A Slip of the Keyboard (39 page)

A very large number of things which we take for granted were science fiction once, and some others were never science fiction because not even science fiction writers had imagined them. The bishop ought to respect science fiction; he’s living in it.

And once again he triumphantly delivers the ever-present question: how, if assisted dying is allowed in the U.K., do you safeguard the vulnerable? This is without fail trotted out by all those against the idea and is delivered as if it is the killer argument.

As the documentary says, there are four countries in Europe that practise some form of assisted dying and recently the Swiss voted in a referendum to maintain the practice. They even voted in favour of continuing to allow the so-called death tourism for those unfortunates, like the British, who make their way to Dignitas.

This does not sound like people who are living in a world where innocent citizens are being killed against their will, does it?

Wednesday

We start trawling through the interminable number of e-mails that had arrived while we were asleep and we find that many viewers had been touched and impressed by the testimony of Veerle
Claus-De Wit, whose husband, Hugo, was granted his request for an assisted death by sympathetic and caring doctors. He had the same disease as I have and I certainly took that one to heart.

There are those that would never accept the concept of assisted dying, it seems, and yet it does appear, sitting here looking at the e-mails still coming in, that this country, if not our government, is thinking constructively. Sniping is, of course, going on from various newspapers that we are picking up. However, there are thoughtful columns as well, but I must say that Alex Hardy’s inconsiderate sneer in
The Times
at Christine Smedley, a woman endeavouring to put a brave face on the death of her husband, was execrable.

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 …

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

A
NTIPASTA
(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.

S
IR
T
HOMAS
C
RAPPER

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.

B
EAU
T
RAP
(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.

T
HINGS TO
O
RDER
L
OUDLY IN
R
ESTAURANTS

1) Liver with bigger tubes

2) Whitebait with extra eyes

3) Smorgasbord with the tops on.

B
ARRY
N
ORMAL
’
S
G
UIDE TO
S
TRANGE
J
OBS IN
H
OLLYWOOD

#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?

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