Terry Pratchett "The Importance of Being Amazed about Absolutely Everything"

good evening distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen thousand girls it's my pleasure and person for lips to welcome you here tonight the historic Public Theater alternative College Dublin on behalf of the Provost John Hagee my name is David Lloyd and I'm known to some of you as the dean of research for this great University tonight I'm going to serve his master of ceremonies because I'm the Dean and very briefly I would like to draw your attention to both the location of the exits and a very firm request that everybody would turn off the mobile phones which you're not using to take pictures with I will also be very brief in heaving some appropriate praise on the myriad own song individuals who helped to make this unreal real event tonight looting are not limited to the fantastic general theory qui vient locking Simon Williams and talen Darryl Jones and Jerry I've never seen myself on this before it isn't quite a novelty tonight we gather tomorrow a very special occasion indeed it's a joyous occasion which sees our University enriched it should be noted that you are among a very lucky few we've never had an event so oversubscribed before and to those disappointed people watching on podcast only we're sorry and next time we will focus stadium the role of the University in society can be crudely condensed to two things it's the generation of knowledge and the transfer of that knowledge there are myriad methods of transfer graduates publications companies policy supports public discourse and lectures like this a University's true currency arts students and staff and they define an institution to their actions and they lay down its heritage of the future world to see Trinity College Dublin has a very proud literary and cultural heritage where else will won't find a constellation of stars such as Jonathan Swift Oscar Wilde Bram Stoker and Samuel Beckett produces initiative on the creative arts technology and culture intends to build on our unrivaled cultural assets the research strengths of University enjoys and our propensity for innovation the C 80 C initiative gathers scholars and practitioners together with the technology in the arts and creativity in a new way which we intend to redefine Ireland as an international leader in this domain promoting the new generation of new ideas the connectivity across programs from the Arts and Sciences and between the city and the University the C ATC spearheads a new appreciation of the creative practice within the university our talk tonight is the first of many such events bringing the creative practice to the forum so Terrence David John Pratchett embodies creative practice over the past 27 years the Discworld series of novels have entertained enlightened and enthralled an international readership the breadth of his productivity spans far beyond that flat world or world attack for Elephants atop a great star purple since his debut novel the character people in 1971 which is marginally older than me so Terry has published 49 books and co-authored 50 more Terry's books have been translated into 38 languages and there are more than 70 million copies in print worldwide stage adaptations of elm and a very very deliberate globe now there's a production of Weird Sisters on right now in the teachers LaVon Parnell square and runs on the Saturday and I have a look just with the no look of horror on the cast space yesterday when Terry walked in on the opening night and they weren't quite informed that was going to happen it was priceless wider audiences have also delighted the television and moody and movie adaptations of his work and this is knowledge generation and knowledge transfer on a truly global scale in 2001 Terry won the Carnegie Medal foreign sholdiers novel The Amazing Mars and his educated rodents adding to his stock of British science fiction locusts and Prometheus Awards only this month and I know he doesn't like Lifetime Achievement Awards he was awarded the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998 he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and received a knighthood in the New Year's Honours List of 2009 both for services to literature in 2010 Terry was selected to give the BBC Richard Dimbleby lecture which he entitled shaking hands with death Terry spans his advocacy and his eloquence on this matter are globally renowned of course these awards and his accolades all Palin's of her in significance when compared with the honorary lady he was awarded by Trinity College and of course convinced we're here to witness tonight tonight this privileged audience and the entire internet will hear the inaugural lecture of Professor Sir Terry Pratchett OBE blackboard monitor adjunct of the Oscar Wilde Center for Irish writing and the school of English in Trinity College Dublin drawing on wild so Terry's lecture is appropriately entitled importance of being absolutely amazed about everything and will be uniquely delivered with footnotes back in 1993 Terry spoke to Trinity science fiction society and the course of that conversation he observed that he never analyzed his own works he left it up to you clever boogers at the University to do so tonight ladies and gentlemen it's my absolute pleasure to welcome Terry Pratchett into the fold of severable Road I will ask you please to be upstanding and appalling for professor [Applause] ladies and gentlemen distinguished breasts I stand before you of your latest and most disreputable professor I'm going to go off message here and just help you I got one a level one measly a lip and I taught myself thanks the beckons field lightly but I'm so pleased to be here today I cannot say my mother was very happy when she was the mother of certain racket because I said before I think she would be more proud of my son professor since if my mother would possibly the motor of my success I hope in conjunct to her tonight now it's common knowledge these days and I know it's common knowledge because I made certain that became common knowledge that I suffer from a strange form of Alzheimer's who posterior cortical atrophy it really means that I cannot deliver a speech as a speech should be delivered because delivering a speech means looking at the audience and then looking back at the at the text to find the next line to bore the audience with now most of you still have a faculty which allow him to do that automatically without thinking about it I don't which means unless he longed to be here till three o'clock you have to come up with something else in addition it was a very very windy night last night um and I didn't sleep very much at all and PCA means that you have to think about things which normally you don't do automatically and that also gets in the way so we put our heads together over the point and I'm decided that what I would introduce to the congregation at this point the Boy Wonder my PA wrong Wilkins who will actually do the speech for me while I make faces in the background may possibly interject at various points but I can assure you ladies and gentlemen that the speech that he will be delivering Martha well I may say he has learned from some of the Masters is the one written by me now I'm going to take the back seat a little bit and over to you well I'm not a public speaker but I'm very opposed to Terry's words so I hope though well I hope I do them justice and okay from the top and why should I subject you to this sherrard it is because it is the truth of the world and the world is growing older and I am luckier with my technology than many others twice when I spoken out on subjects like Alzheimer's and assisted dying helpful Christians have told me that I should try considering my affliction as if gift from God now personally I would have preferred a box of chocolates but nevertheless there may be some proof a curiously company to truth in that because it is made me look at the world just like my pants now we've got to step back a bit here because we eventually jump forward you didn't mention your pants oh okay but you need to know about about my plans I thought you I know he knew he was coming he was making for he would mess it up mimicking in his way to leather clothes oh I might need to demonstrate TCA is those things indeed um it allows me the example like all sensible men of my age i I'm down in White House that do not leave of that fall out feeling and with PCA for some reason that I cannot fathom I cannot tell beforehand whether I am going to put them on properly or not and for a long time actually of this and then suddenly I realize the solution if the path could look like the heavies their name should be or anything like that it's just which direction they're facing quite a long time dealing with is efficient and so I realize solution was staring in as it were the face if I got from the other side they know thick I've also I would have had some healthy I think we were making some idea I think possibly that my pants are probably fine lies at this point but maybe reintroduce I think they could possibly be again I feel very humbled that Jonathan Swift actually stood on this stage and actually told us all about his pants as well okay that's the end o nevertheless there may be some truth a curiously convoluted truth in that because it's made me look at the world just like my pants from a new perspective which according to GK Chesterton is the role of fantasy anyway and now I am living a kind of fantasy and I have found that growing with me is the steel enos that I never knew was there the view of the world that might make Bob Dylan look like a man it was only slightly annoyed at the government whereas not so long ago I used to drift gently through the world occasionally rebounding softly from the side I began to open my eyes which led to a terrible tendency to question authority because authority that cannot be questioned that is tyranny and I will not accept tyranny any tyranny even that of heaven but will certainly make exception for the fully justified and beneficent tyranny of the provost of this institution it says here in the ribbon ladies and nevertheless to question authority is not in principle to attack it although authority always assumes that this is the case since authority must repeatedly establish its right to rule and if this is done by force then it turns out that it was tyranny all along good heavens I can't believe I'm preaching this to an audience of a Irishmen just think after 15 minutes a rational thought it turns us well it does both recently an organization not far from where I lived had to make some of its employees redundant they were called into the office of some functionary who told them that and I quote they were being deleted this did make the local news but the most miraculous thing about it is that nobody after being dealt with by a Dalek punched the bastards lighter and set fire to his debt Terry says he would have stood there bail we live in a venal world when largely by men who count numbers and because they can count people they think people are numbers we accept half-truths we have learned to think that we must do what the government tells us when in fact the truth of the matter is that the government should do what we tell it governments are scared in England unlike Ireland where I gave any punch one another's likes I for fun and entertainment for both weddings and funerals the government does not like to hold a referendum because that would mean stupid people which is to say people who aren't politicians would make the decisions which are better left to stupid and as we learn more and more dishonest politicians instead they despise us until an election comes around when they pretend that they do not meanwhile in the Middle East three people's who hold dear to them the same God or at one another's throats how stupid can one to be she's big and we will continue to be stupid until we realize that the Iron Age is actually over why write fantasy and I wouldn't have been able to come up with something like that it may not surprise you to know that I have some Irishness in my ancestry but I saw the proof that was proof you see a license plate that everybody has in the same way that were all related to Charlemagne my mother sadly no longer with us had an Irish grandfather who told her stories as a girl and took delight in telling me how she passed them on to me when I was very very young I was too young to remember but I sometime suspect that many of many of those stories have lurked and met in my nether regions or by something my self-conscious okay joy to our cross out panting nothing to live 19 thank you waiting to birds are the other bet they are waiting to burst out as soon as to the dismay of the gods of literature I got my hands on my first word processor I'm pretty certain that one of them surfaced in lords and ladies because it had an inedible Irish feel to it I owe a great deal to my parents my mother watch me become a knight but you know should have been even prouder to talk about her son the professor they raised me with kindness and where appropriate a side order of brief and effective sternness and may they be forever blessed with his final consideration without any religious upbringing whatsoever to the best of my knowledge neither of my parents as adults ever went into church with a religious aforethought I know that there was a distant Catholicism in my mother's family but only because once when I was about six years old I found a crucifix and much to her amusement came up to her holding it and said mum I found a stick with an acrobat and all and although she did indeed never perform an act of worship that I was aware of the Acrobat followed her every move every house move and after her death I desperately tore my way through her possessions until I found him was actually in front of me as I wrote this lecture I've always considered an exemplar of mankind but possibly regrettably the Origin of Species hit me before the Bible as a child I did not read for pleasure reading was associated in school and beside I was always one step behind a trait that has characterized my life I feel starting with the fact that I was born late it came as a shock how to tell you but not so much to my mother who had been laying there waiting for me for several hours after the apparently predestined time or three damn hours as she put it to me Lecter a few years on when school days beckoned the family was still on holiday I missed my first day and the first day as everybody knows is the important day that's where you make your friends and enemies and more importantly you get your peg well back in those days with a picture on it and which a raincoat was going to hang for the next three or four years the picture was very very important I might have got the tank I could have been a contender for the soldier I wouldn't have even mind the smiley Sun and would have been happy with a purple dog but no not me I was left with the two damn cherries and so I lagged if you couldn't lag very much of my mum who told me to read with love care and affection and when that didn't work bribery at a penny a page per paid read perfectly which subsequently turned out to be a very wise investment on her part especially when much later they moved into their new house in quite a posh and sought after location however she made the mistake of educating me above my age I record it because it is in fact tattooed on my psyche the day in the third or fourth form when the teacher asked us where the rain came from it so happened that my momma told me about the water cycles and how seas evaporate gently into the sky and for clouds which event blow over the lands we get cooled down and the water falls as rain of course all this markets the ones with pegged not marked with soft fruit had their hands up I'm making me miss me miss noses but the teachers eyes lit upon the silly kid who was the one raising his hand higher than any other child and upon her surprise nod I triumphantly shouted out the seam is the result the jeering of the class egged on by the teacher who hadn't even bother to ask me why I said so even as a bewildered kid I was thinking in some kind of terrified puzzlement well truth if she can't believe that I don't know that it falls out of the sky but she asked me where it came from and I told her the truth there is a circle of hell for teachers like that and I tell you what it's right next to the one set aside for teachers who don't like parents to teach their children to read before they go to school and one furnace away from people who believe that children should only be given books that are suitable for that suitable for them it isn't big enough or indeed low enough I didn't tell my mother of course those who never told your mother just in case you got into more trouble but something began to see and grow I'm sure of it but still I pressed on in my school staff made the decision when you were six based on your facility with reading as to whether or not you would eventually pass the old eleven class examination the winners at which would go on to various grammar schools while the losers went to what we call the secondary moderns where there was weather is a wailing and gnashing of teeth especially yours and because despite my mother's efforts to teeth and because despite my mother's efforts to teach me to read at all I didn't pass that test and I was put among the goats rather than the sheep and that was the best thing that ever happened in my education because I was a bright kid even if a somewhat weird one and with all the sheep passed with a teacher who would get them through the examination I the kid who was always halfway up to class could suddenly become talk with barely an effort and as you know when you're on top you really want to stay oh my god you really want to stay on top and so for the first time I really worked hard around that time while I was up in London with my parents amantha gave me a copy of The Wind in the Willows and I exploded I've never heard of books like this books with things that teachers read to you out of but here was this mole who had a friend who's a rat who had a friend who's a badger and they all had a friend who was a toad not just any toe because this toad could drive the car and being mistaken for a washerwoman even I was pretty certain the wild washerwoman probably was not a contender for Miss World she was unlike unlikely to be mistaken for toad I couldn't have expressed my feelings at that point because I didn't have the language for it and now I would say that I realized huge delight that the author was doing a number on us messing with our minds twisting the world where the hell can I get some more I thought in spending I remembered while writing this that at the time I was concerned about the horse room remember the horse at the horse that called the canary color caravan and in the book I recall thinking is a child that all these animals can speak and don't have to go to work for a living like my dad whereas the car horse does all the work all the time and doesn't have a voice the momentary feeling I had then was pure socialism and that is how I became a Saturday the way of the local public library feverishly writing out another library ticket to myself every time there was a book I really wanted to read and I read everything there was a sort of chain reaction one book sends you on to another I read it and went on to the next without order method or any plan except possibly to leave them all and sometimes really make use London labor in the London poor at the same time as I was reading Torv a young thank you moomintroll books and reading both these books in the same as it were mental tone voice start some stuff I thought was rubbish and probably was but patterns emerged taking down a book on the Silk Road simply because it sounded interesting channeled man to the history that we didn't learn at school not because the teachers were bad but because nobody had really thought about what education should be I remember learning of school about the Corn Laws but only vaguely remember what they were but I remember that they were a government up to the detriment of the poor I had so had no change but the real history the history that everyone should know that the beginnings of the earth the dance of the continents the journey of mankind the development of science these took little space on the curriculum but thankfully they were in abundance in the library god bless it for me my education in the library was like putting together a great big jigsaw puzzle of science fiction history and paleontology I read up on them as if they were all part of the same thing which in a holistic kind of way they certainly were another breakthrough came when I discovered secondhand bookshop around about the age of 12 there were the books that no longer tender for the library shelves my local librarian back in school being a spanking new library the spanking new books but my dad told me there was a secondhand bookshop in the village of Penn a short cycle ride away although a difficult cycle ride when you're coming back with two creaking carrier bags full of books hanging from your Barr's it was a wonderful bookshop it was where I learned humor I did this the easy way although the easy way isn't not often easy at all I read for pleasure every bound copy of the magazine punch between 1840 and the mid 1960s why well not to get a master class in humorous writing that's a fun however a masterclass was what I got because I read the best satirist and comic writers of the whole century including Mark Twain and Jerome cage alone these look like styles it seemed to me or a similarity even though they relation part Jeffery Willens and Ronald Searle delighted me by producing the moles were seriously you know that the very best google humor over the books down with school whisper atoms out of the top and back in the jug again and then I began to absorb the columnist it's like Beachcomber Patrick Campbell Robert Robinson and not least certainly not least Alan Coren possibly as far as observational humor is concerned the king of the mall I read all of these while I was when I was by the standards of the late 50s still a child but in doing so for sheer pleasure I was pressing my foot hard down on the growing up button I found humor has been topical and so while reading these musty terms of punch I picked up by osmosis the topics concerns and even the speech patterns of the millennia which is money in the bank for a writer I wasn't looking for ideas techniques or that terrible word tips I simply absorbed writers probably all do this in their separate ways because it is hard to imagine an author who was not a read at first I was astonished at the wealth laid out for me I was learning from the Masters and I thought about what I learned in fact I did not know at the time but a a satanic mill that started turning in my head and eventually he would turn out a writer but like every mill it needed grist if you don't know what grist is by the way looking at it says here because you're all academics so they I was particularly impressed by hankerings grass with a vocabulary of the average bewildered Englishman but especially what we used to call the working-class I know this because my London granny used to take me around the street markets in every single Barker and she'll and trader and hard bargainer bus conductor well and even my grandmother used a dialogue by quorum really was a wonderful man I remember having a cheerful argument with my mum after my London granny told me that you could tell where a bus was going to because of the name on the front my mother had taught me about the Greek myths and had mentioned the first marathon run by Philippa Dee's he ran from Marathon to Athens well is that every schoolboy knows or well and I remember discussing this with mum at the very point that since he was running to Athens he was really running and Athens rather than a marathon because quite certainly this would have been the case had he had been employed by London Transport a point which my mother graciously took without giving me a quick land a year in accordance with the satanic Mills The Satanic Verses plans to make certainly I was constantly being surprised the calendar that my mother and father both working people had to follow for their summer holidays meant that I also arrived at my secondary school yes one day late and that's the day if you remember and have been paying attention they tell you everything that's important it's no good coming in on the second day because the second day is not the first day and of course that's the day when you learn the things that you learn on the second day and once again the feeling that I have everyone knows something that I don't reinforce my air reinforced of astonishment obviously on that first day the secret of algebra had been December so later on I would dream that I might understand algebra and have mastery of the world but ten years ago my good friend Ian Stewart professor of maths at Warwick sat down with me after a university dinner and scrawled all over the napkins the sheer and obvious understandability of the basics of the quadratic equation with sweat beating on his brow to which I sadly reacted with Philip with the philosophical equivalent of the word and Terry actually had to teach his speech engine how to understand the word the and as he says you know yes I had to teach a computer to be done a project for a rainy afternoon and so once again I settle down to being halfway down the class doing an utter schoolwork to survive and no more my true education still coming via the library and amazingly from the science fiction books I was still consuming my sweet lit would you like this one bliss it was in that space a thorn to be alive Oh Liss it was in that space-age dorm to be alive but unfortunately my only reliable source at first first class secondhand American science fiction magazines was called the little library and it was in a shack in Frogmore a tiny part of High Wycombe in which a very nice elderly lady dispensed cheer the occasional cup of tea and pornography however in order to justify the name and presumably to have somewhere she could put in the window something and she also sold dcsf and fantasy from second-hand cardboard boxes below the actually put it the pinkish shelves which were not at that time of any particular attraction to me how could you tell your eyes upwards when there was a Brian oldest you hadn't read yet and something by Harry Harrison and the third book in James Blish --is cities in flight trilogy I consumed and I became such a bit chewy that I was guaranteed a cup of tea twice every week after which I would leave with my satchel bulging possibly to the book Wilden home that regular bystander who might have been unaware of the SF booty I caught my own I I recall scrambling around happy one day after school when the door was abruptly pushed open and in came a man who that by the look of his efforts not to look by Rhine was clearly even to me a plainclothes policeman he pointed out really at me and demanded of my hostess it was a dear old soul what he doing in here gleefully she raddish the copy of Robert Heinlein's stranger in a strange land which I certainly was and said and I know here only swap me Molly ponch jelly which astonishingly he didn't understand but he seemed to accept and for those of you with little as in it broadly translates as he who sees any evil in this is a Ponce Jessie game set and match to her life and she and she was a decent soul a nice friend to this kid that she considered was her only legitimate customer she never encouraged me to become a patron of the pinkish shelves and Lord did she offer me any of the slim envelopes which when she thought I wasn't looking she handed to the serious and some operative honest furs of the dirty raincoat persuasion but always embarrassed by my presence I think at the time I thought they were probably a probably contain mint condition and therefore expensive people like more clock that's playful ass she was a widow and I don't think I ever knew her name in a way she was one of my tutors because the growth of the author as the Darkmoon knows requires many varieties of compost and I needed that because I wasn't working at school and school wasn't working for me it was a decent school the teachers were the usual Bunch at least in those days with uzs with subject some who could inspire I said good joke I thought we may have missed only halfway through there was a Dixie school the teachers were the usual bunch at least in those days it's using us with a subject someone could inspire relics at the war the needlessly sarcastic and of course the madman the latter a general favorite with every boy in the school my fellow pupils two were also from central casting most with their eyes firmly in their a levels and a good job the fusion really have been there and the bully and the weird kid and the troublemaker which was me it was the worst times and it was the level - Nick are you okay no but it was the worst times because I was the troublemaker picture the scene the 1960s were moving sluggishly into High Wycombe and regrettably my headmaster considered himself a star war against 60s behavior as a matter of fact mostly the kids really just wanted to get their qualifications just as I did but when I brought in a copy of Mad Magazine I was apparently bad influence me the kid who would spend so much time in the library that he would have to blink before he could get used to daylight again I was astonished I have to say that Mad Magazine in those days did some remarkably well observed parodies of Broadway shows often with a suit song of harmless political humor and Dan White comic book fan but to the headmaster it appeared to be the harbinger of the breakdown of society and indeed his society was under threat but I just like the magazine and then on another occasion I was pulled with a copy of Private Eye apparently another crime against society in fact I was amiable if summer talked to kid who liked reading anything and didn't even know the Bob Dylan record making me possibly unique amongst my peers in truth Harry Ward was probably a good teacher although I don't think he was a good headmaster or at least one who understood lessons we're going to be well adolescence and very few of us were really any kind of a problem we actually carried a knife a penknife much better than a pencil Shawn if you had to as we did that back then lots of territory I can only recall one occasion when one was actually proffered in a fight and that was by the weird kid who left shortly afterwards but how he made the classic mistake of the tyrant seeing rebellion in the most innocent transgression and the transgression in the most innocent activity or none at all and I recall a boy I shall call Charles with the misfortune to be born with the amiable distance with an annual disposition and a face which automatically composed itself into a cheerful grin his only other expression of expression as I recall was a mild kind of sullen puzzlement when a cheerful grin got him into trouble and so the suspicious atmosphere of the school meant that he was either seen as a clown or exhibiting dumb insolence the influence of Harry Potter coming and going as a natural idiot Eyre was also in permanent trouble with the bully because I prefer to use my voice in an argument and he preferred to use his fists but a friend of mine from those days gleefully recalled to me that they when I lost my rag and Rama the kid down the length of the room hitting him in midship so hard that he went down and cut his head open on the fireplace after that I became apparently invisible to him and really wasn't any trouble the schoolboy code was that short of murder if you left Earth or 'ti out of it recently a fellow pupil from those days told me that long after I had left and much earlier than expected he spoke as the six former with the headmaster and learned that the man had been affected by the dreadful scenes he witnessed during the Second World War and was sure that this contributed to the man's itchy trigger finger but I can't say that knowing now the theatre he'd been in I can sympathize but how could I have done so then besides I was at worst a farm by heavy-handedness the man created what had not been there in the first place but I thanked him and I've sent you for firming up my decision to quit school before taking my a Lebert a previously unthinkable occurrence I knew I wanted to be a writer I had one pliers and punch magnet in a punch competition and saw two short stories to science fiction magazines but being the son of my parents I research and realize that the odds of making a living as a writer were for practical purposes zero whereas a newspaper journalist gets paid every week well still at school and lined up for the head librarianship I wrote to the editor of the local newspaper the Bucks Free Press asking if there was likely to be a vacancy the following year and he wrote back instantly saying I don't know about next year but we have a vacancy right now thanks to Harry ward I went to see him on the following Saturday and on the Monday walked into school and handed back all my schoolbooks and left by the door that could only be used by prefixing visitors a delightful sensation the school could be a petty place near my decision who was prompted by the knowledge that Harry was publicly adamant that I could not had the prefect ship that traditionally went with being the head librarian I learned that my nefarious means I've been spending every Thursday evening tidying up the library and repairing the books and this was an act of malice sheer malice having been a prefect looks good on your CV and might have come in useful on the other hand Arthur Church editor of the Free Press gave me a good job right there in the interview in recollection he said I liked up your cheap young man did he really say that it would have been in his character but remember my subconscious is that of an author and a former journalist and probably believes that every point would benefit from a bit of a Polish by an expert as I believe Douglas Adams once said sometimes after talking about about yourself so often you're not exactly sure how real some things are the conditions of a trainee newspaper reporter in the mid-60s were somewhere just above slavery you could live at home and not be beaten with chains on several occasions I worked every the week including most evenings and certainly Saturdays especially in the summer and they were seldom my own there was a mystical beast known as the day often new but it was seldom seen until much later in my career I was an apprentice a genuine apprentice my father even had to sign a copy of my indentures a medieval looking document which basically meant that I sold my soul for three years in return for which no at all the rudiments tricks dirty jokes suspicious focal and cliches of local newspaper journalism if Johnny how was your sub-editor you got all the jokes dirty jokes quickly because Johnny was blessed with a wonderfully dirty mind he needed needed it oh yes indeed because a sub-editor on a local newspaper at least needs a pin shot apprehension for every inadvertent dougela entendre did a correspondence once send in a report about a woman Women's Institute flower fruit and vegetable show and actually include the bit about the naked man street streaking through the marquee causing disarray among the tarts before he was called by jomi this fit an image of the late stubby kaye looks me firmly and trustingly in the eye and almost certainly I suspect light any writer needs an eye for the doober entendre in the same way that a gamekeeper has to have the minor poacher the deliberate dubler entendre on the other hand is not to be sneezed at I myself once perpetrated herbal entendre and I suspect that if sufficient drug money could be made available the quadruple entendre should not be beyond like it's a four word statement and if Johnny was short and fat Ken Burroughs called Bugsy behind his back was the shatta 9 news editor tall and thin and when the two of them headed off down the pub at lunchtime it looked like the number-10 going for a walk he told me to get my copy in on time check my facts and never try to put one over on him George top League chief reporter and the best natural journalist I've ever met taught me the uses of the truth and some useful secrets about human nature and finally Arthur Church local boy editor of the local paper who took the affairs of High Wycombe baring seriously and talking honesty and self-respect and not if at all possible to offend a Methodist a decent man the 60s were puzzling him in the same way as they did my recent headmaster but the 60s are okay with Arthur provided that they included High Wycombe when the first Apollo mission to the moon sent back those glorious pictures of Earth seen from its satellite Westminster press the owners of the paper got hold of some of those and looked around desperately a one Thursday to see which of their papers had color capability and was going to press soonest and how they must have groaned when they worked out that somebody was going to have to ring up our church and tell him to clear the front page at least two others probably the Chiefs tossed a coin but us reporters listening at his office door heard his agonized voice as he defended the interests of High Wycombe against at the universe he had a point every national newspaper the next day carry pictures of the moon but only one newspaper would carry the affairs the important affairs of high wycombe not to mention Marlow Lexi Greene loosely row let's we commence being it was it was a chest omean moment and there was no doubt they was right but although they were asking he recognised Mulder in disguise after a fairly lengthy tussle and we set to work clearing the decks while he walked about grumbling very nearly in tears after all the moon was just a lump of rock right and then suddenly the issue was happily resolved in its mind as he beamed and he said with good grace well I supposed moon shines on High Wycombe too just like everywhere else we nearly cheered next day the Bucks Free Press sold out within minutes even in Spain and Arthur Spain was constantly ringing off the hook because local dignitaries were ringing up to congratulate him on his wonderful coat High Wycombe had approved very nearly bought us all a drink the Edison editors of local newspapers were and probably still are insofar as they still exist many haven't given way to the useless and son suspect local government information sheets have been accused of parochialism but a sense of the parochial is needed for the job everybody in the world knows how John F Kennedy died somewhat fewer would want to know about the death of some local citizen found dead in his car in this garage with a pipe from the exhaust sort of partly open window murder probably not suicide quite likely but their town on late hood should know the truth and in those days it was conveyed to them by me and others like me because I had said their glumly in the corners called taking down the facts in the matter as deduced by the coroner in reasonably good pigments we did not like to do it people find many and varied ways during their lives abruptly and all of them are nasty especially for those who have to deal with the aftermath especially of course ooh really needs practice and there lies the problem Pierrepoint the executioner knew how to hang a man swiftly and he knew how long the rope should be aware on the neck the lock should be to ensure the merciful end most people don't and one day the relative of a particularly gruesome suicide asked the coroner to tell the newspapers not to publish the findings of his inquest he said quite correctly that we were entitled to be there by law and all would have been well had he not added something along the lines of although and along the lines of although I sympathize with you and sometimes I myself of wish the press was at the bottom of the sea of course we published that an arthur church who took local journalism very seriously wrote an eloquent defense of reporting even the nasty things the gist of it was this that it was in the public interest that the truth be known and known because it has been carefully reported and published without it you're relying on the man in the pub the rumor and possibly malicious rumor for your information the local paper does for some reason get it wrong then if it did get well then this would be known and an apology and clarification would be made this was not the best of all world but better than the world of hearsay arthur laid this out very carefully and the coroner instantly apologized handsomely and honor was satisfied once again Arthur's a stickler for accuracy and it was not a good day when some angry citizen came up the stairs on the Saturday to complain about some item least if it truly turned out that the luckiest reporter have got something wrong if this investigation showed that the reporter was accurate that the aggrieved reader was courteously shown the door it wasn't only the coroner's court I had to cover along with the other trainees I traveled on a number of treacherous motorcycles to cover every possible civic event in the area including the Magistrates Court where I learned a lifelong cynicism of the process of the justice system regrettably I also learned that elderly ladies are sometimes in inseparably fond of wearing Directoire knickers a blue the tutor in this case being a magistrate a lady of the Shire who like to sit with late akimbo possibly without realizing there was no modesty panel I sometimes wonder now if she was ever puzzled why people never looked directly actor indeed on occasion it seemed to me that every man in the courtroom was staring at his shoes you have included the lawyers often I've been contacted by internet journalists for an interview or some extended comment and the moment they say that they are journalists I say good tell me the six defenses with defamation character I am slightly cheered these days when I know there were these days that some no way what I'm talking about I'm still quite proud of my Pitman's and my adventure I was a decent local journalist and well-informed and accurate to boot but when it came to the hurly-burly of the large regional or national newspaper I just wasn't in contention I just didn't have the killer instinct and as editor Eric Weiss perceived when he sacked me from the West and Daily Press in Bristol he was not a happy man if the story discovered was not the story that he wanted and indeed the Western Daily Press appeared regularly on the Seavey's of many a young journalist that Erekat hired and fired on the other hand he was kind enough to say much later that I had been the best writer that they had possibly that was true because I did have and hopefully still have the ability to somehow apprehend a topic and write coherent informed informed and readable column about it within half an hour possibly with the help of one telephone call and a newspaper clipping why am I telling you these disjointed anecdotes I suppose that it shows how an author is built quite a lot of my history fan itself scrubbed up repainted and part of the book I'm pretty certain for example that keen clever academic bugger could map the Wizards of my unseen University against the staff of High Wycombe Technical High School from the and not all of them got eaten by dragons indicate that some of them including my head of history but I really liked have been immortalized in print in the scenery of my book scenery of my books I see the little village where I grew up characters speak who remind me of my grandmother and it seems that the mill finally grinds up every experience every encounter and never ever switches off and sometimes I detect the influence of my tutors even if they didn't know who they were nevertheless the grinding mill always give something back a few days before I wrote this piece a friend recounted to me that she had met a pre Kadir who had discovered the Discworld books in Afghanistan settled in a neat pile and I by this sort of thing quite often as Scotty will make compost squad he will make contact with me saying we get told to shift immediately and leave everything in essential and regrettably it turns out the really matter counts is non-essential but the brigade brigadier taking cover picked up one of the books and became hooked I'm pleased to say but he said to her how does he do it he hasn't been a soldier a monstrous regiment was written by somebody with a deep knowledge in military stuff you don't get out of books so how does he do it well I think I know because I believe it's the same little discovery which allowed me to win the Amelia bloomer award for feminist writing in the USA twice I don't need to explain because a little fall will bring up the answer and that is an author learns to understand the commonality of mankind if you care enough and know enough about people you can work out to your satisfaction how they will deal with a particular pressure and situation and from this observation can come a spurious rep reputation and by the way it also works at the people of trolls for the whole of my life since I was nine years old I've enjoyed words not necessarily words organized simply some words all by themselves such as conundrum extemporaneous anima onomatopoeia and saturation words that somehow seem to speak back I care for words and their meanings and sometimes stick up for them in a way that the blesses Lin Trust would understand like screaming at the local news on the television if a policeman said how he saw the suspect then he is either describing the position he took in order to observe or he was giving a pretty very brief lecture on optics the word he actually wanted was that pedantic well well I am an academic now besides his argument is bothering that such bothering about matters of usage is elitist a view espoused by Stephen Fry a man with a link written all over him is a load of dingos kidneys wouldn't you expect a lover of music to win to the wrong note work it out yourself words turn us from monkeys into men we make them change change them chase them around we eat them and live by them they are the workhorses carrying any burden and they use it is the skill of the author's trade the heat until versatile there are times when the wrong word is the right word and times when words can be manipulated so that silent shouts their care feeding and indeed breathing is part of the craft of which I am a journey man I will finish by leaving you with a word that I would like see totally expunged from the English language ladies and gentlemen may I suggest you let fun out of your life for years brothers and sisters a mongrel word and that word a fast food bucket of a word well hallelujah what does it mean consider the shameful usage I was doing it for a bit of fun I thought it would be fun I was only having fun and worst of all the little bit of white on the top of this cheeky chicken clapping is are we having fun yet why have fun when you could have enjoyment amusement entertainment diversion relaxation sport bit of a lark and satisfaction and probably contend when fun pretends to be about enjoyment but it's merely about the attempt in search of fun people pull themselves towards places that advertise fun they are probably to be avoided since in my regulation recollection funneling stroking around at soaking wet seaside town wearing plastic raincoats that no matter what you do always smell of fish all right maybe I'm only having a bit of fun with you but these islands of ours at the richest language in the world most mostly because we stole useful words from everybody else besides frantically inventing new ones ourselves so let's have fun with it you never know it might just be fun [Applause] we do have some time as is traditional active lectures for questions focal for with your questions last time we shared this stage we were over there and we were in two chairs and weeks we exchanged questions and since that time it's been my privilege to occasionally call or Terry's telephone at home to ask him to various things to come to dinner isn't a common exemption honorary degrees and to various beliefs and to become a professor and when I called the house last time it was to ask if you would consider becoming imagine professor in this university and the term I used was do you fancy being a chair in which he replied is there any hat associated with this position there is a hat associated in this position we have had a hat commissioned for your professorship by a commissioner no less than John Russia cannot be professor practice sir a great measure to you [Applause] like I'm some kind of colonial of a region of hell thank you very much I think possibly no other academic has a hat like this or whether I should say just two final things I know an event like this looks as it has just been thrown together in five minutes and it was but David actually does quite a lot of work I know his team doing awful lot more work it's really true but here's the man standing next to me so we just like a little something to say thank you and the final thing is yeah it's my job saying the words let's give you only 20 of the words oh that one okay and you copy over no no we're gonna get a copy of the word sauce under here oh right you could give it away there is me baby out there okay so maybe not the final thing because Terry also the final thing but we've got the words here that we scroll down for tonight if anybody wants them and wants to make a donation to charity there's no formal way of doing this just someone yell out some bigger and whoever's the olds aren't the biggest one will get it's got to be that way so does anybody want to tear your lord to offer two euros does anybody want if anybody wants a yell just yell out how much okay let's go to 500 you who's stealing 500 here here we go you're a bit of 584 title will you run then come on down [Applause] lastly I would like I didn't seem to lose the door we'd like to know your name we'll see you in a minute I congratulate you're drinking my head was bigger it turns out I think lastly I would like to thank the provost and the bee and everyone else involved in inviting me to this university and to heaven site making me very very pleased [Applause] I am both academia I have a clip but a clown and possibly is found new uses for clowning that's how I started that's how I continued I'm amazing [Applause] beginning

Channel: Trinity College Dublin

Views: 134,508

Keywords: Terry, Pratchett, The, Importance, of, Being, Amazed, about, Absolutely, Everything, TCD, Trinity, College, Dublin

Id: n2FZ_0d3yEI

Length: 63min 26sec (3806 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2010