The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 92: Thief of Time Pt. 1 (Malignancy with Sparklers)

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Thief of Time”. Irrelevant Tooth Fairies!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:Quote by Terry Pratchett: “The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light...” - GoodReads DonMarshall72 - TikTok Night Thoughts, by Edward Young - Project GutenbergYou're Dead To Me, The History of Timekeeping - BBC Radio 4My Grandfathers Clock by Foster and Allen - YouTube Foundling Names - Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog Foundlings (Italy) - ConiglioFamily.comA Chronicle Of Timekeeping - Scientific American   The Infinite Monkey Cage - Does Time Exist? - BBC Sounds  Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

Right. Okay. No, let me start the sentence again. Has anything historical of note happens this week, fronzing? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Um, we, last time we spoke, which was some time ago, sorry, listeners, we're late. I got the COVID finally, after two and a half years. But since we last spoke, we have a new Prime Minister and a new Monarch. So yeah, so we've got, I think on Tuesday, we've got our fourth Prime Minister in six years. God, we're as bad as Australia. And then on Thursday, the Queen, the Queen who has reigned for 70 years uninterrupted died and we

got a new King. So whiplash of a week. I like the uninterrupted thing as if she may have been one of the ones we had a revolution in the middle. Yeah, it's a good question. Have we ever had a Monarch that like was interrupted for a significant period of time rather than just like killed? I suppose technically, if you're going to assume that the monarchy continued the whole time, then Charles the second. Yeah, that goes a little bit into the practice of monarchy being its own little force of time kind of, oh, that ties in. Yeah, the Qeons and the Kingons. I read that little quote the other day that makes me very happy. I can't remember what book it's from now. No, not this one. Mort. Ah, there we go.

The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher light in Weedle. He reasoned like this, you can't have more than one King and tradition demands that there is no gap between Kings. So when a King dies, the succession must therefore pass to the air instantaneously. Presumably, he said there must be some elementary particles, Kingons or possibly Qeons that do this job. But of course, succession sometimes fails if in midflights, they strike an antiparticle or Republican. Thank you, Terry Pratchett. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages involving the careful torturing of a small King in order to modulate the signal were never fully expanded because at

that point, the bar closed. Very good. Marvelous. But yeah, it's all very weird and surreal, isn't it? It is. Yeah, there's been discourse. There has been discourse. I'm not going to engage in the discourse. My Twitter feed was actually quite varied. But I did find it very surreal being in a group chat with you and our other friend, which is somewhat irreverent. Somewhat irreverent, I think. Yeah, that would be our Netflix genre. Somewhat irreverent. But also, we got a bit introspective at one point. But then also being in a group chat with people who are like diehard royalists who are showing more emotion than I think I've seen a lot of these men display. And I've been to funeral with these people.

That is the thing, isn't it? There is something to be said for the idea that when a British figure such as Princess Diana and now the Queen dies, it kind of allows people to drop the stiff off a lip for a minute. Yeah. And kind of project their own mourning feelings onto the death of a figurehead. I'm just still processing the surreal nature of once again, living through something that will be taught in history books. Yeah, I suppose, though, the death of a monarch wouldn't have been that much of a like, oh, happens once in your lifetime thing back in the day. No, I wonder what the longest reigning King has been in England. Yeah. Queen Elizabeth II is the first thing that's come up. Come on.

Come on. This is what I mean by Google forcing synonyms at you. I said King because I meant King. Right. We've got Elizabeth II, Victoria, and George III came third. There we go. Elizabeth is ninth. There we go. I would not have guessed that. I'd have put her in the top five. Interesting. All right, cool. Good. Good to know. Not very useful, really. Because that's just kind of pushed everything else out of my head. And it's been several weeks since we recorded properly. Has there been any like practically news? We talked about the convention. Well, yeah, obviously, Rob's book coming out. I feel like that's probably the biggest perhaps she knew that's happening at the end of the month or what else news the Lord of the Rings

saying came out. Rings of Power is amazing. Yeah, that's earmark for tonight. It's so good. It's so prissy. The music so amazing. I love it. And there's fun things to speculate. That's good. That's my other least favorite discourse of the week. Oh, yeah. Did you see though, there is one really sweet thing. There's this guy I follow on TikTok who does like weird, you know, fun talking facts and things. But he has some merch and he made this like t-shirt design and a baseball cap that says, you're all welcome here in Elvis. His co-creator did the translation. And then like a kind of it's a row of different ears and some elf ears and some human ears and they're all in different skin tones. And partly like in response to everyone being weird and racist about Rings

of Power, like all of the hobbits posed wearing this t-shirt. I like that. And this guy is like, what the hell? When did that happen? Why? Next time he pops up, show me a link because I don't know who that is. Yeah, sorry. I can't remember his handle. Cool. I like that. Yeah, no, I do stuff. I am just not going on any comment section on Reddit for a while. Weirdly, the least discoursey Lord of the Rings discussion place I've seen is the Lord of the Rings meme subreddit where people aren't being racist. They're just arguing about what isn't, isn't canon. And like, that's fine. Full your boots. If you want to be a nerd about law, go for it. You're doing the literary. Yeah. Yeah. I can respect arguments about what isn't, isn't canon. I don't

feel particularly strongly that if it doesn't fit perfectly with the canon, it's therefore a bad show because so yeah, that's happened. The new paperback of Amazing Morrison is educated rodents with new illustrations has come out. I haven't grabbed a copy yet, but I think I'm going to. And then I have to decide which copy to use for the podcast because my current paperback of Amazing Morrison is almost completely fallen apart, worse than my copy of Fifth Elephant. Maybe use a new one then because you love that book, so you don't want to. I know, but it does fit nicely with the other ones on the shelf. And you know, I care too much about these things for unseen. It's really hard to see them fitting though,

isn't it? On account of the fact they're all post it side out, aren't they? Yes, I know. I really like the growing post it forest on my bookshelves. It makes me very happy. Yeah, I can't think of any other exciting nerd news. House of the Dragon is still really good. I'm having a lovely time. Good. Matt Smith is weirdly hot, covered in blood. Who knew? I can never decide whether I fancy Matt Smith or not. It's very weird because I gave up on my Dr Who rewatch for a bit because I was getting a bit bored and I've just gone back to it, which meant I was watching the tail end of Matt Smith, Dr Who, and then also watching House of the Dragon. It's very different.

Does he look much older? Because he looks to me like someone who's not aged a lot, but I haven't really watched things. He hasn't really aged much. I think his cheekbones are just getting more prominent. He's got the cheekbones, yeah. Yeah, and you know, I have a type of women with soles, men with cheekbones. The two genders, soles and cheekbones. Yep, non-binary people with both. I will also accept daggers. Right. I don't think we need to talk about what I fancy on the podcast. Should we make a podcast? Don't we? I thought that was integrated into the plan. Oh yeah, no way. Susan's in this book. Never mind.

But yes, let's say it again. Let's get on track. Francine, would you like to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make Ye Fract, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today we are talking about Thief of Time, the 26th Discworld novel. It is good to be back. It is very nice to be back. After too long a break, I'm a little bit upset at how late in the year it is now.

I'm now coming to terms with the passage of time, which I suppose is at least appropriate. As it's starting to get darker slightly earlier, I'm not okay with the passage of time. Note on spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler light podcast. Obviously, 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 listener, can come on the journey with us. Periodically flinging yourself to the ground to avoid backwards-aging birds. Good idea. I don't think we've got anything to follow up on.

I mean, maybe. I'd be quite amazed if we didn't, but clearly neither of us have looked. Is that what you mean? Yeah, absolutely. That is what I meant. Maybe we'll have a look during the coffee break and have a mid-episode follow-up if there is any. Francine, do you want to introduce us to the book, The Thief of Time? Thief of Time is, as you say, the 26th Discworld novel. First published in May 2001, it is also the last Discworld book to feature cover art from Josh Kirby, who sadly passed away at the age of 72 in October 2001. The title, Thief of Time, references a saying. Procrastination is the Thief of Time.

This phrase comes from Edward Young's Night Thoughts, which was a nine-part poem published between 1742 and 1745. The stands are in question. Procrastination is the Thief of Time. Year after year, it steals till all are fled, and to the mercies of a moment leaves the vast concerns of an eternal scene. Fun and gentle fact from the podcast that we both listened to, you're dead to me. A history of timekeeping was a very appropriate recent episode. A klepsidra is the proper name for water clock, and klepto obviously comes from two steel. So that's another little thief of water in this case, but it's thief and time-adjacent. And also at this point, I'm just going to shoehorn in a mention of the Tower of the Winds,

which I also learned about from that episode, or the Horologian of Andronicus Charestes, because it's an octagonal tower that incorporates sundials, a klepsidra, and a wind vane, so I think it's deskworld-adjacent on a couple of levels. Yes, absolutely, especially with that number. Let's get octagonal. This was another one of those weirdly prolific Terry Pratchett years, like I think he wrote this, and the next three books we're going to cover all came out in a very short span of time. Last Hero, Amazing Morris, and then we'll start next year with Night Watch. Josh Kirby, Fact Night Watch. Paul could be put a little portrait of Josh Kirby within the Night Watch artwork. Ah, cool. I've got more fun facts, but I'm going to save them for next year.

Yeah, no, that's probably better. Yeah. Wait, let's do this book first. Yeah, okay. Let's do this. Shall I tell the dear listeners what happened in this first section? Yes, do. Please do. Which goes up to page 153 in the Corgi paperback and ends with the line, there was a moment of perfect timelessness. In this section, when wakes and is enlightened, and Claude Paul makes breakfast. Enter auditors into the story as death plays with toast, and a midwife is visited through time. Meanwhile, Jeremy makes clocks, and Lady Lejeune pays him a visit as the hour strikes. There's a fairytale of an accurate

clock that might be of some interest to the horological obsessive. He dreams of the perfect tick and wakes to an imperfect package, an upside down eagle. Susan teaches time until the bone rat interrupts. In the perfect day of the history months, the master of novices isn't happy with young Ludd and sends him to the mountain cultivating sweeper. Ludd and Lutzé had to see the abbot via the dojo and over the mandala. Lobsang Ludd remembers another present as he passes over the mandala. His unnatural talents are calls for concern and the sweeper offers to take him on. Jeremy makes plans with glass and Igor explains the explosion that never was. Susan discusses parental concerns with the headmistress before a visit to her grandfather.

According to death, the end is coming. On Wednesday, brackets my dudes. The auditors are involved. Time has shattered before and apparently time has a son. Jeremy discards his medicine and Susan takes some leave while back in the mountains Lobsang learns from Lutzé. A messenger comes and it's time to panic as the procrastinators run out of control. Seconds slip away as Lobsang takes the reins and pulls the hours back into balance, creating a perfect timeless moment. Enjoy me being bad at the passage of time in this one. Well, we haven't really got there yet at least. This first part is a nice easing our way in, isn't it? Dipping a toe in the timely waters. Yes.

Helicopter along cloth watch. Death is present, obviously. He is. Just keeping an eye on that. I'm going with the mandala for helicopter because there's some swirling. We don't open on the world turtle, but I liked the mention of the world turtle doing his little barrel roll and grabbing a meteorite. So I'm going to count that as nearly. It was close enough in the beginning. I'm going to say the abba is probably in a nappy at this point, which I feel like that serves loincloth duty. Yep. The abbot also mentions specifically that we look at the lephant. Yes, look it. Look it, Joanna. Lephant, as he says. Yeah. So I thought we'd put in an irrelevant elephant and it is relevant to the abbot being a little baby

because my favourite elephant fact of the summer, African elephants have milk tusks. So they have little baby tusks which fall out and then they get their full tusk later, like humans and milk teeth. Do you think there's an elephant tooth fairy? Now I do, which I'm going to draw. Thank you. Excellent. Make sure you get the ladder in. Oh no. Oh gosh, little spin-off sketch because elephants are scared of mice and they might bump into the death of rats. Amazing. All right, no, we can't start head-cannoning elephant tooth fairies right now. We have far too much, did we? Yeah, we've got a podcast we're making front scene too. Got a hold down podcast episode. Shall I do my favourite quote first?

Yes, go ahead here. You do that. Now his point of view dived into the thing, the crystalline thing, plunging down through the layers of glass and quartz. They rose past him, their smoothness becoming walls hundreds of miles high and still he fell through between slabs that were becoming rough, grainy. Full of holes, the blue and red light was here too, pouring past him. And now, only now was their sound. It came from the darkness ahead, the slow beat that was ridiculously familiar. Heartbeat magnified a million times. Shum, shum. Each beat slower than mountains and bigger than worlds, dark and blood red. He heard a few more and then his fall slowed, stopped and he began to soar back up through the sleeting light until a brightness ahead became

a room. Very good. It's one of those ones that'd be really hard to make visual, wouldn't it? But it's just that I want to play with it and make it and do a cool light show. I've picked one that isn't so much like a beautiful description, but just has a trope that I love in it. Lobsang and Lutze are in the procrastinator hall and nearing the end of their panic scene. And Lobsang says, I can't balance it. There's too much time wound up and nowhere to put it. How much? Almost 40 years. Lutze glanced at the shutters. 40 years looked about right, but surely how much? He said, 40. I'm sorry. There's nothing to take it up. That goes on a little bit. And then Lutze shook his head. 40 years? He was worried about 40 years. 40 years

was nothing. Apprentice drivers had dumped 50,000 years before now. I like the trope of new prodigy coming into something and just has no idea how good they are and the old master kind of realising it. I thought that was just a really well-paced way of showing that within the scene of just just how impressive he is and how much he would impress even Lutze. I love the procrastinator scene, especially because this first section, and I know part of that is how we've broken it up. It wasn't written to be exactly one section of the book, but it opens with it. It's all conversations and then suddenly goes into this one incredible action sequence right at the end. And it's just, it's great. It suddenly actually feels like there are stakes.

Yes. Yeah. Because the end of the world on Wednesday seems so abstract by comparison. Yeah, especially because we're just used to that, aren't we? Like, yeah, death turns up around for a day when it goes, universe is ending. Have fun. He does like to harbingh, doesn't he? Oh, he does. Let's talk about the characters. When? When? Well, I thought now, as we're recording the podcast run scene. All right. Let's start with when then. Let's start with when. When? I'm eternally surprised. I really love these when and Claude Paul intervals.

Yeah. He sounds like a bit of a dick. He does. I mean, I feel sorry for Claude Paul. Although Claude Paul does seem to just like take in his stride, so that's fine. They seem well matched as a pair. It's another tropey dynamic I really like. But they're just very sweet little intervals again, as the stakes only really start to raise at the end of the book, that any time it looks like things could happen, we go off and have these little like exposition moments. Yes.

It makes, it paces the book really nicely. Especially because with the procrastinator thing, actually, with the procrastinator hall, where at the end the little bit of exposition is going back to the first procrastinator and like where it all started with this one thing and then get taken into this room where it's just full to the rafters. Yeah. That is cool. I like the procrastinator exposition bit because it's got one of my favorite little conceits of this is nothing like as complex, it merely stalls and moves time. That's in play and now I shall test it. You gave it a halftime with the sound. Ah, very nice, Master of Prayer.

Well, no, it's nothing like as complex, it merely stalls and moves time. That's in play and now I shall test it. Now I shall, now I shall, now I shall. Like with any other writer, you could look at that and go, well, they're just trying to hit a word count that day. When at some point put a little beat behind it, you know. Yeah, remixed it. But there's like the slow build of the perfect day being put together, like the yes, there will always be cherry blossoms moments. Yeah, the cherry blossoms thing is lovely, especially, isn't it? I mean, we know I'm a fan. I've got them tattooed on me.

Oh, yeah. Not like the specific ones from this book, just some random cherry blossoms. You can pretend it's those ones if you want. Oh, cool. Now I've got a disc world tattoo that saves me some money on getting another one. But yeah, when obviously a bit of a play on some various enlightened figures, it's again, almost a stereotype, not really, almost a trope, not really, but you can see. I think you can see where it's coming from, and then it's turned into its own thing. And I enjoy that of how it's done, especially because it's sort of another area that started

as a bit of a side joke thing. But yeah, that's a lot of this book. And I'm going to talk about that a lot later in the meantime. Good. I'm going to talk about Nanny Ogg because... Oh, the best cameo. What a good cameo. I love it when there's cameos in these books and someone like, I feel like death doesn't count as a cameo because he's been in literally every book so far. He's the Memento Mori.

But just unexpected witch. And we get to see young Nanny Ogg tweaking the already low neckline of her dress just in case the caller was male. It's the first time we've seen young Nanny, isn't it? Yeah, she's been talked about, but I don't think we've seen anything sort of from her perspective. Yeah, we've had like a flashback or two to young Esme. There's also, this gives me, it's just cram in one of my favorite themes, which is when Nanny Ogg is described as an edge witch and there's a footnote that she makes her living on the edges in the moment when boundary conditions apply between life and death,

light and dark, good and evil, most dangerously of all today and tomorrow, which brings the liminal into all of our time nonsense. And that's so fun because you have this time as a storytelling thing. And this liminal idea kind of exists between past and present because is there that infinitesimal moment of time between the two? Yes, that gets very philosophical and physical at the same time, which is always fun to listen to physicists and philosophers argue. I like here as well that we're kind of establishing that Nanny Ogg is the best midwife.

Because we've seen Granny Weatherwax do the bit of midwifery and like obviously very impressive midwifery, we had the moment with death, didn't we? But we've now got Nanny Ogg established as the best at that one. And I very much respect that that's her niche. Everyone's got their niche. I also like that it's established, that it's a matrilineal name. And then we have Death. We have Death, he's here.

I don't have much more to say about him until we get to his relationship with Susan. So I'll talk about Jeremy and Lady Lejeune first. I try to be chronological because we're going to get confused enough about time as it is. But I do like, I forgot to know anywhere, but Death's a little toast testing machine. Oh yes, the device, the, just like a vibes measure. Measuring vibes via toast and buttered carpets. Oh no, malignancy with sparklers.

Oh, I did like that. Yeah, that was good. That's a beautiful moment. So Jeremy. Jeremy, Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson, I wonder if that's a reference to anyone. Jeremy Clarkson, Jeremy Clarkson. Would it be a reference to Jeremy Clarkson?

I mean, Top Gear was really big and he was very famous in 2001. So I feel like there was maybe a play on Jeremy Clarkson alongside obviously the Clarkson. Yeah, I didn't realize he was very famous by 2001. Yeah, I guess the desk will is catching up with my memories quicker than I expected. Yeah, it's very weird to think we're now in this millennium. Yeah, my only note on the name was that Jeremy Sacker was an 18th century watchmaker who was said to have coined the term chronometer, which I think caught my eye because Sacker was also my name until Mum and Dad got tossed.

Oh, cool. And I don't use that for any passwords. So shut up, everybody. I like this sort of explanation of the foundlings of guilds, because obviously Lobsang was taken in by the Thieves Guild, you have Jeremy taken in by the Clocks Guild, and they get these specific like Ludd or Clarkson or Joey or Pune surnames. Yeah, for sure.

I couldn't find a parallel to like trade names for foundlings, which was a shame, but I didn't have a lot of time for research. So if anybody does know anything about that, please write in because... I feel like it's more of a storage convention than a real world convention, because I know also putting a pin that this idea of orphan picked up by a guild is going to show up in a couple books time. Yes. But yeah, I love the moment where all of the clock strike in the room.

Yes. Especially with the warning clock first. Well, have you ever been in the clock room at Moises? No. So at our local museum, they have a room full of clocks, and they will come and give you a heads up when it's about to turn the hour, so you can get out of the room if you want, because it is very loud, but they also aren't all...

There's like a row of like three grandfather clocks. Are they like properly... Bong, bong, bong ones, or... They're decently loud ones, yeah, and it's not a very big room. Not every clock in the room is like perfectly wound, but enough of them are that it gets quite cacophonous, and it's quite fun. My step-grandfather is a clock repairer. Oh, amazing.

Yeah, I'm very familiar with the... Oh, half an hour has passed, has it? Good, right? But I was asking about how loud that... Because I very rarely hear the proper big bonging ones, I guess, because it's like it's hard to cut grandfather clocks around, isn't it? So it's quite rare that he gets a huge one in. That's fair.

Yeah, they are quite intimidating. I do like the idea of having one one day, though, a dramatic grandfather clock. Yeah, for sure. I didn't know that the main grandfather clock came from the song, and not like the other way around. I'd always assumed the song was like a clever way of referencing it's a grandfather clock. No. My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf.

Listeners, that's what I'm on about. Apparently grandfather clocks were named after that song, which is very popular in the 1800s, yeah. It's one of the really sad ones, too. If you get me on the wrong moon and I hum that to myself, I'd get a little cry, a cry theory. It's better than Thursday when I did have London bridges falling down, stuck in my head all day.

Yeah, that was that was inappropriate. Oh, yeah, no, sorry. Jeremy gets or Igor on Jeremy gets quite an interesting moment when he's throwing away his medicine and Igor's kind of worrying that he's a bit too sane to be mad. And I would expect more mad man. There's no weird calendars on the wall. It's all too neat. And Igor starts to feel at home when he realizes if sticking screws up,

your nose was madness, numbering them and keeping them in careful compartments was sanity, which is the opposite. It wasn't, was it? That's going through a thing and out the other side. Nothing wrong with organizing your screws. Well, no, I've got a drawer full of screws, which is better than I used to. So that's I'm going to keep that.

That's a I've done all right there. I have very specific ways of categorizing my jewelry making stuff within the drawers I have that make sense only to me. Well, you've got very, very tiny things in fairness. Yeah, I don't have to deal with any. Oh, I wanted to mention as well, poor Dr. Hopkins, who checks in on Jeremy on a regular basis to, because he always just happened to be passing the apothecary

and grabbed Jeremy's medicine. I liked the little parallel between Susan pointing out this isn't a clock. This is cardboard made to look like a clock. And Jeremy very carefully, Igor very carefully saying, yes, I see him pour it out twice a day. Yep. And that's exactly what he said. I also, I don't know if light is the right word,

but I pointed up a moment with Dr. Hopkins, where he's dealing with meeting Igor, and Jeremy explains it's cultural and Dr. Hopkins, he's relieved. He tried to see the best in everyone, but the city got rather complicated. And a lot of it was cultural, and you couldn't object to that.

So he didn't. Cultural sorts of solve problems by explaining that they weren't really there. It was an interesting way of looking at it, because I know people like that as well. And it is, it kind of comes from a good place, because it's like, I don't want to have a problem with any of this. It's confusing to me.

And so I feel odd about it. But if you tell me it's fine, I'll be really happy just to go along with that. You see it a lot when people are kind of dealing with like queer terminology, they're not familiar with, especially like meeting non-binary people, and they're sort of like, all right, you want to be called, all right, that's fine.

I can do that. Anyway, speaking of anyway, Lady Lejean. Myria, a very good first name, somebody of many people. She is an amalgamation. Yeah, a bit rude, but fine, yeah. I'm an amalgamation, you. Yeah, very creepily described, I like that. There are really good moments when she comes in,

and Jeremy's trying to figure out what she is, and sort of guessing maybe vampire. It's definitely. Slightly strange eyes. Uncanny valley effect. Yeah, slightly too human. Yeah. But then he kind of forgets that he's worried by her

because she starts talking about fucking quantum and that. He's like, oh, I love you. I do also like the brief moment of the her should be in water, her should be in be lawyer beetle as a clock mechanism. Oh, yes, yes, of course. I didn't, what I didn't do for this episode, because I just felt like so many people have got interesting articles on this already,

is look at all like the weirdest clocks from history, but I'll look to a couple of fun things about it. I did not find a beetle one. Let's not say there was one. My favorite one from the Your Dead to Me episode was the fire clock that burns a different type of incense every hour. So you know what the hour is by the smell of the room. Yeah, that's definitely got flower clock vibes, isn't it?

Definitely flower clock vibes. And then Susan, Susan's back. We haven't seen, well, we saw her at the end of last year when we did Hogfather. So it's actually not been that long between Susanbergs. No, I suppose not, no. No, she's moved on to being like a teacher from a governess. But yeah, she's gone from governess to teacher.

Yeah, which I think is better for her. Better for her. She's still got her very innate Susan-ness. She's like a kind of very different in personality, but like, do you remember the magic school of us? Oh, yeah. At the cartoon. Okay, I don't know how many listeners of different ages

would have watched this, but the conceit is that Mrs. Frizzle, the Miss Frizzle, whatever, the teacher takes her children on a magic school bus to go to field trips to see all these things shrink down to the human body or go to Forex and get covered in dust, whatever. Yes. I like, I love Susan for the matter of factness of, yes, we are in January now.

Can you tell me what the time is in January? Thank you. Yeah. No time to be impressed. And you can see her trying to coax philosophical thought out of a girl who's very insistent on remaining in daydreams, which is nice. I like that.

There's quite a sad moment later on as well, when she goes to see death at the Gentleman's Club and he's sort of trying to small talk with her and she's sighing because he, you know, she wants to know what's going on. And there's this sort of moment of realizing they only have each other or each of them had no one else, but the other.

Yes. And perhaps it follows that with the line, it was a thought that sobbed into its own handkerchief, but it was true. It is, yeah. And I think it was kind of underlined in a couple of bits, like with death and his mug. And like,

Yes. Like it was kind of spelled out that someone would, only someone with not a lot else going on would keep hold of that. And like, and then Susan, I think, when she got quite upset about the chocolate, like she clearly only allows herself this one bit of human. Joy. Joy per day.

And it's a nougat. Yeah. Which is not nice. Yeah. It's a kind of subtly painted, but quite, not quite obsessing. We're like, oh, background. And it's quite interesting that in this conversation with death,

he establishes, you know, time had a child and Susan's thinking, Oh, there's someone like me. And then a bit of foreshadow of where the book cuts to after that soon. Sustle, but there. Yes, definitely. But I'm so excited to see Susan back and the boner out, of course. And then we have Lutzi, who we have met before. Where did we meet him before?

I know we have, but I can't remember when. He's in small gods. Of course he is, yes. Sweeping around in the background, cultivating his mountains. That's right, because it's the Abbott mentions in this, in this book that he's dissipated him before, hasn't he? And that was, that was one of the disobeys. Yes.

So timeline, why? Oh, no, no. Do you know what? No, I was just about to try and talk myself into the fact that just because it's different timeline on this, doesn't mean that it is for them. And no, do you know what? No, no.

It's fine because they're history monks. They pop into time when they need to. But yeah, no, Lutzi is great. I think he's really cleverly, he's a really clever distillation of the trope of the wise old man. Yes, the in, unthreatening old man. However, they, they've mentioned it as is, like don't, you know. Yes, rule one.

Yeah. Don't fuck with a smiling old man who doesn't look dangerous. Yeah. I like that he's introduced cultivating his little mountains again because it's like, if you, there's one detail you remember about him from small gods, it'll be the bonsai mountains because that's such a fun idea. So bringing him back in with his bonsai mountains again is a very good, like, oh, hey, remember this guy?

Yes. It's cool that, like, obviously they want him around at the monastery because he's like a, he's a hero and he's like one of the most accomplished monks and all this or not monks, whatever kind of thing. But at the same time, he kind of functions as this measure of the novices and like that you can tell how wise someone is or how much they've learned about looking past what you see by how they're reacting to the sweeper. Yeah.

I like it a lot. And I also like the idea that he's got some kind of union going with the other sweepers because they're just like, if someone kicks his shrine, they're like, no. No, not this. Likely say, I think he's great. And his Mrs. Cosmopolite expanded universe is coming along nicely. Absolutely. I started highlighting every one of them.

But like as we kept going, I was like, oh, no, you're just going to do this every other paragraph. Okay. Yeah. Also, there is like, they did bring out a way of Mrs. Cosmopolite book. Oh, I should try and get hold of that then. Yeah. I think it was quite a short print run actually.

I'm going to see if I can track it down. Just start reading myself an affirmation from it every morning as I do my yoga. And then, yeah, Lobsang slash Newgate Ludd. Newgate, interesting name choice. That's the name of... Prison. Yes, prison. London Prison.

Yeah, although obviously not in this world. Yeah. I don't think Ankh Morpork's got a Newgate prison, but I'm assuming that the Newgate bit is meant to be kind of, that's his Ankh Morporkian names. It sounds... Prison-y. City-ish. Yeah.

And he's a thief. And he's a thief. And then, Lobsang, which is the name that Practicfucking loves, for Tibetan monks or Tibetan monks. Adjacent. Adjacent. Yeah. There's...

Oh, yeah. I was trying to remember where else Lobsang turned up and was googling for ages till I realised it's not... Well, not googling, but I was trying to figure it out for ages till I realised it's not disworld at all. It's the Long Earth. And Good Omens. Oh, yeah, of course.

But yes, Lobsang in Long Earth is more of a sweeper. So, it's all very confusing. Yes. Also, I just turned to one of the pages where Lobsang gets an interesting moment and got distracted by the word elephant time. So, have you got a second irrelevant elephant? Oh. Oh.

Mm. Elephants are the only other mammal, apart from us, that have chins. Oh. All right. Well, I'm going to... That's going to sit at the back of my brain for a while. This is in the description of Soto, Marco Soto. He won a competition.

And that is not, as I thought, it might be some kind of like weird Marco Polo saying, no, Marco Soto is the name of somebody who won a competition to have his name in the disworld books. Ah, cool. He looked a bit like a monk, except for his hair, because his hair looked like an entirely separate organism. Say that it was black and bound up in a ponytail as to miss the opportunity of using the term elephant time.

Ah, yes, well done, well done. I relate to it. But I love this idea of, as Lobsang goes through his patterns under the patterns disguised in the chaos of the mandala, and then he has this ghost memory. Yes. That's a memory of a memory. Which is... It all gets a bit better.

It gets very better, but I think it's a really nice way to put a slightly expositional flashback into the book. If... Yeah. As it's a book about time being fucky anyway, you can rather than just saying, this is an expo... Rather than doing like... Because it feels a bit like...

It echoes from the opening of Pyramids with the Assassin's Guild entrance exam. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Very much. So it's a nice callback to that, but then has a frame around it that makes it not just a flashback. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah, it's more...

I enjoy that as a detail. I also want to point out that at the moment, Lobsang appears to be 16 to 17. I'm just putting a pin in that now for later. Okay. And then we have the Abbott. Ah. I like that his kind of infant nature does shine through his infinite wisdom nature, and that they're very much indulgent of it, like giving him

little applause for managing words and things. I really love it. I like, it would normally be something where I think the joke could get tired, but I just didn't get bored of it and was reading all of these little bits out to myself as I was reading this, which is great because I was reading it on a train in public, just quietly saying, pick it to myself. Yeah. I think it doesn't get too annoying because you are getting the actual dialogue out at the same time.

Yes. Not just interruptions so much, and also just the idea of having to think about the child development of the Abbott at the same time that you're very deferential towards him is very funny to me. Yes, absolutely. This sort of, ah, love is a puzzle. This is not. His tutors have nicely pick it, pick it.

Told me he's very talented. Pick it, pick it. I was imagining a proper change in voice as he's going. I don't want to try and baby talk on the podcast. I don't think the listeners need to hear that from me. Okay, that seems fair, actually. No, it's dangerously close to doing an Uwe voice, and we're trying to keep the podcast Uwe free.

That is true, but we've never said it aloud. I like that. Yeah, now you've said it. It is a very much a truth. Yeah, the truth shall make you Uwe free. No. Anyway. Sorry, I was going to go on to locations.

Wasn't I? Where are we? We're in the Valleys of Enlightenment. Oh, yes, which is a very, very cool concept. Yes, for listeners watching the video, it's on a post-it note behind me. That's where the Valleys of Enlightenment are. Good, good to know.

Thank you. Just in case you're wondering, we're very close to the hub. Yes, I enjoyed the description of Enlightenment as kind of a resource of there is cold country and beef country and grass country. The world is full of countries where one thing shapes the land and the people. And up here in the high valleys around the hub of the world,

where the snow is never far away, this is Enlightenment country. We have the listening monks, the brothers of Kul, the balancing monks. And in the highest greenest areas of all, the monastery of Uidong and the fighting monks of the Order of Wen. So their name is the fighting monks of the Order of Wen. It's the other sects who refer to them as the history monks.

Yes, we've been here before with the listening monks, haven't we? We've seen the... Yes, we've had a few references to this kind of soul music, but do you remember the listening monks trying to listen to the... I know that the listening monks moment is something to do with death because we're talking about the sound at the beginning of the universe.

There's also, I said I'll talk about a bunch of cool bits later, but the Abbot reincarnation thing is from Morte. We see Morte reaping the Abbot and then his soul going, background going to get born again. Cool. And then, of course, within the Valley of Enlightenment, we have the Garden of Five Surprises. Fucking yodeling stick insect.

That's just what I... That's the one I remember. And I like the sort of mystery of the Fifth Surprise and Lobster and trying to come up with very clever ideas. And so we've... No. It references the other Garden, which I can't remember the name of,

where you have to find the Five Elements as well, or Four Elements, which I thought was quite cool. And another one of the Look Past, what you see. Yes, the Fifth Elephant... The Fifth Element, not the Fifth Elephant. The Fourth Element in the Garden was surprised at the fact that fire wasn't there, and then he finds the symbol of fire down in the bakeries, which is a nice,

very specific thought process. I was trying to think of, by the way, while I was doing clock research, of like elemental clocks that could fit into this. But you... Okay, so you got the fire clock, like the incense thing. That's quite cool. Water clock, obviously, lots of those around.

Earth clock, I feel like sand. Yeah, like an outglass. It's like a wind clock, though. Maybe there was one, and I just didn't get that while I was reading, but... Yeah, no, I'm not sure wind can tell the time particularly well. But I feel like a sundial would be like in the middle of this cool elemental clock arrangement that I imagine.

Yeah, because it's like made of stone, and then you have the fire of the sun coming down through the air, and sometimes it rains, so it's wet. Sure. All right, they're kind of... They're going away from me towards the end there. Yeah, I need a wind clock, and then I can build a really wanky arrangement in the garden.

That's the important thing. I just want to talk about... Point out that we've talked about the various elements for this long, and I have not quoted the opening to Avatar the Last Airbender, so I think I deserve a small prize. Thank you. Small applause. Thank you.

There we go. I can't give you a prize remotely, but my appreciation should be a prize enough. So when Igor arrives, he hands Jeremy a card for the We Are Igor's business, which gives the addresses the old Ratel's Bad Shushine, C-mail, Jethmarth.Uberwold. So, A, I like that clacks has become commonplace enough that places have, like, C-mail addresses.

That's a nice little detail. So Bad Shushine, where Igor is from, I was trying to work out what the name was a reference to for ages, until I finally said it out loud to myself. I had not gotten that far, I love it. Thank you. Thank you. And this is where the explosion that didn't happen didn't take place.

Oh, the Rat House thing. The Rat House thing, I think we've talked about briefly before, because the Chamber of Rats and things and the meeting room stuff. Yes, that's it. Is it the Rat House in Aintmore Park as well at the Palace? The Meeting Room is the Rat House, I think that's what it's about. Is it the Chamber of Rats? It's the Chamber of Rats, yeah.

Yeah. And then here, I like the fact that we've kind of gone backwards from it, so it's like, oh, Rat House, that means, like, Meeting Room, doesn't it? And it's like, yeah, yeah, most of the time. Sure. Sure, sure, Meeting Room. The Glass House you've put as a location. I just really love it.

It's a really beautiful bit of description. And this is kind of the realm of time, if death has its domain and time has her domain. The Great Glass House in here, it shouldn't be the glass clock barely here. It showed up as shimmering lines in the air as if it was possible to capture the sparkle light off a shiny surface without the surface itself. I just really enjoyed visualizing it and thinking about the sparkly things through a very long time. Yeah, Pratchett does go above and beyond with his realm descriptions, doesn't he?

We'll have one day some elemental weather ones to look at and all kinds of things. It's great. Yes, it's a delight. And I like this idea of the sound filling the glass rooms, that finger around a crystal wine glass sound. Yes, that's such a fucking sound as well. I used to have these really nice big wine glasses that you could just do that sound with beautifully, but they were also quite thin and I broke all of them.

By doing that? Yeah. Well, no, mostly by dropping them to be honest. I'm quite clumsy. How I have plastic. I'm always surprised by how good like every now and then you see a video pop up on the Internet of one of these musicians who can do like a whole arrangement with crystals. And I'm always amazed by how good it sounds.

I'm always expecting it to be like, oh yeah, good. Like you can play something on the kazoo kind of level. But no, it's fantastic. It's also one of my favorite future armor gags when it goes to the planet of people made out of water and there's their in glasses playing themselves. Oh, oh, fuck. The something I did see on TikTok and tried the other day, you know, those big metal mixing bowls, if you've got one, you put a little bit of water in there and just kind of

slosh it slightly. It makes a fantastic noise that I've just never had. Yeah, sorry. We used to use those a lot in the kitchen that you're still working. Yes. Yes. Yes. They are quite industrial looking.

Kitchen instrumentation. Right. Should we take five? Yeah. One more location I want to mention the. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, no, no, it just occurred to me. The Gentleman's Club, whose name I've forgotten.

I thought it was a... It's very woodhouse to have it. Oh, yes, absolutely. And the way it's described. Obviously, it's a very English thing. Woodhouse brings it up because it was a thing. But the idea of rich old men going and just hiding and being left alone for a long time, I always find amusing.

Yes. It's fidgets. And I like this idea of women weren't allowed in the club at all except under rule 34B, which grudgingly allowed for female members of the family or respected married ladies over 30 to be entertained to tea in the green drawing room between 315 and 430. That's what I meant to look at. And the men literally can't comprehend the idea of a woman at any other time. Yeah.

What was... I also... Oh, no, I'm wrong. Don't worry me. Yep, carry on. I really like the detail of as Susan's walking through the club, whenever she's in like Death's Grand Auto mode, her heels get a bit higher. It's a nice kind of nod to her character in soul music when she's adding a bit of lace and things

to the grim reaper outfit. Okay, no, I was wrong. I just had a moment of like, oh, have I found a connection? But I had the unseen university room that doesn't exist, that has all the scheduled classes in is 3B, not 4B. Yeah. Oh, that's a shame. Yeah.

But close enough. Close enough that we can enjoy it as a detail. Okay, right. Let's go find a coffee. Right. Little bits we liked, little bits we liked. Follow up. I found follow up.

Oh, have you got something to follow up on? Yeah. Did you look at the emails? Fuck no. Sorry, I got distracted by Twitter. I've never seen you forget a task as you walk out a rim before. Well done. That's more me.

No, it happens more often than you think. But I've got a Reddit post from Zinkstote who mentioned Clogpool. So this is important for this one. He says, Seaf of Time is one of those books where I recognize to my delight that Terry was drawing on some of the same things that influenced me growing up, alongside the more well-known William books by Richard... Richard Crompton. Richard Crompton.

That's it, sorry. That was a type of... Alongside the more well-known William books by Richard Crompton, there was a series by Anthony Buckeridge about a boy called Jennings and his faithful cohort, Derbyshire, attendees at a boy's boarding school in Sussex in the 50s. They're full of the sort of subtle wordplay and an absolute delight in language that I grew to love and regularly had me in stitches when I was about to use. Anyway, this was the first and for many years the only time I've seen Claude Poll

used in print as a derogatory term, meaning blockhead or dull-witted person. So that's Claude Poll for you. Excellent. I've heard you for a long time. Plenty of times I had not heard Claude Poll. No, I mean, Claude's like a weird solid lump of earth, isn't it? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Poll being head, isn't it?

So it's like rockhead. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Right. Little bits we liked. Yes. Little bits we liked.

What did you like? I like this kind of conceit of introducing everyone via their desk. So we have Death's Desk, which you referenced actually the mug. Someone wanted to make it a jolly mug. It bears an unconvincing picture of a teddy bear and the legend to the world's greatest grandad. Yes. And you pointed out a word neither of us have really heard before. Only someone whose life contains very little else one feels would treasure a piece of

gim crackery or gym crackery. I'm going to say gym crackery because like gimmick maybe. Yeah. But yeah, so it means like a little bit of junk basically, doesn't it? Like a frippery. But what a great, it's just a great little moment for words because you also have contrivance is exactly the right kind of word for the item on the desk. Toast buttering nonsense desk toy, that's great.

Yes. This story starts with desks. This one is the desk of a professional and then it goes to bring in Susan at this desk is neat. There's a pile of books and a ruler and at the moment a clock made out of cardboard. Yes. And he had the desk of the clock maker. Yeah. A desk of galaxies or something.

Jeremy's desk. This desk was a field of galaxies. Things twinkled and there were complex wheels and spirals brilliant against the blackness. Yeah. Very cool. I love the idea of trying to find someone by their desk, but then I worry someone seeing like my workspace and trying to find me by this. And this is the most chaotic space in my flat by quite some way.

Mine's reasonably neat today. So I'm happy as long as I get to find today. That's fine. Guild names, Francine. Guilds have names. Yeah. So the Foundling names thing you mentioned earlier. In in Discworld, we've got Lud, Clockson, Zoe, Pune.

Zoe, obviously Baker, Pune, I'm not sure about. What do you think? I'm going to go with Fools Guild. Yeah. That could work. Yes. So I was hoping that we'd have something similar in England. I could draw on if we do.

I couldn't find it as I say. Please write in if we do. But in England, Foundlings were obviously subject to naming conventions. The name Foundling was sometimes given quite commonly. Sometimes it was the name of the place they were found, e.g. William Euston, found in a railway carriage at Euston Station. Sometimes it was less obvious but connected, such as Mary Chance, who was found as a pawnbroker.

Oh. Yeah. Sometimes like Lud, they were given the surname of the founders of the institution in which they were raised. So St. John's Orphanage, Orphans might be so and so St. John. And quite often, you'd just have a list of given names in alphabetical order. You'd give the Foundlings as they came in, kind of like Storms. As we go here now, yeah.

Outside of England, there's a whole very interesting thing in Italy, particularly, about Foundlings. And I'm not sure whether they use this kind of naming convention more than in other countries, or whether there was just a lot of people trying to do their deniology in Italy, but spoke the English language, because I just found a lot on Italy particularly. But I'll link to a long article on it, but an extract from that article. In the early 1800s, officials began to be concerned about the stigmatic names

being given to Foundlings. So they'd used words like outcasts, things like that. Just basically brand the Foundling, much like bastard names in Britain and other places in the world. Yeah. This is also the whole George R. R. Martin using that in Song of Ice and Fire, like the different regions have different bastard surnames. You have like Snow, and I can't remember any of the others now. Well, that was very based in reality.

Yeah. So in Florence, for example, an 1817 edict declared that such a name expresses the mark of their disgrace and forms them into a class of people inferior to others. In Bologna, it was suggested that Foundling surnames were to be chosen from the minerals, vegetables, or the animals like monti, mountains, folia, leaf, rosa, rose, leon, lion, or others. And I quite like that. That was kind of more George R. R. Martin-y, wasn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So obviously, because people do all they can to find reasons to discriminate against others, I think, once any of these names became known as the Foundling name, it kind of, it was the Cycle of Association. It's a very interesting subject, which I did stop myself before going too far into, but... Because there are only so many hours.

And your one is a large switch in a cave. You're next to it. Honestly, this is me, sorry. This is kind of just me shoehorning in another quote, but this is like an iconic, almost transcendent Terry Pratchett quote. And I completely forgot it was from this book. Yeah. If you'd told me, I'd have thought it was a wizard one.

I would have honestly said it. We'd also come across it much earlier. I would have said maybe last continent. I don't know if that's just because of the cave. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere with a sign on it saying, end of the world switch, please do not touch, the paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Yep. We've had an almost identical quote.

I'm pretty sure in Hockfather. I think it was talking about the Ridcully's bathroom. Ah, yes. So I think we've, we had the proto quote already, but I think you're right. This is, this is the one that gets reused all the time. Yes. And has been shared on Facebook 80 million times.

Gotcha. Yeah. It is definitely one of the, the Pratchett quotes, isn't it? Yeah. It's also, I mean, it's also incredibly true. Yeah, it absolutely is. Human adjacent going to Igor, who is human, I think. I don't really understand, but God,

you tell Pratchett just fell in love with the idea of the Eagles immediately, didn't you? He's like in one book after the next, straight away. But Igor here, as he turns up on Jeremy's doorstep with a pile of what I found very amusing reference letters, some of them written in what he could only hope for, dry brown ink, worn in crayon, crayon, several were singed around the edges. Just the idea of turning up for this pile of completely unhinged references really tickled me and all of their names.

Mad Doctor Scoop, crazed Baron Ha Ha, crushed by a burning windmill. I also really love the idea of the mad scientist like Hester Lee writing out these reference letters as the mobs turning up with the torches and pitchforks. Yes, they're diligent in making sure that Igor get another job. Screaming Dr. Berserk, Nipsey the Impaler, yes. I think, I like to think Pratchett just had a nice few minutes thinking of all the names for the various Igor horrors. For the various Igor horrors, yes.

Because I would point briefly at the mad scientist employers when Carpe Joculum. Yeah, it was Carpe Joculum was one of the first Eagles we got and it was very much playing on that specific servanty trope and I love how quickly it's run off into its own entire thing to the point where they're now an organised business with a class address. Years. And that is all the little bits we liked. Should we go on to the bigger stuff? Yeah, we hated everything else, no.

Clocks, though obviously massive fucking subject, clocks. So I'd pick a sub-subject. Horology. Horology. I like, I do like clocks a lot. I think clockwork is very interesting. I love the word clockwork to start with, which is a good start. I think there's an obvious human fascination with clockwork with, you know,

things like steampunk use clockwork all the time through it. We just love the look of it. I feel like it's one of those technologies that was destined to come into the world. The cogs fitting together. And even now we use the metaphor of clockwork. I don't, gosh, sorry, I'm going properly off track here. Do you remember a very long time ago? I don't remember which episode it was.

I talked about the technology of the time influencing scientific metaphors, thinking about how the brain worked, things like that. And clockwork was definitely- I remember this conversation. I don't remember which book we were on. No, me neither. It was very long. I think it was like an in-person one.

So very long time ago. I feel like the kind of analogy of clockwork, the visual, has long outlasted when we often use it in technology, which is interesting. I think we just love the, you can, it's possibly the most advanced technology that you can look at it and see how it works without any more knowledge. You can look at it and work out how it works. But because we can't just talk about clocks forever, I thought I'd just quickly talk about clock accuracy,

because that's kind of the point of the book. Yeah, it's about the most accurate clock and measure the tick of the universe. Yeah, so timekeeping at its core is the counting of oscillations. And the more regular the oscillation, the more accurate we can keep the time, the more accurate the timekeeping. So back in Jeremy mentions that the kind of pre-oscillating clocks, like don't even bother him, because they're so inaccurate, they're not even like a proto-version.

They're just a different type of thing entirely. Yeah, like pre-pendulum. Yeah, exactly. So the early, early mechanical clocks of the sort that would probably piss off Jeremy, lost something like two hours a day to a clock drift, as you'd call it. So which is basically when a clock desynchronizes from its reference. The first clocks we can really call accurate, the first one's really worth looking at for that,

appear in the 1600s with the advent of the pendulum clock, as you say. Christy Ann Huygens designed and built the first of these, he's Dutch, so I do apologise for mispronouncing his name, not even going to pretend I might have done. His early versions were accurate to less than one minute per week, which is great. Later versions for more like 10 seconds per day. After he invented the spiral balance spring, even his portable timepieces were accurate to within a minute today,

making things like watches usable, really. So Jeremy Clarkson's clocks for reference are better than a second in 11 months, so it got a little while to go yet. In 1895, we had the invention of INVAR, which is an alloy of iron and nickel, in the very specific proportion of 64 to 36. Basically, it's useful because it barely expands when it's heated. Nobody seems to know why exactly,

but it makes it very useful for certain scientific instruments, including pendulums, because one of the big problems with keeping a regular oscillation, like a really regular oscillation with a pendulum, is heat, making the iron expand to track. So there were several very convoluted ways of getting around this before we had INVAR, some of them involving mercury or stabilising iron around it. Once they had INVAR, that was fantastic, brilliant, good.

So by the end of the 19th century, we had clocks that were attaining accuracy of a tenth per second per day. 1921, we had the short synocrome-free pendulum clock, which had about a second per year. So we're finally now up to Jeremy's standards by 1921 on Round World. But now, now, this is when we skid past him into the realm of what he's dreaming about. So we had 1928, the quartz crystal clock,

which was the biggest innovation since the pendulum. That was the next leap ahead. And I'm assuming that's something of the inspiration for the glass clock here, is this idea of the... I think so, and the time with teeth, the electricity thing, because a quartz crystal vibrates at a highly regular rate when you agitate it with an electric current, which is how it works. So you've got regular oscillation by doing that.

So by 1939, clocks at Royal Observatory varied about two thousands per second per day. By the end of World War II, it was a second every 30 years. So this just properly put a rocket up the backside of timekeeping technology. And then it was superseded. It's one of these snowballing technologies, I think. Yeah, once it gets more accurate, it then gets exponential.

Exponential, thank you. Finally, in the 1950s came the cesium beam atomic clock, which uses the resonant frequency of an atom. So the atom is the pendulum, which is weird as fuck to think about it. And that was such an accurate measurement that it just blew everything else out of the water and we redefined the second based on it,

because what we've been using, the kind of rotation of the Earth, whatever, was just fucking useless compared to this. So today, the average times of all these cesium atom clocks around the world give us the coordinated universal time, which is accurate to better than one nanosecond per day. Wow. It's your fucking millions of years to get out a minute. Like, it's ridiculous.

Yeah. Yeah, that's all right. And that's what Jeremy wants. Jeremy wants to have the next. Yeah. And we're still now looking at ways to increase the accuracy still further. Yeah, that is clock accuracy.

And will you tell us about something slightly less objective? Can we go into time? Shall we get, yeah. Let's get subjective. It's something I think this book does beautifully is in this intersection of the nature of time and the nature of storytelling. And it starts really early on with, you know,

this first when interaction on the first couple of pages and we get onto this, there is no time like the present. Yes. And that's kind of almost his moment of choosing to hold onto the present. And then it goes on to the next page that explains how the story works, that a story doesn't unwind at weaves and events that start in different places, different times, bear down on this one perfect moment in time and space. Yes.

And it's using the emperor who had no clothes as an example of, you know, if you go from there to there, then that's the story. Yeah. But if you go a bit further, it's the story of the boy who got a world's thrashing from his dad for being rude to royalty. We've talked before about kind of endings of stories, not being the endings, haven't we? No.

Yeah. And I think it's something really beautiful about the disc world because characters come in and out, they're revisited. Like we have a, you could have said there's nothing more to say about the witch's aftercarpe jugulum, but then we have an anyocameo here. Yeah. There aren't really, I mean, you have a full stop on a narrative, but then it can go anywhere after that.

Yeah. Yeah, several different places, yeah. Yeah. And we talked earlier about Zeno's Paradox, which is a callback to small gods again. And pyramids. And pyramids, yeah. And there's four paradoxes and there's such a thing as the smallest possible unit of time and it must exist because the present must have a length.

Thank you. You can remember things. Yeah. Well, that's another podcast episode I'll recommend for listeners. The Infinite Monkey Cage is, I think it was called, It's Time Real, something like that. But what's kind of hinted at in a lot of the storytelling stuff? It's fantastic because it's talking about storytelling,

but at the same time, it's talking about stuff like, what's the block universe theory and the static universe theory we've talked about before when we talked about time travel. That's what I'm trying to say. But yes, Pratchett is kind of hinting at that again around the sides of, but he's kind of anchored to storytelling instead, which is much cooler. Yeah, it's beautifully anchored storytelling. You have this idea of there would be no time for the present to be in. And so this book is finding the story in infinitely small units of time.

Those are those pinpoints of time where the story needs to get to or travel from. They're waypoints. And it gets really bringing you parallel just a few pages later when Susan's teaching the children about time and the girl she's trying to coax an answer out of comes out with, it's now everywhere. Yes, again, another philosophical slash physics crossover event. The old there.

What is now anyway? What is this concept? Does the past exist? Does the future exist? Does it matter? Does the present exist? And this young girl's philosophical answer is yes, the present exists, and that is what it is everywhere at all the times,

even though it's three hours ago in January. Yeah. I decided not to try and go into how daylight savings time works on the disc. Yeah, no, that's for the best. You're right, yep. And the only way you can kind of have this comprehension of these huge philosophical contexts ends up boiling down to fairy tales, which is a theme that comes up again and again,

especially when you've got like death and Susan. We talked about this in Hogfather of humans needing to believe the small lie is so they can believe the big ones grinding down the universe into dust and find a single atom of truth or justice. I'm butchering, obviously. They're quite terribly there. But you get to look at it through the lens of someone who doesn't really understand the context of stories.

You have Jeremy who doesn't need stories. He's never been interested in stories. He doesn't like fiction, apart from getting really annoyed at hickory dickory doc because the clock in the drawing was wrong, which is the sort of thing we would do. It is. I looked up that nursery rhyme and the nursery rhyme thing,

and it's not that interesting, so I didn't. Otherwise, I'd have sent you a picture of the page. Cool facts about murders there. No. I think it was just a way to teach about the passage of time or something like that, but not in any interesting way. I'll send you the picture. But yeah, so Jeremy's trying to read Grim Fairy Tales,

which, fun side note, I went into this. Patreon listeners who have heard my fairytale episode, who have heard me talk about this already, but they didn't write the fairytale so much as they were trying to make this very weirdly nationalistic collection of folktales specifically from the area they lived in. Obviously, these are different Grims. And Jeremy's only understanding of most of these fairytales,

like how the Wicked Queen danced in red hot shoes and the old lady in the oven, is that there's no clocks in any of them. Yeah, what the fuck is this? The authors seem to have a thing about not mentioning clocks. That is a lovely nod at just like, obviously, they also didn't have a thing about not mentioning clocks. It's just that once you've got a one track mind,

it seems ridiculous that other people don't. It's that fantastic single-mindedness, I love it. And then when he gets to the story of the glass clock of Bad Shoe Shine, and the explanation of the morality behind it is something, again, he's got no comprehension for, but the man is wicked because the readers can see so because it says he was wicked. And he's capturing time. And it goes into all these fun things you have when talking about

where time can be held onto, it can be saved, it can be slipped through your fingers. And so this whole purpose of the history monks becomes about playing with time and how it works based on the fact, you know, you can put a stitch in time. So they take the time that's wasted and put it where I can be used. And that's what the procrastinators become. Stealing a bit of time from a mountain to put it somewhere

where it makes a bit of difference. Talking, you mentioned earlier that moment with the procrastinators and this whole idea of the 40 years. And Lucy's answer is, of course, to dump it in the sea. And I like the idea of that was the thing about the sea. It always just stayed big and wet. That bit as well where it says like a fisherman might pull up something whiskery from the wrong era is apparently possibly a reference to

I forgot the name of the fucking thing now. But not that long ago, a couple decades ago, a fisherman brought up some fish that we'd only ever seen in millions of years old fossils before. And scientists were like, oh, that's still a thing, is it? Goodness. So yeah, that'll be a time dump. And that's why I am simultaneously fascinated

by and terrified of the incredibly deep parts of the oceans. So scary. So alien and weird and cool. I like also the unsettling nature of that story to the children. Because it's something that shouldn't be there, but death has kind of made sure it's there and seen by them. And yeah, it just makes them feel uncomfortable because the world has obviously been stitched up in this way.

But there's this little out of place almost uncanny valley, but in a story sense here. Well, yeah. So talking about the world being stitched up brings me on to my next thing, which is how beautifully this book works in conversation with all of the discworld that's come before it. It's a weird one because before we got to it, like I think I've only read this book a couple of times before it's one.

I don't think I've ever gone, oh, I fancy reading Thief of Time. And I think even though it's a Susan book, and obviously Susan's one of my very favorite characters, I think part of it is where it sits in the series. I mean, we just had the truth, and then we're coming up on like Amazing Morrison Night Watch, which are like those are all three of those books are in my top five. So this one gets a bit lost in the shuffle there.

But reading it this time and having to look at it closely, like it's fantastic. It's never one I'd recommend to a new reader, but if you really love discworld, there's so much in this. And it's almost like Terry Pratchett's using this book as a way to round out things and get stuff back out of the drawer and pay off like long running jokes. And so one of the things is this idea

that the universe has shattered and been put back together. And that's why you've got a medieval castle next to a much more modern building. Because the chronology of discworld is fucky. That's what we were talking about, trying to figure out where small gods happened and then it's 100 years before and the Omnion Church is now this. And what that means for a feed sort and pyramids.

And now it's justified in this book. Girl, time fell apart and it got stitched together a bit weirdly. Oh, you thought you saw continuity era, did you? Did you? Well, have you read Thief of Time? Yeah, that's yeah. No, which is great because it handwaves away. I mean, it doesn't matter that the books have continuity issues, they're fun books.

And of course, they're going to happen. But yes, it's very funny. And then there's so many other beautiful little moments that call back to stuff like we talked about, Lutzi coming from small gods in the Banzai Mountains, the Abbott and the whole reincarnation thing that comes from Mawr. This idea of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and one left before they got famous,

that's been referenced in earlier books. Yeah. Which also helped me because there is a very specific scene, I remember, of the horsemen supposed to ride out for an apocalypse and they get distracted at the pub. And I can't remember which discworld book it's from. I'm sure it's one we've covered already. Like fantastic, I think.

Is it like fantastic? I'm going to have to go back through the book and find the scene then. It was really... Because I knew A, the four horsemen had been referenced, but also the one that left before they got famous specifically had been referenced as a throwaway joke. Yes. And I really clearly remember that scene and couldn't find it.

And obviously looking it up, mostly the quotes are from this one. Psy Note does an interview with Terry Pratchett where he mentions narrativia as the kind of force that guides you writing a story. And he mentions Ronnie Soak as an example. It's like he just knew that Ronnie Soak was the correct name for this character. Yeah, there's a really, really nice bit in Rob's book where he talks about getting to this point in writing thief

because he was mostly taking dictation. So getting to certain points in thief of time, being like a jumping out of the chair, showing yes moment. Fantastic. But then other stuff in this book that calls back to earlier ones. When Susan's dealing with the headmistress of the school she's teaching at, it's like it's a call back to the opening of soul music where we first meet Susan dealing with the headmistress

and going invisible until the headmistress forgets she was there and walks away. And she does exactly, it almost exactly the same thing here, but with a bit more finesse. Yeah, she knows what's happening this time. Yeah, it's a lovely way to echo who she's become and put in those echoes from earlier books. You also have obviously the kids learning about the bogeyman is a nice little reference to the hogfather.

The bone rat still has his snet, snet, snet laugh, which is from soul music. And you have Susan's relationship to chocolate, which is very much the call back to Isabel. Oh yeah. And there's lines about, you know, her favorite dessert was death by chocolate. She was obsessed with chocolates and she'd read chocolates and the weepy stories of that she was finding in the diary room. And now Susan's got this very trying not to be like my mother

by restricting myself to one chocolate a day and not being indulgent though. And it's as much as, you know, she doesn't want to have the traits of her grandfather, father, but they keep coming through anyway. She's also got these traits of her human mother she's trying to suppress. Yes. Yeah, it's trying to suppress both parts of yourself. That's going to go well, isn't it? But that's why it's so beautifully done because it's not just, oh, this book is cool because it has a bunch of callbacks.

It's this book is cool because it uses everything that all those 25 books of Discworld Foundations to do really beautiful things with those callbacks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not just like fan service referencing. There was a couple of nice little Easter eggs that are just there to be Easter eggs, but mainly it's, yeah, it's pay off. Yeah, it's pay off for character development. You have the floral clock in the history monks. That's something from soul music as well.

There's a floral clock in Querm that Susan rushes past and the time is told on the flowers. I like the floral clock. I like the floral clock. But also the way of Mrs. Cosmopoulos was a throwaway joke that then gets filled out thoroughly here. Yes, because there are like a bunch of monks trying to learn offer or something, right? It is from which is abroad. It's a strange thing about determined seekers after wisdom that no matter where they happen to be, they'll always seek that wisdom, which is a long way off.

Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is. Hence, for example, the way of Mrs. Cosmopoulite, very popular among young people who live in the hidden valleys above the snowline in the high ram tops. There you go. Mrs. Marietta Cosmopoulite, a seamstress who also gets, and I don't know how intentional this is as a reference. So that's which is abroad, which did that come before or after Soul Music? I've forgotten the order now.

I think before. In Soul Music, it's Mrs. Cosmopoulite. They go and get a bunch of fabric from to make their cool rock star outfits. Oh, cool. So that's just a nice everything coming together. I feel like that's not an accident. No, surely not. But also it's a great name.

But yeah, it's what I really loved reading this book this time before I've always written off as like just not one of the best ones. And now it's like, oh, no, this is beautiful because it's like a love letter to all of the other books. And it's grabbed everything it can out of the out of the sort of junk drawer and has run away with it and thrown it up into little amazing storylines. Yeah. So it's not just thief of time. It's thief of everything throughout the time of Discworld.

Oh, very good, very good. Little magpie of a book. Yeah. And with that, Francine, have you got an obscure reference for Neil for me? Yeah, I'm going by someone's Reddit comment here. So you'll have to forgive me, guys. But the procrastinator whole, that whole scene of like trying to balance things this and the other, I felt had to have some kind of grounding in reality of some description.

Like it was too well realized for it to be just completely nothing. And I found a Reddit discussion about it. And there's an engineer who commented saying that the round world counterpart would be the power grid. Load refers to the load or energy requirement of a power grid, which is probably a reference to load balancing, because energy usage across an entire grid changes throughout the day. Ramping production up and down is usually expensive and slow, etc, etc.

Shedding a load is also a thing in the Discworld and on round world. And here we go. My favorite scene is the one where they regulate the speed at which the procrastinators are spinning. This is as close an analogy to frequency regulation as I can think of, which is kind of a balancing act within power station. And obviously Pratchett worked for power station. So it makes sense that he would know all about this stuff. And so I'll link to the articles about it and to that comment.

But yeah, power grid is the answer to what the fuck that was about. Awesome. Because I was looking for, I was also trying to look for like maybe, I don't know, some kind of game, some kind of whatever, because it was like a board with different color pieces. But then. Yeah, I thought it was a reference to like some kind of things placing stuff. And maybe it is as well. That was a fucking sentence.

Yeah. Yeah, it's probably both. There's no knowing Pratchett, but. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, cool. Okay, I think that's everything that we are going to say today on Thief of Time. That is correct.

We could say more, but I've made Francine talk for a very long time. We're not too bad. No, we're not too bad. We're more or less on track. We will be back with you next week to talk about part two of Thief of Time, which starts, where does it start? It starts on page 153 and in that timeless moment, the ghost of Mr. Shoblang. And it ends on page 282 with the clock struck one.

Time stopped. Clock struck one. Time stopped. No mouse filled. Sauce. Right. Before we break the causal nature of the universe, until next week, dear listener, you can find us on Instagram at the true show make you fret on Twitter at make you fret pod

on Facebook at the true show make you fret. Join our subreddit community r slash t t s m y f. Give us things to follow up on that we'll remember halfway through the episode. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, and pendulums to the true show make you fret pod at gmail.com. And if you'd like to support us financially, go to patreon.com forward slash the true show make you fret and exchange your hard earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. Francine's just on a fantastic two parts so far on the history of the printing press.

Very fun. Very print. Very fun. And until next time, dear listener. Don't let us detain you. Oh, I've got so much leftovers to eat. So I'm going to eat. I've got leftover Chinese food and I've also got leftover

beans stew, I think. So those are two quite different things. I probably won't eat both of them, but I'll make it. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't combine those, personally. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.