Once More With Footnotes

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 flavor."
     
                  "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 the n 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.
     

This says it all, really. We both worke d in places when science, engineering, and bureaucracy crashed into one another.
     
    As a Press Officer, a man responsible for getting information out in a hurry (sometimes, at any rate) I was forbidden to touch a typewriter. Strictly speaking, I was supposed to write out releases in longhand and send them to the typing pool, from whence they might be returned to me tomorrow. However, by this time the average nuclear reactor can be quite well alight, so I just typed stuff anyway, and no one said anything.
     
    It was, in retrospect, a great life for an sf fan. After Chernobyl it seemed there was no question too weird for the local Nodding Acquaintances of the Earth to plant with willing reporters. Will your nuclear power stations withstand an Ice Age? No? Why not? (Answer: because a two mile high glacier scouring the continent down to bedrock puts a crimp in everyone's day.) Isn't it scandalous that there's a fault line running through the power station car park? (Answer: Not really. It's about 200 feet long and ha s n't moved for 60,000,000 years ...)
     
    One of my many strange jobs was escorting TV and movie researchers when they were scouting power station locations for upcoming dramas. I'd take them up to the pile cap (the top of the reactor) and they'd look around in dismay at the total absence of green steam. They never believed me when I told them that green steam is not a normal reactor product. Then they'd bring their own for the shoot. Oh, and big fake panels covered in flashing lights, too, because we didn't ha v e enough. In fact, our power stations were a complete disappointment. They were so unlike the real things.
     
    I had eight years of this. It was a great life, if you held onto your sense of humour.
     
    As far as I'm concerned, The Leaky Establishment was one ste p away from being real.
     
     
     
     
     
I ntroduction: T he L eaky E stablishment
     
                  I hate Dave Langford for writing this book. This was the book I meant to write. God wanted me to write this book.
     
                  For a large part of the 1980s I effectively worked (which was defini tely not the same as worked effectively) for the civil nuclear industry, or at least that part of it that produced cheap, clean nuclear electricity, if I remember my facts correctly, in South West England.
     
                  Reactors hardly ever exploded. I was a Press Off icer, so you can trust me on this. But they didn't have to explode. Some little known component of nuclear radiation made certain that life for anyone involved with the public face of the industry became very weird. And I worked with Dave Langfords all th e time. I had to. I knew about words, they knew about uranium. They were a fine body of men, with a refreshingly different view of the universe.
     
                  When a member of the public turned up at a nuclear power station and was found to be too radioactive to go nea r the reactor, they advised me. When I had to deal with the news story about the pixie that shut down a nuclear power station,