Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook (Discworld 40.50)

*

About half an hour after leaving Ankh-Morpork, the train stops at the township of Upunder. This once typical Sto Plains community is now home to many families who have moved out from Ankh-Morpork to enjoy the bouquet of the cabbage-enriched air.

•UPUNDER•

POPULATION: 550

CLACKS TERMINAL

POST OFFICE

ACCOMMODATION: Keevil’s Hotel, The Boot Inn.

MARKET DAY: Wednesday.

Squash Monday Fair, third Monday in June, marks the start of the caterpillar eradication season.

UPUNDER IS A small but expanding town with a tradition of cabbage-growing and cobbling. The Offle King cabbage thrives here and its robust outer leaves provide sustainably produced soles for the practical and hard-wearing Upunder boot, which to generations of farmers has meant the difference between being dry-shod and suffering from Squelch, a nasty fungal affliction brought about by spending one’s working life with damp feet amid rotting vegetable matter. Now it seems that some young people have taken to wearing these boots as a fashion accessory, which has led to a trade in inferior imported boots using a cheaper leaf. These are reported to smell dreadfully when wet; so much for progress and the vagaries of fashion.

THE ENDLESS FIELDS of brassica stretch in every direction with a sameness that might be restful were it not for the overwhelming odour of the cabbage. An hour after leaving Ankh-Morpork the city of Sto Lat appears on the horizon perched on its rocky outcrop like a fortress island on a sea of bilious green. This ancient kingdom had until the coming of the railway more history than future, and is ruled by Her Supreme Majesty Queen Kelirehenna I, Lord of Sto Lat, Protecto

r of the Eight Protectorates and Empress of the Long Thin Debated Piece Hubwards of Sto Kerrig. She has been most forthcoming in her views as to the benefits of the railway to a small kingdom built on the fortunes of leaf vegetables, and was behind the building of the modern terminus outside King Olerve’s Gate. It is constructed to look in keeping with the surrounds by employing the artifice of crenellated towers and what appears to be a huge portcullised gate that is in fact the entrance to the engine sheds. Sto Lat Junction, to give it its official name, forms the centre of a network which extends as far hubward as Uberwald, and the great engine sheds and workshops of Swine Town lie near by.

•STO LAT•

POPULATION: 9,800

CLACKS TERMINAL AND GRAND

TRUNK OFFICE

POST OFFICE

ACCOMMODATION: The Queen’s Head, The Railway Hotel, The Runcible Arms, The Plough Inn.

BANKS: The Cabbage Growers’ Cooperative, Apsley’s Commercial.

MARKET DAYS: Wednesday and Saturday.

Grand Agricultural Show in May, Soul Cake Duck Parade in Sektober, Cabbage Scramble and Rolling contest in Ick.

STO LAT IS the commercial centre of the cabbage-growing business and boasts the Grand Brassica Exchange Building as well as the Rutabaga Assembly Halls. The Josiah Remnant mural in the latter is reported to be his largest rendition of Prospect of Sprouts Upon a February Morning.

The Castle Museum, which is open to the public (daily from ten until four, admission free), houses an interesting collection of double action seed drills, early Humdrummer’s single-tine fork dibbers and the complete musical vegetable collection of Aloysius Musk.

The castle gardens have a good display of herbaceous plants and ornamental cabbage. The maze has been closed to the public after complaints that starving visitors trapped inside had to be fed by throwing sandwiches and bits of cake to them from the battlements. It was reported that a family of dwarfs even resorted to tunnelling to make their escape. The maze was planted to a plan provided by that ‘master’ of landscaping, B. S. Johnson. This plan, preserved in the museum, was drawn on a piece of paper that had also been used to sketch a design for a cruet. Further confusion was added by the many circular coffee stains and part of a note from Mrs J. to her chambermaid.

Sto Lat is well known for its community of skilled blacksmiths and metalworkers who historically used the ore found in the rock that the city is built on. (Legends tell that this isolated crag was carried here from the Ramtops in the days of the Ice Giants.) The local seams were soon worked out and, until the arrival of the railway, iron ore, along with coal, copper and tin, was brought in by mule-trains in the summer and troll-drawn sleds in the winter. The metalworking industry is now revitalized, although many of the younger craftsmen have migrated to Swine Town where the wages are higher and the only cabbage they see is on a plate. With gravy.

Sto Lat’s prestigious Military Academy, located just outside the city walls, still enrols the younger sons of the Sto Plains gentry, although in these peaceful times a career in the Royal Sto Plains Riflers is no longer the reliable source of income, enemy boots and other such spoils of war as it once was.

The cadets spend as many hours learning the intricacies of etiquette as they do military strategy. One may often spy a hapless cadet or two outside, julienning potatoes, polishing oyster forks or performing endless Borogravian Waltz drills as punishment for some infraction.

TRAVELLING THE FEW miles to Swine Town one can usually hear it before one sees it. The sound of mighty hammer presses permeates not just the town but the countryside for some way out, rattling farmhouse windows and causing the ground to tremble. The sound could be mistaken for thunder were it not so regular. The sky above is lit by the red glow of the forges like some crucible of the gods and everything is covered in a fine black dust. There are vast sheds where serious and clever men in oil-stained dungarees create from steel sheet and bar the finely engineered steam machines that power our railway. Swine Town is a wonder of our age and its whole population is directed towards that one purpose.

•SWINE TOWN•

POPULATION: 690