There is a ticking, such as might be made by a clock. There’s an ox roast afterwards, and it’s generally considered a nice day out for all the family. There, the men dance on the first day of spring, backwards and forwards, bells tied under their knees, white shirts flapping. It’s a small village high in the Ramtop Mountains, where the big and simple secret is handed down across the generations. And even there, only in one place have they got it right. Except on the Discworld, which is flat and supported on the backs of four elephants which travel through space on the shell of Great A’Tuin, the world turtle.

It is danced innocently by raggedy-bearded young mathematicians to an inexpert accordion rendering of “Mrs Widgery’s Lodger” and ruthlessly by such as the Ninja Morris Men of New Ankh, who can do strange and terrible things with a simple handkerchief and a bell. The imperative is felt by deep-sea beings who have never seen the sun and urban humans whose only connection with the cycles of nature is that their Volvo once ran over a sheep. It is danced under blue skies to celebrate the quickening of the soil and under bare stars because it’s springtime and with any luck the carbon dioxide will unfreeze again.

REAPER MAN By Terry Pratchett The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse.

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