A Blink of the Screen

sitting should stay stood up,’ said Granny.
    There was a brief pattering on the leaves, one of those very brief showers you get when a few raindrops don’t want to bond with the group.
    ‘Well, all right,’ Nanny conceded. ‘But it was a little bit cruel.’
    ‘Right,’ said Granny.
    ‘And some people might think it was a little bit nasty.’
    ‘Right.’
    Nanny shivered. The thoughts that’d gone through her head in those few seconds after Pewsey had screamed—
    ‘I gave you no cause,’ said Granny. ‘I put nothin’ in anyone’s head that weren’t there already.’
    ‘Sorry, Esme.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘But … Letice didn’t mean to be cruel, Esme. I mean, she’s spiteful and bossy and silly, but—’
    ‘You’ve known me since we was girls, right?’ Granny interrupted. ‘Through thick and thin, good and bad?’
    ‘Yes, of course, but—’
    ‘And you never sank to sayin, “I’m telling you this as a friend”, did you?’
    Nanny shook her head. It was a telling point. No one even remotely friendly would say a thing like that.
    ‘What’s empowerin’ about witchcraft anyway?’ said Granny. ‘It’s a daft sort of a word.’
    ‘Search me,’ said Nanny. ‘I did start out in witchcraft to get boys, to tell you the truth.’
    ‘Think I don’t know that?’
    ‘What did you start out to get, Esme?’
    Granny stopped, and looked up at the frosty sky and then down at the ground.
    ‘Dunno,’ she said, at last. ‘Even, I suppose.’
    And that, Nanny thought, was that.
    Deer bounded away as they arrived at Granny’s cottage.
    There was a stack of firewood piled up neatly by the back door, and a couple of sacks on the doorstep. One contained a large cheese.
    ‘Looks like Mr Hopcroft and Mr Poorchick have been here,’ said Nanny.
    ‘Hmph.’ Granny looked at the carefully yet badly written piece of paper attached to the second sack: ‘“Dear Misftresf Weatherwax, I would be moft grateful if you would let me name thif new championfhip variety ‘Efme Weatherwax’. Yours in hopefully good health, Percy Hopcroft.” Well, well, well. I wonder what gave him that idea?’
    ‘Can’t imagine,’ said Nanny.
    ‘I would just bet you can’t,’ said Granny.
    She sniffed suspiciously, tugged at the sack’s string, and pulled out an Esme Weatherwax.
    It was rounded, very slightly flattened, and pointy at one end. It was an onion.
    Nanny Ogg swallowed. ‘I told him not—’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘Oh … nothing …’
    Granny Weatherwax turned the onion round and round, while the world, via the medium of Nanny Ogg, awaited its fate. Then she seemed to reach a decision she was comfortable with.
    ‘A very useful vegetable, the onion,’ she said, at last. ‘Firm. Sharp.’
    ‘Good for the system,’ said Nanny.
    ‘Keeps well. Adds flavour.’
    ‘Hot and spicy,’ said Nanny, losing track of the metaphor in the flood of relief. ‘Nice with cheese—’
    ‘We don’t need to go that far,’ said Granny Weatherwax, putting it carefully back in the sack. She sounded almost amicable. ‘You comin’ in for a cup of tea, Gytha?’
    ‘Er … I’d better be getting along—’
    ‘Fair enough.’
    Granny started to close the door, and then stopped and opened it again. Nanny could see one blue eye watching her through the crack.
    ‘I was right though, wasn’t I,’ said Granny. It wasn’t a question.
    Nanny nodded.
    ‘Right,’ she said.
    ‘That’s nice.’

THE ANKH-MORPORK NATIONAL ANTHEM

    BBC R ADIO 4, 15 J ANUARY 1999
    In 1998, the BBC, or at least part of it, asked me if the Discworld had a national anthem
.
    I said no, but the city of Ankh-Morpork had one
.
    And they said: Would you write it for us?
    And that led to the first ever national anthem of a fictional city state being played nationally on BBC Radio 4 on 15 January 1999, as the rousing close to a week of programmes about, yes, national anthems
.
    Carl Davis was asked to do the music and we had several long phone conversations about how the thing should sound, culminating in him ringing me up from a taxi in New York, I think, and playing a stylophone at me
.
    It was wonderful. It was exactly what I’d asked for – ponderous, slightly threatening, and full of the joyful pomposity of empire. I think it was the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra that played it, with a wonderful soprano who tackled it cheerfully and made ‘ner hner ner’ sound like something by Wagner
.
    It was never officially played again, for