Boing Boing has a link to this lovely bit of quilt making (there’s something I never thought I’d be mentioned on here!) by a group of Terry Pratchett fans. The Ankh Morpork Knitter’s Guild have been working on the Pratchett Afghan quilt, or Pratchgan as it has been dubbed, for some time – the finished version was given to Terry at the weekend while he was at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. What a brilliant piece of work, I’d be delighted to curl up all toasty under that this winter (and given the promised domestic fuel bill hikes it might be very practical too!). I wonder if we could persuade them to do a Transmetropolitan one for Warren Ellis next? More details on the Ramblings of a Yarn Junkie blog and plenty more pics on the Pratchgan Flickr stream.
Elsewhere on the BBC site Terry talks about living day to day with Alzheimer’s and how it affects his life and his writing: “I type badly – if it wasn’t for my loss of typing ability, I might doubt the fact that I have Alzheimer’s. It’s now hunt and peck, and there will be a moment sometimes when the letter A just totally vanishes and I don’t quite know what happens. It’s as if the keyboard closes up and the letter A is not there anymore. Then I’ll blink a few times and then the letter A comes back.”
Despite this the fantastically popular author remains fairly upbeat in the face of this awful affliction and comments that his family have noticed a big difference in him due to medication – simple, everyday matters like doing the buttons up on a shirt that most of us would take for granted had become difficult, now he’s doing it again. However, Terry also spoke out (again on the BBC, which has a clip of him from Panorama) on the issue of medication, criticising the NHS’s decision to limit the use of Aricet, which he referred to as an insult to sufferers, pointing out his literary success meant he had the means to be able to pay for his own doses when the Health Service would not, but most people were not going to be in that position: “Alzheimer’s scares people and at four o’clock in the morning it scares me, and Aricept is well worth having for the relief that it brings.” You can find out more information via the Alzheimer’s Research Trust site (where you can also find out how to make a donation if you wish) and the grass-roots, fan-based Match It For Pratchett is still taking donations from readers to try and raise a sum equivalent to the donation Terry himself made to Alzheimer’s research.
Tue, Aug 19, 2008
Books, General