Ned Simnel

Ned Simnel was the blacksmith and tinkerer on the stifling plains where Miss Renata Flitworth had her farm, and where Bill Door once came a-knocking with a task. He was one of those difficult men who not only know what a three-eighths Gripley was, but also how to use it...

Ned was charged with destroying - "Killing utterly " - a common-or-garden scythe so that it could be used in the shadowy world between life and death, but could not bring himself to destroy the blade which Bill Door had honed to perfection.

Ned was also the inventor of the Combination Harvester, a reaper of corn that horrified Bill Door utterly. This mechanical contrivance was to be the dawning of a new technological age on the Disc, but unfortunately came to grief when Bill Door needed the tarpaulin from around it during a very fierce storm, and at the same time removed a small but vital part, a three-eighths Gripley.