Terry Pratchett and the meaning of life, plus a self involved digression

Jdack and I went and saw Terry Pratchett in conversation with Garth Nix at the Opera House last weekend. It was all kinds of wonderful, mainly because I am a massive Pratchett nerd (and also a pretty big Garth Nix fan), and I had a slightly surreal fan-girl moment of giddy I-am-not-worthy-ness at being in the same room as someone who ranks so highly in my personal pantheon. It almost makes me wish I’d dressed up, just to get into the spirit of the thing, like these people;

Pratchett talked a bit about the new book (yay, it’s a city watch book!) and there was a reading of an extract from it. But he mostly talked about his condition (a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s) and his advocacy for assisted dying. I’m a little bit ambivalent about the idea of assisted dying. On the one hand, I absolutely think that people with fatal illnesses should be able to choose to end their life with dignity when the suffering gets to be too much. But I disagree with people who think that assisted suicide should extend to people with depression, for example (not that Pratchett seemed to be suggesting this, but just to explain why I’m iffy on it). Like many people, I’ve dealt with depression for years, and occasionally take medication to help me keep on an even keel. I understand the pain of depression, but I worry that if it was considered grounds for assisted dying that many people who could be saved would take the option. I’ve been so down that if someone had offered me a sure-fire, painless ticket out, I would have taken it (don’t freak out, I’ve never planned to kill myself and I’m getting better and better at riding out the dark times as I get older, mainly because I don’t feel embarrassed about asking for help these days, and also because I’m lucky that the people who are close to me are very good at noticing when I’m starting to spiral downwards). But Pratchett makes an interesting case that is hard to argue with, and he is well worth listening to. There’s a great interview here, on the ABC Book Show. 

We really need more media coverage of people like him on highly emotive issues like this, instead of the sensationalism and fear mongering we generally get. He’s intelligent, eloquent, and in many ways you could think of him as the non-threatening face of this movement. He’s an irascible old fart (and I mean that in the best possible way), a sort of exasperating but cuddly grandfather figure and it’s hard to argue with his point of view. And I completely agree with him that as a society, we need to stop allowing ourselves to be held hostage by a few shadowy religious types, on this topic and many others. Time and again we see that, along with assisted dying, the vast majority Australians are in favour of the decriminalisation of abortion, and are in favour of gay marriage, yet there is a tiny core of nutters that stops us from moving forward. I’ve really never understood why these people care so much what goes on in the bedrooms and bodies of other people, and who knows why the politicians are so scared of them, but I say to the nutters out there, if you care that much about this stuff, feel free to go and form your own society somewhere else, where you can repress whoever and whatever you like, and let the grownups get on with the business of making decisions rationally. 

Ahem. Sorry, I got a bit off topic there. Where was I? Oh,  yes. Terry Pratchett. At the end of his talk he handed out plastic teeth (if you’re familiar with his books you’ll understand why. Otherwise, I direct you to Hogfather).

We were too far back from the stage to get any, but it was a wonderful spectacle nonetheless; how often do you get to see an internationally best-selling author hurling handfuls of plastic teeth from the stage of the concert hall in the Sydney Opera House? Then we all sang Happy Birthday, gave him a round of applause and that was that.

Look out! It's the living corpse of Christopher Walken!

Last night Jo and I took it upon ourselves to do something about the shameful excess of gin in this country by disposing of quite a lot of it in a manner that has ensured that none amongst the most vulnerable in society will be forced to come into contact with it. 

It began, as these things so often do, with the intention to pop out for a quick drink before dinner, and ended, as these things so often do, with me drunkenly demanding ice cream, regardless of fact that it is 1am and ice creams are just not to be had. 

But before we got to that point, we had done a little tour of a few of the bars around here. We drank much gin. I became convinced that I had learned to roll my tongue;

I hadn’t, but needed photographic evidence to convince me.

We ate enormous plates of stuff covered with mayonnaise;

And we ended up at Raspa, a bar around the corner from our house. I love this place. It’s tiny, with only about five tables in it, and it’s full of bits of music memorabilia. We generally refer to it as ‘the place with good music’ because, in a country seemingly devoted to the ear-bleedingly tedious warblings of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, Raspa generally has something decent on the stereo, often classic pop and rock like The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, but just as often it will be something a bit out of left field, like the Billy Elliot soundtrack (which is great, by the way).

And, in what is becoming a bit of a theme on this blog, they serve a decent sized gin and tonic.

The choice is yours. Drink it, or use it to put out a forest fire.

On this particular evening, we were in for a treat. Raspa was showing what we eventually worked out was the opening formalities of the 2010 COPA America football thing. It was stunning. Sadly, I have been able to track down a video, so you'll just have to use your imaginations. 

It was all a bit bewildering. There were women in white dresses holding eggs, which they reverently presented to an older gentleman, who cracked them open and presented each woman with a flag. Some of the eggs seemed a bit undeveloped, and the woman had to place them in an incubator until they were ready. The master of ceremonies seemed to have broken free from a Tony Robbins seminar.

And the musical numbers were being performed by the mummified remains of Christopher Walken.

With my brain gently marinating in gin, it was all a bit much for me. (As a side note, I realise that it was a bit odd to have been taking pictures of the TV, but luckily for us, everyone else, including the barman, was far too drunk to notice. He was also looking at a very important news report about dildos that was showing on the bar’s other TV, so as you can imagine, his attention was elsewhere) It was at this point that I started to demand ice cream, which we did eventually find, though it was no match for the gin, and I still felt rough as anything the next day. But at least we’ve made a difference, and no sensitive people will have to deal with the sight of full gin bottles on the shelves of most of the bars around here.

Insert Tasteless Skeleton Joke Here

When I was doing my Spanish course I went on a guided tour of Pamplona with a few other people from the language school. I thought that because I’d been living here for almost a month by that stage I wouldn’t learn much, but it was pretty interesting. Our guide told us that next to the Cathedral they had recently uncovered a medieval cemetery, and we had quite a long discussion in the group about how creepy it would have been to have been walking around over graves for years without ever knowing it. I generally consider myself to be a bit of a rationalist, and I know realistically that they’re just bones. But there’s that little part of your brain that whispers at you that they were once living, thinking, feeling people, and that we’re all headed the same way they went.

Anyway, a few days later I was walking down an alley that I have occasionally wander down on my rambles, when I saw what I thought was plumbing maintenance or somesuch. Only to realise that it was in fact the remains of another medieval graveyard.

I suppose the reality of life in a place like this is that everything is built on top of something else, and that where we walk every day is where people have been living and dying for hundreds of years.The sheer concentrated volume of the history of this place takes some getting used to when you come from a country in which a house that is less than a hundred years old can be considered worthy of a hertitage listing.