Terry himself was due to arrive at 12:15pm, but was fashionably late by one hour! When he did arrive however, he couldn’t get into The Grainstore because he was mobbed outside by some of the attendees, for autographs and chats. So the poor man had to stand in the bitter cold outside for a while longer. The party was now getting into full swing!

I was lucky enough to be able to get a fairly lengthy and relaxed chat with Stephen early on in the day. The subject of conversation was an impending Discworld release, namely the second of the Discworld Big Comic Books. This came about from a discussion of the end of apartheid in South Africa. You see, to show the populous what atrocities occurred on both sides of the Black v. White battlefield (this was with the intention of learning knowledge from mistakes and to stop such a thing happening again), it was felt that all formats of publication should be used to get the messages across to all people, no matter intelligence or wealth. So a T.V. version, a book version, an audio version and a Comic Book version(!), amongst others, were made to purvey the message.

Stephen confirmed that the Discworld Comic Book release will be Guards, Guards, again illustrated by Graham Higgins. However, this release will see several changes and will benefit from lessons learnt after the release of Mort. Most probably Guards, Guards will be in Black and White, thus it will be bigger, meaning more pictures and a thicker book. This also means that Stephen’s role of adaptation is made easier, as this size of comic book will mean less of a story cut is required. Thus providing an accurate, fully covering pictorial of the original book.

There’s a woman called Rachel (sorry I forgot your surname) whom attended the Hogswatch Party. Many will remember her as Susan in the Maskerade Parade with her Death of Rats marionette (which was absolutely excellent), but as it turns out this was not a one-off. The marionette was so greatly admired, that Stephen Briggs was sufficiently impressed with Rachel to ask her to do marionettes for his stage adaptations of the Discworld books in Abingdon when necessary. Rachel has just completed the making of an apparently excellent looking Errol (according to Stephen). So watch out for her work and of course her Dragons on Sticks. Unfortunately none of her work is available for the general public to buy at present. The Marionettes are solely for Stephen’s adaptations and the Dragons on Sticks she gave away for free at the Hogswatch Party.

The "Wallbro Pixies" and our hosts for the day, Eric and Arthur were at work selling their wares and making a fair few bob. This was of course the new "Albert’s Drip" beer, plus the last of the older beers such as the special "Fifty" (for Terry’s 50^th Birthday), "Imp Pale Ale" and more. They were also selling the Clarecraft pieces at special knockdown prices. Eric and Arthur made excellent hosts and ensured no-one’s spirits were down, how could they be with this pair of pixies bringing as much fun as they could to the event, and being as cheeky a pair of chappies as they could without offending! The only downside to the whole event was that there was no tour of the brewery, as time didn’t permit this to happen.

For Terry, as always, this was a busy day. A day brought about by his writings and an opportunity for him to survey the many offshoots of his novels. He could not escape the many autographs he had to make within his books and on any object anyone could find to hand. However, this was not all for Terry on this day. Rachel also plays the Steel Drums and had been entertaining the masses all day with her playing, so it was Terry’s turn to be entertained. Rachel handed out several lyric sheets, including one to Terry and the proceeded to play a filk that everyone was meant to join in with. In reality only a few people did, but I think Terry enjoyed listening and was also glad they stopped before the X-rated verses!

In the end though I believe even Terry found the day fun, finding pockets of time to escape and have a few moments to ask the questions himself and just chat about what he wanted to, and of course eat. In fact at the end of the day he was taken out for a meal by Eric and Arthur to a nearby Chinese restaurant called "Wok This Way", no surprise to learn that Eric found this place!