A Slip of the Keyboard Read online

  I wouldn’t have expected that even from the Daily Mail.

  Thursday

  Right now we are sitting in the Chapel, which is covered with stacks of books that must be signed and sent to New Orleans post haste, and still the e-mails and letters are coming in and we are getting requests from countries around the world to talk about the documentary.

  Not quite sure about that.

  I would like to see carefully controlled assisted dying available in the U.K., which is why I helped fund a commission of the great and the good who have an open mind on the subject and a working knowledge of the mechanics and expectations of this country, to see whether sensible arrangements should be put in place that would be acceptable to the population at large, so that in the fullness of time stricken people who do not wish to be prisoners of their disease can at least die with dignity in their own country.

  But when the British government is unresponsive, then individual citizens must try to move things along and, for now, we are going to write a book, and it’s not about death.

  Friday

  Last night the BBC’s Question Time was held in Scotland and, of course, the issue came up. Not so long ago I recall another BBC Question Time in Scotland, where the issue was raised and got some very short shrift.

  This time the panel, while not all on side, spoke carefully and thoughtfully to a very respectful audience which seemed, for the most part, to be open-minded on the subject. The world changes, but slowly.

  AND FINALLY …

  TERRY PRATCHETT’S WILD UNATTACHED FOOTNOTES TO LIFE

  Space (at the) Bar, A Compute for Charity magazine. Compiled by Octarine (Science Fiction and Fantasy Humour Appreciation Society), 1 July 1990 (Hull)

  ANTIPASTA (inspired by seeing it on an italian menu)

  Possibly the greatest, and certainly the most expensive, food in the world. You need a massive particle accelerator and enough electricity to power Greater London just to make one plateful of antipasta because, like all antimatter, it travels backwards through time. Normal pasta is made several hours before you eat it; antipasta is made several hours after you’ve eaten it. If correctly timed, both can be made to appear on your fork at the same moment, resulting in the inevitable taste explosion. In fact, most of the expense involved in the creation of antipasta is due to the cost of cleaning all the tomato sauce off the walls afterwards.

  SIR THOMAS CRAPPER

  Everyone knows that Sir Thomas Crapper invented the first practical, efficient flush lavatory (star of the Great Exhibition of 1851) and thus gave his name to the device and, eventually, the verb and associated noun. The strange thing is that what everyone knows is wrong. “Crap” and its various derivations date back to the sixteenth century (one name for a privy was a “crapping castle”). So it follows that if Thomas Crapper existed, he must have had a really bad time of it at school, and realized that he had no alternative but to enter hydraulic engineering and at least make sure that crappers were efficient. Strange but true.

  BEAU TRAP (early nineteenth-century slang, probably originating in Bath)

  Now, at last, a word for something that really needs a name. Almost every street in these Thatcherite days has, somewhere along its length, a paving stone which has come loose so that rainwater can get underneath. And when you tread on it, tips up and pumps half a litre of rainwater up your trouser. This is a beau trap.

  THINGS TO ORDER LOUDLY IN RESTAURANTS

  1) Liver with bigger tubes

  2) Whitebait with extra eyes

  3) Smorgasbord with the tops on.

  BARRY NORMAL’S GUIDE TO STRANGE JOBS IN HOLLYWOOD

  #1. The man who reverses big lorries out of side streets during the big car-chase scene (you know … usually the hero manages to steer round it and the villains hilariously have the tops of their heads removed as their car goes under it).

  It was not realized until 1988 that this is not only the same lorry but the same driver on the same delivery round.

  “ ’S’not my fault,” said Hiram Kaputnik, 47. “Some of the places they want I should deliver to, there’s no way I can three-point turn there. I got commendations for careful driving. It’s just that I back out and two cars come down the next alley at 90 mph, what am I supposed to do? If I’ve had the underseal redone once, it’s been done fifty times.”

  Strangely enough, Mr. Kaputnik’s father and uncle spent a lot of time in Hollywood during the 1920s trying to deliver one sheet of plate glass by hand. And why not?

  About the Author

  Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Color of Magic, was published in 1983. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen; he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, and was awarded a knighthood for services to literature.

  For more information about Terry Pratchett and his books, please visit www.terrypratchett.com