Episode
Rebecca: hi there, Sam,
and welcome to pleasure central radio.
Sam: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Rebecca: It's so good to have you back. I always love having interesting conversations with fascinating people. So I'm happy that you're over there in your hotel room recording and I'm over here in the studio recording
Sam: I think we both have pretty nice little recording areas.
Rebecca: Yeah, we do. Nothing's going to keep us down.
Sam: That's right. Pandemics 20 20, the slow motion apocalypse. Everything it can throw at us.
Rebecca: 10 days of smoke.
Sam: Oh my gosh. Yeah, exactly. So glad that's over.
Rebecca: Well, speaking of interesting experiences, There is an author that I have been reading practically my entire life. And I don't usually reread books, but this is someone who I have re-read all of the books that he's had out that I've been able to find multiple times. And there's some, you know, some 70 plus books out there.
Do you know who I'm talking about?
Sam: Well, I would go out on not a very shaky limb and say probably Terry Pratchett,
Rebecca: yes. It's Terry Pratchett, sir. Terry Pratchett.
Sam: sir. Terry Pratchett.
Rebecca: Sir, Terry, he's a very fascinating guy. He's dead now, but I did have the pleasure of getting to see him speak at town hall in Seattle a few years ago, when one of his books came out. it was fascinating.
Sam: Nice. I had not really even heard of Terry Pratchett, before I met you. And, you quickly remedied that. And, turned me on to, some of his books and he is quite a prolific author. He's had a lot of books and a lot of success.
Rebecca: Yeah. And he has a very interesting story too. If I remember correctly, he started out his career as a reporter and ended up getting to spend a fair amount of time with the police officers and the police department while he was doing reporting. And then slowly he wanted to start writing and doing his own thing and writing his own books.
there's one character set, which is the Watchman. A lot of what he has written about there in those books came from doing that as a reporter.
Sam: That's fascinating. I've been around law enforcement, but of course, with my background in the military, that's more my expertise. But yeah, when I started reading, particularly, yeah, about the character of Sam vines, he writes those types of units and those types of people. So exceptionally well, I feel like he, nails The comradery, the, the power dynamics, particularly between, sergeants, within the military and also within law enforcement, he just really, picked up on and writes that very well.
It's something I in, almost of the books that I've read, uh, at least the one centered on Discworld and that feature, Sam vines or, or similar characters.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think you're right. One of my favorites in that genre is monstrous regiment because it does have Sam vibes in it a small bit, but it actually is about an army in a country that's not very good at armies. they're very, very religious and are hardly ever winning Wars. So they're constantly sending their young men off to die in these Wars that are futile and pointless.
And, it's a really sweet book. I don't want to give any spoilers, at least not yet, but monstrous regimen is one of my favorites. And if I remember correctly,
did I have you read that one or was that.
Sam: Yes you did. That was, I think the second book you had me read. and, and yes, that was one that I thought I had to actually look Terry Pratchett up and see 'was he in the military?' because Of creating those characters and a thoroughly enjoyable book. That was the ones that along with, guards, guards really, really drew me in.
And I haven't been much of a, I don't even know what genre you would call it. Something along those lines, it features magic. It's not so much Saifai. but yeah, those two books really sort of cemented my appreciation for his fantastic sense of humor, his creation of the Discworld universe. And then of course it was after you gotten me to read those that, good omens, the mini series came out, which I thoroughly enjoyed and have definitely enjoyed more of his work since then.
Rebecca: Oh, my gosh. I have so many of his books that I want to shovel at you, which I know is not really a sustainable strategy. And let me know when you're ready for another one.
Sam: I definitely will. Well,
I, certainly, appreciate the Discworld books, but, there are some other books you've recommended that are by Terry Pratchett, but go in slightly different directions like Nation.
Rebecca: Yes, nation is an incredible book in its own right for a couple of different reasons. one of them is, if I remember correctly, this is the only book that Terry Pratchett said he couldn't not write. It was like, I wanted to come out of him no matter how hard he wanted to avoid writing it. He couldn't not write it.
So, it's an interesting story. And if you read all of his other books and then read that one, the tone is different. The message is a little bit different and yeah, I'm really glad that you've read it because I'd love to compare notes.
Sam: Well, it was one that you recommended to me and I downloaded it and you're right. It is a Very different style, very different tone and a completely different setting. It's a world similar to our own, and he touches briefly on the idea of the multiverse , but it's almost an alternate history where he takes very familiar settings and then just tweaks them just a little bit. So it's familiar, but different.
Rebecca: Yeah, it almost has that flavor of if a butterfly had flapped, it swings in the 1690s or something, and one little thing had gone different and the plague, it actually had this instead of that effect, and then there was a typhoon and then a tsunami. Yeah. It was very interesting to see how similar things felt and the history that they were describing and also to try and pick out the wait, which ones are made up.
Sam: Right. Wait, what part of this tracks with the history that we know and what part of this is different?
Rebecca: Yeah. That was really fun. You know, one of the reasons that I've been reading again a lot is there are times when you do need to just bury your head in the sand and stop thinking about the news and what's going on in the outside world. Now, I don't recommend that anybody does that all the time, because you still do need to see where your boat is going in order to steer it.
And it's really helpful to find some useful things to let yourself fall into and put some new thoughts in your head, some new experiences that you can draw from. So this is one of the books that I feel fits into this category really well. It's a great book for reading during 2020.
Sam: Yes, it's not entirely escapist, but I mean, there are definitely, I think some, some really good parallels to various things that are going on right now. Definitely some lessons to be learned. But you're right. It is nice to pull your head out of the endless news cycle and go down a different path for a little while if only to clear your head and gain some perspective. And, this book opens with a cataclysmic event. Well, after a brief scene on a dock, but the meat of the tragedy and is, in a lot of ways about, rebuilding and recovering from what seems like a virtually world ending event. And I think in a lot of ways, it's helpful to put things into perspective for, for 2020 which seems like a slow motion apocalypse at times.
Rebecca: That's slow motion apocalypse. That is funny.
Sam: like one thing after another. So ...
Spoilers! (after this - make the first 10 minutes a trailerRebecca: I think we should say here from now on, there's probably going to be some spoilers about this book. So if you don't want any of the spoilers, then don't listen in. But, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the book in general, and then we can talk about what we really. Found to be interesting or useful or
applicable to 2020 right now.
Sam: Okay. Well, one thing that I found really fascinating was Terry's, I found it interesting, the, the journey that he charts for Mau, one of the main characters. And it begins with him sort of going through the tribal manhood crucible. His tribe known as the nation. this has been the way boys become men as long as anyone can remember.
And so it's really interesting to me how he shows Mau going through this process and then having to learn some new things and create a new process practically from scratch when a lot of his expectations suddenly are literally washed away.
Rebecca: Yeah, what an incredible thing to have happen, especially on the day that you've become a man. I thought that was really potent that the book starts out with him still as a boy, having a boy's soul, a child's soul, trying to we're getting ready to leave this Island, go back to his Island. And his family and his tribe, and go back as a man like that, that is the whole point of what he's doing.
And as he's going back, he ends up getting swept up by this tsunami and the entire village gets wiped away. Wow. That is an intense start to a story.
Sam: Well, and I thought it was really interesting that when he's on another Island, it's like the Island where boys have to go to become a man, and they survive there on their own for a period of time. They have to build themselves a boats and return to the village, but he specifically remembers his father telling him to enjoy his last day as a boy that eventually you're going to come back, you're going to have a wife and kids and that's all well and good, but enjoy that last, you know, day of just being a boy. And for some reason that made me think of a line from John Cougar Mellencamp. he says, hold onto 16, as long as you can changes come around real soon, make us women and men. But it's the universal thought of childhood as this in the best case scenarios, fairly carefree.
And then that transition being, you're assuming responsibilities, more responsibilities than you had as a child.
Rebecca: I also liked the little snippet that they had where at the end of his day on the Island, he takes the ax and he just buries it really, really deep into that wood. And then that comes back around to bite him only a few pages later.
Sam: Yeah, I did find that pretty amazing. one of the themes there was that, you know, men help other men. And so he not with any real malice, but just kind of a Ha! I'm going to make this hard for the next boy. And then the next boy turns out to be him! So yeah, the only person that he screwed was himself.
"When he buries the ax, it was not a nice thought, but he had a good canoe and a calm sea and he would scuttle fast. Oh yes. You swung the ax as hard as he could thinking, "ha! The next boy to pull this out will deserve to be called a man." And it's just a really interesting again, just sort of, you know, spoiler alert here, but when he, when he next tries to pull it out, just a few pages later, he is unable to, and he's, he's just buried it too deeply, even for himself to pull out. And then the acts makes a reappearance much later in the story exactly when he needs it. And he is able to pull it out. And, and use it. And that really marks a major transition for him in the book.
So incredibly subtle foreshadowing, and again, that's just a Mark of a search area, project being quite the masterful writer.
Rebecca: He is quite clever. I've always loved his footnotes. The footnotes are the best part of his books!
Sam: Yes, he definitely
footnotes.
Rebecca: Yes. And then there was the ghost girl. She was a very interesting character. What did you think of her?
Sam: as far as ghost girl, she is an interesting character there are some cultural clashes or cultural differences that come early on. Mao is I guess in practical terms, a Pacific Islander, although Terry Pratchett makes it clear that this is not the Pacific, but that's generally how you can think of nation and, Mau's family and ghost girl is clearly white. And, arrives with all of the, technology of sort of colonial era Britain and their power. And so you have this clash of civilizations and this contrast, which of course in today's climate of everyone wanting to be sensitive. it was interesting to see how, Terry Pratchett handled that. The whites in this are referred to as the trouser men, because they all wear trousers. And, so she is a trouserman, woman. As a young girl stranded on this Island her journey, which in many ways, sort of parallels Mau's, It's interesting. you thought of, of ghost girl.
Rebecca: I liked her a lot. I've found her to be really interesting, adventurous. Strong. I think as a female role model for young girls growing up, she is a pretty powerful person. I liked seeing that. I liked that she started out pretty helpless and you could tell the way she was talking about the ship and what she knew about the ship and what she didn't. But also very curious, they mentioned her being taught by her dad who's an Explorer and getting to see all kinds of interesting things at home and diving into books and science, and just been curious about everything. And I like that. She, they made her a very relatable character. I think. So, even though at the beginning of the story, she seemed like this spoiled, rich, white girl, very quickly, you realize that she knows how to take care of herself and she cares about other people and she's wanting to do what's best for everyone, which is very sweet.
Sam: Yes. And even though really, she kind of is a spoiled, rich white girl, her limitations have been things that were imposed on her by her upbringing and her culture, not anything that was inherent to her. She's not inherently weak and helpless. She just didn't have the exposure, or the mean silver in these other things.
So when she suddenly in a situation where she has to adapt, I think in that way, she's very similar to Mau and that's okay. No, she's in a transitional period where she is becoming a woman and one thing I found fascinating for both of them is they're essentially deprived of social pressure to fit into a certain mold other than what they've had already imprinted on them.
You know, from their upbringing to this point, but when suddenly all of that culture is gone and those people are gone, they have this opportunity to figure out for themselves. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a member of this society?
Rebecca: Yeah, I did like that. And I appreciated that they were, that there were the ancestors of each of the sexes, the grandmothers would not haunt the women's place, but they would spend time there. that's where the grandmothers were and the grandfathers were up in their tomb on the Hill and also in the grandfather birds that were all over the place.
So it's interesting to hear that both Mau and the ghost girl, Daphne or they both ended up hearing the collective voices of the grandmothers or the grandfathers.
And I found it interesting that they were able to like, sometimes the grandmothers and grandfathers would say what they expected and sometimes they wouldn't, they would come up with something new and different.
Sam: Yeah, it was a really interesting way to talk about just sort of social norms and how they play into what we think we should be doing and the pressure that that can have. And that's something that Mau deals with in like hearing these voices in his head of the grandfathers and it seems like a lot of what he hears is just not helpful. And it seems like they're telling him things that he should be doing, or he should be concerned about that really have no practical use. And so he definitely resist that in a lot of ways. and it seems, yeah, it was good reason when they're specifically talking about the gods stones and now, you have to do things the way we've always done them because otherwise bad things are going to happen.
And his attitude is basically like seriously? Like, how, how could worst things happen? And you've been doing it this way since forever. And it still didn't It. stop this calamity. So why would I care about that now? You know? Yeah. Yeah. When the system didn't work in the first place, then why would you continue to, and believe in that system?
And he very much resists that.
Rebecca: Yeah, I like that too. I like that. That's how he discovers his own path is through questioning a lot of the dogma that he's been told his entire life.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny to me that when the grandmothers talked to Daphne the ghost girl, they kind of coopoo the the grandfather's wisdom, like, eh, you know, yeah. They're always getting the boys to, you know, go to war you know, that's, that's their big advice. Every Reliving your high school glory days or your, you know, college glory days or your military glory days or whatever, you think your youthful days were, it's interesting that, that seems to be the way the grandfathers skew and the grandmothers seem much more practical.
Rebecca: Practical, even to the point of making a magical tea that she uses to slip off into his dream and bring him back from the grips of death.
Sam: Yeah, there are some really fascinating, elements of magical realism where for the most part it's very straight forward. Mal almost entirely debunks, sort of the religious dogma of his tribe. And yet he hears the voices of the grandfathers. She hears the voices of the grandmothers. they deal with death and like you said she drinks this tea that sends her into his dream where she pulls him back from the brink of death.
And it's just really cool to have that. feeling it's not overplayed. in large part, the story is just very simple and realistic. And, and yet you have these fantastical elements that I think really adds something to it.
Rebecca: Yeah, I agree. Another thing that I really appreciated about that story was that the love story doesn't end the way every other love story does. It's actually quite sweet, how it doesn't end that way. And you know, these two people are both so committed to what they see as their duty. It just never happens.
And it's okay.
Sam: Yeah, the framing of the story in that way is pretty interesting. It reminds me somewhat of the movie, the princess bride, where telling the story, and then, you know, you have the, the interjections with, the young Fred Savage like, "Whoa, wait. No, it has to be the, story's got to be different!" So I found a pretty curious, twist there at the end where, you know, someone is telling this to, I think grandchildren and there, there is some of that of like " Wait!? It ended how??" And you know, like you said, it doesn't necessarily conform to your traditional, Disneyesque, Hollywood happy ending. What did you like about that?
Rebecca: I think I liked that throughout the whole book, they were both shown as mold breakers. And so when you get to, so the point at the end and you're like, Oh, they could have, they could have forced themselves to find a way of being together. Well, really, no. before the time of email texts route before you could reach out across the world and talk to somebody on the other half of the planet, there's so a little opportunity for continuing anything and neither one of them could really leave their people. It was just very realistic and sweet and empowering, I think.
Sam: Yeah. So at the end, again, it's kind of a spoiler, but when the guy at the end is talking to the two little kids, the girl says, "I suppose they both thought more about their people than they thought about each other." And when he turns to the boy and says, and you young man, the boy looked down at his feet.
"I think they both thought more about their people than they thought about themselves." Which I thought was an interesting distinction. it wasn't that they cared more for their people than about each other. Although there's some element of truth, probably in both of those assessments that, yeah, they, they each cared about taking care of their people more than they cared about the other individual, but then also more than, about taking care of themselves that, you know, they were there, there was very much a sense of a selflessness in the way they each carried on at the end of the story.
Rebecca: Which is very funny coming from me and you, the King and queen of selfishness! Right?
Sam: Yes, I guess maybe there was an element of that, that their sense of self carried them to do what they did.
Rebecca: I also wonder if their sense of self was so intertwined and connected with their people, then maybe it was not even really a question.
Sam: Yeah. That's a good point. The each definitely became strong leaders in their own, communities. And so it was, I thought really interesting to see how they both grew into those roles throughout the course of the story. That ghost girl in particular, her growth wasn't as direct as Mao's was where Mau came back and felt like he had not had the traditional transition to becoming a man.
And yet did all of the things that needed to be done, really stepped up and, took the masculine role, took the lead role, became at first the defacto leader of his sort of ad hoc makeshift tribe. And then eventually becomes the actual leader of the tribe just by virtue of doing what needed to be done. And so Daphne's growth into the leadership I think was a little portrayed a little bit differently, although it was very clear that she was growing throughout the story. her leadership wasn't as clear cut, as I think Mao's was.
Rebecca: Yeah, I do think that it was interesting how she connected with the other women, completely different culture, completely different needs and courting rituals and all of that and different language even. Interesting to see how she came together with the other women over things like chewing up food for the old lady that had no teeth,
Sam: Yes.
Rebecca: because someone needs to do
Sam: Somebody needed to do it.
Rebecca: One of my other favorite pieces about this book is the whole concept of Locaha, the specter of death and mows. Constant back and forth with Locaha at the very beginning after the tsunami has come and wrecked the entire village, and he's the only person alive. He's the only person left there.
So he ends up walking around, finding all of the bodies, taking them down to the beach, wrapping them in paper vine, tying stones under their feet, cutting the hole for the spirit and. Putting them in the Bay so that they can return to being dolphins as their belief system says. And throughout this whole experience, he's very numb.
You know, he's calling his hands, Locaha's hands and his body Locaha's has body because it's death. It's doing this, not him.
Sam: Yeah, that that's a really moving scene and, definitely something that, Terry Pratchett has explored and that's a concept he's explored in other books with, you know, death being a fairly prominent character in Discworld . Mort being a, a character sort of helping to us.
So the concept of death is, is certainly one that he's familiar with and I liked that death isn't given just free rein to take any one - there's some give and take there. in Mao's interaction with Locaha has certainly, one that's full of full of nuance and meaning.
Rebecca: And I think for me, the key piece with that relationship is when mal decides, no, this is not going to happen. I don't care what you want. Loca death. No does not happen. And he's just adamant this does not happen.
Sam: Yeah, it's a really neat, recurrent, sort of phrase that just comes back to him, like does not happen. And it's him really taking a lead role and recognizing that he has agency. And he's just determined that he is, not going to allow things to just befall him or his people.
Yeah. It's interesting how what he defines as his people definitely expands over the course of the story.
Rebecca: Yeah, it does. I think that's the piece that I'm connecting with the most this year is that whole concept of does not happen. at the beginning of the book where he talks about, he can see his family on the beach and there's the picture of it. And there's the silver thread that connects him to the picture of it.
And then at some point during the whole tsunami, that silver thread goes away and he can't find it anymore. And all of a sudden he feels unmoored and like, he's not sure that the future is going to be what he says it is anymore. And I liked that and I liked how that piece, that silver thread leading into the future connected with his Locaha "does not happen" moment.
Sam: Yeah, that's really cool.
Rebecca: It's kind of how I feel about this year - does not happen!
Sam: Yes. Yeah. it's certainly is one thing after the other in 2020. I think it would easy to, succumb to a kind of numbness about it all. Or just a hopelessness of just bracing for like, okay, well what's next? And just going to let it happen. And yep. Mao is not delusional that things haven't happened, but it doesn't leave him helpless and hopeless. It. Yeah. If anything kind of inspires him, then like, well, I'm, I'm going to find new meaning in, in things and I'm not going to simply accept what was the old dogma.
Rebecca: Yeah. You know, I think one of my favorite examples of that is the shark story. Do you remember the shark?
Sam: Oh, I love the shark story.
I'm curious what aspect of the Sheriff's story, you enjoyed the most.
Rebecca: Alright. So in brief, the shark story is there was a shark coming in one of the ones that they really didn't want to have around, and it was threatening some of the villagers, I think. And he had been told once upon a time that there is a sure fire way to stop a shark in its tracks.
Sam: Yeah, well, an old man that he had done something for as a boy and I'm I'm misremembering some of that too, but he had been given a special word to say, to drive off sharks.
Rebecca: And the only thing that was important about that word was that he say it as loudly as possible or right in the shark's face. And he has occasion to actually use this. He does turn around, yell underwater really, really loudly right in the shark's face. And it works, the shark goes away. And I loved how that was one of the moments where he started to think about, Oh, well, there actually might be some things that we don't know here - sort of his beginning foray into some scientific reasoning.
Sam: yes. The thing that I really enjoyed about that story was the miss building that the first who. sort of washed up on the shore and became part of the community constantly referred to Mao as a demon boy, someone who had no soul because he was, he was stuck in that transition between boyhood and manhood.
And so, because he had not received the final rights of manhood. He wasn't really a man, but he also wasn't a boy. And so when, when Mao was in the water and yelled at the shark and the in the telling of that story, one of the other older boys who had also washed up, he had this amazing, dramatic telling that was like, the shark was so huge, clearly, you know, bigger in his telling than it was in yeah, in reality.
And how Mao had just been in the water, you know, facing down the shark, has the shark came ministering like coming right at them, you know, Mao in the water pee'd himself. And it was really not what you're expecting. Of course the mouth is mortified. That is the way he tells the story. But then he goes on to explain that, like, this is just additional proof that a real person he's, you know, he's not a demon boy.
He's. He's a real human being with real fears every day human emotions, including fear when a shark's coming at you and that made him screaming at the shark and making the shark go away even more impressive feat because. It wasn't that he didn't feel fear. It was that he absolutely did feel the fear.
And yet still face down protect, you know, someone else who is in the water.
Rebecca: That's really lovely. You were talking about myth building and stories. Like what, well, what importance do stories have in our world today?
Sam: Well, I think they're incredibly important. It's I think the best way that we process information at all. There was a really fantastic article in McSweeney's that came out shortly after nine 11 and
sort of the upshot of it was about the importance of stories. And while given, you know, the events of nine 11, it could seem like. Oh, you know, you write stories, you teach stories, you know, this is unimportant in the greater context, but one thing that they, little speech was the importance of remembering that stories have a beginning and a middle and an end. that, even when things are looking particularly, gray and hopeless, just keeping that in mind that, you know, things will continue to evolve and every story has a beginning and a middle and an end. And that recognition that, okay, this will pass. And I think that's a good way to look to. Okay. Well, what will the next story be and how can we bring this to a good conclusion?
Rebecca: So how can we bring 20, 20 story to a good conclusion?
Sam: Well, I think looking at nation, for, any kind of template, the biggest thing that I drew from nation was this idea that when you're starting over from scratch, you can build things in a way that's useful for everyone and or that you can rebuild things in a way that.
That will be helpful without having to exactly duplicate what you had before. And so there's a growth process that Mel and Daphne go through when they're finding out, Oh, some of these things that we thought were true, aren't really true. Some of these things that we thought were useful, aren't really useful.
Some of the things that you've been taught actually are useful, even though it may not be in exactly the way that you thought. and so the idea, I don't know, it's just occurring to me that, like the process of making a beer, is a great analogy the, traditional conservative view. And I don't mean conservative, like, you know, you know, extreme right wing nationalism but, the more classic conservative idea of don't change things just to change things without considering. The impact that we'll have . And, for Daphne, she thinks it's kind of silly that you have to spit in the beer and then sing a song.
But she comes to realize that, Oh, there's something in saliva that starts to chemical process in the beer that renders it's safe to drink after a certain amount of time. So you have it singing the beer song isn't really about the beer song itself. It's about the time it's a timer. Exactly. And exactly.
Right. And, and then for Mau, the idea of like, well, you have to have these gods stones. Well, but why they didn't protect the village in the first place. Why, you know, why would I care about them? So it was a really interesting mix. I thought of, finding things that work and changing things that don't work.
And it feels like that's where we are in 2020, everyone's sort of reassessing systemically what works and what doesn't, what can we change? What should we change? And what are the fundamental things that we need to hold on to... within our society, within our belief systems, within our communities. And, we have so much that's really. shaking us to the core that, I think it is important to look for commonalities things that we can do to hold onto what's important.
Rebecca: I think that's a great lesson to learn from that book. Beautifully stated. Thank you.
Sam: Well, thank you. Thanks for the recommendation.
Rebecca: My pleasure. I have a ton more of those at my sleeve. Just let me know when you're ready.
Sam: I'm probably about ready for a new one.
Rebecca: All right. Have you read thief of time yet?
Sam: No,
Rebecca: well, I will say thief of time is a, one of my favorite Terry Pratchett books, thief of time, making money. And there's a few other ones. They're just, they're so classic and so unusual. And the footnotes are fantastic. And there's so much in thief of time that I love there's monks, that change history. There's lots of Kung Fu and karate and martial arts. There's a lot of Socratic wisdom, but said in a surprising way. and there's chocolates and a school teacher and Death. So..
And the apocalypse!
Sam: Sounds perfect. For 2020.
Rebecca: Great. Well, it's been really lovely to have you back on the podcast, Sam. Thanks for coming.
Sam: Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for the book recommendation and definitely enjoyed discussing it with you. We'll have to reconvene and song about the fifth time or, Maybe the next, events of 2020. Fingers crossed that we won't look back fondly on 2020 and be like, ah, the good old days.
Rebecca: Absolutely here's to that. Cheers.
Sam: Cheers.