THANK YOU FOR THE KIND WORDS.

THANK YOU FOR THE KIND WORDS.

Sir Terry Pratchett will be missed. 

I met him a few times and every time it was fun. He came out to Perth a handful of times for signings and for Swancon - I designed and screenprinted one of the t-shirts for Swancon - it had Great A'Tuin and all, done in fountain pen and ink, looking very old map like. Terry was asking about colours, seeing as we could print them overnight at home, to order.

"And we can do black on black"
"Black on Black?" The not then "Sir" Terry asked, incredulous.

We showed him what the puff ink did. It looked pretty swish!

Terry ordered one of those, and Lyn came and ordered others, both of them delighted. My Mum handily printed them overnight, and delivered them in the morning. They were very pleased.

At the Ascot Hotel one Easter Swancon (understand that this is Perth, Western Australia, and it gets very hot in the lead up to Easter) I was wandering through the common area when Then not then "Sir" Terry rushed up to me and dragged me outside saying "You've got to see this, come with me!"

Outside, with the Swan River snaking behind the hotel, the rain was falling down gently on everything. Terry took me by the shoulder and gestured expansively. "This is..."Rain". You're Australian so I thought I'd better let you know what it was."

After I finished laughing I let him know that it always rains at Easter. Not even quite true then, it's certainly less common now!

He seemed to find the back end of Ascot a wilderness...I suppose it might have looked that way with the reeds and all. "You expect the African Queen to come downriver!" he said.

I asked him a bit later what had happened to Tethys the sea troll, but he said that some characters have their time in the story, and then they just move on and aren't heard from again. I was a bit sad about that, I liked that character.

At the 1999 Worldcon in Melbourne we encountered Terry striding his way down the hall of the hotel, which was the old Victorian Railway Administration Building from the 1800's converted. Very tall ceilings, huge doors and hallways. "This place is built for Krell!" he quipped to us as he went by.

Later, after he was diagnosed and was back in Perth for a signing I was lining up to get The Truth signed for my journalist dad. His eyes lit up when he saw the old Swancon tshirt with the DiscWorld map I was wearing - I've no idea if it was recognition or not of my old design and he said chirpily "You've got the lot there!" and when hearing that Dad had been a journalist inscribed a special message to him on the book.

Farewell Sir Terry, you're still  with us in the worlds and kindnesses you've created and the works they've inspired. 

Noli Timere Messorem 

That's Sir Terry's achievement below -  note the Morepork and the Ankh. :-) Wikipedia says that Sir Terry had never heard of the bird on first writing about the greatest city, but retroactively associated the New Zealand/Tasmanian species with it after finding out.

#terrypratchett