Discworld Notes

8/12/2019 Discworld Notes

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One for sorrow, two for mirth,

Three for a funeral, four for a birth,

Five to let go, six to hold,

Seven for a secret never to be told.

Eight for shine and nine for rain,Ten for health, eleven for pain.

Twelve for a road to reap what’s sown,

Thirteen’s luck is the devil’s own.

Fourteen squawk in voices rusted,

“Mislaid miscahnce unmistrusted.”

[1] Except in very small universes.

[2] Mostly involving big, big beachballs.

[3] Quite an overrated activity.

[4] An edge witch is one who makes her living on the edges, in that moment

when boundary conditions apply - between life and death, light and dark,

good and evil and, most dangerously of all, today and tomorrow.

[5] But they still use forks, or, at least, the idea of forks. There may, as the philosopher says, be no spoon, although this begs the question of why there is

the idea of soup.

[6] And the story continues: The novice who had protested that it was only

the shrine of a sweeper ran away from the temple, the student who said

nothing remained a sweeper for the rest of his life, and the student who had

seen the inevitable shape of the story went, after much agonizing and several

months of meticulous sweeping, to Lu-Tze and knelt and asked to be shownthe Right Way. Whereupon the Sweeper took him to the dojo of the Tenth

Djim. with its terrible multi-bladed fighting machines and its fearsome

serrated weapons such as the clong-clong and the uppsi. The story runs that

the Sweeper then opened a cupboard at the back of the dojo and produced a

broom and spake thusly: 'One hand here and the other here, understand?

People never get it right. Use good, even strokes and let the broom do most

of the work. Never try to sweep up a big pile, you'll end up sweeping every

bit of dust twice. Use your dustpan wisely, and remember: a small brush for

the corners.'



[7] One reason for this was the club food. At his club, a gentleman could find

the kind of food he'd got used to at school, like spotted dick, jam roly-poly

and that perennial favourite, stodge and custard. Vitamins are eaten by wives.

[8] Which is much harder than seeing things that aren't there. Everyone doesthat.

[9] This is true. A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as

chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that

determined that food eaten while walking contains no calories.

[10] Not 'Did' anything, just 'Did'. Some things were Done, and some things

were Not Done. And the things that were Done, Igors Did.

[11] Igors were loyal, but they were not stupid. A job was a job. When an

employer had no further use for your services, for example because he'd just

been staked through the heart by a crowd of angry villagers, it was time to

move on before they decided that you ought to be on the next stake. An Igor

soon learned a secret way out of any castle and where to stash an overnight

bag. In the words of one of the founding Igors: 'We belong dead? Ecthcuthe

me? Where doeth it thay ..we"?

[12] And it has to be said that there was nothing intrinsically evil about Igors

themselves. They just didn’t pass judgement on other people. Admittedly, that

was because if you worked for werewolves and vampires and people who

looked on surgery as modern art rather than science, passing judgement

would mean you'd never have time to get anything done.

[13] Every society needs a cry like that, but only in a very few do they comeout with the complete, unvarnished version, which is

'Remember-the-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-

Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-the-Atrocity-That-We're-About-to-Commit-To

day! And So On! Hurrah!'

[14] The yeti of the Ramtops, where the Discworld's magical field is so

intense that it is part of the very landscape, are one of the few creatures to

utilize control of personal time for genetic advantage. The result is a kind of physical premonition - you find out what is going to happen next by allowing



it to happen. Faced with danger, or any kind of task that involves risk of

death, a yeti will save its life up to that point and then proceed with all due

caution, yet in the comfortable knowledge that should everything go

pancake-shaped, it will wake up at the point where it saved itself with, and

this is the important part, knowledge of the events which have just happened but which will not now happen because it's not going to be such a damn

fool next time. This is not quite the paradox it appears because, after it has

taken place, it hasn't happened. All that actually remains is a memory in the

yeti's head, which merely turns out to be a remarkably accurate premonition.

The little eddies in time caused by all this are just lost in the noise of all the

kinks, dips and knots put in time by every other living creature.

[15] But not tasteful.

[16] Teaching small children for any length of time can do this to a

vocabulary.

[17] Up to ten dollars a pound, usually.

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