Scrote

A one-horse town out in the cabbage-growing Sto Plains, about a day's travelling from Ankh-Morpork, it only note-worthy event is the annual "Scrote and District Agricultural Show" which takes place on the last weekend in June. There is also the Sprout Festival on the Fifth of Offle.

Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook elaborates a little on Scrote. We learn that owing to the railway line now serving the town,it is home to the unique Unlevel Crossing. A famed part of the local brassica is the lethal Scrote Sprout, a human foodstuff whose characteristics make it much desired by Dwarfs. The town has a total declared population of 120 permanent residents, and now boasts two inns capable of providing overnight accomodation to travellers; one is the Jolly Cabbage, which in previous times was inhospitable to The Band With Rocks In, and the other is Seth's Livery Stables, which has presumably had a barn conversion.

Mentioned in Hogfather, Death has some difficulty at the outskirts of this town. While filling in for the Hogfather, he tries to come down a stove that has a pipe chimney. In Soul Music the tour of The Band With Rocks In stops here for the night and a show. As the usual attitude of locals to strangers in town is "about this time of day we usually think of a barbecue down by the rockery" and shares something with Roundworld movie Deliverance in terms of general sophistication and open-handed welcome to travellers, this said something about the power of music to soothe the savage breast.

It could be the home town of Scrote Jones from the Gamblers' Guild.

Interestingly enough, there is a link to the Roundworld city of Nuremberg, in Germany. An acclaimed opera on the disc is Die Meistersinger von Scrote, which has its Roundworld referent in Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. This must only have been a fleeting association, perhaps a crossed line in the Multiverse or a single fleeting inspiration particle, as Scrote resolutely refuses any temptation to grow to city size with magnificent cathedrals, opera houses and parade grounds capable of housing the most strident demagogues and a hundred thousand jackbooted followers. Nor has it ever accommodated a war crimes trial some years later for the demagogue's fervent followers.

Indeed, the nearest it gets to a manifestation of any sort of political unrest or dissaffection are the three youths lounging around the livery stables, all swearing that one day, one day, they'll make it big and get out, we're not going to be stuck here all our lives like those three old men sitting outside the tavern nursing pints.

One day, in fact, during the Music With Rocks In craze, three young men did escape from Scrote to a fleeting moment basking in somebody else's fame. They called themselves Insanity, among many other names, and tried to make music...

Annotation

Yes, about those three young men who escaped from Scrote and tried to make music ... Nirvana much?