The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 93: Thief of Time Pt. 2 (What the Cuttlefish Sees)

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 2 of our recap of “Thief of Time”. Ooh, a yeti! Ooh, a bird! Argh! A storm! 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:Britain has become One Nation Under Brands, detained in our Center Parcs lodgings - The Guardian Why were ITV hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield at Queen's lying-in-state? - B BC News Screenshot of comment that pushed Francine over the edge - TTSMYF The Daftest Ways The UK Is Mourning The Queen - The Content Mines The Mars Watch - Anicorn WatchesMars24 Sunclock - NASAScientists Quantum Entangled Atomic Clocks 6 Feet Apart to Probe Fabric of Reality - ViceBook:Thief of Time/Annotations - Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki   “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman - GoodreadsHarlan Ellison Shatterday cover - TTSMYFHousehold Butler Etiquette - Schofield ButlerMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.comSound effects: Wine glass ringing: Department64, Freesound 

without wanting to jinx it. Let's try and do a no edit shot. Let's go for it. There was a straw that broke the camel's back on the old forced morning period. The morn hub. The morn hub. The morn hub. It's been, it's been funny. We've had a lot of fun kids. The center parks to Valkal, I think has still been my favorite. And I don't know whether I should explain that for international listeners. Very quickly, there's like a holiday camp away thing you can go and say. Oh, sorry, I thought I'd join in.

No, please do. Please do. So people have holidays booked that are going over Monday and center parks and else they were going to close for the day. So people on holiday would have to like leave and come back. They'd have to find somewhere else to stay for the night. It's the most fucking unhinged corporate policy I've ever had. And then obviously they backtracked and they were like, no people can, but the way they worded the backtracking was guests will not be forced to leave, but will be expected to remain in their lodges. So it was like, and what they meant was like all the activity stuff would be

closed because these places have like rides and cycle paths and swimming pools and things archery and shit that you can go and do. And so what that was, and all the restaurants are going to be closed, which is fine because all these things are self catering. But the way it was worded was very much step outside your lodge and you get sniped. We love arches in the trees. And of course, people were responding like this is a holiday camp where you go and do like archery and lots of things that help you get physically fit. Like it's just going to go for longer games, which I'm kind of sad they backtrack because that would have been great.

It was it was just wonderful seeing it all unfold on Twitter though. So the Centre Park's social media manager, or I think there were a couple of them on shifts, poor fuckers. Usually I'd look back, usually a Centre Park's post will get like a couple dozen engagements tops. This first tweet about we're going to kick everyone out of the park for 24 hours. Got like 3000 replies within a couple days. The just the it really does beg a belief for me that that idea got passed anybody got passed anybody to the announcement stage. Can you imagine you are on holiday hours, hours and hours drive from home. And you're like, okay, go go away for 24 hours, go and find somewhere else to stay. And a lot of places are also shut. So like finding

another place to stay. Yeah, like you're not going to another hotel. Yeah, like British corporations right now, British businesses are kind of tripping over themselves to close in the most closed manner tomorrow, like every tomorrow is Monday, by the way. That's necessary. We're recording on a Sunday for the first time in quite a while because my mother-in-law visit and we had a nice day on the beach. But out of respect for the Queen, we will be releasing this episode on the day of the Staty Funes. Of the Staty Funes is what the Queen would have wanted. I'm just prefacing everything with out of respect for the Queen now. Out of respect for the Queen. I'm going to have another coffee.

But anyway, so what was I on about? Right, so Centre Parks was hilarious. Everything up until this morning, I found hilarious. And I don't think it was anything particularly bad about this morning is just straw that broke the camel's back. And I started getting really pissed off with everybody in England. There was a story on Plymouth Live, because sometimes I look on Plymouth Live to find hilarious stories about seagulls, about Philip Shofield and Holly Willoughby, who are morning TV presenters. And they'd gone to the lying in state. I was about to say Staty Funes again, because that's just a wonderful collection of syllables. Thank you, Casual UK subreddit for being a shining light in the

grim depths of Reddit. And they had apparently, apparently skipped the queue to go through the Queen. Like 16 to 32 hour queue. Because the logical progression of this conspiracy theory, obviously, is that Philip Shofield and Holly Willoughby would, on their time off, go together to see, I mean, they're not married or something, are they? No, he's, he's gay. He came out a couple of years ago. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, so there are a pair of morning presenters that are married and I've forgotten. Okay, I don't care about Philip Shofield anymore. Right. So sorry. Sorry. Is there something important about him? No, not really. It's just he's a bit of a wanker. Okay. Also at Schofield. Schofield, whatever. I only know that because

he was a bit of a meme for a while, so the children in the kitchen informed me. Oh, was he? Yeah. Yeah, apparently. Great. He was doing things on TikTok, I don't know. But anyway, yeah, sorry, back to the, back to the outrage. Yeah. So obviously, like, obviously on their day off, they would have gone together to see the Queen and skipped the queue, which is something that only MPs, I think, have done. Like David Beckham queued up for all the hours or whatever, like PPR and I'm sure. And so yeah, ITV obviously said, no, they were working. And that was the whole story. It was a nothing new story. And obviously, every bit of trash tabloid is trying to whip the whole nation up into a fervour about who's not sad enough on a corporate level,

because the businesses have to be sad. It's not enough that people individually have the feelings about these things. Businesses have to be shown to be sad. And every fucking local Facebook group is full of posts going, Oh, lovely to see how many businesses are shutting tomorrow. And shame on BNM for staying open. Wow. Just fucking, who cares? They're never going to fuck you guys. Shame. Shame. God damn it. Sorry. Wow. I really have broken. Anyway, the comments underneath that skipping the queue article were particularly insane. I did read the comments. I'm sorry. It's because I did. I found it funny up until I did. And the comments were like the first comment was this country is becoming elitist under our noses. I was like, and that that that's a reaction

to Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. Not the fact that there is a five mile queue snaking around London to see the coffin of our dead monarch. Yeah. It's amazing. It's it's incredible. Like, oh, yeah, no, I sounded a lot more respectful last week, didn't I? I was trying to be fairly neutral. I've tried to keep a lot of my not respecting it to like Twitter circles at least, but like now I'm just fucking done. It's ridiculous. Like, it's really difficult to think of Charles as a king with his creepy sausage fingers and shit. He makes fun of his arthritis. Oh, right. Fine. It's really hard to think of Charles as a king

with his whole I want to be your tampon bit. Yeah, that's that's fair game. Yeah, that's fair game. Everyone's being dicks about Meghan Markle for existing and I don't get it because she's really pretty. Yeah, but she's unfortunately, for her and in Britain, very pretty while being mixed, race. Yeah, no, how does she and American very much sarcasm there. I feel like I very much need to quantify. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it's all for their husband as in a sad moment, which is unacceptable. No, the hauling ridiculous. It's also fucking stupid. I am enjoying like the best thing about living in like a sort of slightly sad little town and on a shitty little estate is how sort of mildly half ass things seem like obviously I live near some shops and so my local corner

shop has got like a sign up to I've seen other like shops in this chain like on Twitter, they've got these like we're very sad about the passing of the Queen with the branding at the bottom and a black and white picture of the Queen. Whereas this one is literally just got will be closed for the funeral between this and this and a picture of the Queen in black and white, but obviously printed on like a low on ink printer. So there's a weird yellow stripe down the middle of it. And like they're all a bit creased and rag tag after being pinned up on the counters for a couple of days and pinned up over the summer raffle basket, which is a prize draw you can enter to win that includes some WKD, a disposable barbecue, baby wipes and deodorant. Wow, that's a Saturday.

I mean, like that is exactly what I would have bought for like a festival. So I do get it. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, okay. That's just the kind of slide. I don't know if that's what they're going for, of just like people locally probably need WKD and baby wipes, which fair play. But it is something just sort of so half arsedly shit about it that I really enjoy. Oh, I like that. That's it. You know, you brought me down again. You brought me down to a happy and being being amused about all of this. Because what I do enjoy is, is people who clearly are just a bit bemused by the whole thing kind of going along with

it. So they don't get yelled at, although I hate the people yelling, but yes, the, the, oh, God, damn it. It's so fucking the local groups. I mean, that is so bad. The local Facebook groups are hilarious. Oh, God, I don't even know what like, oh, do you know where I should get this, this and there's on Sunday on someone like, oh, I bet some sad people are still expecting to be by fuel on Monday. I was like, Jesus Christ, dudes. It was like, do the same as you do Christmas Day. I was like, I think Petra, I think the petrol station opposite me is open on Christmas Day, actually. Like my corner shops open for a bit Christmas Day. Also, like with Christmas Day,

you have a, you have a whole year to know that's coming. Not like the notice we've had for this one and no official guideline about what's closing or staying open. I was like, because we're recording this afternoon, because Waitrose is going to be closed tomorrow, like I would have gone to Waitrose last minute today because the yellow sticker section would have been insane today. Oh, I'm sorry. It's fine. We still might have time if we get done in the next hour and a half or next hour. I mean, that's A, that's unlikely. Get Jed to go without you. No, he won't know what are the good deals in the yellow sticker section. Just tell him to get everything. No, don't. That's fine.

My freeze has not got enough room in it. I've got a chicken in there. Sorry, dead and plucked. I don't have like a live chicken in my freeze. Good. Not for long, you don't know. Anyway, in other more emotional news, buffering is coming to an end. I'm very, I know we've got buffering the podcast, not the internet phenomenon. Buffering the vampire slayers coming to an end. I know we share like a couple of listeners, but they're doing their live show for the finale tonight in New York, which obviously I'm not going to New York because I'm here, but I am going to watch the live stream. So again, if I hadn't made Joanna record on the Sunday, she would be in New York right now after her Waitrose trip.

Go to Waitrose, pop to New York. Now I'm going to watch it at one o'clock in the morning and stream it and then probably watch House of the Dragon immediately after and then sleep through the state of Fiends. But yeah, so it's fine. I'm fine. We're all fine. I'm sorry, Joanna. How long has it been going on? How long have you been running? Like four or five years? I think I got into it around season two, season three. That's nice. Yeah, I had a little binge and then have been listening to it consistently since about season three, I think, which is great. So that's, that's emotional. We're all sorry,

darling. No, no, it's fine. It is just a podcast, but it's a very good podcast. You know how emotional I've gotten after some of the podcasts I like because like Enlid or someone's left in scandal or whatever. Oh yeah, no, totally. I am going to, I'm really worried about like the ensuing insomnia when I eventually run out of Magnus Archives because that's become my sleep podcast. Oh, I have more recommendations for you. Okay, good. That's fine. I'll go on to that later. Yeah, but John Sims. No, unfortunately. But I think he's probably done something. I don't know. He does have the perfect voice. He does have really the perfect voice. It's an excellent stuff. I might do my

lesson and pull in that for them again. Yeah, cool. That's good. That's healthy. Yeah, I feel like if I ever get into writing fiction, it'll be cosmic horror because I just love that genre. I just love it. And it's so nonsense. I enjoy it. I don't know if I'd be good at writing it, but now I'm starting to think about doing a cosmic horror game. I think you should finish a project. Yes. No, I, well, speaking as a huge fucking hypocrite, considering like my main project at the moment is the book and that has an official deadline, I'm being paid for it and I have to finish it. I will finish it on the game side of things. Oh, on the game side. Yeah, no,

I have actually started a project that will go all the way to completion. That's my current project, which is like a choose your own adventure thing. Good. I'm doing it as a text based one first and then turning it into like a pixel platformer. But you can do it with some cosmic horror ideas in your mind, in the meantime. Oh yeah, the half written half baked section is fucking fantastic right now. There's a short story somewhere about how those posters for circuses get in abandoned shops. Do you have a folder or one huge unhinged document? I have a folder sort of. I've got one document called scraps, which is like literally when I've ended up with a paragraph that I like, but I can't be bothered to do anything with.

And one that every now and then I'll go through it and be like, oh, that's a good idea for an article. So what I have is like a folder on Google Drive that's kind of like that, that with lots of little different half written bits. But then I also have the notes up on my phone. And I have a couple of ideas notes that are basically just random sentences that have occurred to me that I go and rummage through when I like need to write a poem or a monologue or something. I just submit, I did actually just write and finish and submit them on log to a thing. So I'll find out if that's getting staged in a few weeks. Good stuff. The Ray Bradbury in the Zen and the Art of Writing, which is a book I've recommended several times on the podcast,

one of his things that he's one of his tips in there, which I've implemented is like literally a list of nouns or a list of words or something. And yeah, just kind of do the word connection thing in your head, just keep going, keep going. And then at some point, go back, pick one, that's your title, go. Yeah, it's just like a, that's a nice jumping off. What's it like a slightly tailored word prompts generator, I suppose, isn't it? Because you got, it's come from your brain. So obviously you've got a slight interest in that word already, whatever, something like that. Yeah, that's a good idea. I struggled with that monologue thing for ages because I had an idea and I was like, oh, this is a good idea. And then I struggled for like three days trying to write it,

got to about 200 words and just landed on. This isn't actually that good an idea. And also I've written it as like a two-hander play before. And that was a lot better. And I'm just copy, I'm literally copying myself. Let's go and write something else. So which one did he go with in the end? It's not also biographical, but it sounds also biographical, but it's about dealing with grief by trying to figure out what to do with like a teddy bear that no one wants anymore. Because when I finally, I originally, it was going to be this monologue about Demeter. And then I realized that like, I don't need to write more about Demeter and Persephone. And B, it was that

kind of horrible. It was very much that it was a particular type of thing that I really hate in theatre, where it's kind of self, it's a bit wanky. And it makes the audience feel smug that they get that it's Demeter. It's like, I remember going to see a short, I saw like a night of short plays and one of them, it was characters from the Tempest dealing with like their prosperous will. And there was this moment where you realize it's the characters Tempest and you could like feel the smugness in the room that everyone got it. And I realized I was writing that kind of wank and I didn't want to. I love you. That's a really good reason, actually. So then I went for a walk and forgot my headphones, but came up with the line that it's

the teddy bear that haunts me and that turned into a monologue in like a day. Well, that sounds like the ghost whispered to you on your walk, which is why we should always wear headphones, but okay. Okay, yeah, so it's slightly possible that there's like a haunted that my walk is haunted, but that'll eventually lead to some good inspiration for the Cosmic Horror. Yes, absolutely. Yay. Okay, that's brought us round to the circle. So do you want to make a podcast? I do. I do want to make a podcast. Was that a good hint? It took me a second. Hello and welcome to The Tree Shall Make Ye Frat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one, a stym in chronological order.

I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today is part two of Thief of Time, the 26th Discworld novel. And it's all at a time. It's it's time you whine me. We've done so well. It's about downtime. Yes. Much better. It's about downtime in a minute. I mean, okay, no, we don't get that. We can't we can't change that to be Discworld relevant on the fly. We're not that good. Okay, spoilers. Note on spoilers before we get started. We are a spoiler light podcast. That means heavy spoilers for the book Thief of Time. 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 listeners, come on the journey

with us. Slicing time into ever finer increments. Terrifying. Mm. But it's always find the bits in between. Yeah. Follow up. I've got some follow up. Shall I go first? Yeah, follow us up. Let's follow up. First up email from Alex. I already tweeted but this is one of the best subject headers we've ever received. Time is a betrayal. Oh, I didn't see that tweet. Good stuff. Well, then, Alex. Thank you, Alex. But Alex emailed us to talk about the Mars watches that tell Mars time. And this is very cool. Oh, okay. So Alex started with, unfortunately, I'm extremely extra about timekeeping on Mars, which that's not unfortunate. That's a great thing to be extra about brand new sentence. Have you heard the podcast? It's okay to be extra about things like timekeeping

on Mars. Oh, yes. Someone has to be. Okay. So the thing about Mars is its day, which is called a soul, is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. But when we're planning rave operations and in general trying to keep time on Mars, it's easier to divide the day into 24 hours. So that means a Mars hour is slightly longer than an Earth hour. And since it's easy to have an hour divided into 60 bits, a Mars minute is slightly longer than an Earth minute. And finally, it's easier to have a minute to be divided into 60 bits, a Mars second is slightly longer than an Earth second. So the Mars watch keeps time with these slightly longer seconds and stuff. And it's very expensive and entirely useless as someone living on Earth, unless you happen to be one of the unlucky people who

have to work on Mars time, which they did for most of the Phoenix land mission. And at the beginning of Mars 2020 in the perseverance. And Alex says, I'm not sure if they did it with curiosity too, but luckily, they are no longer on Mars time for ops. Basically, you have a 24 hour and about 40 minute day. And your noon becomes whenever the mission's local noon happens to be, which is sometimes the middle of the night. But because the soul is a bit longer than an Earth day, it keeps drifting. So it's not like going to another time zone where you eventually adjust. And apparently if you work on Mars time long enough, you just get the feeling of being constantly jet lagged. Oh, no. But you can actually buy the Mars watch, which is expensive, obviously. And NASA also has

a free slightly less fancy clock that you can download for your computer if you want to know what Mars time is. So I'll link those in the show notes. What's the Mars watch like? Is it like a digital actual? It looks like a normal watch, but a bit spacey. It's quite cool. Cool. Cool. I like it. I'll link that in the show notes. So yeah. Thank you, Alex. That's great. That is great. I like that a lot. Please never stop being extra about Mars time. Also, Sander Vogel on Reddit pointed out something I'm really annoyed I missed, which is when Soto finds Lobzang, he's in the stance of the coyote, a reference to the wily coyote stopping in midair before he falls off the cliff. And I'm annoyed I missed that because coyote and road runner are my favorite mini chains.

Oh, yeah. Oh, that's nice. Did you have something to follow up on? Yeah. Yeah. So on that same Reddit thread, actually, Batsuit Cloud pointed out that the book with the four horsemen previously was sorcery. I got that wrong because Winswyn and Coastal were horses. Of course. That's it. Also, the floral clock first gets mentioned in Guards, Guards, which is why it came up so early in our series. Ah, of course. Because I was like, it wasn't really early. I've certainly talked about it, wasn't it? And yes. It's because Colin goes to Querm for a holiday or his wife goes to Querm for a holiday. Yes, that's it. Which is why it's also in soul music because Susan attends the ladies

Querm College for ladies. And as we all know, Terry Pratchett's continuity is perfect. No notes. No notes. Apart from some notes I've got later. Yeah, no, that's fine. Also, I have a bit of clock follow up. You'll all be thrilled to hear. Yay. In the same week we recorded, but I've managed to miss this. The article came out and this article came out and you scientist researchers have quantum entangled atomic clocks, allowing them to be synchronized more accurately such entangled clocks also used to study dark matter and gravity more precisely. Very cool. I'll link to vice in the show notes because new scientist is paywalled and vice is also pretty good at plain English explanations. Nice quote from the article, the vice one.

When two atoms are entangled, then you cannot describe the state of one without describing the state of another. Beth and Nichols, one of the study sources wrote in an email to Motherboard. This is what Einstein is describing with the phrase spooky action at a distance, which I can't believe we've not brought up yet in all our rats back on him. If something happens to one atom, it can immediately affect the other with no apparent communication between them. Amazing. The synchronized clocks, I believe are something like six meters, six feet apart. So not massive amounts yet, but it is quite exciting. And I did forget to mention at the end is like the clock accuracy bit that different types of atom used

can affect what's going on. But I think forget is a bit generous. It's just that I can't really understand it. And I'm not going to try. And you're on your own from there, listeners. Enjoy diving into the world of quantum. Have fun. Don't drown in quantum. Cool. So what have we got next? We've got the quotes. No, we don't. No, we don't. I'm sorry. Where's the helicopter? No, you're going to tell us what happened previously on people's time. That's right. I've just scrolled down to the next page. Right. In my keenness to try not to have to write at this too heavily because we're recording the day before we release, I'm just fucking it up entirely. So keep all this in. Yes, I will. Previously on, thief of time.

Oh, wait, I had an S3 run first, didn't I? You do have an S3 run first. Hickory dickory dock. The auditors want to clock. The world will end. Space time will rend Hickory dickory dock. Perfect. Well, just kind of summarise it, but actually previously on, thief of time. There is no time, but the present says when the eternally surprised. He may soon be correct in a literal sense, not merely an annoying metaphorical slash quantum sense as death senses that time is running out. So he makes it Susan's problem. Meanwhile, two talented young men are well depart in personality and geography makes sine waves in their chosen fields. Lob sang the time monk novice. Lob sang the time monk novice is schooled on rule one before a verting disaster

where masters could not. Jeremy the clockmaker is given the commission of his dreams and an assistant willing to make nightmares come true. Amazing. And would you like to tell us what's going to what's happening this time? What's going to happen? What's happening right now? Because there is no time but the present. There is absolutely no time but the present. Death comes to collect Shoblang, quite literally gone too soon, F5 in the chat, but can't see Lob sang working the spinners. The procrastinators are fine for now, but Lutze is worried another glass clock's coming. Yeah, but forbids Lob sang in the sweeper from heading to Uberwald to stop the crystal clock, but allows a trip to Ankh-Morpork for the sake of

wisdom. Portable procrastinators in hand, the rag tag duo set off, deftly slicing through chronology. Meanwhile in Ankh-Morpork, the clock's coming together, but Igor's getting suspicious of Lady Lejeune. Jeremy doesn't get a dinner date and Igor sees a fading gray shape as he tracks the mysterious madam. Lutze tells Lob sang about a clock time in a love letter and Lob sang remembers that when was right, he hallucinates a great glass house and senses a disturbance in the forces of time. Carry on. They come across a yeti trapped by hunters and after a brief lesson in real one, they accept a ride from the snowy cryptid. There's a brief decapitation interlude as they get closer to the city. Eagles worry that Lady Lejeune sabotaging their efforts. Susan chases

down cracks at the history guild until Binky arrives with her grandfather. She's sent to find Lutze and a particular midwife while deft heads off to ride out. Susan finished nanny as deft chats to pestilence and nanny tells the story of a difficult birth and a panicked father. Lejeune gets an auditor interrogation before requiring some companions. Lutze and Lob sang reach the copperhead mountains and burrow a broomstick while a raven watches on and death visits famine. Lady Lejeune and her new escort visits Jeremy. The clock just needs one good storm to get going but the lady doesn't want it to start all time to stop. She's on the verge of sabotage as Hopkins arrives and Lob sang and Lou race the storm sizing deeper into time.

Death speaks to war as Lady Lejeune throws a hammer only for Mr White to intercept. Lutze and Lob sang make it to the square and Lou almost falls as Lob sang races to the clock. Lightning hits, the clock goes tick, time stops. Very good. Nice rhyme at the end there. I'm quite proud of that. I did that. Good stuff. Oh god, it seemed so inevitable, didn't it? What, the time was going to stop? Even though Lob sang could do the whole run in faster than anyone ever, that was still going to be just the last. Well, yeah, I mean, otherwise, like what would the third part of the book be? And everything was fine.

Everything was nice. I don't know, you'd have to, you'd still have to deal with the order. No, you're quite right. Anyway, helicopter and loincloth watch as previously established very, very thoroughly on the true shaman keyfret, broomsticks are of course helicopters. So we have a dramatic helicopter chase, which is dangerous in a thunderstorm. It is. And I feel like as the Yeti's kind of a troll, he's sort of an honorary could be wearing a loincloth type. Yeah. Yeah. If he went down into Ang Moor Paul, he might put on a loincloth for, you know, cultural sensitivity sake. Exactly. That kind of finds good. Nice. Quotes. Do you want to go first? Finally, I'm at the point that I tried to get us to

far too early. Yeah, just trying to skip huge chunks of them. It doesn't need to be in order. What is time? Sometimes the gods have no taste at all. They allow sunrises and sunsets in ridiculous pink and blue hues that any professional artist would dismiss as the work of some enthusiastic amateur who never looked at a real sunset. This was one of those sunrises. It was the kind of sunrise a man looks at and thinks no real sunrise could paint the sky surgical appliance pink. Nevertheless, it was beautiful. Footnote, but not tasteful. I'm so glad that was your quote because I was trying to desperately work out where else I could shoehorn it in. It was very nearly mine.

I love it so much. So you've chosen something with a little more depth, perhaps? Possibly. Mine is a tiny bit later. It's towards the end of the section. It's Lady Lejeune. I have seen galaxies die. I have watched atoms dance. But until I had the dark behind the eyes, I didn't know the death from the dance. And we were wrong. When you pour water into a jug, it becomes jug-shaped and it is not the same water anymore. An hour ago, they never dreamed of having names and now they are arguing about them. Very good. It is also very relevant to lots of points I'll start making later on about things being the shape of things. Yes, absolutely. I will say that I thought your quote was going to be, sometimes I try and guess. The habits of a billion

years don't yield entirely to a mouthful of bread. That was a backup. I nearly just squeezed it in as well. Well, there we go. It's in now. We've managed to cover everything that we were going to sneakily. To be fair, I try and guess yours and the main reason I didn't sneak in the suddenest bit is I was pretty sure that was going to be your quote. You know I like my non-phoetic weather metaphor. You're getting predictable, Francine. Whatever. Shoblang. Let's talk characters. Let's start with Shoblang. Gone too soon. I like an idea of death. Have you got somewhere you can stay? Not really. It's not really something you call ahead, is it?

The reincarnational equivalent of centre parts kicking you out for 24 hours. That's 79 years. That reference will age well. Yeah, absolutely. I do like that he sort of does the, I'm sorry, I'm late as well, boom, boom. To let you know it's a joke. Yes, that was necessary. Well done. Boom, boom, a thing before Basil Brush. I feel like it. Horrible flashbacks to Basil Brush now. Link in the notes, listens. Yes, for international listeners, prepare yourselves, brace yourself. But yeah, Shoblang, yeah, so interesting. He was already a master but still got 79

years left on the clock. Obviously, the longevity of the monks is not confined to the very top of the ladder. Absolutely not. One of the things that death says to him, I particularly like as a time travel thing, because he's sort of doing, find too early then, can't you? And death says everything that happened stays happened. Which listeners know I quite like lost and obviously lost had a whole fucking time travel season. And the thing they kept coming back to is everything that happened happened, like that's their justification for everything that has changed by a time travel is just everything that happened happened. Yeah. So it's a good way of not getting too

deep into your time travel law. It's a good way of kind of ignoring the grandfather paradox stuff. Yeah, yeah. I think if you're going to do time travel, that's a good way to do it. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, I think anyone who's managed to do it neatly has pulled one back on that in the end, because otherwise you've just got no. No, absolutely not. So the Abbott and the Appalight sounds a bit like the Ass and the Angel, doesn't it? But And then the Ass or the what's that? Oh, that was a Nick Cave book. Yeah, also the Bible. Well, yeah. Yeah, creepy book. Oh, thank you, Nick Cave. It was like the Wasp Factory on crack. Yeah, two books that I'm glad I read and have no intention of revisiting.

Yeah, same. Very same. In that very firmly locked away category of good literature. Yeah, that is a good book. I will never reread. The Abbott keeps, the baby Abbott keeps doing things like a flick to spoonful of nourishing papal over the chief acolyte. And I love this. The Abbott was a little bit more than purely random in his attacks on the man. The kind of mildly objectionable person who engendered an irresistible urge in any right thinking person to pour goo into his hair. And it's very specific. And I know that person. Yep. Yep. And again, the consistent Abbott being a baby and also a grand master of wisdom is not getting old yet. Love it. No, no, it's one of my favorite jokes.

Pick it. I have spoken. Pick it. Pick it. I have spoken. And then we meet Q. Yes, very subtle reference. Yeah, very subtle, especially naming him Q. But it's got a U. But it's got a U. So it's a reference. I'm assuming all the listeners get it, but just in case Q was the character in James Bond that provided many, many ridiculous gadgets. Yes. Betrayed by Desmond Llewellyn until he passed away in 1999. Well, there you go. Yes. I thought I'd look that up and actually have a name, because I'm not great on my James Bond lore. No, no, I shouldn't think so. But yeah, Q is like the Q in this book is like the James Bond Q turned up to 11. So it's just constant like,

everything's a weapon. Everything's a weapon. It can all go bang. With your everyday objects, what would you choose to turn into a secret weapon? I think my little rubber duck you made me that I tried to talk to. I feel like that's because it's always close to hand. Yeah, it's good. I want to say like one of yeah, good smoke grenade. I want to say like one of my pens, but I carry so many in my in my handbag that that's dangerous. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I wouldn't mind a lipstick that can also do something dramatic. Yeah. Oh, I like I can't remember what film this is from, maybe several, but lipsticks that's like poison. And as long as you don't swallow it,

you're okay. But when you kiss the man and you're femme fatale role, I think that was in a Batman film. I think like Poison Ivy or someone. I might be thinking of Batman. Yeah, I think that's Batman. But it's like a lipstick mate. It's like the poison of an ass or something. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I like that. What about you? I think I've always got a notebook on me. So I feel like notebooks that the pages when dissolved to have some kind of useful property. I haven't really thought this was a bit of a spontaneous bit, and I should have thought about it first. But yeah. You do like a quick drying cement type thing if you dissolve the pages in water or something.

Oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. If I was going to be like a nonviolent secret agent type, I guess it'd be like a water purifier or something like that. But I do have to say that need to be secret. The gadget bits are always my favorite bits of like spy novels and spy movies. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can love it. Spy Kids. Someone pointed out on Twitter the other day that is like, Spy Kids seems to think of spies as like, they don't spy. They don't do any spies. Spies is just like a genre of person. So my introduction to spy stuff as a kid was like the Spy Kids movies, which I loved so much. Oh, we would have been sad good friends. I'm so sad sometimes that we weren't friends as kids.

And do you remember the Alex Ryder books? He was like a teenage spy. They were like mind blowing for me thinking about video games because there's like one of the books he gets like trapped in a live action version of a video game with like real stuff trying to kill him. And then he only gets out when he remembers like, I'm not stuck in a game though, so I can climb the wall and rip stuff out. And that was like really mind blowing to think about video games having all those built in invisible walls and stuff. Yeah. I forgot all the plots of them. I just remember I had a bunch of them. That's like that and something to do with the jellyfish is like all I remember of them. So I remember of most days. There was a TV adaptation of them

recently, but I didn't watch it on the basis that it would probably kill some nostalgia for me. And I don't want that in my life. Did you know that Sam Octopus's carry tentacles from Manawal jellyfish to use as weapons? No, that's so cool. Which ties in with both the jellyfish thing and the secret weapon thing. Octopods are so cool. Therefore we can move on to Eagle. Oh no, one last little qubit. Sorry, damn it. That was not so uncertain. No, there's just one last little qubit I really like, which is when he's explaining how the qubit of qubits, sorry, qubit of qubits, when he's explaining how the portable procrastinators work and says, I'm afraid I had to resort to clockwork and Luzé's like pearl clutching horror at

clockwork being used for the portable procrastinators. That's a really great detail. Why do we think that like Luzé is so against clockwork or the monks are so against clockwork as a technology? I feel like it's not as refined as the procrastinator technology. I think it's a combination of not as refined if it becomes too refined, the entire world breaks. Oh, there is that. And their whole use of time is as a fluid thing that doesn't, we can steal bits of it and put it somewhere else. So something that measures time accurately is kind of counterintuitive to that. Yeah, that makes sense. Also, it's got lots of bits, isn't it, that could be jostled around just on track. We just don't want to jostle bits.

I really liked, before I forget to mention it elsewhere, when they were traveling down to Angkor Fork, I liked the concept of clock time. It's about an hour's clock time down there, not the kind of time we're making. Yeah, so Igor. And I won't go on about Igor a lot, because I know you want to talk about some of the butlery stuff later. Oh, yeah. Although I do like the use of did. Oh, no, carry on, because I've got very specific butlery stuff. Igor, to your heart's content. It's a footnote. It's later on in the book, but it doesn't do to. It always did to answer the door at a certain time, that kind of thing. It always did to anticipate the knock, and the footnote is,

not did anything, just did. Some things were done, and some things were not done, and the things that were done, Igor's did. And I love that. It's like, it's an old fashioned uses of the word. It doesn't do to or... Yeah, that should be brought back. That does, that's a nice way of expressing this weird little British quirks, isn't it, of just, there's no reason for this. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not going to hide that from you. It's very... Downton Abbey. Yes, Downton Abbey, to an extent, Jeeves and Worcester. Yes, but only from Jeeves's perspective. Of course, not from Worcesters. Oh, God, I just really...

One thing I did notice with the Igor scenes in this section, there's a lot of Igor worrying about what's going on with Jeremy and what's going on with Lady Lejeune. And we don't really see much from Jeremy's perspective in this section. It's like all Igor looking at Jeremy, rather than Jeremy himself. And since I noticed some of the stuff with Kara, I've been paying a lot more attention to the perspective shifts, because then it's the opposite thing with Lutze and Lobsang. It's all from Lobsang's perspective. We don't see anything from Lutze's point of view. Yes. I wonder if that's to kind of preserve the unknowable nature of those minds in that state. So Jeremy, obviously, we got a bit of perspective from him in the last

section, but now he's still taking his medicine for a bit, and now he's kind of ascended to this wild-eyed plane of dreams and... The specifically focused creative state. We don't see from his point of view in Lutze being this kind of... Well, all powerful or not, I'll talk about him later. Yeah, no, it's better to have him unknowable to kind of preserve the surprise of what he does, doesn't do, whatever. Yeah. So Lady Lejeune next, speaking of her. Something I forgot to mention in the last section, actually. I kind of missed this, but I checked Annotated Pratchett for details on something else and spotted this. I kind of ignored her name, being Myriah Lejeune, then Myriah being Myriad, and Lejeune being... I said that in the episode.

Oh, did you? Yeah. Did you say the Legion bit as well? No, I didn't. I missed that. Yeah. Lejeune being Legion is a We Are Legion, which is biblical. There's someone possessed by a bunch of somethings and says to Jesus, We Are Legion, and it's been used a lot in a horror and sci-fi-y things. I think what I actually said was something like, Ah, Myriah, a very appropriate name for an amalgamation or something, and there didn't make it clear after that, so in fairness, easy. There we go. Yeah, she gets a couple of good moments. I do think it's quite sweet when Jeremy asks around. Oh, yeah. They're both these absolutely weird, kind of not quite human at this point.

Yeah, and still just go, Blash, perhaps another time. It's the description of her expression flickered. It went from one expression to another as if they were a series of still pictures with no perceptible movement of the features between each one. Yeah, like a stop motion. Such a cool visual. I love that. I also love the visual of when she literally materializes, like pulling the different types of material towards herself out of there. It brings up very much the I and I Have to Make a Man song kind of thing, which we'll revisit a lot later. A lot later. Yeah, that was another one that was almost one of my quotes, actually. But the way she's, it's already hinted at, it's fairly obvious,

but the way she's sort of revealed as an auditor in this section with the, when Eagle's following her and he looks into the abbey and there's a fading gray shape in the air. And if you haven't got it already, then that's like an amazing, like you could hear like a musical sting. Maybe not that. No, no, more creepy. The wine glass, we're going to have the wine glass move to you throughout. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, we get a little chime of wine glass. And like with my quote, just all of these realizations she has about the darkness behind the eyes, this division in the universe. Yeah, that's just so fascinating. And it's so sweet that she's visiting everything. She's kind of come around to this idea of life. It's so clever how quickly

Fracture kind of turns around this hostile character into, obviously still a little bit hostile, but like someone that you genuinely fond of in a few pages. Yeah, she's becoming an eating toast and looking at art. Yeah, it's this living life to the fullest thing, like she's decided while she's going to do this. And she's sort of lying to herself about it being research or data collecting. Because she's only been incarnate for what, two weeks, something like that, right? Yeah. And that's amazing how much more experience she is than her friends. It's amazing how quickly it happens to the point where they're confronting her about it. Maybe you're not like using the body, are you? And she's discovering the things the body does

by herself, like how she's crossing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like shrugging. Just comes with the body. Yeah. Built in features, great. Built in shrugging. Which is like boosted in the French stats. I wish I could shrug like the French. Milly. Um, should we move on to when? When? When and time? When and time? When and time? Oh, it's just it's very sweet. It's a very sweet little romance. The way Lobzang, not Lobzang, Lutzé talks about seeing the letter, this like hidden scroll of when and saying, you know, well, it was a love letter. That's such a very sweet little thing.

It was a love poem and it was a good one. Yeah. And it didn't really feel right to read it. Basically, I've just put this in there to make sure everyone knows a ship went in time. Yeah, well, that's good. Do you need to ship characters who are already in a relationship? That's a question. I'm still kind of new to the ship thing in the last couple of years, you know. I support the cannon ship. I don't fucking know. I support the cannon ship. Yeah, I know. I was about to say it makes me sound like a little like tug boat next. Oh, you know, I'm in the Navy. I support the cannon ship. It's not a very important role, but, you know, I deliver them their tea. Just turning up alongside and having the alfie skis.

You know, it doesn't sound like much, but it's quite a skill to make sure the Hobnobs don't get damp. Exactly. Anyway, I make ginger nests. Yeah, and the whole birth like seen as amazing. This idea of this, her dematerializing and this idea of because obviously we've seen bits of when but we've seen him very serene with Claude Paul answering things like a fish. Yeah, I didn't bother looking into that as to like if it's a reference to anything. I feel like it's kind of taking the fish out of a lot of like, supposedly wide mysticism feels like nonsense if you read into it any more than surface level. Yeah. And it's kind of when making fun of himself there, isn't it? He's not.

Yeah. Yeah. But so we've seen when very much from that perspective, so then picture him as this anxious father while his mrs is like dissolving and coming back together with every contraction knocking on the door of every knocking on the door of the same door. Every other decade. I wonder how we heard about the best miss my from the first place. Word gets around. Yeah. I mean, the time. Well, if we're going to do six degrees of separation, then I'm assuming time as an anthropomorphic personification probably like knows death, at least in passing. And then death's mentioned granny and then granny's like, well, okay, so nanny's more the birth one. I'm all the death gal. Yeah, sure. Yeah. During their like

monthly catch up death and granny. Usually while they're playing chess for the first life. Yeah. Chesty and biscuits. Yep. Perfect. Or cripple, Mr. Onion. Yeah. The Yeti. Yes. Very cool little addition. Not really that necessary. Just a great thing to show, like the nature of the different characters and an excuse to shove in a completely unique cryptid. Absolutely. And it's a fun. It's not the first time we've seen Yeti's in the disc world. So it's another like, oh, grab something out of the drawer again and build on it a little bit. Yeah. I think we first saw them hiding under the snow to scare people in moving pictures and they sadly got trampled by elephants. Oh, yeah. Well, that's all right as it turns out. Yes.

Because they saved points. So Pratchett was like... Extremely video game. Yeah, I was going to say, Pratchett's a massive video game now. And I feel like this is like, what if people did have save points? Yes. And then he's like, you know, I'm not going to make that into a whole book, but we'll have a little cryptid that can save itself. And I love just the little details. Like he doesn't go overboard like making a whole bestiary for each book, but like just the little details like he's got such springy legs, you can barely feel the going along. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. I like that. I read that and I just really wanted to be carried by a Yeti while I have a nap. Absolutely. That sounds so relaxing. It's quite nannier, isn't it? Like the kids

falling asleep on the back of the bears or whatever it was. Yeah. It's like, God, that sounds comfy. You and I have both got to start our nannier. I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, so we can start our nannier reread. Okay, cool. I'm... No, do you know what? Yes, let's do that, because I was about to start the... Oh, fuck me. What's the really long book that Carol always wants me to read? The Count Motti Cristo. I was about to start that and I'm happy to put that off. I am halfway through a scanner dark loop, but that's like a 200 page book. So anyway, yes. Sorry, Yeti's. Having a safe point and getting decapitated thing also leads to my favorite transition in the book, which is... He brought the sword down and cut off the Yeti's head.

Tick. There was a sound rather like a cabbage being sliced in half and then a head rolled into the basket and it's someone being decapitated in querm. It's very good. Yes. That's a great... Again, there's like... This isn't one of the books you think of as particularly adaptable, but this would... So much of this is really cinematic and would work in an adaptation. Yeah. Like the thing with Lejean's face flickering, like that transition. You can see that on screen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just need to cut the camera in. Yeah. Yeah. You have the sword interrupt the camera shot and then you're in quite a video. Yeah. Yeah. The pacing of the kind of flips between scenes as well as it was nicely done. So yeah,

that was I think the best cinematic version. Yeah. Especially as it gets to the last section of the book where you're kind of in the big chase and the tension is building and all the scenes get a bit shorter. Ticking down. Ticking down. Ticking down. Yeah. It's so well put together. Oh yeah. And Susan and Nanny meeting. This is just a great thing again of like... I like when you sort of have these crossovery cameo moments in Discworld because not like in a lazy MCU. Oh my God. Wong's in She-Hawk kind of way. I was about to say it doesn't feel like fan service or whatever. It's just like... And what would happen if these two had a conversation? Yeah. It's such a richly textured world that you can then put these two separate characters

in a room together and it makes sense and it's really satisfying. Yeah. Yeah. Especially Nanny saying you get the other one and I'll spit in his eye immediately standing up to Susan until the whole thank you for your time moment. Which I thought was an odd thing to suddenly go change your mind on and it makes me think she was on the edge of changing her mind anyway and found an excuse because like thank you for your time is not a rare saying. No. I feel like there's something in it being exactly the same words that he said that were kind of a... Okay. I remember the state he was in and maybe this is something someone else needs to know. Evocative rather than a like spooky enough coincidence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think

I think it unlocks a tiny extra section of memory of like, okay, this is important. Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of like it's frustrating for a minute when you're reading it, but it's as nice to think of Nanny being that concerned with the privacy of the mothers that she helps. I really enjoy that as a detail because especially because I think you have to be, especially if you're working in Lanker and things are the way they are. For sure. Yeah. Yes. It's good that she put up resistance there. I like the focus on Nanny being a really good midwife and always. Yeah. Exactly. But yeah, it's really fun to see the two of them interact because they're two of the most kind of steely determined characters

when they need to be. You know, if we're going film adaptation again, like the flicking of the camera between just staring at each other, like... Wild West music plays in the background. Yeah. Getting the flavour of you. What's going on here? Gribo bats a roll of tumbleweed across the screen. He's trying to join in the stirrup, but one of his eyes has come that way. Oh, no. Right. The horseman. The horseman. The horseman. I love these. All four of them so far? Yes. No. All four of them. Spoiler. No. We said spoilers for the whole book. These little interleaves where death goes and

speaks to so pestilence and famine. And then war is the best one. But all of them kind of don't really want to come. They're busy. Pestilence is getting annoyed at soap and famine. I mean, A, I like how the horsemen are written partly because it's impossible to read this and not compare them to the horsemen from Good Omens because Terry Pratchett wrote this book and co-wrote Good Omens. And now two personifications of the four horsemen as written by at least partially by Terry Pratchett. Yeah. And they're completely different here. They don't really share any DNA. Obviously, you've got pestilence and sort of pollution. Famine is going to keep eating. Yeah. But it's still wasted and weird. Yes. As Susan described it, which is cool because you

get like, you don't have these long paragraphs describing each. You kind of get it split up over the two sections. Exactly. They're also concerned with their petty little things. Yeah. And famine is, I love the idea that you need humans for famine. There's droughts and locusts for fertile land to be turned into a dust bowl by stupidity and avarice. You needed humanity. Yeah. And then you have war as well, who's this kind of browbeat and married to a valkyrie. Do I like onions dear? No, they give you wind. If that scene had continued much longer, I would have been like, oh my God, the 80s. But it was okay. Also, this was written in the early 2000s. Yeah, exactly. No, it was almost cringe, but it was just funny enough not to be. And I like

the idea. Do I like onions dear? I like an overbearing valkyrie. Yes, I know you do. A middle class valkyrie with house making tendencies. Yeah. Homemaking. Homemaking. Homemaking tendencies. Probably also house making. I think she probably built that house. Yeah, probably. I mean, war probably helped. Bless him. Yeah. But these little interludes all really sweetly sort of serve to show how lonely it is to be death. Like war has his wife and peasants of famine have this thing to be doing and death has got to keep going on and being death. And you get this line after he's kind of dealt with them all of emergent behaviors towards the end of death, talking to war. And of course, because they've all been imagined into

human shapes by humans, they'd all picked up these human tendencies. And a brain can't think about plagues of locusts all the time. They've found other things to sort of cling to. And death, you know, thinks to himself, thank goodness, I'm completely unchanged and exactly the same as ever was. No, no, no, emergent behaviors. Not several books worth of emergent behaviors for death. No, me. No, no. But that's almost like a really sad part of it, because every time death goes to try and be a bit more human, he always has to go back to being death in the end. Like that's the revolution of all those stories. He gets to be the hogfather a bit, but he goes back to, you know, reaping. And I wonder if we ever had the time whether war would have a similarly

sad storyline where he's been happily looking at his aunts for ages, because it's a peaceful time on the disk. And then an actual huge horrible war comes along. And he's like, Oh, this is the kind of stuff I love, but I do have to leave my life behind for years. Yeah. You know, yeah. Oh, she's got to go and do her job, which is singing people off the battlefield. So they're kind of having to wave at each other. Now, here's an interesting point. The three of the three other horsemen, do you seem to genuinely enjoy their things that they signify? And say pestilence is like, no more soap for you. It's good, good pestilence. And famine, famine, obviously, is like, yeah, he starved to death. And wars like, oh, the fucking arms rolling all over the place. It was

brilliant, wasn't it? And death is very much like, this is my job. And this is what I do. The harvest is like, I don't enjoy killing people. Yeah. Well, death doesn't kill people. Death doesn't want me, you know, humanity would not want me to get creative. I love that bit as well. Absolutely. Yeah. He's, and no, you're quite right. He doesn't kill people. He's a psychopomp, but he doesn't seem to like, look forward to that either, does he? No. He does not take joy in death. He's doing the job that needs to be done. You do the job that's in front of you. And I wonder why, I suppose, because as shown in Reeferman, if there was some, if there was a being that took joy in it, then the balance of the universe is just too thrown off. It's too important

to roll to give, to have joy. But then the, the upshot is that death is quite lonely in this similar thing with Susan, that they have each other. And that's it, because they are so outside of humanity in a way where I think pestilence, famine and war kind of aren't. That's true, because once you meet death, that's it, isn't it? Yeah. You live with war, famine and pestilence for at least some time before you're taken off. Yeah. Anyway, so now that's all said, let's talk about locations. Okay. Oh, the warehouse. Yes. Good idea. This is such a cool description. Sorry, I'm just finding the right page. And they call back to the truce as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. These weird little sheds at the back of things that get hired out and are

filled with decapitated rocking horses. There's definitely like an image from Terry Practice earlier life, I think, here with the old industrial state, estates that he, he would have been, because his father was a mechanic, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah. He probably spent quite a lot of time around these places. There's sort of a workshop built and then another beside it and temporary lean twos crawl towards one each other, meet and merge, and spaces between outside walls get roofed. As you get this spaces like this, which is a tiny warehouse, which all the owners think belongs to the other three, and they all own like a wall of it. In here was a silence known only to rats. And yeah, this bit you mentioned earlier of Lady Lejeune assembling herself

with the air moved for the first time in years. Now, I find this interesting, because I feel like there's like a slight supernatural quality to it, because being sandwiched between, or sandwich, what are you sandwiched between four things, some kind of cuboid sandwich feeling, I suppose. And we're being sandwiched between four industrial areas. Like you wouldn't think it'd be that quiet, would you? But obviously, that liminal space takes on its own quality, I think. All the noise on the other side of the walls kind of exacerbates the quietness within. Ah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's the one thing I've ever said on the podcast. Yeah, I'm going to put a little singing music behind that as well. I'm going to increase my editing time just to make

it sound more wonky. Thank you. Yeah, so I just love that as an idea of these kind of, yeah, like you said, these liminal, these lost little spaces buried between these kind of hubs of activity. Yeah. And it always, it always feels fantastic when you spot one of them, doesn't it, when you're out and about, especially when you were a kid. And yeah, there's something very pleasing to the human mind about finding a little, a little den of your own. It's like, oh, a secret. Little lost space, little hollow within a hedge or something like that. Yeah. It's when like, obviously, we have the Abbey ruins in our town, and you know, there's a couple of like quiet little corners on those. And when you discover those little corners where you can go

and sit, that's always a really cool thing. Yeah. Speaking of quiet corners of the world, it's exact opposite. Perhaps it's Forex. Forex. Yeah. Obviously, we don't go to Forex, but Lutze is explaining Forex to Lobsang with the barman everywhere is from there. And the term Smoco. Oh, yeah, Smoco. Cultural mainstay of Australian. I saw someone on Twitter asking if Australians would start referring to non-binary people as non-bino. Yeah. And I really hope that starts. Jesus Christ. Bit non-bino, are they? Yes. Australians, please get back. In fact, we can ask our Australian counterparts. Yes, we will. Who host a fantastic Pratchat. And we'll ask them to get it going. Cultural influences.

Anyway, Lutze. Lutze. I'm just mixing up the names. That's weird, no. I'm not. Lutze mentions that it's a strange country with a big time source right in the middle, which is a great little last continent callback. Because obviously, we talked a lot about time travel during the last continent and how it all went a bit weird there. Yes. Yeah, that was, I think, the real... That was kind of a contrast to this one, wasn't it? This is quite well explained time nonsense. Whereas the time nonsense, I was like, and because this, and it's so surreal, and because it's Rincewind. So, you know, yeah, it's a Rincewind book, which means it's a caper. It is a caper. It's a joy, a delight. And it goes so well in a pasta. Sorry.

And then in the deeper and deeper time slicing into smaller and smaller bits, we reach Zimmerman's Valley. We do. We do. Did you look up the term Zimmerman? The only place I've heard it before, I didn't spend time looking it up, but I know Hans Zimmerman is a famous composer. Yeah. He does movies, schools and stuff. Can I remember a single thing he's done now? No, of course I can't. Zimmerman. Oh, no, I'm thinking of Hans Zimmer. It's Hans Zimmer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's Zimmerman racing brand. It does like brake discs for race cars. I don't know if that's that old. Yeah. All right. Oh, Hans Zimmerman, so he did like Pirates Cabin, Dark Knight, Inception. Yeah, he does dark dramatic music,

I think. Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, I cannot Google in a coherent way right this second. So readers, listeners, viewers, if you want to do a workforce, please. Could you do the Googles? Thank you. You're far up the Google. But yeah, I'm just on the fire. The descriptions are beautiful, but also just this idea of once you get through to this point, it's all about just moving steadily, balancing on a wire. Yeah. Fine. If you don't think about it. Oh, what a place to visit. Yeah. And it's the way it's described is like, like Maris and Runners talk about running. It's like you can run through this pain limit and into this kind of euphoria. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of delicate.

Yes. What a good book. That's all my locations. God, such a good book. God, a good book, isn't it? Was there anyone like it? No. No. I have one character that I would like to mention, which is the Raven and his lack of ornithological knowledge, which I found in music. Yeah. Nothing else to say about that. That was just good. I can't remember what noise to make. And that he says it as well. Yeah. And the lutes say, obviously, fix up on that and love saying doesn't. It's like the gas boat saying woof. Yeah. Yeah. Or when he's in poodle form, yep. Yeah. It's like, now are you going to say call or croak, I wonder? Croak? Yeah, that's what I thought. Just turning around to the death of

the rats and be like, we'll get me a book next time. How am I meant to know about my species? Should we talk about the little bits that we liked, Francine? Yeah, let's. Do you want to talk about some time, Boppo? Yeah. So I hope I'm not stealing any of your thunder here because it's a connection back to an earlier book, which I know you like. Yes. But Lobsang, having the kind of horrified realization that many students of Grounding Weatherworks have, which is just tricking people in the habit. I thought you were going to teach me things worth knowing. And Lutes says, like, oh, what you thought I should use my mysterious powers to ride from a lifetime of study just to keep my legs warm. And then there's similar little reveal of,

well, actually, I can't keep my toes warm. It's like a lighthearted version of the Grounding Weatherworks. The sort of Hedology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a Lobsang magrat parallel. I don't know. It's not really esk, is it? Well, it's kind of esk. It's like the overly powerful. Yeah, I feel like Lobsang has got a bit of esk to him, actually. I mean, it's a theme project comes back to again and again. It's one of my favorites. Let's say Lobsang is a bit Tiffany, who we haven't met yet. Yeah. Yeah, that's more like it. Yeah. Yeah. We do like the Apprentice. The Apprentice Troop. I will talk about that a bit more later. Cool. Igor mentions that one of his former masters had made a TikTok man. All levers and

gear wheels and cranks and clockworks and a tape punched with holes instead of a brain, provided that everything in the kitchen was carefully positioned. It could make a possible cup of tea. If everything wasn't carefully positioned, it could make a furious cup of cat. So, I wouldn't have got this bit of the reference if it wasn't for Anatata Pratchett. Repent Harlequin said the TikTok man is the title of a classic sci-fi short story by Harlan Ellison. I really need to breed more Harlan Ellison. Yeah. Because he's like very heavily referenced. Described a dystopian society ruled and time regulated down to the microsecond by the master timekeeper, aka the TikTok man. The timekeeper is challenged by the free

perspirited Harlequin, who is never on time. But I got here. Oh, gosh. Saturday, Harlan Ellison. And that's the only one I got here. Oh, look at this, though. Sorry, listeners, but viewers. I'll also put a picture of this in the thing. Isn't that a gorgeous piece of vintage sci-fi cover art? Oh, yes. That is extremely bad good. Love that. Absolutely love that. But I love this idea of... We were talking yesterday about how popular clockwork isn't an aesthetic. And I love when it's used for creepy creatures and things. I literally can look to my left. I've got a book called The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder, which is an interesting clockwork assassin steampunk story. They're quite good books, actually. I do recommend

those. Yeah. I haven't read them for a while, so take that with a pinch of salt. And Doctor Who, The Clockwork Creatures with the Masks. No, no, not The Cybermen. It's the Mariant... Not Mariantal Net. It is Mariantal. Madame de Pompadour. Oh, yeah. The Madame de Pompadour episode with The Clockwork Creatures. Oh, yeah, that is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Masquerade Masks was the stop motion kind of thing, isn't it? And the noise. Yeah. You can hear the kind of gears turning. Which, admittedly, sometimes when I try and remember something on the podcast, I'm pretty sure you can hear the gears turning. Yes, yeah. We did actually create Joanne around a clockwork listeners. I am the clockwork. Which means a lot of what I've said is very offensive.

But we'll let it slide. We'll let it slide. So, yeah, I just didn't... I love that. A, because now I've got a story to read and can... I've been meaning to read some more Harlan Ellison, any Harlan Ellison for a long time. And B, yeah, I love it as a visual. I love the thing. I love that it doesn't really work. Yes. Until eventually they're like, ah, well, if we zap it with lightning, and then Igor runs away because the mob's coming. It's a little bit Wallace and Gromit as well. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's a contrivance. It's another contrivance, let's say, yes. Don't we love a contrivance? Something else that might be a contrivance? The first

the first clock, do I know? This is literally marked in my notes as what in capital letters. Good. Always a good sign, I think. It's not the first clock, but the original glass clock, the first time someone tried to build something that measured the universal tip. And, obviously, this idea of time is made and unmade every second, and you can't... And the universe is built and rebuilt every time in the smallest micro of time. As Lobsang says, you can't make a clock like that because it's inside the universe, so it gets rebuilt when the universe does, and it's like opening a box with the crowbar that's inside. So there's less of a little bit I liked and more a little bit that meant I had to go and

quietly put the book down and stand and stare out of a window for a minute before I went back to it. Well, this is very much the quantum physics stuff that they were talking about in the episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage that I linked last episode. So there's... Yeah, there is a genuine scientific school of thought that the universe doesn't need restart every instant, and therefore you are. You are not a constant, you are. So they're ever new and eternally surprised, I suppose, when clearly came up with this idea and all the physicists on Round Worlds would start copying him. I'm sticking with the idea I came up with somewhere between studying A-level philosophy

and learning just how much I could drink, which is that time isn't actually linear at all, it's just that our brains are only capable of perceiving it as linear. I'm not sure you came up with that, but yeah. All right, no. The theory I adopted and decided to take to heart, shall we say. Speaking of not quite linear time, Francine, do you want to... I'm sure you came up with a particularly good way of explaining it in the pub though. Yeah, probably. With a pool cue in hand.

Which was much more interesting than however the philosophers did. With a pool cue in hand and the marina and the diamonds on the jukebox. I think it's one of those things I decided to announce my ideas on when I was playing pool with someone much better than me, so I had to wait a really long time for my turn because they just kept potting things. Yeah, yeah. Get better at pool kids, otherwise you might start doing philosophy. That's true.

Sorry, non-linear time, Francine. What about time slicing? Time slicing, time slicing. Yeah, I just let, well, a tiny bit of a call back to Johnny and the bomb. Yes. Yeah, with the red-blue-shift visuals showing time travel. Clearly, I factored it very much like that, and I agree. It's a lovely way of showing this absurdly fast movement through time,

or time just being fucked with in some way. And I thought it was just beautifully described, really. One of the lines I highlighted was, the world ahead shaded towards violet, and the world behind Van Lobsang looked around was the shade of old blood. And then a little later on, well, it ties into the whole time travel boffo thing as well. So the old man might be a fraud when it came to fighting, but there was no kidding here. I like that Lutze gets the chance to show off his skills,

rather than just make people scared of him. And it's a little more impressive than the toes melting the snow, I guess. But speaking of someone with poor circulation, not sure which I picked, to be honest. And the world went from blue to indigo to an inky, unnatural darkness, like the shadow of the eclipse. And I'm like, this is deep-sea visuals, isn't it? We've moved here from the telescope red-blue-shift to your movings, and you couldn't stay there long, even if you could tolerate the ghastly chill.

There were parts of the body that weren't designed for this. Go too far down, too, and you'd die if you came back too quickly, which is very much deep-sea. That's the fence. I've blown this thing wide open. It's not like conspiracy. I don't know why I'm saying it like this is a fucking conspiracy that I've worked out. It's just a really cool mushroom.

I like it. We're in the, what's it called, the Marianas trench of time travel. Yes. Oh, I love it. Oh, God, oh, fucking, that's, there's so much of that. And like early sci-fi as well, so much the old, the early time travel visuals in like, quite a mess, and that looked like these diving bells looked like the, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. And so space travel, oh, so it's, it's all connected. And if you think about it, if you want to like massively extend the metaphor as well, that part of the reason you've got this, the deep sea is time travel, and the deep sea is where things lurk that have existed, like before evolution really fucking got going. Yeah, yeah. Or when evolution was in its surrealist phase.

Things down there are old, things down there are fascinating. Yeah. You know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, I love the deep sea. I know. Also, a note from Wiki L Space. This possibly is a music reference as well. There's quite a lot of music references in this book,

which like, we don't love as much as other kinds of references, which is why we've not brought them up as much. But Lobsang slices time further and deeper than anyone could stand before. We're explicitly told that time slows from blue to a deep purple, or indeed, a deep purple capitalized, which makes Lobsang a child in time. Ah, yeah, I totally would not have got that reference. Me neither. I just haven't been on that.

I have a bunch of deep purple on vinyl, but that's just because I have my dad's vinyl collection. Yeah, we need to get that fixed for you, so that we can have like a really breaking record party. Yeah. We so do. We all make up. We can have like fucking vintage dinner party stuff.

We can make something like suspended and gelatin. I can find another chair in gelatin. It'll happen. Okay, Sam and Moose. Right. Off topic, back to topic. Is Sam and Moose really ever off topic, Joanna? Can we make this segue too?

No, no, I still want to talk about one other. Okay, Sam and Moose. Sam and I live in the ocean. Another deep sea thing. Yes. You were talking about the red blue shift, and when you get deep enough into the ocean, the spectrum of light that's available is smaller.

That's why- Oh, that red light doesn't make it through, does it? No, that's why fish evolve with those light things. Certain fish evolve with like light markings that only other fish can see, because generally they don't have the rods and cones to seal the different bits of the light spectrum. So sometimes fish will evolve to see certain parts

of light spectrum that other fish can't see, and then emit similar bioluminescence so that they can only spot each other's bioluminescence so they can mate, and then predators will develop a similar thing so that they can pretend to be something shaggable. And then the cusslefish just sees everything. Fucking weird eyes.

I don't want to know what the cusslefish sees. Speaking of things as weird as cusslefish, clock cuckoos, what the cusslefish sees? Is definitely my sci-fi short story. And probably- I'm having that. That's going to get me into sci-fi just because I want to use that as a title.

Okay, it's probably also going to be the title of this episode. Yes, yep, let's have it. Cool. Oh, the clock cuckoo. As weird as a cusslefish. As weird as a cusslefish. The clock cuckoo. The cloud cuckoo.

It's what it's called, I think, yeah? No, I think it's- No, it's a clock cuckoo. Oh, okay. The cloud cuckoo was mentioned in there somewhere. And I was like, oh, a cloud cuckoo loan. No, the clock cuckoo is a cuckoo

that's building clocks as nests to attract a mate. And I just really like it. It's very sweet. The clocks can't really keep time, but the cuckoos build themselves little clocks, which is a lot nicer than what cuckoos actually do. Yeah, and the young ones bad at it. And they get bread too.

And that's where people got the idea for cuckoo clocks. Yeah, obviously, yeah. I mean, how else would we think of such a weird, horrible thing? Well, yeah, talking of like clock noises being kind of creepy, like obviously like a ticking clock can be like a weird and haunting thing. And the sound of a cuckoo clock is like such a good horror motif as well, I think. Or it can be used very well as a horror motif.

Yeah, absolutely. The bit I liked with the bird, actually, was like a, not a... What's the opposite of like a little horror motif? Just a moment of, ah, amongst the weird. Let's go. There's not much time, but time enough to watch a bird, thought lob sang. Has he let the world around him become blue and fade?

And the thought was comforting. Yeah, just these little moments that, let's say, keeps introducing into lob sang's world. I feel like are quite important and deliberate, like these little moments of while we're at it, while we're at it, well, rather than this kind of world saving mission, where we have to be quite ruthless and get on with things. Let's have a second to not be a twat.

Yeah, let's meet again. So let's look at a bird. Yeah, yeah. It's like he's told the abba, he's taking him to Engmorpork to seek the wisdom of Mrs. Cosmopoli. And that's not what he's doing. He's going because he's pretty sure the clock's in Engmorpork, not an overworld.

But he's giving him a chance to impart his own sort of wisdom on the way. And it's a similar wisdom to his building of bonsai mountains. Yes, smart. Small pieces of beauty. You're quite right. There's nothing about cloud cookies anywhere here. I think I just misread that because I like the phrase cloud cookie land. I like the phrase cloud cookie land.

Fantastic. Big stuff. Let's get on to the big stuff. Shall I begin? Please do. Cool. So, so, so. Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin. No. I'm not going on a giant unhinged run, I promise. I don't really believe you looking at the title, so okay. Stories, stories. We like stories on this podcast. I don't know. We do.

And I've never seen you go on an unhinged round about stories. So let's. I like this idea of they tried to delete the idea of the glass clock from existence, but it survived in stories. Some things you can't kill. It leaks back in stories or paintings on cave walls or whatever. Yeah. This is definitely a recurring concept, isn't it, in Discworld?

Yeah. And it comes later on when Susan's kind of thinking about it. It was too big to hide and leaked out via the dark hidden labyrinths of the human mind and became a folktale. Which just. It's almost like a, not reference exactly, but it kind of mirrors the round world thing where you've told me before about different folktales or fairy stories that seem to evolve independently in different parts of the world, but have these really similar plots or whether they

involved independently or whether there was just more travel between countries than we knew of or whatever. But you know. Convergent evolution of folklore. Yeah. Because, and it's something I think I talked about. It might have been as far back as pyramids. This idea that every culture has a story about why the sun comes up.

Hogfather, it would have come up as well. But everywhere has the remiss because it's a common thing. Everyone is experiencing and everyone comes up with their way to explain why the sun is rising, why the seasons are happening, whether it's, you know, Demeter sulking or, I can't think of another seasonality myth now, but there's a lot. Yeah, they're plenty. And similarly, a lot of cultures have the story of the Great Flood, which is maybe more parallel to this because it is a huge event that maybe we can pretend the gods didn't

want us to remember, but keeps leaking through in different cultural aspects. It leaks through because you would remember, and this makes, and of course it makes sense with this Convergent Evolution of Folklore, that the clock, the glass clock, the clock that is the clock of all clocks. That clock. The grandfather of clocks, if you will. If I will. And yes, yes, I will.

You shall. I shall. Marvelous. Yeah, it is. Oh, it's very cool. And yeah, so it's kind of seeped through the cracks in. And it's seeped through the cracks in history. And the cracks in history.

So there's a few more fun little callback in nodding to the rest of it. Something it brings up that I love, let's say, explain to Lobsang. Have you not wondered about the opera house and the disc? So this big guilt ridden that you think of as kind of 18th, 19th century opera house. And then the disc, which is the globe. We see that being established back in Weird Sisters, and it's obviously a Tudor building. And why are those scruffy things like right next to each other on the street? Because that's the concept I felt like playing with that day.

Shut up, everybody, because time broke. Can you have me now? I imagine that. Great. Do you want me to do cool tropes or not? And obviously, it references the time Lootsie spent in Omnia. Yes. And the fact that I love this because you and I spent some time, like,

I'm not sure if I edited this out of the podcast entirely for going, wait, no, but if this ended then, then how old is this thingy here? Yeah. And don't worry about it. Yeah, we definitely did that after Small Gods because it's meant to be set like 100 years ago, effectively. Exactly. But also like Pyramids is a really interesting one because the whole,

like he's played with this idea before because Pyramids, I've totally forgotten the main character's name. Tepik. But he's Tepik, thank you, is in modern day Antmorpork. He's in Antmorpork as it is now, training to be an assassin. And then he goes back to Jelly Baby and it's all weird and historical and hasn't moved because it's stuck in a bit valley of time. And then you have, like, the Epheme and Sortian War on either side of it.

And when he brings his country back into time, Epheme and Sort aren't even opposite each other anymore. And then you have this whole Epheme and Sort thing. The various books where we visit Epheme, it's full of ancient Greek philosophers and they're going to war with Sort, which is also sometimes a bit ancient Egypty, like in Mott. Time gets played with them. Now it makes sense here.

That was very nearly a poem. Thank you. Sort, Mott, good. Yeah. I was like, yeah, very good. I like it. I like it. You've blown this thing wide open.

Well, no, the clock did that. We've got a lot of things to fix after today's episode. We've blown so many things wide open. It's fantastic, but I'm going to have to get the hoover out. There's a nice little line as well. It's like glitter, isn't it? Plot points everywhere. There's a nice little line of all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork as well,

which is obviously like an all roads lead to Rome thing. But also if you look at the books, like at one point we were tracking how many books, I stopped tracking it, but how many books we've gone where we don't visit Ankh-Morpork at all. Yeah. And we did hit a point where we finally hit a book that never went to Ankh-Morpork, but it's still more books go to Ankh-Morpork than don't. I think in a previous book, they've said all roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, and so it's referenced here again.

It's a callback thing. And then, of course, Susan goes to visit History Guild and starts picking up on which we've never heard of before. Guild of Historians. Love that. Yep. I want to join the Guild of Historians. We're going to have to extrapolate here.

I feel like Practice would have done if he hadn't edited it down or something. But who must clearly exist in this perpetual semi-panic of nothing really makes sense. Nothing really makes sense, does it? And even if you're kind of papering over the cracks in your own head, I think they must all be incredibly neurotic, honest and conscious. There's a conscious knowledge that nothing really works, does it? I feel like I now need to point to round-world historians and random theories like the 13th century didn't happen.

Is that a historian theory? No, no. I think that's a conspiracy theory that tires historians. But I feel like there's some round-world parallels. Sometimes history doesn't seem to make sense if you look at it too closely. Especially if you go back to the classics, yeah. Absolutely. We've talked before, haven't we, of the immense frustration of historians

dealing with Greek history, which is kind of anecdote and fucking Herodotus. Which was on the wind, yeah. Fucking Herodotus. Talking and swearing. Love Herodotus. Shut up. We stan Herodotus now. We do stan Herodotus on the true show.

Thank you for that. I know it was like enough before, but I've changed my mind on him now. We are a pro-Herodotus podcast in case anyone was wondering. Having heard about the Persian Empire and all of the history we would have lost if Herodotus hadn't given it a go. Yes, bless him. But yeah, Susan, noticing things like the history of Afib, either its famous philosophers lived for a very long time or inherited their names

or extra bits have been stitched into history, which is what I was just talking about. History of Omnia was a mess and two centuries have been folded into one, which I feel like that covers brother. Yes. And Omnianism becoming what it is by the time we've reached where we are in the disc world. Becoming, you know, visit the infidels with explanatory pamphlets, that sort of thing. And this idea of Kuhn Valley, this famous war between dwarfs and trolls. I wonder if we'll ever hear more about Kuhn Valley.

Nah. We'll remember it, though. That's for sure. We'll remember Kuhn Valley. We'll remember the atrocity committed against us last time that we'll excuse the atrocity that we're about to commit today and so on, Hurrah. And so on, Hurrah. It's not the catchiest war cry, but it's ours.

Ah, yes. So speaking of war cries. Speaking of war cries, heroism. Yeah. This kind of leads me into my next point. The thing I love about this is that the chronology of discworld is a mess. And here's a book thrown at it. I don't think this book was written to just,

I don't think the chronology being a mess needed justifying. I don't think this book was written to justify it. It's just sort of like, oh, while I'm here, I might as well paper over the cracks in the universe. Yeah, yeah. Yes, it's, oh gosh, meta. Look about papering over the cracks in the universe, while papering over the cracks in your own universe, yes. It's perfect.

It does all of this while still being perfectly story-shaped. And this goes back to my quote, this idea about once you put the water into the jug, it's jug-shaped. And this is something I've heard talk about a lot. So I've had this on, I talk about Rule of Three, that comedy podcast, and it's something they talk about in the nature of writing parody things. And that's the bucket. And this idea of, so Spinal Taps is a good example.

Spinal Taps is a mockumentary, the first, the best, etc. Yeah. So it's in a documentary-shaped bucket, and then it's full of nonsense. Ah, ah, yes. Yeah. And that's the thing about doing parody. When you get it right, the bucket is perfectly the right shape. And then you can put whatever shit you wanted.

Like Charlie Brooker's parody of a news piece. Exactly. And it's where, I feel like she hocks catching a bit of criticism because they're kind of parodying the lawyer sitcom genre. But unfortunately, it's also like a superhero show. And so it's doing also lots of stuff that's the comic book. And so the buckets come a really weird shape and some stuff leaking out. The metaphor's getting away from me here.

It's fine. No, carry on. So it's the same idea of horse going into the jug and becoming jug-shaped. No matter what project does, his stories are always perfectly story-shaped. Like it's beyond parody of fantasy now. And I think this one, this book, particularly- A long way first, yeah. Yeah.

This book particularly doesn't feel like it's parodying a specific thing. No, there's a few bits in it. Yeah. The book has obviously a beautiful story. It's incredibly well-told. It's doing something interesting. But it's not like, say, soul music or moving pictures, whether what happens, anything happens.

Or all masquerade where it's shaped like an opera. Yes. But it still manages to do all of the beautiful Pratchett stuff so well. And I think the best example of that is the Lootsang and Lobsang. I keep saying Lootsang now. It's not a ship name. It's just saving me a couple of... No, no, it's still Lootsang.

It's the easy-to-say. When Lootsang. Yeah. When the two of them interact with each other, it's the thing you were talking about, the boffo, the kind of tricking into heroism. And the other stuff that builds up around it in this apprentice relationship. Lootsang realizing how powerful Lobsang is and doing...

Okay, but... Don't let it show. Yes. Yeah. Like, you know, necessarily... Maybe don't show people you can do that. And then when he's explaining the procrastinators on the next page, and this isn't in reference to the Don't Let It Show,

but it works in tandem with it, no one notices something that works too well. And that's part of the Don't Let It Show, because if Lobsang was known to be this incredible, powerful thing, then okay, cool. So now just Lobsang can handle it. Yeah. Deus Ex Machina.

Exactly. It's why Lootsay is a sweeper, so he can't overly Deus Ex the Machina. That was a terrible sentence. We should not try and put Latin in grammar. No. We should not Latin. We're not trying, actually, are we?

So that's fine. No, no. We're not even trying. And yeah, you're right. And I... Ah, the other kind of the perfect story shape here is the journey of the master of the apprentice. It's the...

It's the learning as they travel. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which gets those beautiful moments we talked about, stopping to talk to the Yeti, stopping to look at the bird. And it goes into this idea of... Um...

...headings rank more pork and there's tensions starting to build up. And Lobsang can feel, you know, I made the disturbance in the force joke, but he can feel where it's happening, and he knows it's up and more porky. Like a two-spin pulled in your brain now. Yeah.

And but he's all like, why are you and Lootsay is like... Yes, I knew it was going to happen in rank more pork, but that's because I've got a lifetime of experience. You're just gifted. Yes. How do you know, Dickhead? It's this kind of exasperation that Lobsang just has this,

whereas Lootsay has had to learn this. Yeah. But it kind of brings... It means they've got two different skills that's to draw upon, doesn't it? If neither of them could have done it on their own. Yeah. But the thing I really...

Obviously neither of them actually did it. The thing that really got to me about this being this perfectly story-shaped thing, and why it's such a beautiful book. So obviously we split every book into three, because that works for our podcast. And generally it's good to spot in the action places, but I don't think any book does it quite as perfectly as this.

This build up to the urgent hero moment when they're racing on the broomsticks and they're slicing through time. And they found Zimmerman's Valley, which Lobsang should not have been able to do. And he's standing there and kind of shouting at Lobsang, like we need to keep going, we need to keep going. Whatever it is you can do,

I don't understand this ridiculous power you have, but do it. I need you to do it now. And Lobsang's like, but I don't know what I can do. And he's like, well, fucking find out then. Yep, yep. We're out of time. Now is the time to do it.

And it builds and it builds and it builds to that moment where the clock stops and time stops. And he sees it through the gaff in the door. And he's jumping through. And he's trickling down and oh, it's good. And if he hadn't stopped to help Lootsay, maybe he would have done it, but of course he couldn't not stop to help his master.

Now, help me out here. Because while we were in this like building tension and quickening pace, there was a moment where Lootsay kind of broke pace to describe how lightning works. And I'm wondering if this is a metaphor or a parallel in some way of the drawing, taking the path. The path comes from the bottom.

And then you open the door and let it through. It has to come from the ground first. It feels like that should be extremely meaningful that I couldn't immediately draw the connection. If I'm going to think through a corkscrew to get there, I'm going to think about letting Lobsang's power build from the ground up. He's been taken out into the field and he's...

Lootsay is not trying to teach him a way of doing things. He's trying to put him in situations where he... It comes from the ground and he learns it himself, rather than like Lootsay raining the wisdom down on him. That's cool. Yeah. I like that. I wonder if there will be a more obvious parallel in the third act. Quite possibly.

I haven't got to yet, but I like that as well. If not, I'm satisfied with that. Thank you. Let's close that gate of my mind for a little bit. But it's such a great build-up to an urgent moment. Also, like just quick side note, I want to put a pin in this tableau of frozen watchmen they walk through, because I enjoy that at the moment.

Don't touch it. Don't put a pin in it. Do not put pins in frozen watchmen, listeners. Yeah. God. Oh, rewinding slightly as well. I like the, again, very story, very movie. It's in... It's in everything. Lootsay, in this case, the grizzled old warrior, and we, at the start of the second act, learn his backstory,

learn his failure, learn how he became not embittered exactly, but kind of can't let this happen again. His driving force, his motivation, his, his, my wife was kidnapped. Except it was time and it exploded. And there's nothing left to, and it's happened before, so we know what's going to happen, but this time we can't fix it in the same way.

And so the stakes are underlined at the same time that Lootsay's motivation has explained. It's very good. It is really, really perfect for a story that's told about time-cracking and that doesn't need to be told in any real chronological sense, how incredibly well it progresses, and how incredibly human all of these somewhat inhuman

and outside of humanity's characters are. It's the thing, Pratchett, we always say this over and over again, that Pratchett's relationship with humanity is really fascinating and it comes out in things like, how death interacts with humanity? It's this idea of death being lonely. It's the idea of all the horsemen being kind of too taken up with their humanity

and these emergent behaviors. And it's this idea of Lootsay and Lobsang who are these incredibly powerful time monks. Lootsay, because of his millennia of experience and Lobsang, because he's born with something extra, maybe he's born with it, maybe it's 800 years. And all of these characters stop and have their incredibly human moments,

Susan's exasperation, stopping to look at the bird, getting these learning moments in, and to build all of that into something that's still incredibly well-paced to come to that perfect time-stopping moment. Kind of want to end it there, to be honest, that was a nice... How actually, how far into it are we?

I think maybe we skip this one and talk about it next time, because I really did like that as an end point. Okay. I'm happy to end with time-stopping. So here's, yeah, I think that was cool. So next week, listeners, at some point, we are going to talk about the nature of humanity. So that's a fair warning.

Warning, listeners. And the darkness behind the eyes. And actually, I think that'll work quite well with part three. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool, cool, cool. So we're going to edit the podcast on the fly. Francine, do you have an obscure reference video for me? I do. I'll see.

It's like when time shattered and they had to paste it together. So I liked the eagle coat. I love eagle. Fucking love eagle. I think he's been perfectly fleshed out in this. Not in a gross way in an eagle way, just now. Actually, before I even get to this, I love the moment where his grandfather's hands clench up

of their own accord. That would be... That would, you'd have to introduce an entire scene somehow in the adaptation to show that it was his grandfather's hands. And, you know... You need like a flashback of the grandfather's hands, and there's a close-up as you see them clenching, and then when you zoom out for close-up,

now they're stitched to eagle, and it's the same hands. Clenching. Love that. Love that. Anyway, not at all what I'm talking about. So I like the eagle coat I thought was very fun. The never contradict. It was no part of an eagle's job to say things like,

no sir, that's an oratory. The master was always right. And then you've got never complain, never make personal remarks. Never, ever ask questions. Not the big questions anyway. And it is pointed out that eagle's door-answering capabilities are extremely...

They are the done thing. You never did. Yes. You never did. And that made me think of Jit and Worcester, and therefore butlers in general. And so I started looking, researching butlers just a little bit. Nice.

I found quickly one parallel with the eagle coat, so I can tie this in in a sensible way. According to Schofield. Now I've confused myself. Schofield, not Schofield, right? Oh my God, it's all tied together. Schofield butlers.co.uk. I think they hire out butlers.

I don't know. Train them. Who knows? A butler should not correct the principle. And it's principle, by the way, as your boss. He should use the right answer technique, such as, as you know, sir, ma'am. So if you said something.

So butlers are really expositional. They're very expositional. And I feel like that's more passive aggressive. So if you said to me, if you were the principle and said to me, I'm catching the train at 9am tomorrow, Jeeves. And I said, oh yes, as you know, sir, the train leaves at 10 o'clock, so I shall ready your suit for 9.

Ah, perfect. Yeah. Love it. And also, while I was at it, I did find the British Butler Institute.com. And I was trying to basically, I was trying to find where it was written down about door answering etiquette.

And I found that quite difficult to find, unless I'd paid £5, which I refused to do. So there is a £5 publications for butlers in training on how to open and close a door on the British Butler Institute. Yes. And there seem to be many, many, many of these publications. This course is part of our online Butler and Etiquette Luxury Learning Program.

You will receive unlimited access to online film teaching. On unlimited access to online film, teaching you the correct way of opening and closing a door, step by step. Amazing. Detailed accompanying course notes. I'm so tempted to do it. I know it's only a five-house.

I nearly did. I was like, oh dear, I've tried to be really careful with money this month because, you know, the upcoming crisis. But at the same time, maybe I want to learn to open and close a door. I've never been very responsible. But I did not say, well, then me. Hey, I put jeans on when my...

There are also things on packing a suitcase, the wake-up called napkin presentation. I remember to put jeans on when my grocery delivery is coming. I feel like that's pretty... I think that is the done thing, yes. It does, to wear trousers. So you did. So I did.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tenuous and skeer reference, but I enjoyed it so much. I had to put in. I'm now trying to remember there is a song from a musical where someone is saying to a... Joseph from the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And it's when he's singing to the other guys in prison and he says to the butler,

you'll bottle as you did before. Oh, yes. Yes, bottle is a fantastic verb and is a... Is a real word. It is the word. Anyway, I think I'd make a fantastic butler. Oh, I think you would in short bursts. I don't think you'd be able to just keep it up for long.

I'd be a good creepy butler. I think you'd play a butler very well on stage. Yes. Yes, someone cast me as a creepy butler in something, please. Right, I think that's probably all we're going to say this week on part two of Thief of Time. We will be... My voice went really wet there.

Thief of Time. Oh, that's another rule. That's another rule, a butler rule. The butler should never speak too much and when he does his voice should not be hoarse. Ah, yeah. So, fuck you if you've got a cold, I guess. The right sweets for butlers.

I'm starting a new charity. Oh, of course. So, yeah, the last section starts where this one ended. We're starting on page 282 and the Korgi paperback with Mr. Soak the Dairy Man and going unsurprisingly to the end of the book. Progressing as we promised in a chronological fashion, at least as regards page numbers.

Yeah, we're going through the pages chronologically. What happens in the book? We can't make any promises. That's not our fault. We didn't do that. Until next week, dear listeners, you can follow us on Instagram at The True Show, Make You Fract, on Twitter at Make You Fract Pod,

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go to patreon.com forward slash The True Show, Make You Fract, where you can exchange your hard-earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. Spoilers that this month, the bonus nonsense is going to be a bit chocolatey. I've got plans. I've got plans. And until next time...

You said it in like a bit fruity tone of voice there. I mean both, right? Yeah. It's going to be chocolatey and I'll take my top off. No. Oh my God. I'm sorry. Until next time,

dear listeners, don't let us detain you. It really took a new turn on the tone at the end there. I like it. Give the listeners whiplash. It's what they want.