Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook (Discworld 40.50)
ACCOMMODATION: The Hotel Continental.
MARKET DAY: Wednesday.
Annual Well Undressing in April, when small children and old people are unwrapped from winter’s protective layer of goose grease and brown paper prior to a good scrubbing in the beneficial spring.
HIGH MOULDERING BOASTS wonderful salt-water baths from a pleasantly warm spring, and the owner and his wife give hygienic massages to those who would like to enjoy the benefit. Ladies and gentlemen separately, of course; there is nothing here that could be considered insalubrious or that would shock the most delicate of sensibilities.
People wishing to tour the area may be interested in the Sacred Glade of Shock Knee, which deserves to be noticed for its amazing echoes. A short distance away is a shrine to Anoia, patron goddess for people who have difficulty with things stuck in their drawers.
•CRANBURY•
(Change here for Sto Helit)
POPULATION: 420
CLACKS TERMINAL
ACCOMMODATION: The Plain View Hotel.
MARKET DAY: Friday.
Prick Out Monday in March (the day when cabbage seedlings are thinned out) ends in a procession of the maidens of the town dressed entirely in last year’s cabbage leaves. The young men of the town meanwhile play merry japes secreting slugs among their foliage.
CRANBURY, ONCE A staging post at the crossroads between the Sto Lat–Big Cabbage and Sto Kerrig–Sto Helit highways, is now a busy station at the junction of two railway lines. Traditionally it was the centre of a home-based cabbage-bottling business; the industrious housewives of the town developed their own recipe to preserve the bright green colour of the fresh vegetable. Cranbury Cabbage was transported by cart as far as Ankh-Morpork and even Ohulan Cutash where it was regarded as a great delicacy. Since the coming of the railway the process has been industrialized and tin cans, produced in Swine Town, arrive ready to be filled and sealed.
En route to Sto Helit, the train passes close to Smirk Hall, home to a rather unpleasant family who once owned vast tracts of land in this area. The dark turrets and ominous buttresses of the great house are visible from the train and there, in forbidding shadows, perhaps lurks the last club-footed member of this clan. They made their money, it is said, by theft and ransom and kept it by only marrying cousins. They lost it on strong drink, cards and snail racing.
•STO HELIT•
POPULATION: 3,500
CLACKS TERMINAL
POST OFFICE
ACCOMMODATION: The Grand Hotel, The Castle Arms.
BANK: Sto Plains Cabbage Growers’.
MARKET DAY: Octeday.
Nip Day, third Friday in August; Soul Cake Duck Cavalcade with illuminated floats and grand costumes in Sektober.
STO HELIT EMERGES from the evening gloom, its tall and rather forbidding castle dominating the skyline. The city has long outgrown the corsetry of its ancient walls and spreads itself out along fine avenues with shops and cafés. It enjoys something of a provincial reputation for ‘class’ and genteel living. The principal attraction is the ancient castle; some rooms are open for public viewing for a small consideration. The Long Gallery holds some fine landscape paintings in the Brindisian style as well as portraits of the Sto Helit ducal family. Lady travellers might wish to visit Bilberry’s Emporium, a most fashionable outfitters with a long tradition of dressing royal families. Their lace-makers and seamstresses created a delightful wedding dress for Queen Magrat of Lancre.
•GREAT SLACK•
POPULATION: 43
CLACKS TERMINAL
POST OFFICE: counter in Bitlidder’s General Store
MARKET DAY: Tuesday.
The Ember String Fair includes a tug of war, and children’s knotting games. The fair is regarded as a success if all the children are cut free before dusk.
A SMALL HAMLET that tries hard to be bigger, its only interesting feature being a monument to Antipater Slack, grower of the first self-protecting cabbage. This was the Slack Snapper, which devoured all insects that came within reach, thus precluding any possibility of pollination. Perceiving it was in danger of dying out, Antipater worked the field with a small camel-hair paintbrush to do the job himself. Neighbours were later able to trace his passage by those plants that successfully went to seed and his end by the remnants of his clothing and one rubber boot.