One of my favourite authors passed away the other week. Terry Pratchett's books have been a huge part of my life growing up - not just as hugely entertaining and beautifully crafted stories, but as a world that has genuinely helped to make me the person I am today.
I always enjoyed reading from a very early age. I particularly loved the Chronicles of Narnia, Willard Price's adventure series, and series such as Animorphs and Goosebumps. Around the time I was approaching the end of primary school I was looking for something new to read, and my Mum recommended Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell trilogy - Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny & the Dead, and Johnny & the Bomb. I don't remember a huge amount about them (I haven't read them since), but I remember thoroughly enjoying them, and one of them had what I still hold to be the best running joke in any book I've ever read ("dinner, dinner, dinner..."). Once I'd finished them I moved on to the Bromeliad trilogy (Truckers, Diggers and Wings), which was also a fantastic series of books, about a community of nomes trying to find their home. Both series were perfect for younger readers, but by the time I finished them I was ready for something a bit more mature. I had borrowed the last two Bromeliad books from the high school library, and every time I'd been in there I'd seen the slightly daunting array of Discworld books sat on the shelves next to them.
Rather than read them in order to begin with, I went first for Witches Abroad, I think probably just because I liked the cover. I fell completely in love with the story, which was a parody of various fairytales as well as a story about the power of stories themselves. It also had a brief throwaway passage in which a vampire is hit by a "ballistic garlic sausage" and then caught by Nanny Ogg's evil cat Greebo - "It seemed to Greebo's small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn't having any of that from a mouse with wings on...". I can remember reading that passage in the changing rooms waiting for my Friday night swimming lesson and not being able to stop laughing. My Dad was there with me, and after that he started to get into the Discworld books too.
After Witches Abroad, I couldn't get enough of the Discworld. I borrowed them from the library to begin with and read them voraciously at home, in school, and wherever I could. One Christmas Dad bought me a whole load of the ones I hadn't read, including several of the earlier ones, and knowing that I had so many weeks or months of reading to look forward to was the best present I could possibly have had. Other series I'd only really read before bed, on holiday, or when I could have a lie in at the weekends - Pratchett's books were the first where I was actively finding time to sit and read, and choosing to do so over watching television or playing computer games. I even got on better with some of my teachers because I learned that they were Discworld fans.
Like with Witches Abroad, the Discworld books were great because they took stories that were already well known, went back to the deepest, darkest roots of those stories, and then re-crafted them around the world and characters that Pratchett had created. Like Neil Gaiman, Pratchett always had a beautiful understanding of what it was about a story that makes it so memorable. He knew what parts could be messed with and was able to do so in a way that was both sharply satirical and deeply respectful. The nature of stories even became a part of the magic of his universe - Pratchett referred to this as 'narrative causality', meaning that in certain situations something would have to happen because that's how the story goes. Million-to-one shots will always hit their mark, and a wheel will always roll out of a flaming wreckage.
One day in my early high school years, I was out shopping in Norwich and went into an interesting looking, vaguely hippy type shop in the Royal Arcade. Whilst there, I noticed in a display cabinet a number of resin models that were undeniably characters from the Discworld. Most of them were massively more expensive than my pocket money would allow, but I spotted some smaller pewter models and bought a few more recognisable ones (I think it was the Librarian and the Luggage), and took them home to show my Dad. They turned out to be part of a large range of collectible models by a company called Clarecraft, and Dad and I both quickly fell in love with them.
I always enjoyed reading from a very early age. I particularly loved the Chronicles of Narnia, Willard Price's adventure series, and series such as Animorphs and Goosebumps. Around the time I was approaching the end of primary school I was looking for something new to read, and my Mum recommended Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell trilogy - Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny & the Dead, and Johnny & the Bomb. I don't remember a huge amount about them (I haven't read them since), but I remember thoroughly enjoying them, and one of them had what I still hold to be the best running joke in any book I've ever read ("dinner, dinner, dinner..."). Once I'd finished them I moved on to the Bromeliad trilogy (Truckers, Diggers and Wings), which was also a fantastic series of books, about a community of nomes trying to find their home. Both series were perfect for younger readers, but by the time I finished them I was ready for something a bit more mature. I had borrowed the last two Bromeliad books from the high school library, and every time I'd been in there I'd seen the slightly daunting array of Discworld books sat on the shelves next to them.
Rather than read them in order to begin with, I went first for Witches Abroad, I think probably just because I liked the cover. I fell completely in love with the story, which was a parody of various fairytales as well as a story about the power of stories themselves. It also had a brief throwaway passage in which a vampire is hit by a "ballistic garlic sausage" and then caught by Nanny Ogg's evil cat Greebo - "It seemed to Greebo's small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn't having any of that from a mouse with wings on...". I can remember reading that passage in the changing rooms waiting for my Friday night swimming lesson and not being able to stop laughing. My Dad was there with me, and after that he started to get into the Discworld books too.
After Witches Abroad, I couldn't get enough of the Discworld. I borrowed them from the library to begin with and read them voraciously at home, in school, and wherever I could. One Christmas Dad bought me a whole load of the ones I hadn't read, including several of the earlier ones, and knowing that I had so many weeks or months of reading to look forward to was the best present I could possibly have had. Other series I'd only really read before bed, on holiday, or when I could have a lie in at the weekends - Pratchett's books were the first where I was actively finding time to sit and read, and choosing to do so over watching television or playing computer games. I even got on better with some of my teachers because I learned that they were Discworld fans.
Like with Witches Abroad, the Discworld books were great because they took stories that were already well known, went back to the deepest, darkest roots of those stories, and then re-crafted them around the world and characters that Pratchett had created. Like Neil Gaiman, Pratchett always had a beautiful understanding of what it was about a story that makes it so memorable. He knew what parts could be messed with and was able to do so in a way that was both sharply satirical and deeply respectful. The nature of stories even became a part of the magic of his universe - Pratchett referred to this as 'narrative causality', meaning that in certain situations something would have to happen because that's how the story goes. Million-to-one shots will always hit their mark, and a wheel will always roll out of a flaming wreckage.
One day in my early high school years, I was out shopping in Norwich and went into an interesting looking, vaguely hippy type shop in the Royal Arcade. Whilst there, I noticed in a display cabinet a number of resin models that were undeniably characters from the Discworld. Most of them were massively more expensive than my pocket money would allow, but I spotted some smaller pewter models and bought a few more recognisable ones (I think it was the Librarian and the Luggage), and took them home to show my Dad. They turned out to be part of a large range of collectible models by a company called Clarecraft, and Dad and I both quickly fell in love with them.
We used to seek out the shops that stocked them to see if we could find some of the rarer pieces (inevitably these shops would be wonderful little quirky places that we would never have found otherwise, of the sort that would also sell gemstones and incense and books about tarot cards). Around the same time, my brother started collecting Pocket Dragons which would often be on sale in the same shops, so the three of us would go out together with our own mental list of what we were looking for. Dad found out where the factory was and would take me there on tours, which would culminate in a paint-your-own section where we could spend a couple of hours painting the colour into our favourite characters and personalising them a little to our own imaginations.
Clarecraft also ran annual conventions, closely tied in with the Discworld fan community, which Dad and I went to for several years. As well as whole tents for painting the figures, there would be various events culminating in the Masquerade, in which prizes would be given to people who had brought the best Discworld costume. One man in particular would always go all out, and my memory of his colossal Detritus the troll costume, complete with glowing eyes, was one of the things that inspired my own love of elaborate fancy dress. Pratchett himself turned up every year to do book signings and judge the contests, along with other Discworld personalities like Stephen Briggs, who wrote the Discworld plays, and Paul Kidby, the illustrator who created the books' cover art after the death of the brilliant Josh Kirby. There was also Terry's secretary Rob, who legend has it was a former MI6 agent and an Olympic standard rifleman.
At one of these events we met Bernard Pearson, the founder of Clarecraft, who had a shop in Wincanton called the Discworld Emporium where he sold all sorts of Discworld merchandise. Dad and Bernard got on well together, and we went to visit him and his shop a number of times - Bernard actually took us to the pub and bought me my first ever pint on one of these visits. He had a little studio at the back of his shop and would let me sit in there to paint some of his models while he and Dad discussed work. Bernard was the sort of person who loved collaborating with people with different skill-sets, and he ended up commissioning my Dad (a graphic designer) to create a set of Discworld stamps which were used on the inside of the front cover of Going Postal, a book about the re-establishment of the Ankh Morpork postal service.
Clarecraft also ran annual conventions, closely tied in with the Discworld fan community, which Dad and I went to for several years. As well as whole tents for painting the figures, there would be various events culminating in the Masquerade, in which prizes would be given to people who had brought the best Discworld costume. One man in particular would always go all out, and my memory of his colossal Detritus the troll costume, complete with glowing eyes, was one of the things that inspired my own love of elaborate fancy dress. Pratchett himself turned up every year to do book signings and judge the contests, along with other Discworld personalities like Stephen Briggs, who wrote the Discworld plays, and Paul Kidby, the illustrator who created the books' cover art after the death of the brilliant Josh Kirby. There was also Terry's secretary Rob, who legend has it was a former MI6 agent and an Olympic standard rifleman.
At one of these events we met Bernard Pearson, the founder of Clarecraft, who had a shop in Wincanton called the Discworld Emporium where he sold all sorts of Discworld merchandise. Dad and Bernard got on well together, and we went to visit him and his shop a number of times - Bernard actually took us to the pub and bought me my first ever pint on one of these visits. He had a little studio at the back of his shop and would let me sit in there to paint some of his models while he and Dad discussed work. Bernard was the sort of person who loved collaborating with people with different skill-sets, and he ended up commissioning my Dad (a graphic designer) to create a set of Discworld stamps which were used on the inside of the front cover of Going Postal, a book about the re-establishment of the Ankh Morpork postal service.
Dad even went to Pratchett's house at one point for a meeting, which was tremendously exciting. The pictures on the stamps were drawn by my Dad's old illustrator friend Alan Batley, who Bernard also commissioned to make an Unseen University cutout book. In one of the Discworld novels, there is a reference to a wall at the back of the University where students have carved their names over the years, and Alan included mine and my Dad's names on that wall, almost making me part of the Discworld universe. That was something I am hugely proud of and grateful for.
Unfortunately Dad and Bernard fell out not long after the UU cutout book was released, but the Discworld stamps still turn up on eBay every now and then and some of the rarer ones have sold for quite a lot of money. My Dad has since then started making his own cinderella stamps (i.e. stamps made purely for artistic and collectible purposes, with no postage value), and has become quite well respected in the philately community for the quality and detail of his work.
Since the Clarecraft factory closed and Dad and Bernard parted ways we've drifted away from the Discworld community a bit, but we still bought and read the new books as they came out and we were as saddened as Pratchett's other legions of fans to hear of his alzheimers. The work that he did to raise awareness of the disease in his later years was hugely admirable, even if he did look a little out of place on that advert singing I'll Get By With a Little Help From My Friends with the likes of Simon Pegg and Lily Allen (prior to his diagnosis he had also done a lot of fundraising for the Orang-Utan Foundation, which I also used to respect him for).
I was on the train on my way back to Norwich for Mother's Day weekend when I heard of Pratchett's death. I picked up my old copy of Hogfather while I was there to read on the train on the way back to Birmingham, and despite the fact that I hardly ever get time to just sit and read nowadays, I found that I was as unable to put it down as I was 12 years or so ago when I first picked it up.
Pratchett's books, and the devoted community of people who came together to celebrate their love of them, were a bigger influence on me than any other book, film, musician or TV program before or since. They helped me bond with my family, especially my wonderful Dad, and informed my love of reading, fantasy, art, costumes and comedy. I literally don't know who or where I would be if I had never discovered them. And I know that there are hundreds of other people out there that have been just as affected by them as I have.
As Death says in Hogfather, "HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE."
RIP Sir Terry. You were awesome.
Since the Clarecraft factory closed and Dad and Bernard parted ways we've drifted away from the Discworld community a bit, but we still bought and read the new books as they came out and we were as saddened as Pratchett's other legions of fans to hear of his alzheimers. The work that he did to raise awareness of the disease in his later years was hugely admirable, even if he did look a little out of place on that advert singing I'll Get By With a Little Help From My Friends with the likes of Simon Pegg and Lily Allen (prior to his diagnosis he had also done a lot of fundraising for the Orang-Utan Foundation, which I also used to respect him for).
I was on the train on my way back to Norwich for Mother's Day weekend when I heard of Pratchett's death. I picked up my old copy of Hogfather while I was there to read on the train on the way back to Birmingham, and despite the fact that I hardly ever get time to just sit and read nowadays, I found that I was as unable to put it down as I was 12 years or so ago when I first picked it up.
Pratchett's books, and the devoted community of people who came together to celebrate their love of them, were a bigger influence on me than any other book, film, musician or TV program before or since. They helped me bond with my family, especially my wonderful Dad, and informed my love of reading, fantasy, art, costumes and comedy. I literally don't know who or where I would be if I had never discovered them. And I know that there are hundreds of other people out there that have been just as affected by them as I have.
As Death says in Hogfather, "HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE."
RIP Sir Terry. You were awesome.
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