Discworld

“Saw this and thought of you!”  Should I be insulted or flattered?  Was I being likened to a hairy monster or did Partner-who-loves-tea recognise the background to this picture.  Whatever - she sent me this from home while I was staying with GB this year.

 Postcard - 118

For people who are not Discworld fans I should perhaps explain that in Terry Pratchett’s remarkable Discworld series of novels the librarian is turned into an Orang-utan by an unfortunate piece of magic.

The Librarian appeared in the first novel of the series, ‘The Colour of Magic’, and was transformed into an orang-utan in ‘The Light Fantastic’ as the Octavo fired a beam of magic upwards. On discovering that being an orang-utan had certain advantages for a librarian - he can climb up to high shelves, for example - he refused to be transformed back into a human and has remained an orang-utan ever since. The other wizards have gradually become used to the situation, to the extent that, from ‘Night Watch’: “if someone ever reported that there was an orang-utan in the Library, the wizards would probably go and ask the Librarian if he'd seen it.”

I should warn you, in case you meet him any time, that an Orang-utan is an Ape.  He is therefore likely to rip your head from your shoulders if you make the mistake of calling him a monkey.  In my librarian days there were other reasons I should have occasionally liked to rip readers' heads off but we won't go into that...