A Slip of the Keyboard Read online

  So last night I walked into the theatre like Wyatt Earp on a deceptively quiet street in Tombstone, my finger already on the trigger. And what I found is this: Nation is pretty good. You still have to pay attention, but according to the chief spy, attention has been made a lot easier. Cox, the chief villain, has an unnecessary back story, in my opinion; in the book he is a vicious psychopath, almost a force of nature. I wanted him to be not a two-dimensional but a one-dimensional character, evil incarnate. There were one or two places where the laws of narrative demand their due; if you’re going to have a young Victorian girl sawing off somebody’s leg during a musical number it’s pretty important that the audience can understand why this is happening. And refugees arriving at a hospitable island after terrible suffering really should look close to death—which segues neatly into the amputation problem. And in my experience the ending needs approximately another twenty words of dialogue to make a complex and very delicate scene come into focus. All this being said at length, I couldn’t help but love it. It isn’t my book. The medium changes things. Nation the book whispers where Nation the play shouts; this is because the book has to reach your eyeballs, while the play has to reach the back of the theatre, and making things louder also makes them different. Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage. In the book there is time to make certain that the reader, or even the reviewer, understands the difference between the grandfathers, the departed elders of the tribe, and the grandfather birds, vulture-like scavengers. In the play they collide, but not on the whole badly. In all fairness to Mark Ravenhill (the adaptor), to fully realize Nation on stage would probably require a performance of Wagnerian proportions, and much, sadly, had to go. As it is, it could be honed further to helpful effect, and I, who came prepared to be appalled, found myself charmed by it. The house was two thirds full, which would seem to me not too bad for a Wednesday. People sobbed, gasped, cheered and cried, and all moreover in the right places, as it dawned on me that what I was watching was, in a very strange way, a Victorian melodrama for the twenty-first century.

  I spoke to a great many people after the show, because I signed a great many autographs, and heard nothing but good things. Even the older couple who vouchsafed to me that they thought there was a bit that they had not “got,” seemed quite happy that the idea had been there to be got, even if they personally hadn’t got it.

  And no theatre in the country would have been ashamed of the tsunami of applause. It is not my job to be a shill for the National. Remember the author doesn’t get the blame. It could listen more, and earlier, and I must admit that we had an amicable conversation subsequently about further small tweaks to aid understanding and prevent confusion, so possibly I am not entirely useless. But the cast were great, and it is recognizably Nation, even if slightly out of breath. I will go back to see it again—probably more than once.

  DOCTOR WHO?

  Honorary degree acceptance speech, University of Portsmouth, 2001

  Nine times so far British universities have suffered short bouts of insanity during which they have awarded me honorary degrees as a Doctor of Letters.

  It’s now a tradition that I return the compliment and some suitable member of the faculty gets a degree from Unseen University (plus a badge and rather nifty UU scarf). It gets a laugh and a picture in the papers and everyone seems to enjoy it. I used to do the oration in Latin, or the Discworld equivalent, which coincidentally looks like very bad Latin, but it had to be very bad indeed before most people “got it”; Jack Cohen at Warwick University got his for “habeum tonsorius per Alberto Einstineum.”

  This one, from the happy day in Portsmouth, was how the English ones go.

  Vice-chancellor, venerable staff, guests, students, and graduates, I hope that no one will take it amiss when I say that what we are in fact doing today is celebrating ignorance. Ignorance is generally an unregarded talent among humans, but we are in fact the only animal that knows how to do it properly. We’ve got where we are today by starting out ignorant.

  It wasn’t always like this. A few thousand years ago, we knew everything—how the world began, what it was for, our place in it … everything. It was all there, in the stories the old men told around the fire or had written down in a big book. No more questions, everything sorted out.

  But now we know that there’s vast amounts of things that, well, we simply don’t know. Universities have made great efforts in this area. Think about how it works: you arrive at university, the gleam still on your A levels, and you’ve pretty well got it all sussed. Then the first thing they tell you—well, the second thing, obviously, because they have to tell you where the toilets are and so on—is that what you’ve learned so far is not so much the truth as a way of looking at things. And after three years or so you’ve learned there’s a huge amount that you don’t know yet, and that’s when they give you a scroll and push you out. Ignorance is a wonderful thing—it’s the state you have to be in before you can really learn anything.

  Well done for surviving and thank you, Vice-chancellor, on behalf of the graduates, and also on behalf of myself.

  I’m not quite sure why you’ve given me a Doctorate of Letters. Certainly the biggest service I have performed for literature is to deny on every suitable occasion that I write it but, nevertheless, I am honoured. I suspect the award has really been for persistence. I have been writing Discworld books for the better part of two decades. They have, I hope, brought pleasure to millions, and it almost seems unfair to say that at least they’ve brought fun and money to one. They’ve taken me around the world a dozen times, I’ve had a species of turtle (an extinct species, I’m afraid) named after me, and I think I’ve signed more than three hundred thousand books; I’ve even done a signing in the middle of a rain forest in Borneo and three people turned up—four if you include, as you should do, the orangutan.

  But I’ve always wondered what life would have been like if a convenient journalistic job hadn’t opened up on our local paper and I had gone on to university instead. I’m sure I would have enjoyed the cheap beer. On the other hand, that was in the late sixties, and as we know from our politicians the only thing you were sure of learning at university in the sixties was how not to inhale, so maybe I made the right choice. After all, now I have my degree, which I believe means I’m allowed to throw my hat into the air, something I’ve always wanted to do. Once again, many thanks to all of you from all of them and all of me. Thank you—and now for a small but important change in your advertised programme.

  I said I did not go to university but I have since made up for it by owning one. Unseen University as the premier college for wizards came into being about eighteen years ago in the very first Discworld book and seems to be becoming more real every day. And since I have some influence there, I have prevailed upon the Archchancellor to allow me to perform a little reciprocal ceremony to celebrate the bond between our two great seats of learning. So … forward, please, Professor Michael Page.

  Although he is far too thin to be a real wizard, Michael has nevertheless impressed me by having a sense of humour while nevertheless being an accountant, an achievement of such magnitude that it most certainly earns him an honorary degree in magic. In order to make him a member of Unseen University, of course, he must don … the official hat … the official scarf, with the University’s crest … and the Octagonal badge worn by all alumni. There … you are now, professor, causas diabolici volentus, an honorary Bachelor of Fluencing. Due to a lack of foresight this does means that you will have to have the letters BF after your name, but that is a small price, I am sure you will agree, to pay for greatness.

  Thank you very much, Vice-chancellor, ladies, and gentlemen.

  A WORD ABOUT HATS

  Sunday Telegraph Review, 8 July 2001

  I like hats, particularly the black wide-brimmed Louisianas which most people think are ca
lled fedoras. Coming as I do from a family where the males go bald around twenty-five, I prefer to have more than a thickness of bone between my brain and God.

  The article says it all, and got commissioned merely because of a remark I made to a journalist at a party. You’d think there was something funny about hats.

  I was obviously very upset when my hat was kidnapped. You hear such stories. Was it going to be chained to a radiator? Would I get a photo of it holding a newspaper? Or—terrible thought—would it side with its captors and refuse to leave them? I think that’s called the Stockholm syndrome, although the Swedes aren’t hugely famous for hats.

  So I just paid up with a cheque for £75 to the student Rag Day charity, which was the object of the whole exercise. The dreadful drama was over in ten minutes, and I didn’t even get an opportunity to speak to the hat on the telephone.

  I got the big black hat back and was, once again, myself.

  I like hats. They give me something to do with my head.

  In my family the men go bald in their twenties, to get it over with. It stops it coming as a nasty shock later in life. But it means that there’s nothing there to absorb all those bumps and scratches that the hairy people never even notice. The modern remedy is a baseball cap. A baseball cap? I’d sooner eat worms.

  I spotted the first big black hat in a shop called Billie Jean in Walcot Street, Bath, back in the late eighties. There it was, on a shelf. It was everything I wanted in a hat although, up until that point, I hadn’t realized that I did, in fact, want a hat.

  It was black, of course, and wide brimmed, and quite tough, and flexible enough to hold a decent curve once I’d done a bit of work with a steaming kettle.

  Sometimes you see something and you just have to go for it.

  Since then I must have owned about ten of them, all identical to the inexpert eye. All right, I’ll own up: when I was a kid I remember being impressed by John Steed of The Avengers opening a wardrobe door to reveal, disappearing into the distance, apparently endless lines of bowler hats and furled umbrellas. That taught me something. If you’re going to be serious about hats, you can’t have just one.

  Some, after a decent airing, have been donated to charity auctions or used as competition prizes (“Win Terry Pratchett’s Hat!”). One is the proud possession of my Czech translator. One just died. It was one of the best ones—thin felt that looked like velvet, a perfect fit, and as black as the ace of spades. It was like wearing a head glove. Never found another one like it. Took me a year to get it exactly as I wanted it, and two years to wear it out.

  No two hats are alike. Every hat has its own character. All confirmed hat wearers know this. I’ve got a heavy felt stunt hat, useful if I’m doing a school visit where half the class are probably going to end up trying it on, a quality hat for those select occasions, and some suitably rugged ones for signing tours. A black fedora or Louisiana wouldn’t do for Australia, though, where I prefer an Akubra Territory, the largest hat they do short of a sombrero. If you look closely you can still see where the koala bear pissed on it.

  When I became an officially famous author, the black hat became a kind of trademark. It wasn’t on purpose, but photographers liked it. “One with the hat on, please,” they’d say. And you always do what the photographer wants, don’t you? And so the hat—sorry, the Hat—turned up in PR photos and I was stuck with it. It became me, according to all the photographs.

  For that reason, people assume that I should be wearing it all the time. “Where’s your hat?” is the demand when I’m signing in a shop, as if people aren’t sure who this little bearded bald guy is unless the Hat confers the official personality. Readers want to be photographed with me at bookshop events, and that’s fine and part of the whole business, but I just know that as the camera is elevated they’ll give that little gasp of realization and “with the hat, of course.”

  There have been a couple of foiled attempts at hat theft.

  Then there was the hat stretching. I bought a new hat for a tour last year. It turned out to be on the tight side, and I had foolishly not brought the spare hat. But a wonderful bookshop in the town of St. Neots had once been a gentleman’s outfitters and there, on a high shelf, was a Victorian hat-stretching engine. No bookstore should be without one. They kindly racked the hat in front of the crowd while I signed the books. I believe that some people thought it was a way of forcing me to sign.

  People ask me if I feel naked without my hat. The answer is no. I feel naked without, say, my trousers, but if you walk down the street without wearing a hat, the police take very little interest at all. But, yes … I’ve grown very attached to the hat, over the years.

  Aha, people say, it’s like some kind of prop, right? A magic mask? You think you become a real person when you put your hat on? You are the hat, right?

  And that just goes to show why people shouldn’t go around saying “Aha” and getting their psychology from bad movies. No, I don’t become a real person with the hat on. I become an unreal person with the hat on. There’s this man who’s sold twenty-five million books and goes on huge and gruelling signing tours and has seen the inside of too many hotel rooms. He’s the one under the hat. It’s tough under there, and sometimes the hat has to come off.

  The hat’s an antidisguise, one that you remove in order to be unrecognized. It’s amazing. It works beautifully. Without the hat I can join the huge fraternity of bald men with glasses, and amble around the place without people looking hard at me and saying, “You’re you, aren’t you? Here, could you sign this for my wife? She won’t believe me when I tell her.” It’s not that I mind that stuff, but sometimes a man just wants to go out to buy a tube of glue and some spanners.

  Without the hat I can leave home without a pen.

  Without the hat, in fact, I can be myself.

  A TWIT AND A DREAMER

  On school days, scabby knees, first jobs, frankincense, Christmas robots, beloved books, and other off-duty thoughts

  THE BIG STORE

  Programme for Bob Eaton’s stage adaptation of Truckers, March 2002

  It’s all true. Even so, I doubt that I could get across the real magic of that first visit to a big store. This was a pre-TV age, at least for anyone on a working man’s wage. Nothing had prepared me for all that colour and sound, those endless, endless racks of toys, those lights. The visit etched its pictures in my head.

  Truckers started to be written when I was four or five years old.

  My mother took me up to London to do some Christmas shopping. Picture the scene: I lived in a village of maybe twenty houses. We had no electricity and shared a tap with the house next door. And suddenly there I was in London, before Christmas, in a large department store called Gamages. I can remember it in colours so bright that I’m surprised that the light doesn’t shine out of my ears. If I close my eyes I can still hear the rattling sound the canvas clouds made as they were rather unsteadily rolled past the “aeroplane” in the toy department. It was “flying” us kids to see Father Christmas. I can’t remember him, of course. It would be like trying to remember the face of God.

  Later, drunk with sensory input, I got lost. My frantic mother found me going up and down on the escalators, looking at the coloured lights with my mouth open.

  Nothing much happened for thirty-five years or so, and then I wrote Truckers: small people in a huge department store that they believe is the whole world. I think my hands on the keyboard were wired directly back to that five-year-old head. I remember the mystery of everything, and pretty much everything is a mystery at that age. Nothing made sense and everything was amazing.

  That is what it was like for the nomes, trying to find the meaning of the universe in their indoor world without a map. What is “Everything Must Go” telling you? And “Dogs and Pushchairs must be Carried’? In order to understand what they mean, you have to, well, know what they mean. Of course, most of us are brought up by people who help us fill in the gaps, but the nomes have to work it out f
or themselves, and get it gloriously wrong. They achieve impossible things because no one has told them they can’t be done.

  Diggers and Wings followed shortly, and completed the trilogy, and by then I was in charge. But the first book was written entirely for the kid on the moving stairs.

  (There are different kinds of fantasies, of course. Six years ago a Russian translator told me how hard it would be to translate the book. I said: surely Russian children don’t find it too hard to believe in little people? She said: that’s not the problem. The problem is making them believe in a store stuffed with merchandise.)

  ROUNDHEAD WOOD, FORTY GREEN

  Playground Memories, Childhood Memories Chosen by the Famous in Support of Elangeni Middle School and Chestnut Lane Lower School, Amersham, ed. Nick Gammage, 1996

  Forty Green is near High Wycombe, in the Chilterns. I lived there when I was at primary school, and it was there that I learned how to spit, how to live with scabby knees, and how to run away. My parents were wonderful—they were parents who wouldn’t mind taking you out of school for the day to go to Lyme Regis in search of fossils. Once we went to a place called Church Cliff, and my dad brought a bucket—you could pick up winkles. We put lots of winkles in the back of the car—it didn’t fall over, which was good, and when we got home, we gave some to all the neighbours. I got to enjoy being a boy, living in Forty Green.

  My favourite play area was—it still is—called Roundhead Wood, although it has fewer trees and more barbed wire now. And here four or five of us roared around like some screaming multilegged animal, building camps, climbing trees, riding bikes around the little chalk pit in the middle, and growing up a little bit more every day. It stood for every woodland, every jungle, and, eventually, the surface of alien worlds. And you could hear your mum if she called.