We arrived all sweaty and out of breath, and they were broadcasting the breaking news. We reached the radio station at the top of the hill, a very long way from anywhere, about 40 minutes into our hour-long live interview. Terry Pratchett is not one to go gentle into any night, good or otherwise.’ Photograph by Graeme Robertson for the Guardian ‘Beneath any jollity there is a foundation of fury. There are things you can never unsay, that you cannot say and still remain friends, and that would have been one of them. I did not ever say, at any point on that walk, that all of this would have been avoided if we had just got the bookshop to call us a taxi. Terry said nothing, in a way that made it very clear that anything I could say would probably just make things worse. I would try to say cheerful, optimistic things as we walked. We called the radio station as we went, whenever we passed a payphone, to tell them that we knew we were now late for a live broadcast, and that we were, promise-cross-our-hearts, walking as fast as we could. It would be several miles, all uphill and mostly through a park. This was a long time ago, in the days before GPS systems and mobile phones and taxi-summoning apps and suchlike useful things that would have told us in moments that no, it would not be a few blocks to the radio station. “From the address, it’s just down the street from here,” said Terry. Next stop was a radio station: we were due to have an hour-long interview on live radio.
We had just done a stock signing in a bookshop, signing the dozen or so copies they had ordered. Back in February 1991, Terry and I were on a book signing tour for Good Omens, a book we had written together.
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