Pratchett

Yesterday I went to see Terry Pratchett interviewed by Garth Nix at the Sydney Opera House and good gravy what an experience.

The astonishing thing about my organisational skills is that I am only capable of organising things in an extremely condensed amount of time. When I discovered that my local cinema was doing a midnight screening of Harry Potter I messaged all my friends, got definite numbers and bought the tickets within forty-five minutes of the discovery. When I read in the paper, on the train home from uni, that Terry Pratchett was going to be at the Opera House I messaged everyone and organised who was and was not interested before I stepped in my front door. I bought the tickets the next day.
Ask me to organise something over a couple of weeks? I'll put it off until the day before. One hour? I can halve that time. I'm a contradiction.

Anyway, I started reading Terry Pratchett when I was approximately 12 years old and I think I'll be reading and re-reading them for the rest of my life. His books have probably been a primary influence in the way I view the world and my ambition to be a writer. Yes, I love Harry Potter and all that it's adoration entails, but the Discworld is my childhood happy place. When I learnt that Terry Pratchett had Alzheimer's I was deeply upset. Here is one of this centuries most brilliant minds, slowly deteriorating. I kind of understand why he's an advocate for assisted suicide (a topic which I'm largely undecided on). The destruction of such an imagination, such quick wit and astonishing thought, is truly a tragedy.

I don't know why I was surprised to find him so funny. He spoke how he wrote, with eloquent phrasing and a dazzling sense of humour that caused the audience to hang on his every word and spontaneously burst into applause. He was shorter, smaller, than I imagined him being - I suppose he's rather old now - but his personality more than made up for it.

The interview went half an hour over time but I don't think anybody wanted it to end. When they finished they threw plastic teeth into the front few rows (from the tooth-fairys castle of course) and Garth Nix got everybody to sing Happy Birthday because it was Mr Pratchett's birthday next week and it was amazing.

I think the most wonderful part of the experience, besides 'oh my gosh I just heard Terry Pratchett speak) was the complete and total adoration of the audience for this small, skinny man with a lisp and a big hat. You could feel the love and the awe that every single person sitting there had bursting from their hearts. I know that the Discworld series gave me so much as I was growing up and if everyone else felt even a fraction of that gratitude then it was possibly the most affectionate and loving crowd I have ever been a part of.

If anything ever happened to him now I would be so distressed. But I definitely know that I would not be the only one.

Positive Memory of the Day: That one time I saw Terry Pratchett and then walked across the city with friends and it was a near-perfect night.