Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook (Discworld 40.50)

CLACKS TERMINAL

POST OFFICE

ACCOMMODATION: The Forge Inn has rooms. As the town expands more public houses, canteens and dormitories are opening up to cater for the vast army of workers. Visitors normally choose to stay in Sto Lat.

BANK: Royal Ankh-Morpork Bank.

THE STATION IN Swine Town is functional, surrounded by extensive shunting yards where a continuous stream of trucks deliver iron ore and coal from the quay at Colyford a few miles upriver. Swine Town is a place of pilgrimage for locomotive enthusiasts, who spend their days hanging around writing down engine numbers and other details in little notebooks. Mr Simnel’s Aunt Maudie, who runs Simnel’s Café just beside the station, also supplies these young men, and it is invariably young men, with that item of hooded waterproof clothing now becoming known as the Anorankh.

•COLYFORD•

POPULATION: 306

CLACKS TERMINAL

POST OFFICE: Counter in General Store.

ACCOMMODATION: The Waterman’s

Inn, The Cellar Inn.

MARKET DAY: Saturday.

Riverboat Festival in May: a weekend of fun, frolics and sociable crochet, culminating in a parade of decorated boats.

THIS SMALL SETTLEMENT on the banks of the River Ankh was once a quiet and somewhat backward town whose river trade comprised mainly wool and cheese coming downriver from Lancre. There used to be a small fish-processing plant where the Ankh green-gilled chub was transformed into something almost edible in a jar. This has recently closed and Colyford is now a bustling river port where the raw materials for building the railway are fed at great speed by the crowds of dockmen from barges on to railway trucks and thence to the forges of Swine Town. There is little else to see but the smell of the town is less offensive than it was and locals can now afford to make their sandwiches with named meat.

THE JOURNEY HUBWARDS takes us next to the hamlet of Hapley. In Spune there are frequent delays on this line caused by leaves shed by bolting cabbages. Unlike the Blue Bolter, which runs away when startled, the Burley Bolter is classed as an aggressive brassica and will pounce upon a moving object. Burly Bolters are not robust enough to damage engines, but cleaners report that removing the debris from the wheels is a greasy and smelly job. I was told that the AM&SPHR have requested that farmers use the land abutting the railway solely for growing potatoes or some other passive vegetable.

•HAPLEY•

POPULATION: 62 1/2

CLACKS TERMINAL: Nearest is ten miles away at Colyford.

POST OFFICE: Counter in Scrimp’s General Store.

ACCOMMODATION: The Rumptuous Arms.

MARKET DAY: Friday.

KEN DITCH, THE founder of the Very Plain Potato church, was born in Hapley and there is still a small shrine in the front room of his parents’ terraced cottage in Beehive Lane. There is a small trade in the sale of sacred relics of the founder; these take the shape of wizened and dried-out potatoes that are worn around the neck on baling twine. Some converts have taken to wearing wristbands of the twine alone, like some small scratchy bangle.

Further afield, Rumptuous Hall, a once grand house but now in ruins, was the home of the Rumptuous family.

The unexplained disappearance of the septuagenarian Lord and Lady Rumptuous has never been resolved and their only son, Cuthbert, went missing on an expedition to find the source of the River Z’boozi in Howondaland. Some impression of the former grandeur of the estate may be gained from the famous Remnant painting believed to show the grounds, Still Life with Cabbage, Broccoli both Green and Purple, Sprouts, Kale and Elderly Couple being Attacked by Werewolf.

The journey continues with the never-changing view and ever-pleasant aroma of cabbage fields. Even the unassuming railway stations are built to a common plan, with little to raise the interest of the traveller. It is, however, worth getting off at Little Swelling, the acknowledged centre of the worm-herding tradition. The ancient ways of the worm herder had at one point almost died out but, like many things put aside in the name of progress, their work was much missed and regeneration and breeding programmes are now under way. The station master, who is himself an amateur worm breeder of some renown, is also the curator of the small museum and will open it to visitors for a small remuneration. It boasts a fine collection of herder’s prongs, travelling trowels, scoops and flat pans as well as the worm-skin tunic and socks worn by fabled worm herder Thaddeus Spelt.

LITTLE

•SWELLING•

POPULATION: 148

CLACKS TERMINAL: at the Worm Herder’s Arms.

ACCOMMODATION: The Worm Herder’s Arms.