And besides, there were always other things waiting to be written – bigger stories in which far more outlandish and arresting things were free to happen.īut now that Terry’s memory itself was under an explicit threat, the prospect of a memoir felt different. He didn’t seem persuaded that there was anything in the story of the journey that took a kid from a council house in Beaconsfield to a knighthood and a mansion near Salisbury by the sheer power of his imagination alone or in the tale of how a boy with, as Terry put it, “a mouthful of speech impediments” became one of his generation’s most popular communicators or how someone who left school with five O-levels could also go on to have an honorary professorship at Trinity College Dublin. In the years before he was ill, he talked about it almost exclusively to dismiss the idea. Terry often talked about “doing” his autobiography. Yet Terry was doing exactly the opposite, reacting to the news of his imminent demise with bravery, with unsparing thought, with a determination to confront his condition head on in public, with a bold mission to force the topic of assisted dying into the national conversation, and most of all (being Terry) with work – three television documentaries and seven more bestsellers. There were, inevitably, grim and testing times in those years, and I spent a lot of that period in denial about the full gravity of what was unfolding.
We became, of necessity, a sort of double act. Neil Gaiman collaborated with Terry Pratchett on the novel Good Omens.Īfter Terry was diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease, in 2007, at the cruelly early age of 59, I began to accompany him at public appearances, reading for him when he no longer could, helping him through interviews on stage as “keeper of the anecdote”. Terry could get quite exasperated with people sometimes, and certainly did not (as people often found themselves saying about him) suffer fools gladly. Just to be clear: there were no actual bodies in need of burying during my more than 20 years of working with Terry Pratchett. For all you have done, for all of the little things and all of the much bigger things and for the burying of the bodies … I thank you.
Look after the business and it will look after you. Have a big dinner each year, more if necessary or if a celebration is required, and raise a brandy to my memory and to happy days. Choose a gift every Christmas and birthday. Have those fine pieces of jewellery cast to my design and give them with my love. I think I was good, although I could have been better, but Terry Pratchett is dead and there are no more words.
There were days when I felt I had already gone and so all I wish for now is a cool, quiet room and some peace to gather my addled thoughts.
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