instead. It's fine.

We used to have coffee and talk about Terry Bransher. We're just recording ourselves doing it now and have some bullet points. Right, sorry. Should I tell us what happened? Yes, do. And I'm going to meet myself and eat some hula hoops while you do, so I'm fucking starving. Yeah, I made sure I had a nice breakfast. Right, in this book, in the Blackbrew Blackout, there's no more Paradise Street. Just a single unexploded bomb.

As Mrs. Tachyon and her squeaky-wield trolley with pickles are plenty swing by, the bomb explodes. In the future, or the present of the book, which is out past, Johnny dreams of planes, bombs, and a fossilized fly. Times are still trying, and a noise from an alley alerts Johnny and pals to an injured Mrs. Tachyon. As an ambulance claims the old woman, Johnny claims the trolley. In an interlude with a mysterious surgeon, he orders a Bentley to the Blackberry Burger Bar with flashes of Johnny bothering his brain. Back in the present-ish, Tachyon's in hospital, and Kirstie's head rumours of violent yobbs.

Johnny and Kirstie go for a bedside visit with chips, and Johnny's confused about an old new newspaper and a jar of pickles. As Sir John wonders about the trousers of time, Johnny, Kirstie, in the time-travelling trolley, flash to the future and back again, just in time for a mysterious black cart to pull up. The government hush things up, you know. After a high-speed chase, in which the rest of the ragtag miscreants are collected from them all, the gang land in 1941, and a panic wobbler runs. At a racist corner shop, Johnny learns that it's bombing day for Blackberry, while Big Mac gets in trouble with the police and leaves a bit of the future behind, and wobbler meets a young boy all set to run back to London,

at least until he catches a spy. Children play in Paradise Street, as Tachyon relaxes in the past's police cells before reclaiming a trolley. Johnny and the gang head back to the future, but leave wobbler stranded in the past. They've arrived back to a different trouser leg of time, and Sir John introduced himself as the now-elderly wobbler, having made his billions on the back of burgers. The group head back to 1941 for wobbler, who may have never been born, and set themselves to make the air raid siren go off, saving the denizens of Paradise Street. As the future happens, and time blurs, a mad dash through the angles of the present saves lives as the bomb hits, including that of the young boy who thought he'd call to spy, wobbler's grandfather.

Back in the present, as they all start to forget, because with Paradise Street saved, why would they ever have gone back? Johnny finds some common ground with his grandfather, and meanwhile, back in the Blackberry Blackout, Mrs. Tachyon heads back to spend sixpence. There are a lot of bees in that section, and now I'm just going to carry the podcast for a bit while Francine eats some hula hoops. All right, we're good, we're good, I'm done. Now, I thought that made quite a good visual, like the popcorn eating for the drama, so I might make a habit of that. Okay, great. I just have to remember to finish it by the time I finish the summary.

I nearly finished the whole packet, I did quite well there. I'm quite impressed. Well, they're not as big as they used to be, packets of crisps and such, you know. Yeah, I used to be able to get a giant bag of hula hoops and change from the sixpence. We watched one of the older episodes of Derrick Girls last night, because I got sad that we'd finished the series, and noted that when somebody was offered a tin of biscuits, they picked out a wagon wheel, which was a full-size 90s wagon wheel, which Jack pointed out and said, someone in the props department made a full-sized wagon wheel

just for that tiny bit, which I love, they do such good attention to detail. They do, because I've binged, well not binged, but I watched the last three episodes of the season yesterday, because I've got a bit behind, which, yeah, so the ending of the penultimate episode. I didn't want a texture. No, I'm fully aware. I made a choice there. Derrick Girls, good show. Go watch it. Yeah. Just be warned that the penultimate episode might kick you in the tits. Yeah. Metaphorically. Probably, only metaphorically.

No one reached out from Ireland in the 90s and literally kicked me in the tits. Quotes. No, helicopters. Helicopters in my cloth watch. Fucking unhinged. Quotes. No, helicopters. No, being kicked in the tits. Oh, I've got many, many problems. But being kicked in the tits ain't one. Airplanes are helicopters or close enough. Helicopters are airplanes and vice versa. Brief mention of barbarian hordes, which I'm going to say based on previous patches that covers our loincloth quotient. Sure. Although I do believe they were speaking specifically about Mongolian barbarian hordes,

which as far as I know did not don the loincloth on account of being from somewhere quite cold. They might have had loincloths underneath all their furs. Yeah. And they probably did get some people who lived in hotter places. Yeah. So they were, they're about, they're around. Yeah. There's hints of loincloths. In the greater universe. In the greater Khan universe. In the greater... The Khan cinematic universe. Actually, did you know Genghis Khan was quite problematic? Oh, fuck. I don't want to hear a Tumblr teen's take on that.

Yeah. Tumblr addresses the problematic backstory of Attila the Hun. Do you know John Wayne played Genghis Khan? No. No. So that's problematic in itself. But that was, yeah. And then while he was doing that, probably got the dose of radiation, which was probably what called his ventral count. Yeah. Interesting. Couldn't have happened to a nice guy. Our friend... Behind the bastards, John Wayne. That's my recommendation of the week.

So then he also, you have to get kicked out of the Oscars because he massively kicked off when a Native American woman accepted an award on... Yeah. He was a prophet for it. Yeah. Cool. John Wayne was a great... Massive white supremacist now. Yeah. My favorite thing about Attila the Hun and barbarian hordes and stuff is explaining to a friend of ours that they weren't riding on like massive war horses, but they were more likely to be tiny ponies.

He was so sad. We ruined so many legions. They're dirty. They're better horses, I think, for... I know. The mental... A lot of it was mental gravity. The mental image of someone with a massive sword and all these furs on like a little Shetland pony. I know they're not like tiny Shetland ponies, but still. It was Prince William on the...

Whatever. The horse decided it was going to be snowy. Snowy. Yeah. The horse that keeps running out from between his legs. Exactly. That's what I'm going to imagine. We are so good at staying on topic at all times. Yeah. We'd better stay on topic today because we have other engagements. Quotes. Do you want to go first? He couldn't tell them about the feel of the time around him.

He felt that if he could only focus his eyes properly, he could even see it. The past and the future were there just around some kind of corner, bounding up to the ever-travelling now by a billion connections. He felt that he could almost reach out and point. Not there or over there or up there, but there at right angles to everywhere else. Very good. This will be a theme for this episode.

The devil you say. I like... I love the way Pratchett writes about time. It's so good. So my name is... But the clouds were parting and the moon shone through, and there were shadows nosing through the rags of cloud, and Johnny could feel the unseen shapes turning over and over as they drifted towards the ground.

First, there was an allotment, and then the pickle factory, and then Paradise Street exploded gently like a row of roses opening. The petals were orange, tinned with black, and unfolded one after another as the bombs fell along the street. Now, that is a beautiful fucking bit of prose. Yeah. That's... Oh, God, just...

I think it's been a while since we properly went into the, like, why these quotes sound so good. But that first bit, the rhythm of that run on sentence is just... Absolutely beautiful. Like, I don't... I wonder if he did that consciously or unconsciously. It feels like a disservice to say it with either. Yeah, like, if you're saying it's unconsciously, as you're ignoring the amount,

but if he does it consciously, it's... It's like... So, yeah, I reckon he tweaks it, yeah, to make it... He does tweak it. Surely, to make it sound that good. I mean, fuck. I mean, I know he edited, like, a lot, but just sentences like that, just...

Speaking from a Rice Reapers... And I know we're both writers, but I'd try and do a bit more of the ranking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I will sit and I will read sentences aloud and try and feel how the rhythm is going to be and tweak them to make them work like that. And I'm sure he did sit... Reading your work aloud to yourself is a very good way to edit.

It absolutely is, yes. I would agree with that for nonfiction stuff as well, because getting that... Especially that first couple paragraphs, right? Very important. Yeah. It is, however, a downside. If you're performing a piece, you write yourself, because you will find yourself constantly fucking editing it.

It is never finished. I like the idea of you, like, reading it aloud on stage and going, no, hold on, fire up, fire up. Give me five minutes. I've heard it. I hear it now. I hear it now. Hold on.

No, I would literally change it on the fly as I was reading it. Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. And the main reason I started recording was myself performing, and so I could check what I'd fucking done to the poem. I love it. Anyway, right. Sorry, character stuff.

Let's talk about characters. I thought we'd start with Mrs. Takion. Yes. Practice says that Mrs. Takion really exists or existed anyway. I used to see her sometimes at Waterloo Station, Cartonall. I haven't seen her for about a year. I hope she's made it to someone nice. Oh, that's sweet.

Yeah. Which I hadn't seen anywhere else that he'd based off a real person, but I expect he said so in interviews and things. There's some interesting bits from her rants, her babbling. We've got a Millennium Hand and Shrimp. We've got, yeah, yeah. He's clearly on the same plane of existence. As Fowler will run.

And I think Bursa does a Millennium Hand and Shrimp at some point as well. Yes, yes, he does. So that's clearly a frequency. Now, that phrase precisely, I wonder if just popped into practice head one day and was like, oh, that sounds good. I'm going to keep that. Oh, great. Millennium Hand and Shrimp.

Yep. There's, where's one of her other rants? Talk about a blue pencil. You can tell he's a lad, can't you, Mr. Shadwell? Yep. Yep. Mr. She's just bouncing from place to place. There's a few good Omenzi bits in this.

I think I mentioned you can feel from the kids the links to Good Omenzi. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Though there are a different set of kids, but there are some nice ones. One I noticed because we had this come up as something a listener said to us the other day, I believe it was Steve Jeffries, but we were talking about the bromide thing. And one of her answers, that's the stuff to give to the troops, bromide. That's what you think.

And I remember we had a conversation about bromide and tea. Smart. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't catch that one. Good job. Yeah. Yeah, no, I like the, just the little not pop culture exactly, but like future references, which if, if you were in 1941 would just sound like absolute gibberish like the rest of it, which, which says to me that perhaps some of the gibberish that we don't understand is just

from the further future. Quite possibly. I like the little like ad jingle bits that go into her mumblings as well. Like there's an arbisto at one point. Yeah. What, no bananas? Well, that's a graffiti thing, isn't it? I think it's cool.

It's maybe for them as likes it, but not me. Thank you so much. Don't know where that came from. Liked it. A lot of my highlighted bits have just turned out to be these unhinged rants, which became a problem when it came to writing my notes. Yeah, that's right. I try, I try to keep it to ones that were references to like vaguely disqueld related things.

Yeah. They're just, yeah, they're nice, nice little rants for sure. Um, yeah. So Mrs. Tachyon in general are pretty good, uh, chaotic neutral force, I would say. Yeah, just kind of pinballing around the book to nick it from last week. It's quite clever. I'm going to talk more about how cleverly some of the scene setting is done with the time travel. But, you know, you get to learn as listeners that she's in all these different parts of time

before, say, Johnny and his friends know it. So we can kind of, you almost, you're yelling at the book like, no, she has time traveled. It's fine. But seeing the intentionality of it as it goes around, that's really quite fun. And this poor dear who's pitied and the social worker coming to her in the hospital when she's obviously very much in control of her life and having quite a nice time with it. And the idea of like smashing the milk bottle together. Yeah.

As I said, it's a very Pratchettian thing, isn't it? They are just helping out the, the, those who needs it, even when it's obvious they're too proud to ask properly or whatever. Yeah. It's, there's something quite sweet about it. And I love Guilty. With fair like carpet underlay. Fair like, no, I don't love guilt.

I'm Catholic. I embrace guilt. Jesus. No more Rasmus on this podcast. All right. Weird line to draw, but fine. I can stick to that probably. I've drawn weird aligns.

Francine. You have drawn like the lines. I've seen them. Sometimes they turn into dresses. Mrs. Takion picked things out of the gusset. Sorry. His fair like carpet underlay, broken teeth and boomerang shaped backbone. The idea of him like advancing on the dogs that run away as well, spinning around, biting

himself. I feel like there's a sort of kinship between him and Griebo. They're not the same cat. No, but they're that flavor. No, but they're that flavor of cat. In fact, there's probably a relevant passage in the unadulterated cat. I'll try and remember and grab that during our next break. Yes, do.

Have you got the unadulterated cat? I actually don't. I'll get you a nice copy of that at some point. It's one of the few I still see in charity shops. So if I see one, I'll get it for you. Excellent. I've spent too much time in secondhand bookshops recently, as you've seen. One of the things I got during my last little haul was another

fun etiquette book. So I'll grab a couple of those to tell you later. I'm sorry. Quick side note, I know you mentioned you were in Cambridge the other day, and there's a very good secondhand bookstore on that little market square. I was not in Cambridge. Oh, I thought you said you were. No, the friend was.

Oh, yeah. But there is their secondhand bookstore market square. Yeah. You know, the little market square is right by Optical Express. I know it's there because I spent a lot of time wandering around that market square, waiting for our appointments when I was getting lasers fired into my face. That's right. I picked up a couple of signs of discworld the other day.

Oh, nice. Not the other day. I was like, last year. Oh, last month, yeah. I can't believe it's time. Almost a year since I got my eyes done. Oh, this is kind of relevant because secondhand bookshops have that weird time thing that we can talk about.

There we go. Now we can get back on track without feeling like we've just ricocheted. I love them so much. Right, Johnny. I really liked one of the comments we got on the last episode, which is very relevant at this point, which was Steve Jeffery again. I think you don't so much stray off track as jump a ditch and go careening across an adjacent field, smash through an inconveniently plate barn, scattering the obligatory chickens hithering

on and wind up on a completely different track headed in the opposite direction. But please don't ever change. Thank you, Steve. I also greatly enjoyed that comment. Also shout out to Pete, our listener who's ended up listening to the Carpe Joculum episodes while in Whitby. That's dedication. Yeah.

I do like it when a listener gets really engaged with the old episodes and we get comments on some of the ones we've done. Especially the ones going further back. Oh, I don't remember this at all, but I'm glad you found value in it. Right. Johnny, I'm going to keep us on track today because we've got to go for coffee. Johnny, how much he cares about Paradoistry and how much it's used as a parallel to the rest of the kids, especially Kirsty, who I will obviously talk about at length and below

her section into Yolos. But yeah, the short summary of Kirsty, she's a dick. But when he's trying to explain Paradoistry to Kirsty and she's just not listening and it makes him care more and more deeply. Yeah, the idea of, I think we both understand the idea of just like getting really engaged and like going on about something and whoever we're with just like not engaging at all. Which I think is why this podcast is so good for both of us because I think we get a lot of

that energy out. And we're also very willing to get obsessed with what the other is obsessed with. Sometimes unhelpfully. So about these radioactive cats, right? No, anyway. Well, what I enjoy about this book and kind of Johnny's growth or whatever, and obviously he's still going through the trying times thing, except it's now very specifically he lives with his granddad and his mother looks out for window and smokes.

Yeah. And he gets to go to counselling. Yeah, which I hope it's helping him. The events in this he's got a lot more agency in. They're not just thrust upon him. Obviously he ends up with a time-travelling trolley. Time-travelling. Trolley.

Trolley. A trolley about trolleys. Trollies, fuck. He ends up with a time-travelling trolley. Apologies for the trolleys. There is one quite nice line about fate flicking him through a window or something, isn't there? But yeah, once the kind of initial starter pistol has been fired, he does get the juice to take action.

Yeah. As opposed to the screw we go to him and he's had that responsibility dumped on him, or last week with the dead, yeah. Last week with the dead. Less dead this time. Less, a few dead, yes, certainly. Few are dead. Depends on how you're measuring them.

If we're doing like by volume, it would be... Anyway. What unit of measurement do you use for dead people? Well, for ghosts. Or not ghosts specifically, isn't it? Because otherwise we'll get you into a bad, boring character. Yeah, the point is then not ghosts. Yeah.

Francing. Johnny. Johnny. Anymore on him? That was pretty much it. Kirstie. Kirstie. What a dick.

Dick. I'm going to quickly start with... We're just going to call her Kirstie. I'm not going to respect her trying to have other names because she's... But when... She was considering the name Kleimanistra. Yes. So, I'm assuming that's a reference to the name Kleitemnestra, spelled with a C,

who was Agamemnon's wife. Oh. And I only know the name Kleitemnestra because it was... A throwaway line in a monologue. Do you remember the pregnant bridesmaid monologue I did a couple years ago? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a line...

A throwaway line. I think it's the husband choosing baby names. Kleitemnestra. That was something he'd suggested. Which I remember really clearly because it was a very pause for a laugh line and it was always a challenge to see how much I could draw out the name Kleitemnestra. Kleitemnestra. Yes.

Fantastic. So, Kleitemnestra was... Sorry, I'm just looking her up real quick. There's more to it than Agamemnon's wife, but I didn't want to go into the full group mythology. No. Oh, cool. Yeah, no, I was just looking for a picture specifically. Yes. So, I'm assuming Kleimanistra is a reference.

Yeah, probably. I think it's 20 here. I'm going to send you the picture. Agamemnon and I do have very similar taste in women. It's true. I've always had that. But yes, to keep us blurred over with Johnny and back again, her perspective on Johnny is no interesting.

I don't know if that's the way to say it. Which he needs specifically. He was a natural worrier, but she only said that because she didn't worry about anything. She got angry instead. A nice catch up because obviously we haven't seen it. Yeah, no, I plan to see Kleitemnestra. Sorry, just throwing that in there. There we go.

Relevant windows up. Do many of them. Yeah, I've now got three tabs open on great mythology. There we go. It's closed. Fantastic. But yeah, no, she's just so catronising. She is.

It's good to sort of catch up with where she is from the first book, which is Saving the Planet and Foxes. Yes. Which, you know, fairly noble goals. Save Foxes on weekend. Yeah, he doesn't save Foxes on the weekends. I don't. But it's all done in this very

non-human way, isn't it? I think, which is highlighted when they're talking about homeless people. Oh, yeah. And she's saying like the state of Miss Atakion is an indictment on society. Oh, but I don't want to go and see her. I've got to sort this out.

And Johnny's like, well, we'll just go see her. She's like, why? I was like, well, might cheer her up. And like, that's not really a concern. On a very, on a macro level, she just doesn't seem interested in people until she sees them. Which, again, happened with the screwy and happened here with the street, wasn't it, when she saw the kids playing?

It's like, oh, OK, fine. Now it's not a foreign concert. But you really have to drive this stuff home to her. Yeah. Not naturally empathetic. It's because of a character flaw. She tried to, the more she tried to help people by explaining to them how stupid they were,

the more they just wandered off for no reason. The only reason Johnny hadn't was that he knew how stupid he was. And because of her personality, she considered it a character flaw on everyone else. Yes. I do worry a little bit. Obviously, I'm not like Kersi when it comes to, you know, the casual racism and the being a total dick.

But I am a little bit like Kersi. I have an overwhelming need to sort of take over for people, explain it to them and just do it for them. Which is how I became a sous chef, because I would started doing the job because I was worried other people were stupid. I don't know. I've never got that vibe from you, not in that kind of way.

You've always done it nicely. Maybe not in the kitchen, I don't know. I think you're very aware of other people in a way that she isn't. So although you might try and do that, I think you can see quite quickly if it's not a good idea. Yes, I'm a patronising control freak, but I'm a lot nicer about it. And no one to give it up.

Sometimes. Yes. Also, I'm not calling you a patronising control freak. I am calling me one, not you one. You're not a patronising control freak. It would be amazing if I was, really, considering my life. Something I've found good is like a writing thing, a bratchety writing thing.

She's going into her acceptable explanations and the government hashing things up, and Atlanteans and the giant Yeti footprints. And it's very similar to Anathema in Good Omens, but from the perspective of a wildly different character. Yes, that was it, because I was trying to think like one of the kids was obsessed with it and it wasn't. It was Anathema.

Well done. It was Anathema got Adam into it, but it is two wildly different characters that can both take on that 40 in times and the government hushed it up vibe, which is great when you have Johnny quietly thinking of the rational explanations, Big Mac and the giant rubber feet for the Yeti footprints.

But he was watching. I really liked that it was all cursed. He was like, well, there's a perfectly rational explanation. And Johnny's like, here we go. Atlanteans, aliens. Like Johnny's like, all there was a gas leak under the fish shop. And it's very familiar in a lot of conspiracy theorists

will talk to you like you're being the over-emotional one. It's like facts don't care about your feelings and the facts are that lefties are running the world and Black Lives Matter who changed our pub sign. Yeah, you saw that Facebook. Oh, yeah. No, I saw you comment. I decided not to join in. Yeah, no, that's fine.

Last time we were having a fun bit of local drama at the moment. Yeah, and Black Lives Matter is actually just an organization making a profit, which fucking hell, shut the fuck up. Yeah, which to me is on the same level of Atlanteans did this, except less wholesome. That one guy we know who was sure that we never meant to the moon. Yes. Who was a history teacher and refused to teach the moon like this.

I can't remember if we ever said this on the podcast, but we did discover the best way to deal with conspiracy theorists like that is just to warn up them. So if we didn't go to the moon, we say, What the fuck are you leaving the moon? Exactly. They say Atlanteans did it. We say we're Atlanteans.

Yeah, yeah. Atlantis didn't sink. They just renamed it. The UK, obviously. Right. It's colder because the government are dimming the sun. And it's now getting warmer because they're slowly trying to go back on that because it costs too much.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. Anyway. Where were we? Fuck. All right. We're getting there.

Shall we talk? Well, let's kind of blend Kirstie into Yolas here. Okay. I don't think you'd enjoy that. Well, no. But let's try. Yeah, I think so. I know.

Yeah. But yeah, Kirstie, just casual racism, pretty gross. One of the things I really, obviously it's later in the book, so we've already had a nice chunk of her casual racism. But when she turns around to Yolas and says, I thought you people were good at running. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So people of my height. Yolas's calmness is impressive because it's amazing. He's not fucking lumped up. There's a good setup and payoff moment right at the beginning. And Kirstie's on the phone to Johnny is saying that a gang of yobbs beat up Mrs. Tackian. One of them was black.

Yeah. And Yolas has explained that, you know, if one of his ancestors had joined Attila the Huns, usual of millions barbarians, he would have definitely remembered that one of them was black. Yeah. And it's paid off later on when they end up reappearing in the church hall again.

And Yolas says as they're going through, don't forget one of them was black. Yeah. Yeah. I, he does keep it together, but in a way that he doesn't, if that makes sense, he, sorry, I'm just bringing up the, it's the, yeah, because my granddad came here in 1952,

said Yolas and the same plunking hollow voice. And yeah, I mean, he goes off in a decent rant, like including the slurs he would have been called and everything. And then, and then after he's broken of it is when Kirsty comes in with that dig about, she didn't mean it nastily, it's just how she was brought up.

You people can't expect us to rewrite history. Yeah. But yeah, she's, it was the description. I think he's about to really kick off when Johnny. He had never seen Yolas so angry. It was a kind of rigid, brittle anger. How could someone as intelligent be so dumb? Yeah.

And Johnny says it's just how she was brought up. Yeah. And you get this kind of payoff later on when Kirsty gets the little lady experience and Yolas gets to do that. Well, they can't help it. You people can't expect us to write history. And I'm glad he gets to be a bitch to her

because she deserves it. But it would be nice if she, well, it would be nice if she fucking learned from it, from the perspective of looking at this as if it was an actual person. But I do like the same thing with like Mr. Grimm's story not being neatly tied up at the end of the last book. Maybe likes not the right word.

I respect that it's not all neatly tied up and there's not a lovely moment where Kirsty apologizes for being racist and... Yeah. You see her having the learning moments and you can kind of infer from that that she will start to improve somewhat but it's not going to happen right away.

And... Well, no, she still says you people like a few pages later. And I'm glad Pratchett is more honest about that, that kids don't have those learning moments and heal everything and become wonderful people all in one fucking fell swoop. Yeah. Although it does turn out she's also a Trekkie.

So they have one thing in common. The whole dynamic between them is very well done, like very well written awkwardness. And you can see Johnny being just exhausted by having Kirsty around even though he's a little bit relieved that she takes the lead on some things. Yeah.

And she is useful to have around. I mean, you know, let's give her a moment of not sagging her off the fact that she can tap into the whole and tell me how that works kind of thing. As fun to read. I do want to point out the difference between Big Mac and Kirsty in that Big Mac is literally wearing swastikas

and somehow still less racist. Yeah. That gave me a... Ooh. Because when he said like skinhead, I was I was I was like worrying what kind of skinhead because there are several flavors. Yes, you've got the very lefty skinhead

and then you've got the very fascist skinhead. And then you've got the in the middle fashionable skinhead. Yeah. Like, oh, fuck me. What's it called? This is England. That movie. Did you ever watch that?

God, I love that movie so much. Yeah. And that shows. Really hard to watch. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I could watch it again now, honestly.

I'm a lot more sensitive than I was as a teenager. I think we studied it when I was studying film. Yeah. So it was an interesting one to look at from that perspective as well. But there were some bits in it. I just I really struggle with. But yeah, that movie very much deals

with the kind of shift from lefty to fashion to fascist in the skinhead. And that was slightly early in this by the 90s. Like the whole idea is that, you know, Big Mac's one of the last skinheads, the whole thing sort of fading fading out. Yeah. So I don't think they're fascist skinheads.

I think it's just they've learned the fashion and that it involves swastikas because it makes you look odd. Not trying to justify wearing swastikas. No, you should have known better. And I'm amazed he because he lives with Yola now, I think. Well, I feel like that kind of gets a little bit retcon because he still makes a few comments that sound like he lives with his brother.

Or maybe just move back. Yeah, yeah. Like I feel like that was a neat ending for the last book, but it's not so relevant here. Anyway, but yes, he also makes a very good Nazi spy as it turns out. Yeah. Or a very bad one.

Yeah, I wouldn't say he's very successful, but that's fine. I can't remember much else of what he's done. He did a bunch of stuff, didn't he? He went and helped pull people out of the rubble, which was nice of him. Yeah, he gets some good moments. It's not really a hymn book, though. He was a much bigger part of the other two.

Yeah. Wobbler, on the other hand, much bigger part of this book. His moment, yes. He does get his moment. He does also get his computer skills like a little bit more retconned. Yeah. He wanted to be a kid in milk bottle, bottom glasses,

and a deformed anorak who could write amazing software and be a millionaire. But he'd probably settle for just being someone whose computer didn't keep smelling of burning plastic every time he touched it. But he does, it turns out, have the instinct for money making, if not that particular talent. Which is fair.

There's also just briefly, before we go on to his bigger moments, a nice little, when he's talking to the kid that turns out to be his grandfather, the one that was going to run away, he's talking about how rubbish it is here, that Atterbury kid pinched my piece of shrapnel, as in, I'm assuming, a little reference to Atterbury from last week. Oh, fuck.

There we go. So that's a clever little blend it all together, what's it? Now, which one was he? He was the Royal British Legion guy who then kind of takes on the whole. That's it. Yes. Whose father was killed in the war.

Dad was killed in the war. Yes, yes, yes. Well, thank you. So it all works out. Cool. I like that. Yeah, Wobblers is great though. I like him as Sir John.

Yeah, I've sort of separated them out a little bit. That was clever. Before Wobblers, yeah, because Sir John, there's also obviously the, you assume it's Johnny at first. And the nice little hints of Adolf and Stalin, the fish as well, those being the two fish to survive, and the fact that Sir John has two fish called Adolf and Stalin. Yes.

So that's like a little hinty thing. Obviously, they're not the same two fish. No, no, no. I know, yeah. He said it was their descendants, they didn't he? Yeah, all that he keeps getting them and naming them after. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But before he becomes Sir John,

the moment where he breaks down after he realizes he's been left behind is so sad and so sweet, where he's sort of, no, it's fine, you're going to jump out. Come on, let's all go home and get a burger. I don't mind buying. We can go down the Chinese and then he's sort of finally, finally realizing like, oh, there's no Chinese takeaways. And he's been left.

That made me very sad. I did. Plot bits like that in media always get me a little bit because it's just that you have to obviously skim it to an extent because he can't then go through the next 60 years of him living. But things like that and, and like, oh, like in Doctor Who with Rory. Oh, yeah.

When he like has to go back in his room and or in Blink, the first episode with the Weeping Angels, where like her friend suddenly gets sent back to like 1910. Yeah, it always, yeah. I'm not sure what emotion it elicits in me exactly, but it's, it's, it's one, it is. It's just an emotion. It's, there's a sadness to it.

And there's sort of a, oh, well, I'm glad it worked out and they ought to have a nice life for themselves. But the Lord would always wonder about the life they didn't get to have, slash would have had if they were in the future and, and that thing. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And it definitely kind of hits my scared of mortality buttons as well. Yes, very much.

I wouldn't like to suddenly be sent back to the future. It's like, well, no, you can't see any more future now. Yeah, exactly. You still get to live a, you still get to live a whole life, but you don't get to see any more of what the world will become. Yes. It's like being told, you can only watch television you've already seen for the rest of your life.

Like that, but for your actual life. But for your actual life. Yeah, let's go out and putting it. Anyway, yeah, for Paul Wobblersadon, I'm glad he did well. Interestingly, he never married or had kids because it didn't seem right. Yeah. It is like he's an interloper in this. He sort of gets that he's not really meant to be here as such.

I like that all the little interactions with him and his driver as well of like, look, I'm going to give you a lot of money to do what I'm telling you to do and not what I'm supposed to do. Yeah. I loved when he is trying to warn his grandfather about not getting a motorbike. And he's like, why won't he listen to me? Why won't he just listen to sense? I would listen if I came to me and then get to the letter.

He's like, well, this is a bullshit. I highly respect that. I would like to address some concern for the concept of the Willy Wobbler Clown because it's been a year since we talked about clown eggs. So there's no such thing as a fish. Had a bit on it yesterday. So what are clown eggs or Willy Wobblers? Clown eggs.

Yeah, cool. I've learned some more about clown eggs. In fact, I'll send you the link to that episode actually because I think you'll enjoy that one. But yes, sorry, I just want to say Willy Wobbler one more time before we move on. Very well. Willy Wobbler. But yeah, no, I enjoy it.

I think it's a clever character moment and it's clever that it's not Johnny. Yes. Because of the way they treat Johnny and the way he wonders about things. You don't kind of get this feeling of that Wobbler would be the one to start thinking about the chances of time as he's living the rest of his life out from the past forward. Yes. Yes. Because that's a Johnny way to think and it's like Wobbler's picked that up from him.

So the sort of fake, it's not really a fake out, but... No, yeah. And he's kind of obviously realized he doesn't have Johnny to do all that bit for him now. And then he's got to do it for himself. And so he's lived out his whole life and then near the end something on, well actually hang on, I can learn this. Let's start getting the books and Stephen Hawking. I like the moment of the telling the joke to make the rest of the kids realize.

Yes, that was a good moment. Like Johnny's clearly cottoned on already, but... And I think it's Yolus who does... No, it's Buddhist. Oh, fuck. Yeah, that's it. Like the idea, I love that idea of just like reacting to somebody as though in the way you always would. Because yeah, just that was pretty sex.

That's how you realize it's not somebody, yeah. In that anime, you made me watch Avatar, yeah, with his best mate, right? Oh, yeah, there's a bit in Avatar, the last airbender where he... Because he's been trapped in the ice for a hundred years. And then he suddenly realizes this really old dude running into the city is his old mate, Boomi. Yeah, and it's a similar like a line, he said, wasn't it, or something? Yeah, something very stupid, he said. Yeah, so I didn't know any locations because we don't really go anywhere

apart from into the past. And I feel like we're going to talk about that a little bit more. Yeah, no, later on. Right, so I found an adulterated cat. Yes. And I believe that guilty must be a boot-faced cat. That's fine by practice. They're fangs, cross-dyes, enough scars to play an awesome cross as championship on,

and ears like old bus tickets. Most boot-faced cats are black, strange but true. Also, I had a quick Google while I was there to find out why he's called guilty. It's an interesting one. And accidentally came upon a summary of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Black Cat, which sounds fucking horrendous. I've never read it and I never will now, God. I've never read it and have no idea what it's about, so...

Animal abuse. Oh, cool, fun. That's fun. I just lost track of where my book was for a second. Should we talk about the little bits we liked? Yes. Rather than animal abuse. Speaking of losing track of things.

Lost property. The whole conversation in the 1940s police station about the lost property office. Yeah. So what if the Crown Jewels were found? Oh, we put them in the lost property cupboard and then find the king if his name was on them. The whole conversation about lost property and everything really reminded me of the watch in the Discord, but I like looking for the bits that have threads that carry to Discord and back again, and that was very much one of them.

Yeah, very knobby. Except we would have nicked it. No, we would have absolutely nicked it. This guy at least does seem very earnest about his... He's got a good thick tool. He's got a lock. I only have the key. What's wrong with it?

Yeah, there's maybe a bit of carrot to it or a bit of detritus. Yeah, yeah. That flavour. Yeah. So, yes, I enjoyed that. I liked the bit about spontaneous combustion. I was trying to find a less weird way of saying that. When Johnny's like, as if I didn't have enough to worry about,

now I have to worry about spontaneously combusting. I had a book like the ones they're talking about when I was little that had, when I was too small, I think, to be having such books, because they had like a picture of the aftermath of a spontaneous combustion. God, I think I remember reading a bit like that. Possibly in the school library. It might have been the same one. I bet it was.

I didn't spend long enough trying to track down exactly which one it was, except there were so many about just unexplained phenomena. But it had like, it wasn't things like aliens or yetis. It was things like spontaneous combustion, bull lightning. Yeah. Just stuff you can maybe just about believe. But yeah, I just, that brought back that feeling. I had what I used to read about it.

Like, oh, I mean, nowadays, I assume a lot of spontaneous combustion had to do with the incredibly flammable night wear. Yes, quite possibly. As I said, when I was the other week, both of us were looking through some some vintage night wear on eBay because we don't like to sleep. We'd rather read about pajamas. And yeah, looking at some of the materials, I was just like, ah, yeah, no, I'm not going to actually buy something from the 70s because I now

see why everyone kept lighting on fire. And those like the dressing gowns we kept finding that look like fucking duvetes. Yeah. And like, that is. That's why fires. They're flammable. Yeah. But no, I was quite concerned about spontaneous combustion as a child.

I went through a phase of obsessively reading about unexplained phenomena and stuff like 40 in time stuff like fish falling from the sky. And partly because I like, I was at Catholic school and dealing with like, well, do I think God is real enough? What other weird shit is out there? There's never quite fish. Exactly. Well, Rain of Fish, I'm sure links to God.

Wasn't that one of the plagues? No. Rain of Fish. Yeah. Plague of Locust. Rain of Fish. Rain of Blood. There we go.

Rain of Blood. I should watch The Prince of Egypt again. That's such a good movie. But yes, I know I got weirdly obsessed about it a while. It hasn't entirely left me, which is why I still really want to know what happened at the Yalov Pass. Yeah. Well, that's a different flavour.

That's a different flavour. There's a really good sinister hood. A couple of episodes on that one. Yes, but we still don't know. No, we don't. But it's good. Yeah. So obviously, Wobbler finds himself trapped at the pass

and makes his millions by inventing the burger bar. Yeah. What if you were trapped in the pass and wanted to invent something to make your millions? But I saw this earlier and I forgot to think about it. Do you have one? Is there anything I know? There's anything, is it?

I don't know how to make things. I don't know enough of like programming and stuff to invent C++ or something. Yeah. But what I do know how to do is write. So what I would do is write the Harry Potter books early, but also better. That sounds like it could be a net game for the world for sure.

And then you don't have like that prominent... Become a massive transphobe. Yeah. I like that idea. So I could become a billionaire, not a giant transphobe. Good, good thinking. And also maybe take some of the anti-Semitism and apologies for slavery out of the books.

I like the way that Fratch has dealt with Wobbler like being realistically unable to invent things, which is that most of his money is made from investing in inventing as he knows are a good idea. I really like that as this. I think that was a really clever way of doing that. It was a clever way of doing it. And also the whole burger bar thing.

Yeah. It's just made me go on to that. But yeah. No, what would I invent? Fuck. I'm not even sure I could like write. Probably the only books that have a decent chance of writing from memory would be these ones.

And not well enough. And obviously I wouldn't want to undercut Fratch in. Yeah. See, that's the thing. Like I'd be very willing... Don't get me wrong. I haven't got the Harry Potter books memorized, but like I remember enough.

You know the plots and they're not exactly complicated to write. Exactly. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. No. I don't know. I would at least have some time to think about it

if I were jetted back into the past. Yeah. I'm also trying to be realistic about the fact that if we were stuck as women in the 1940s, we might have quite limited opportunities. Yes. Especially if we start off with no resources. Yeah.

Might have to do your cute woman thing. Marry someone rich. Yeah. I'm sure I could find a rich husband pretty easily. We're a bit past it now by 1940 standards, but even so, where there was, there exist. Just say you're a widower. Exactly.

Spinster. Make it grow. Be such a good like spinster aren't though? Yeah. Imagine me as the spinster. Imagine me as the spinster aren't. You need to have an accounting money for that. Yeah.

But could you imagine me as the spinster aren't in like a Jane Austen novel? Absolutely. Just cackling in the corner. I've had a real craving to read a bit of Jane Austen recently and I haven't really had time. Yeah. I've really fancied it.

I've really fancied it. What a bit of a dracula. I've really fancied it. Well, Dracula, we're reading quite piecemeal. That's quite nice. We're reading Dracula daily through Tumblr listeners, which is you get an email. Well, not through Tumblr.

No. But you sign up through Tumblr and you get an email every day with a bit of Dracula for most days. I'm a few days fine. With a little bit of Dracula. And I feel quite guilty. So it's Dracula, but like in real time. He's to read it for the podcast.

I mean, it would have been relevant. Well, it's fun. Now I don't feel like I have to. I want to. It's fun reading it like this because obviously it's not the way it's done. It's not told in order in the book. Yeah.

Yeah. So. And also because everyone else is and it's memes everywhere. It is. It's sort of like being in a massive, ridiculous book club. It's been fun. Anyway, local history stuff. Dracula is not local to us because we're not in Whitby.

Or indeed in Transylvania. No, no, we're not. Still got no castles. Local history stuff. Sorry, that's me. Yes, I was waiting for you to say the next bit, but that's my job. Yeah.

I just a little bit about like watching Blackberry from a distance, looking at it from a distance when they're back in time and it's all smaller and like running down streets. You kind of recognize, but then there should be a street here and there isn't. I've just been very into like old photos and maps of local stuff recently. And I don't know.

It just tickles a bit of my brain that I love very much. And like. I really I really enjoy when wobblers running around and the trees not grown yet. That's such a nice. One of the things I love looking at like old pictures and stuff is seeing where the trees are going to be. Yes.

There's like, there's a picture of nearby me, like a few streets away from like the 60s. And there's a tree in there that is still there. And like it's been found to which was quite good. And yeah, just like when I'm on dog walks and stuff, I really like because I've got some old ordinance survey maps and things like that. And just like, I know where a limepit was.

And and I know that this road used to stop here. And I've seen fixed for this and that. And yeah, I know it's just really it's pleasing. I would suggest listeners, if you feel like it, looking up a few really old, really old maps, we're lucky because we live in a very old town. So you can look up some medieval maps even. And like go from there and watch the town grow

and like to look up the etymology of various street names. And it's all very nerdy. It's even just remembering looking back old pictures from the change in the town like since I was born, like the Castle Market and that whole shopping development. I remember when all this was car park. I remember what like it was my route to school watching that cinema being built.

So you got to see it from the inside out and you got to see like they were building where the seats were going to be in the screens. You can see all the steps. That was very cool. I love driving past that when it was being built. Nice. See, I did live around here then, I think,

but I must have just not gone past that very often. But yeah. Yeah. Fun. Anyway, yeah. Shall we talk about the biggest stuff? Actually, we're going talking history. Yeah.

So this isn't much of a bigger thing, apart from it's not really a bit I like as much as a vague thing I wanted to talk about, which is the myth of the blitz spirit, which is so pernicious in British culture and which I think perhaps it deals with quite well here, which is the idea of- Keep calm and carry on.

Yes, the overarching thing being like, oh, everybody pulled together in the blitz and just got on with it and everyone loves those photos of people going to work through the rubble and the postman delivering to the one standing house on the street and it's all brought out of this, oh, yes, we can pull together through everything

and aren't children rubbish today because they couldn't do that. And it's invariably by people who weren't even fucking born at the time, obviously. No. But I think the way it's carted out is often in quite a negative way because it, well, A, it's very misleading because obviously

people weren't keeping calm and carrying on because that was just the way of the British spirit. It is because these people had to go to work because they needed to eat. It's not really a good thing about the country that these people who'd just watched the rest of their street get blown up, still had to go to work, I think.

Also, there were people robbing blunt bomb sites for anything they could find that was left behind. There was a massive black market. Yeah, exactly. And you saw a lot of this commentary in the first days of COVID and that where people were like, God, I can't believe people are being scalpers in that now with supplies

and people just weren't like this back in the day. It's like they absolutely fucking were. The crime rate during the blackouts was obscene. And yeah, but I feel practice dealt with it quite well here in that one's reaction to something like that happening quite often is surprisingly stoic, surprisingly good on with things. And it's not so much like a strength of character

as it is a human response. You need to get through these next steps. You cannot become hysterical right now. We need to do this and this and this, which then quite often ends with just fucking breaking down and laughter like the boys do. Yeah, it's that kind of shock reaction. Not going back into all the pressings stuff

I talked about last week, but as someone has been through some traumas, you make a to-do list and you do the things you can do. Because you have to. Those things have to happen. The human, it is perhaps a good thing. It's a compliment to the human spirit in general, not the British spirit of the old days that we are able to.

And people help each other more than you think they would as well in the aftermath of disaster and this kind of, I should now approach it from the opposite direction, which I think people sometimes go too far the other way and say, oh yeah, in the wake of a disaster, everyone's fucking at each other's throats with machetes and the government can't tell people anything

in case there's a mass panic. And it's like, no, actually in times of adversity, people generally tend to just try and help each other more than you'd imagine. And it's when it stretches into the long term, it gets tricky. A bit. Yeah, but yeah.

So that just brought up those annoyances for me and I was pleased that perhaps it did in such a good way. It's something, so the way I'm going to put this is going to make me sound like a total sociopath and I'm going to try and clarify that. But it's something I think about often and the reason I have the stupid meme tattoo on my leg, but it wasn't a meme at the time

when I got the words fucking, live, laugh, love, tattooed on me. Oh, you're admitting that, are we? I'm sure I've mentioned that on the podcast before, but just in case I haven't, I will tweet a picture. You can all rip the piss out of me. I like it. I do like it. I don't feel like it means.

No, it's just a middle-aged woman named Susan's wall decal that I've got tattooed on me. No offence to any middle-aged women named Susan who have lived love, love on their walls listening. Actually, some offence. Right, no. The point I was making is this remembering that other people are people.

And again, I'm fully aware that makes me sound like a fucking sociopath. I get it, yeah. Yeah, you can be very caught up in your own head and you can almost have this thing of what if I'm the only real human and everyone around me is a projected hologram kind of thing. I don't go quite that far.

No, I don't go that far, obviously. But I think people often forget that everyone else is having the same human reaction to what's happening as they are because we're all so caught up in our own little worlds. And I think something this book brings out with this fucking myth of the Blitz spirit that it's this special British thing.

It's not, it's a human thing because we all react very similarly, not identically, when going through horrific things. And that means some people will do good things and some people will do bad. It comes up a lot when people talk about asylum seekers or migrants, as they now apparently officially called the press, where I hear this narrative

from people where it's like, oh, yeah, and all these cowards ran away rather than defending their country. And they'll be talking about fucking Syria or something. It's not the same as the Blitz. You could not have come up with a better plan than these people have. They are human beings.

They are not inherently less brave or clever than you are. They are literally just in different situation. I would never, obviously, really wish this upon these people, but I kind of wish they had to face something similar just so. And they'd still never get it, would they? Because you get all these fucking, the only moral abortion was my abortion crowd.

Excellent article, by the way. And, yeah, I don't know. Sorry, I'm going off on a rant there. Tell me about time travel. Time travel. So this brings me into, again, why this such good book we talked about with the last two. They are very good books, especially

they are very good kids' books. And so I think this book does very well as every person in it is so human. That's a really fucking stupid thing to say. You know, it's what Pratchett does well. He writes people. He writes very peopley people. Total lack of black and white to it,

apart from maybe when Kirsty's being racist or when the shopkeeper's calling Yola Sambo. But, yeah, within that also is very well written time travel. And I don't, it's not that I dislike time travely things, but they always give me a headache. The paradox stuff gives me a headache. I've talked about this.

So I tend to stick my fingers in my ears and go, la, la, la, a little bit at it. And obviously up front, yes, there's some back to the future references and they're quite funny. I do like the back to the future movies. Yes. They're fun.

But it's so deftly written, like right at the beginning, the scene setting with, you know, obviously it's Blackberry, but it's Blackberry and it just sets a couple of things to show you it's Blackberry in the past. I dig for Victory poster. Yeah. Searchlights, the blackout.

And then it goes to a few pages later and now you're in Blackberry and the present within the book. And it's nine o'clock in the evening in Blackberry High Street and there's an electrical shop and televisions and it's just that to set the scene into a different time. And it just, it's so cleverly done and

simply done. It's not patronizingly done. No. Yeah, there's enough. It's obvious enough that it's intended audience like young adults will be able to get it, but not like spoon fed. Yeah.

And I really enjoy that. And it goes into this. You get the discussion of the paradoxes and the idea of killing your own grandfather, which was, we've just done last continent and it's almost like, it's not word for word, the same conversation they're having on the island, but there's definitely a.

Yeah. They're hand in hand with each other. Yeah. Which kind of goes on from what I was saying last week about when you get the boys arguing, it's a lot like the wizards arguing. Yeah.

And that brings me joy. But this idea of going back and fixing things that carries on so nicely from the angel from the last book, this idea of what if on your deathbed, someone gives you the opportunity to go and do everything differently. Yeah.

Except it's not an angel. It's a shopping trolley full of bags. Yes. And also you don't get to go back and do your own life differently. No, you have to go and live. Someone else's your own life somewhere else or someone else's life entirely or

yeah. But I think they work together. It goes from Johnny wondering if you could do something like that to, okay, here's this thing. I'm obsessed with it. And there's a real opportunity to do something about it.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, he does it in just this one reality while understanding that it's not done everywhere else. And it's, Kirsty goes in this route when she's kind of figuring out that the trolley is possibly a bit time

travelling. She's doing this, well, haven't you ever wondered what would happen if a flying saucer land in your garden or you found some magical item that let you travel in time or an old cave with a wizard that'd been asleep for a thousand years. It's like Johnny doesn't have to wonder

because last book he met the dead and he had to wonder there, what would I do in this situation? Oh, I'm going to do the thing rather than walking away from it. Yeah. It's very straightforwardly done from his perspective, isn't it?

It's not this whole mythical quest thing. It's like, right, this is happening. Let's go. This is what I need to do about it, obviously. He gets his spacing out spiritual moments later.

But generally, just the thing is, obviously, I have to go and help this now. It's also nice to get a literal representation of the trousers of time, which is something that I'm all theoretical in the Discworld books. If you spot the trousers of time, tell me what you'd like to drive down.

But it is. It's literally they're flipping from, I don't know, I guess parallel universe. I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who recently, which has probably quite helped me with reading this one. Yeah, I expect so. Whenever they make the changes,

it doesn't change the future. It creates another future. And they have a bit of a minute of hopping between the two presents slash features. It's really hard to talk about. It is. And it has to be, by the sound of it, quite a big event to split the futures up,

doesn't it? Like it has to be a not like a big world-changing event, but someone not being born this time or whatever. It's not like a butterfly effect thing. So much, though. Unless they did actually create

18 other parallel universes. Yeah, we just didn't get the results. Yeah. Perhaps. We stepped on that end, and now your grandfather was a knight. Yes. Hang on.

Fantastic. And there's some, there's just some really nice ways of how it's talked about. In the context of changing the future and those ways, this idea of everything you do changes everything.

Every time you move in time, you arrive in a time, a little bit different to the one you left. What you do doesn't change the future, just a future. Yeah. And the follow-up of this million places where the bombs killed everyone

in Paradise Street, but it didn't happen here. Yeah. And it's like a, obviously we didn't change the future for all those people, but you know, we did want, we did a good thing.

We saved these people. Yeah. We saved these people here, and that's all you can really ask for. Yeah. And the follow-up of, when you travel in time, it really happens,

but it's like a little loop in a tape, and you go around the loop and then carry on from where you were before. And everything that's changed turns out to be history. Yeah. I like also that,

not early, early on, but reasonably early on on all the time traveling adventures, one of them says something like, oh, but what if we do this and it changes this? And another of them says, look, no, if we think like that,

we're just not going to do anything. What we need to do is save the street. Yeah. Yeah. There is no point worrying about it, which is nice that they take that stance so early on and don't panic about ants.

Yes. One of the physical representations I really enjoyed was while he was running down that street, when he like decides on the street to run down. And that's all very, not physically explained so much.

Yeah. But the town in front of him was like frozen and blue. And then behind him, this guy was red. So it's like the time shift. Like that's how you tell how things are moving in space,

isn't it? The red and blue colouring. I was thinking of it like a pair of really old school 3D glasses as well. I think possibly he's talking about the time thing. Yeah, that probably makes a lot more sense.

But I like the 3D glasses angle and does make you wonder where the dimension is that they could see if they stood back far enough. Let's not ask. Oh, there's a chance of this. Red shift and blue shift.

That's what it's called. Not time shift. And yeah, you can work out whether something's moving away or towards by what colour it is. Yes. Yeah. And then also,

I quite like the parallel because they're all cold and everything's turned into crystals and there's a nice bit like descriptive bit about that. And then after the bomb goes off, there's a very similar descriptive bit except it turns out everything's covered in glass.

Yeah. That was a nice little parallel. And it's the way they keep having to deal with what they're trying to do to fix things not working. They can't stop the bomb. They can't change that part of the future. So they're doing the air raid siren

and they're doing the air raid siren and then they're going in a different direction to do the air raid siren. Yeah. He briefly meets his own grandfather as well, which is a very nice resolution right at the end where he puts the playing card back.

Yeah, you don't have to have another moment of the slowly realising who you are when you're talking to him. You get back and go, but he puts the playing card back in front of his grandfather and his grandfather just sort of has a mad explains it.

Thought you looked familiar sort of moment. His grandfather does seem to be quite accepting of such things with the, oh, dead are you? How's that going? To shreds you say. To shreds you say. I also really love the sort of metaphor

of how you end up with bags of time. It's like Johnny thinking, well, you could save time. You can waste it. It can run through your fingers and you can put a stitch in it. Of course, perhaps that was only a matter of speaking and it all depended on how you looked at it.

But Mrs. Tackian looked at things in a corkscrew way. Yes, yes. If you were able to look at it from an old enough perspective, why not indeed? And eventually Johnny does look at it from an old enough perspective. Yeah.

So something they mentioned in the episode of the Museum of Curiosity, actually it was practically it was on the an astrophysicist who said something like, I mean, the concept of time obviously is bollocks in more scientific words. Because if you see it, even the metaphors we use show that it has to be bollocks

because we use the flow of time, which if you've got a river of flowing time, then surely it must be moving in conjunction with something which we never bothered to explain. And we've got this and that and that. Yeah. This is why I don't like learning physics front end. Well, I don't mind this side of it so much

because I don't know why not. So big. It does not set me as much as quantum, yeah. Well, no, actually the kind of idea of linear time being bollocks is something I've held, I guess for a long time, because as I started dealing with, maybe I'm an atheist.

One of the things that I separated out of my beliefs very quickly was the idea of this creator and beginning and ending universe was like, time is linear because we could perceive it as linear, but what if it's not actually linear and it's just kind of always been there and it doesn't need a creator because there wasn't really a beginning or end.

Well, you went very deep with your realizations. As far as I recall, my atheism starts with a way, no, this doesn't make sense, never mind. Well, yeah, but then I decided to do a level philosophy and become a wanker about it. That's right, yeah. But talking about time travel

and the lack of linear time, quite possibly. Older Wobbler explaining the lack of logic to this is another nice moment. Yeah. So I don't think time's all that logical. It bends itself around humans and it's probably full of loose ends. Absolutely.

Some follows, sometimes loose ends are necessary. If they weren't, spaghetti would merely be an embarrassing experience. It was very nearly my quote. Just trying to eat just like an infinite loop of spaghetti. Oh, that's so Esher. Nobody wants Esher Spaghetti.

Esher Spaghetti. Esher Spaghetti, Esher Hoops Spaghetti. No, oh. I like Esher Spaghetti. Strips in your spaghetti. Get that Mobius out of my spaghetti. Waiter, waiter. That's an infinite quantum theory in my spaghetti.

Get out. I'm very embarrassed for you, sir. But how fast is it moving? Right, no. Come on. Let's move away from physics. God's sake. Anyway, I could sit and read out millions of different

quotes from this book. And I think it's good, which is pretty much all this fucking section is. One other thing I love is the little fossil theme running through it. And it's only a couple of times when it starts with this dreaming of a trap fly. And near the end, he describes his memories

as being trapped behind amber glass, which is a nice. I thought there were loads of really good kind of calls into the fly thing, actually. Like when they were talking about being caught in concrete with your legs all sticking out or whatever. I thought that was a kind of parallel bit. Yeah, and the fridge molecules. Yeah. The idea of a time fossil as well, isn't it?

It's like this thing has to have happened, even if it's a fixed events. Again, too much, Dr. Who. But overall, I just, I think it's again, such a well-written book and especially a well-written book for kids slash young adults. Because it's completely unpatronizing about the time thing. It goes right back to what you were talking about at the beginning that you can, for a certain extent,

take for granted that people, they know back to the future, they know Star Trek, they know enough to get what's being done here. But then to take it and do something kind of unexpected with it. Yeah. I must say, there was a few instances, as usual, of Patrick being grumpy in the forums about this kind of thing, with people saying, oh, he got this from Back to the Future or this from that. And he was like, what do you think, Back to the Future,

was the first thing that had someone meet his grandfather or make a joke to recognize someone by it? One of the oldest sort of things that come up in like physics and discussions when you start talking about time travel. Yeah, we've done that. Yeah. We've done the grandfather paradox to death and we won't bring it back again.

We'll do a grandmother paradox that way. Yeah, yeah. More sensible with knitting. We won't do the grandmother paradox. I just remembered the episode of Futurama. Oh, yeah, who know. It just rides you, say. Right. Fuck.

Okay, we need to leave. We do. I don't want to land on a really depressing point about grief again. So have you got an obscure reference for Neil or me? Yeah, I'll cheer you right up with wattleberries. What the fuck are wattleberries, Francie? Well, Joanna, I'm glad you asked. So when it was talking about the moors, the dance,

the tumps were five mounds on top of the down. They grew heather and wattleberries. Wattleberries, says I. What is a wattleberry? So I googled it. It's felt with an H, which it wasn't in my copy of the book. As in W. H. Wattle. Excellent underrated author.

Ah, yes, I remember his poem about funerals. Sorry. Anyway, right. It's the Devon name given to the wild bloke blueberries that grow on the moors in Devon and the West Country, which tells me that perhaps this is where Blackfrey originally was a little further down than we think. Yes.

But it's also, we probably know it's a bilberry, but it's a European blueberry, sometimes confused for American blueberries. You can tell the difference because bilberries are red in the middle. They're those berries that really stain you, like, worse than Blackberries. If you've ever eaten any, well, you're out and about.

I don't think so. No, I mean, they look a bit like other things that you shouldn't eat, so that's probably not cool. Um, but yeah, they're red in the middle, whereas American Blackberries are white, not American Blackberries, blueberries, rather. And yeah, that's that. But because that was a short one, I have a bonus one,

which is a question for our listeners. Yes. In one of the forums, I found out somebody, I found somebody who said, and this was in 1998, so there's no chance of me tracking down. I've just seen a documentary about breakfast cereals. One of them had a rhyme very similar to the one you put in Johnny and the Bomb

about Blackfrey Pickles, which was Tim Jump, little Tim leaping in the air being bitten or something. Yeah. After the air leaps little Tim, Blackfrey Pickles have bitten him. So it must have been similar to that one. Um, is this a Joker coincidence? I'm curious.

Practice says, no, it's research. Um, anyway, I had a little look around. I couldn't find which breakfast cereal jingle that must have been referring to. And so I feel like my best shot is to ask some, I'll ask if any of our listeners remember it. Yeah. Or remember seeing that documentary, which came out in 1998.

Yeah. So if you know any breakfast cereal that's similar to that one, please tell me. Nice. I hope they can. I don't. I don't. Right.

Thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Trisha Miki Fret. Next month, we are returning to the disc world. We're going to talk about the fifth elephant. There is absolutely no requirement to watch the fifth element to talk about the book, The Fifth Elephant. But if you want to, like, it's a pretty good film. I, you know, go for it.

We are going to have a slightly longer break than usual because I'm off on my holes. And doing the dreaded turning 30. So there will be some bonus content coming to you next week for the 25th of May. Glorious 25th. And soon we'll actually be able to talk about that in context. Next year we will.

And then we'll be back with our first episode of The Fifth Elephant on the 13th of June. Yes. Gosh. However, in the meantime, sorry, dear listeners, you can follow us on Instagram at the Trisha Miki Fret on Twitter at Miki FretPod, on Facebook at the Trisha Miki Fret.

Join our subreddit community, r slash tt smyf. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, and time travel, but no explanations of physics, please. Unless you do that kind of drive-by explanation, which I quite enjoyed. Yeah, no, I do quite like that. The Trisha Miki FretPod at gmail.com. And if you want to support us financially,

you can head to patreon.com forward slash the Trisha Miki Fret and exchange your hard-earned pennies for some bonus nonsense. We will have a rabbit hole coming out in the next couple of weeks, which Francine is in charge of. And if I remember, there'll be a recipe by the end of the month. The rabbit hole is still, I believe, going to be on that cemetery scandal. I haven't changed my mind to say.

Excellent. And once again, I've forgotten to have the last line of the book. Candy. Super. In the meantime, dear listener, she went back to 1903 and spent it on fish and chips and still had change. They can't all be profound.