{"id":3286,"date":"2023-05-25T14:21:05","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T13:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.hertford.ox.ac.uk\/bridge\/?p=3286"},"modified":"2024-07-01T11:52:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T10:52:41","slug":"25-may-a-day-for-towels-and-terry-pratchett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.hertford.ox.ac.uk\/bridge\/25-may-a-day-for-towels-and-terry-pratchett\/","title":{"rendered":"The Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May: a day for towels and Terry Pratchett"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

‘This must be Thursday,’ said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. ‘I never could get the hang of Thursdays.’<\/em> \u2013 Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you see someone wearing a towel out and about this Thursday 25th<\/sup> May, don\u2019t be alarmed. It\u2019s a sign of excellent worldly preparation, of course, but also a marker of Towel Day \u2013 the day in Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy when the local bypass is set to work its way through Arthur Dent\u2019s front yard (and, more pressingly, the hyperspace expressway makes its way through Earth). A celebration devoutly celebrated by fans since 2001, it even goes so far as to appoint a Towel Ambassador for Earth<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also \u2013 by an unusual quirk of fate \u2013 The Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May, the day of the Ankh Morpork rising in the Discworld series. Adherents often wear lilac<\/a><\/strong> in honour of the revolution (fictional, of course, but that\u2019s beside the point.) Terry Pratchett fans are lucky \u2013 they find no shortage of ways or ways to celebrate their author, whether it\u2019s celebrating his birthday a month before or \u2013 in one of the more poignant traditions created \u2013 typing \u2018GNU Terry Pratchett\u2019 onto internet forums and message boards across the land<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 proving \u2018a man is not dead while his name is still spoken\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it\u2019s strangely coincidental that these two fantasy celebrations coincided on the same day, in many ways it epitomises the centrality of community in literary \u2018fandoms\u2019. Maybe it\u2019s the very nature of speculative fiction \u2013 out of place, out of time \u2013 which draws its fans to come together \u2013 on a single day or with a single action \u2013 to create a sense of unity. More generally, reading can often feel like a very solitary experience \u2013 and there\u2019s nothing super-fans of literature like more than to have a chance to talk about their favourite book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that doesn\u2019t stop people finding their own real-world parallels, none more so than in Oxford. Ankh Morpork itself may be based on London (though the Unseen University may seem rather familiar to some of us here\u2026) but Oxford isn\u2019t short on its own fantasy imaginings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something about Oxford just lends itself well to speculation. Maybe it\u2019s the otherworldliness of the whole place which offered itself up so well to the imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis \u2013 or maybe it was just the influence of the pubs. Philip Pullman sets the His Dark Materials series entirely within the realm of a parallel Oxford \u2013 with a few brief cameos from our own, too \u2013 and walking around these streets, you can feel the converging forces of research and mysticism which Pullman illustrates so well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And with that speculation comes tradition. One only needs to go to a bench at the back of the Botanic Garden on Midsummer\u2019s Day to see a gathering in honour of Lyra and Will, and \u2018Inklings\u2019 pub crawls<\/s> pilgrimages abound about town, with a certain famous elvish phrase above the threshold of a time-honoured pub<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s not to mention more recent home-grown ventures into the realm of speculative fiction \u2013 Rebecca F. Kuang\u2019s award-winning Babel<\/em>, which explores the latent imperialism couched in an alternative-universe Victorian Oxford, or Hertford\u2019s own Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction-shortlisted Laline Paull<\/strong><\/a>, whose second novel, \u2018The Ice\u2019, describes itself as a work of \u2018cli-fi\u2019, or climate fiction. Only time will tell whether these will lend themselves to their own national days \u2013 we have a sneaking suspicion they might prove to be classics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, we eagerly await the Hertford College fantasy novel which will allow us to celebrate with our own time-honoured tradition. Who knows which new ritual we\u2019ll be taking up in ten years\u2019 time? Or perhaps Hertford\u2019s famous pancake-day race<\/strong><\/a> will take on its own fantastical significance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested reading:<\/p>\n\n\n\n