Strandpiel 10: Ontwaking - Awakening
How dual nationality works out for one proud user.
Currently embuggered by loads of ideas and very little time to commit to record because of the demands of a new job. LOTS of ideas for continuing old stories ("Many worlds", et c) and barely enough time to sketch them out for retrieval later. Building skeletons, basically. Still, taking sick leave has some advantages… pain and discomfort are a bugger but at least I can do this.
A series of episodes and glimpses into the later life of a new character. Readers do appear to want to find out more about her. Trying to keep everything in roughly chronological and sequential order with lots of call-backs and flashbacks to related tales.
Dear Ruth.
We all miss you very much here in Ankh-Morpork. Mum says it isn't the same without you there. Auntie Heidi wants to know who is going to brew the tea for her now you are gone. I suspect this is a joke you had between you, that the black girl always makes the tea for her white betters, to which you would reply, choke on this, baas-lady, or something similar. It must be a joke you had between friends, as Auntie Heidi always seemed happy to make the tea for you in her turn?
I hope Dinizulu is a good husband to you and is a nice handsome and pleasant man who loves you very much. Auntie Emmie said that these things may be fixed if he isn't. Grandmother Joan said there are ways a marriage can be improved if it runs into bother. Godsmother Alice has asked to be kept informed and for you to keep in touch. I did not enquire further. Mum said not to. Mum made inquiries. All she could discover about your husband is that he is a capable commander with battle experience and has the leadership of a Bull's Horn Of The Left. This is a word for a group of regiments, a division of the Army? Which makes him a General?
I hope he is a better general than any of the Lord Rusts, who I have been reading about. I have been studying Howondalandian history for School. Mum thinks it is not hard to be a better general than a Rust. I am inclined to agree with her. Especially after finding out about the Zulu Wars and the horrible, horrible, battle at Isandlhwana. I had a bad dream about Isandhlwana. It was a horrid place.
I must ask you, Ruth. Our history books are written by Ankh-Morporkians. I can also read the history books taught in Rimwards Howondaland, which tell the same history differently. This is perplexing, as there can only be one past. But there is an Ankh-Morporkian past and a Howondalandian past and it sometimes reads as if they are telling two different histories that happened on two different worlds. Godsmother Alice is checking my History work before I submit it and she is being very thorough. I told her I am troubled that in an account of a war with the Zulus, there is nothing at all about them except that they were there and were The Enemy. A large part of the story is missing. I asked Godsmother Alice how I can write about history when the voices of half the people who made that history are silent, and the presumption is that you do not need to take the views or the opinions of The Enemy into account. They are The Enemy, after all.
Godsmother Alice smiled at me and said well done, I could make a historian out of you. You have grasped something fundamental about the study and the practice of history. Something which evades many of my students.
I'm still not sure what it is that I have grasped. But Godsmother Alice said, isn't it obvious? You want to know how the Zulu peoples thought and chose to act a hundred years ago. History books written in Ankh-Morpork don't think this is worth discussing. History books written by White Howondalandians certainly don't think it's worth even considering. Well, then. Ask the Zulus.
So, Ruth, I am asking you. How do your people teach this history?
I have also read that the Paramount King of the time was crazy, greedy, filled with his own importance, despotic, cruel, and filled with an insane hatred of white people. At the same time this proud absolute ruler was also a helpless puppet of the Klatchians who evilly manipulated him to do their bidding. I know this to be true because our history books teach it, and history books don't lie, do they?
But I know he was also an ancestor of yours, perhaps your great-great grandfather. And try as I might, I cannot ever see you sitting on a throne of skulls ordering mass executions. Mum says she could never see you doing that either and that anyway you'd prefer quality over quantity. Craftsmanship, and not a production line. But that's Mum.
So how do I find out more about Paramount King Ceteswayo and the sort of man he really was? My family say he once took my very-great-grandmother prisoner after a battle, and he not only let her go when he could have executed her, he gave her her sword back. He did keep her prisoner, sort of, which was perhaps better than having her running around fighting and killing people. But our stories say she became more of a guest than a prisoner of war and she even got to eat at his dinner table. Which doesn't sound like a bloodthirsty maniac to me, much. Then again, my history teacher, who is a cow, got snotty and said mere family anecdotes do not count. But she thinks her family's stories about previous Lord Rusts are good history. (Did I mention she is a Rust?)
Mum thinks she can get this letter to you without too many other people seeing it. She said anything going through the regular mail to your country with the name "Smith-Rhodes" on it isn't likely to stay unopened for very long. She named at least three lots of really nosey people who would deliberately leave the envelope near a steaming kettle for long enough to soften the glue, and then take a peep inside once it was open. So hello to anyone reading this. You're not meant to and this is between me and Ruth, so go away! She also said not to make any jokes about having an Uncle Havelock either, who really really likes to know what his nieces are thinking, so I won't. She said one of my aunts got into trouble for this. Whoever Uncle Havelock is. It's one of those jokes they all know and I don't and you don't want to ask. But Mum said this was important and I should ask Auntie Mariella. I think I will.
Are you going to have babies, or is it too soon for that? They'd be lovely pretty babies. I'd love to see them. To be their sort of big sister, if that's allowed.
With lots of love and really missing you
Bekki.
"All this stuff now belongs to your cousin Johanna." her mother said, as she unlocked the wall-safe in her study. Bekki sat quietly in the small office where her mother did her academic work. It was largely lined with bookshelves. Various framed degrees, diplomas and membership certificates hung on one wall. Bekki had read them all. Her Assassins' Guild formal membership. The citation for the Gold Star of Howondaland. Her doctorate from Unseen University. Bekki had wondered about that. Mum had said she had all the magical ability of a housebrick. But she was technically a Wizard? You had to be to get a degree from Unseen, hadn't you? Her membership of the Guild of Doctors. Mum had said she'd learnt a lot of medical stuff on the fly. And there wasn't such a thing as the Guild of Veterinary Surgeons. Animal doctors were, by default, a sub-set of the Doctors' Guild. Mum said, off-handedly, a lot of it was transferable. If you could operate on a cow's stomach, the same sort of bits were all there, all recognisable, and in much the same general places, in a person. It wasn't a great leap. Mum's first degree from the University of Witwatersrand at Home. They'd given it to her after she'd established the City Zoo. Her Guild of Teachers membership. Mum was a teacher. That made sense. You had to be.
The commission that made her officially a Kolonel of the Army Reserve. Bekki read the text, in the formal Kerrigian used for official legal-speak, and Morporkian. Mum had the right, as a loyal and trusty friend of the Staadt, to raise and lead a full Kommando, with auxiliaries, in the lawful defence of her nation, both within the borders of the Republic of the Transvaal and in the greater confederation of Rimwards Howondaland. She tried to imagine her mother in command of a small Army. Her grandfather had one at his disposal. He commanded the local Volkskommando, a reserve unit of irregular cavalry that was called up at need from local farms and communities. They regularly mustered for a day or two of training and a night of enthusiastic drinking afterwards. Grandmother Agnetha tried to be understanding.
Why aren't we running the country? she thought. (1)
And, the most perplexing one of all, her mother was an Associate Tomfool, a member of the Guild Of Fools, Clowns, Jesters, Jugglers, Minstrels, Conjurors, Dorises, Mime Artists And People Who Wear Those Silly Mascot Costumes At Football Games And Theme Parks.
She really wanted to ask about that one. Her mother in a clown costume and the slap? Her two Godsmothers, and one other interested person, were present too. Mum had asked them to be there. Alice Band smiled slightly. "I got one too." she said, guessing Bekki's thoughts. "The Fools' Guild made me a member at the same time. We were both Foolish enough to accept. She hasn't explained to you yet? I've got some iconographs. You might want to see them sometime."
"You asked about the family history." her mother said. "I will keep the Fools' Guild thing for another time. Long story. Now I have to insist we all wear white gloves. These documents are getting no younger."
Pairs of white gloves were handed out. The fifth person present had provided his own. Which was just as well, as his hands needed a custom fit. And, Bekki thought, his feet.
Then Johanna brought out the first of a stack of very carefully stored journals.
"Wow." said Alice Band, feeling the history.
"Wow." said Irena Politek, getting a thrill of latent magic.
"Ook!" said the Librarian, feeling reverence for seriously old books.
Bekki said nothing. She closed her eyes and felt a nearby unannounced presence. She wondered who it would be this time.
"When I pessed the sword on to Young Johanna." Johanna said, "All this became hers also. Custodianship, you might say. She esked me if I could hold onto it for now, es it's in the best place. I want Bekki to have eccess to it, es she hes particular reasons for wanting to know the family history. Treat it with care, Rebecka. Old man, I need your help too. Ebout how best to preserve these old books and documents."
She nodded to the Librarian.
"Oook!" he said. He was a happy Librarian, doing something he loved.
"Irena. Cen you see if there's any megic here we need to know about? Ponder thinks there is."
"It's what Ponder would call induced magic." Irena said. "Things that don't start out being magical in themselves. But they gather it over the years. Yes. Definite magic. But it takes the right person and the right set of circumstances to unlock it."
Everybody looked at Bekki.
"And on one very basic unmagical level," Alice Band said, "This is a hundred years' worth of history. Of your country, as seen through the eyes of people who were around at the time. That makes it important, to a given value of important."
She turned to Bekki.
"Remember. You need to cite. Add footnotes. Translate accurately into Morporkian but remember to quote the original text. That's important. So if it comes to peer review, they can See Your Workings. If I were marking it, I could go to an independent third party and get them to check the original and that you've translated accurately. Despite what Miss Lonsdale-Rust says, if you're a historian dealing with other cultures, you have to deal with source texts that aren't in Morporkian. There are accepted conventions for dealing with this sort of thing. Use footnotes and endnotes. And when you're dealing with unpublished texts, you have to establish provenance. Or you can be taken in by modern forgeries. Historians have been." (2)
Alice smiled a little smile.
"That's why I'm here. Guild of Historians. Giving your family history the official stamp of approval. Provenance. Important."
They bent over the letters, diaries and journals left behind by Johanna's predecessors and got to work, in their own specific disciplines.
Bekki heard the little voice from somewhere near her right shoulder that said
If there's anything you don't understand or need to know more about, liewe heksie, just ask. I'm here.
Irena sensed it too. She smiled. Johanna, oblivious to the unseen presence in the room, got on with sorting and explaining whose writings were whose.
"I try to make time now and egain to do trenslations into Morporkian" Johanna explained. "Es end when I can, I'm taking iconograph copies. Releasing some meterial to the Smith-Rhodes Museum in Scrote.(3) End Uncle Charles keeps esking for copies. He'll get them, when I get full eccess to his femily archives."
I keep trying to get through to your mother, liewe hecksie. Just occasionally she suspects somebody is near. But it is hard work.
Out of nowhere, Irena remarked, seemingly to nobody,
"Well, you might try talking to Ponder Stibbons. Or even to me. I'm here."
Johanna and Alice looked up in surprise. The librarian, busy assessing the condition of some old letters, said "Ook.", then shrugged. He worked with wizards. He saw this sort of thing a lot.
Alice frowned.
"I'm not magical." she said. "But I'm from a priestly family. We get to sense octarine too. It's associated with gods as well as magic. Right now, there's a bit more octarine in the air than you'd expect. Over there, next to Bekki."
Johanna frowned. She looked intently in the region of Bekki's left shoulder.
"I can't see you." she said, in Vondalaans. "I don't even know for certain if anyone's there."
There was a double knock on the table. Everybody jumped.
"Sorry" Alice apologised. "Couldn't resist."
Johanna gave her old friend a Look.
"And I wouldn't be able to hear you. But. If you're who I think you are. You're family. You're welcome."
"She's standing just behind Bekki's shoulder." Irena said, in a matter-of-fact sort of way. "About twenty-five. No older than thirty. Looks a bit like you. Some, sorry to mention this, really bad scars on her face."
Irena focused.
"Says her name is Johanna Cornelia van der Merwe. Smith-Rhodes."
Johanna breathed out. She had to make allowances for magic-users. She was married to one. And the mother of another. Who was growing up into being a lightning-conductor for this sort of thing. With lots of noise and blinding white incandescent flashes.
"Well, These are her diaries. End we're reading them. I still can't see you. But welcome."
Alice Band breathed out.
"This certainly sorts out the provenance thing." she said. "But how do I word this in my report to the Guild of Historians? The long-dead author popped in to say "Yes, it was me who wrote these things ninety-five years ago.""
Irena smiled slightly. She listened to an empty space.
"Alice, Johanna Cornelia has just pointed out that history is all about evaluating the words and the actions and the writings of dead people."
"Well, yes." Alice said. "At bottom, history is about dead people. You just don't, as a rule, normally get to ask their opinions or get them to peer-review what you write about them. It isn't as direct as that, usually. Professionally, I'm not sure if it counts."
Three women, a girl, an orang-utan and a ghost set to reading the old journals. After a while nobody thought this was unusual. Periodically, Johanna Cornelia relayed her input through either Bekki or Irena.
"She'd like us to skip over the bits she wrote when she was twelve or thirteen." Bekki said. "About being in love with a boy called Stukkie and so on."
Bekki felt sympathy for this. If you were female and nearly thirteen and you were writing your deepest innermost thoughts in a journal, you wanted it to be private. Not brought out as History a century after you died. Even if you got to be famous.
"We can skip the early bits?" Alice suggested. She'd been thirteen herself once. She understood. "The technical term is juvenilia. Limited interest, and serves only to set background details. You can safely summarise."
And so it progressed.
The group retired for lunch. Claude the butler served. He'd been aware, in a necessarily discreet way, of what was happening. Butlers had to be aware.
"I am told the accepted protocol is to set another place at Table, madam." he said, smoothly. Johanna accepted this. The Guild of Butlers, Manservants, Gentlemen's Gentlemen and Senior Domestic Servants was thorough in its training, and covered all eventualities. (4)
Claude stepped back and addressed seemingly empty air.
"I have taken the liberty of preparing an aperitif for Deceased Madam." he said. "If you will permit me."
He struck a match and set fire to the contents of a glass. The liquid inside burnt with a flickering blue flame. And the ghost of a glass of klipdrift crossed the planes for just long enough.
Bekki watched Johanna Cornelia raise a glass with everyone, and consume it with every sign of appreciation.
Maar, he's good! And this is good klipdrift. It's hard to get a decent drink after you're dead. It's so hard to get the barman's attention.
Johanna sighed. It was taken as expected that Smith-Rhodes family members visiting Ankh-Morpork could descend on her for automatic and indefinite hospitality. She suspected this was taken for granted. Now, it seemed, this extended even to the dead ones. Even if she had to accept other people's word for it that the seemingly empty place was being occupied by her great-grandmother. It took some getting used to.
At least Ponder had arrived. He had blinked, re-adjusted, and accepted the extra guest, taking her presence as a different kind of normal for his family. Johanna Cornelia now had three people in the room she could speak to directly. The fourth just said "ook.." a lot and politely offered her a banana.
"I just wish I could see and hear you." Johanna said to the empty place. Bekki heard a wistful longing in her mother's voice.
I regret this too, Johanna Famke. But you've really done well for yourself. We're all proud of you. Maar, maybe one day, ja-nie?
Bekki dutifully relayed the reply to her mother. She had a friend at school who had a completely deaf mother. Jane had to interpret the hearing world for her mum through sign language. Bekki had watched carefully to try to work out how it worked. She was learning a little. Bekki wondered if she would have to interpret the magical world, the parallel worlds overlapping this one, for her non-magical mother and evolve her own sort of sign language. Which was tricky, as she was still learning herself.
Dear beloved Auntie Mariella,
I miss you so very very much and wish you were here or I was there. I hope all is happy in beautiful-sounding Bitterfontein where the grapes grow. I love grapes. They are so yummy.
So. Lord Vetinari has a first name, as if he were a normal person like anyone else? You never stop to consider things like this. Everybody must have a first name, I suppose. Even the Patrician. But… Havelock?
Mum says "Uncle Havelock" punished you by giving you a job. I am still trying to work that out. But ordinary news first.
Let me tell you what has been happening here and give you news about my mother and my father and my sisters Famke and Ruth…
Winter was setting in over Ankh-Morpork. Bekki's schoolwork progressed by day while her witch training and the Other Things happened in the evenings and at weekends.
She still had to go to Kerk on Octeday mornings. She endured the unspeakably dreary service, knowing her parents and sisters and other members of the household, like Annaliese the nanny, had to suffer it too. She wondered why the priest was such a toad. Like Liutnant Verkramp in a clerical collar. And why people put up with him.
But Octeday afternoon, in the few hours before Dorothea served up a yummy roast dinner, saw her spending time at the Zoo. Mum always found things for her to do here. Annaliese took her little sisters to see their favourite animals. Mum, or Auntie Heidi, took her doing other things. Right now, they were tending to the needs of those animals that needed greater care and warmth in an Ankh-Morporkian winter. Bekki found herself cuddling a shivering chimpanzee baby who didn't like the cold at all. It was nice, although she remembered to hold a cloth pad under its bottom. In case of accidents, mum had said.
The Zoo staff were setting up an indoor extension to the chimp habitat that could be heated. It had taken careful design and a lot of money had had to be raised for it. Apparently Lady Sybil had contributed a lot.
Bekki realised animal work was a kind of useful training for being a witch. She'd seen loads of animals being born. She even had an accurate idea of what had to happen several months earlier to make it possible for a baby animal to be born. It sounded straightforward, if yukky when you applied it to actual people. She wondered why people made such a big deal of it. It was another process, like lancing a boil or dressing a wound or putting a poultice on a burn, or peoples' problems with going to the privy. Seeing practice with the Watch Witches had exposed her to a lot. She was starting to realise now that magic was the lesser part of the deal. It was people who were the business of Witches.
Hence all the boil-lancing and poultices and mixing of potions and identification of herbs and what they could be used for. (Thank you, Davinia Bellamy!) You paid attention. People who were relieved of pain, glad of the attention and relaxing after treatment said a lot. More than they should, sometimes. Olga and Irena and Nottie had all said, that sort of thing remains here. Between we witches. Never to be said anywhere else.
Bekki understood why.
You are the witch. You hear everything. You get to know everything. But it goes no further than you. You gave nothing away. The price for knowing everything about everybody is that you can't tell anybody else. Except perhaps another witch.
She focused. Trying to generate more warmth in her own body and to give it to a shivering chimpanzee who was a few shivers away from hypothermia. If I visualise a flame inside me, not that hot, it doesn't need to be, and make it bigger. Then move it out a little bit… make it a nice warm orange colour…
You heard all sorts of things in the Watch steading. Apparently Constable Johnson was getting very friendly with the wife of Constable Previss but Constable Previss didn't know about that. And there was going to be an almighty fight when he did find out…
Olga Romanoff had explained to Bekki that down here, she ceased to be a Lieutenant. Irena wasn't a Sergeant and Nottie wasn't a Flight-Constable. They very carefully took their uniforms off and wore black. They were, here, just witches. So any Watch stuff they heard, they had to lock away. Or they'd have no patients. Igor was the same too, weren't you, Igor?
"Can't help feeling Mr Vimes'll go spare, though." Nottie said. "When he finds out."
"Not our problem." Olga had said. "They were talking to Olga Romanoff, babiuschka, down here. Lieutenant Olga Romanoff, Air Police and Pegasus Service, stopped at the door, and anyway she lives upstairs. That's understood."
There were lots of words for Witches around the Disc. Not all of them translated as overbearing nosey old woman or trouble on a broomstick.
Olga and Irena were babiuschkas. If they were Brindisian, they'd be vecchias. Toleda referred to brujas. Quirm had its sorcières. She, Bekki, was the liewe heksie, which made sense everywhere a language like Vondalaans or Kerrigian was spoken. Beloved Little Witch.(5) It was her family's pet name for her. Even the living members of her family called her that.
Bekki liked it at the Zoo. There'd been the thing with the goat, during a holiday in Howondaland, that had convinced Ouma Agnetha that she had talent.(6) Ouma had then talked at Mum until she gave in. Ouma Agnetha was good at that.
When they'd got back, Mum had taken her on trips to the Zoo. She'd got to see places the paying public didn't normally get to. And Mum had, very sternly, said that if she started getting grey hairs ahead of time, she would blame it on you, Rebecka.
Bekki shifted guiltily. Good. This little thing is warming up and showing more interest in her surroundings. We can send her back to her mother soon.
Okay. She'd been told later that getting into an enclosure with lions is not a sensible thing, Rebecka. But the five-year-old Bekki pointed out that she'd asked the mummy lion first, and the mummy lion had said she could, so there wasn't a problem…
Johanna had turned round and yelped to see her daughter was happily playing with a litter of lion cubs, whilst the lioness had been looking on, in seeming feline disinterest, probably relieved to have a babysitter.
Then yelped again as the lioness prowled towards Bekki and gave her a quick acknowledging nuzzle, then turned away in disinterest to collect the cubs from where they'd been playing with the nice friendly human girl. Come on, kids, time to go…
Bekki didn't do that sort of thing any more. Much. She realised it probably wasn't a good idea. And playing with lion cubs only worked if they were very tiny. When they got bigger, they might still look cute and cuddly but by then they had teeth and claws that could hurt. Just common sense, really. But she could, up to a point, communicate with the animals. She could sense when they were in distress and where the distress was coming from, for instance. That was useful. And on other occasions she'd passed by the lion or tiger enclosures and said "Mummy, I wouldn't send any human keepers in there today. She's not happy. She's angry." And pointed to a lioness, sometimes a tigress, who, outwardly, seemed no different to usual. Johanna had watched intently, and recognised more subtle signs of moodiness. Danger signs. So slight you might miss them. Then said "Golems or trolls, only."
Uncle Danie worked at the Zoo too. In summer, he tended to work with his shirt off a lot. Girls tended to gather wherever he was pitching fodder to the large ruminants. Bekki hadn't been able to see why. It was her uncle. With his shirt off. What was special about that? You pay to see my Uncle Danie with his shirt off? This baffled her.
It usually went on, with a gathering female crowd, till Senior Keeper Grinchlow would go up and say "Keeper Smith-Rhodes, you are improperly dressed! Put your shirt and tunic back on, NOW!" Some of the girls squealed with disappointment. Uncle Danie usually waited twenty minutes or so for him to go, then stripped down again, arguing he was more comfortable this way and maar, when it was warm, you took your shirt off to work. He always had. Couldn't see why people made such a big deal about it.
She'd helped him sometimes. With some of the big cattle animals that were having babies. He'd shown her what to do with calving cows. It was something you learnt young on a working farm in Howondaland. Mum had reasoned it was a useful skill, when she'd set him up with a zoo job.
These days he did the same for more exotic bovines. Bekki had learnt about bovine midwifery from him. She'd helped quite a few calves into the world, of quite a few species.
Uncle Danie had also explained to her, in a matter-of-fact way, about bulls servicing cows, and about this new Ankh-Morporkian thing called artificial insemination and how to go about gathering samples.
It sounded utterly yukky, but she could see it was practically yukky.
"It got invented here." Uncle Danie had said. "Vorbei, your mother's got a warped mind. She tried the idea out here, then got glassblowers and artificers to make the equipment. Maar, they must have given her some odd looks. And my bigsister is not a slow woman. She made sure she got the patents, and now this idea's spreading. She'll make a fortune at it. Now the horse-breeding people have cottoned on, and realised it works for them, too. Just as well. She complains bringing up you and your sisters is costing her a fortune!"
Uncle Danie had grinned a long slow grin.
"Something to tease her about. I bet she never thought she'd get a name for it." (7)
Bekki, now somewhere between twelve and thirteen, and beginning to dimly realise why girls paid to get into the Zoo to look at her uncle with his shirt off – not that I'd ever pay to see my actual uncle with his shirt off, that's sort of yukky, but I get the general idea - led a busy life. Not much empty time. But she was, she realised, really quite happy. She realised she ought to feel thankful and fortunate.
(1) Bekki belatedly remembered the existence of Charles Smith-Rhodes, financier, entrepreneur, political eminence gris and general meddler, then reflected that her family probably already did. Or at least, was on the way to a 51% controlling interest.
(2) On our world, think of the Zinoviev Letters, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or the Hitler Diaries. These have caused varying degrees of nastiness, bother, or just hilarity.
(3) See my Discworld Tarot short, The King of Swords. This also deals with the interpretation of history.
(4) The family you serve may well have members who are vitality-challenged. You are not to discriminate on these grounds and are to accept that the Dead have their needs too. You will almost certainly be called upon to attend to the needs of deceased people. Look after them with the same diligence you give to the living.
(5) Die Liewe Hecksie is a South African animated children's show, based on a popular series of books, about the good-intentioned and slightly clueless witch of the idyllic country of Blommielaand. It's actually quite sweet and cute and plays all the clichés Up To Eleven. Lots of Saffies, apparently, grew up loving the show as a fond childhood can see why – it's got the guile-less charm and naivity you get from the best kids' tv. Available on YouTube, along with a wicked parody by comic Casper de Vries, a man who must have had a twisted childhood. Bekki is probably a lot better at being a Little Witch than Lavinia, I think. Can't find English subtitles, but not too hard to get into.
(6) In my tale Gap Year Adventures, which in some respects overlaps this one.
(7) The Smith-Rhodes Device For The Selective Breeding of Livestock had caused Uncle Charles Smith-Rhodes a few winces when it got to Rimwards Howondaland. It sounded better if it was called a Kunsmatige Inseminasie Toestel, but die Smith-Rhodes koeifokker made him cringe. Then he realised how much money there was to be made, in a nation with a lot of agriculture and horse-studdery, and realised his niece and her side of the family were cornering it all. He felt that was worth a little embarrassment. His son Julian had roared with laughter and said if there was anything at all that summed up Cousin Johanna's attitude to life, this was it. And Johanna's worked out that once you've squeezed the lemon, you can sell the juice. So to speak.
Notes Dump:
Somewhere in a sea roughly halfway between two continents, the one of the tale being currently written and the semi-glimpsed one of future tales yet to be committed to paper, where isolated ideas are given lifebelts and a signal rocket against being spotted and rescued.
Die Liewe Hecksie is a South African animated children's show, based on a popular series of books, about the good-intentioned and slightly clueless witch of the idyllic country of Blommielaand. It's actually quite sweet and cute and plays all the clichés Up To Eleven. Lots of Saffies, apparently, grew up loving the show as a fond childhood memory. Available on YouTube, along with a wicked parody by comic Casper de Vries, a man who must have had a twisted childhood. Bekki is probably a lot better at being a Little Witch than Lavinia, I think. Can't find English subtitles, but not too hard to get into.