User:AgProv

Male, middle forties, should know better but doesn't. Married to the Roundworld model for Susan Sto Helit (Goth Queen).

January 2012 He's back...

Hard to explain in a minimum of words. But after a few barren months' unemployment in 2011, got a quite well paid job. The drawback was that this includes night work. Seven till seven three or four nights per week at a not-bad wage rate. Could not afford to turn it down, but night work turns everything else upside down. You lose weight and build a sleep deficit so that at the end of four nights on, all you want to do is sleep. All those obligations you optimisitically took on when you were time-rich and cash poor start to weigh heavy. The artwork for an American friend's facebook site? The beta-reading for somebody else's fan-fic? The colloborative exercise on the nature of Quirm? All still there. nothing forgotten. But it just needs the time.... and spending up to 44 hours a week staring into somebody else's PC screen rather kills desire to look into your own for very long!

Just today I had a stubborn wisdom tooth removed. Three twisted roots. It didn't want to come quickly... under local anaesthetic, it felt like I was having a prolonged session with a troll retrophrenologist. Sitting here with a growing purpled bruise on one side of my face, and Herrself, who is slightly built, having to deny that she did it, despite severe provocation. Perhaps a strong drink before I go to bed, and tomorrow, I shall carry on contemplating policing in Quirm. I have not forgottten. Honestly. Ffor now, to re-acquaint myself with the Wiki as in my days of dark doubt, I thought I was mined out and had nothing more to offer. But we shall see! WEDS 11TH JANUARY, 2012, 21:21 pm.

An active lurker and idle-minded bystander on several sites, principally Fanfic, tvtropes, and Hootoo. (h2g2, founded by Douglas Adams as a bid to expand the Guide's entry on Earth from "mostly harmless", so that when the intergalactic researchers arrrive they will find the entry on Earth is big and comprehensive and already written for them.)

Sample Guide entries on hootoo:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A4329173

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A8379732

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A8145812

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A6172931

Hootoo is no longer owned by the BBC. I am free to post there again. I will also check the above links to see if they still function!

The brief biography.

Born in the Flintshire region of Llamedos. Educated in England and a graduate of UEA Norwich.

The longer biography

Born Welsh. Was educated at a school combining aspects of Hugglestones' Academy and the Assassins' Guild School, with occassional overtones of Fools' Guild (beds and catering). This left me with no horrors whatsoever concerning going either to prison or into the Army. Indeed: I served in a Welsh regiment and I understand exactly how the soldiers in Night Watch felt when bits of pavement were being ripped up and thrown at them (and worse) from behind barricades in an urban setting, although more shamrock than lilac.

Left the army in time to see the total collapse of steel, coal and other heavy industry in my top right-hand corner of Wales. Went to university instead and spent a total of eleven years and my first marriage in East Anglia.

Came North to Manchester. Spent another ten years working up to being a manager of an old peoples' home. Took redundancy money and ran as the system was being run down to the point where catastrophe, for which I would have been held responsible, loomed ever nearer. During that time, met enough undertakers in the course of their professional work for several offers of casual work to be gratefully received. Even before joining a firm of funeral directors on a part-time basis, I saw more death than the average person owing to the nature of my employment.

One day I might "fictionalise" this as there are tales to be told.

People on the night shift in care homes tend to be pretty funky ladies. They don't scare easily or tend to see things. It is entirely possible, to those of an open disposition, that they saw Death on at least one occassion.

This (other peoples' odd supernatural experiences in the hospice/OPH setting) may also be written about.

Now on the second official wife, and remain carefully neutral on matters of red and white roses. Have only ever visited Yorkshire. I reccomend Halifax.

Have today been told my main job contract with Manchester City Council, as part-time administrator, is in the light of spending cuts, blah blah, no going to be renewed. So time to start whoring myself to potential employers...again... but in a different universe I could be risking life, limb and personal cleanliness at Shotton Steelworks or Point of Ayr (Mostyn) colliery, missed career opportunities I do not mourn!

By recreation, something of a Grinjer. Yes, I know, it is a bit sad in a man in his forties, but the wife approves as she knows where I am at nights and my hobby involves neither golf clubs nor (most of the time) strong drink. Examples:-

[1] on a specialist forum where I'm known as Marshal Zhukov.

Now elevated to Sysop (27/09/07). Non sum dignum, Domine... No doubt I will find out what the extent of my newly-acquired superpowers are in due course....

Some of me Fanfic

Author desperately seeking feedback..... AgProv is Now available in NEW easy-to read fanfic form! See here:-[2] for Discworld short story "Fingers". This is a short story speculating on events in the life of a younger Fred Colon and Sam Vimes. A longer tale involving a post-Moving Pictures Victor Tugelbend may soon go live, as will a "prequel" to Good Omens in which a demon and an angel we know and love are in pre-First World War Austria, nurturing a young artist with big ideas.

These are listed under AgProv's "Clark Kent" identity.

Moving Pictures part II has now gone online. (Three completed chapters awaiting an ending)

Dec '08:- How André Got His Badge Back - a Discworld short story tying up loose ends after Maskerade and The Fifth Elephant is now live, same place!

Anthem Genaidlaethol o'r gwlad Llamedos

yn canu a'r thema "Men of Harlech"

Oh, ye men of Pant-Y-Girdl,

Do not fall at this last hurdle,

Though the foeman does encircle,

Llamedos prevails!

{more will be added/improved upon as it comes to me}

Here's a full verse - hoping it has the right sort of Pratchettian flavour to it!

Hold ye, Pant-Y-Girdl, steady,

Fight ye naughty foe’s incursions

And presumptions on your person,

With Llamedosian steel!

Ye tried to invade me;

Now you’re feeling deathly!

Iechyd-da,

Your tonkers are

Skewered to our swords and far from healthy!

Now you’re heading hospital bedwards,

You thought you could fight past Sergeant Edwards!

Cross your hearts, oh Pant-Y-Girdl -

Llamedos prevails!

I Shall Wear Midnight

First general and unfocused thoughts (left deliberately vague so as not to provide spoilers). So far only up to page 60, or so.

• As Tiffany gets older, the books get darker. There are some very dark scenes in the early chapters. The extremes of human behaviour (sexual and violent) are thrown at Tiffany to deal with - as her father points out in a key scene, she isn't even sixteen yet. She also deals with Roland's accession to the Baronacy and has the same political issues thrust upon her as were once Granny Aching's to sort out. And there are always the Feegle...

--AgProv 10:02, 3 September 2010 (CEST)

The Fanon

For those who are interested, I have taken up contributor Dr Whiteface's idea of the Fanon, a Wiki where fanfic writers may expand on their own take on the Discworld and explain and discuss their ideas about what the Discworld should have but doesn't.

This is a great idea - I'm surprised it's remained moribund since its inception, and now I'm barred for life from BBC messageboards as Public Enemy Number One, I need something else to do with my blogging time!

I have put up "shorts" on several of my own expansions of ideas Terry has raised in passing, or used as unexpanded one-liners, or just left as bare-bones skeletal notions or as "placeholder" characters that he may or may not return to in the future.

One such is Assassins' Guild swordmanship teacher Madame Les Deux-Epées, who is barely there in the canon apart from a name, a location, and a job description. I have used her in seveal fanfics, and this is my "biography" of her up to the point where she is persuaded to join the Guild.[3]

Her Howondalandian colleague Miss Smith-Rhodes, similarly barely there in the Canon, is described here:-

[4]