USB holes
It’s a classic night drive down the lost highway (to Hull). Production note: on the picture of the sign to Hull Docks that I used as reference had been vandalised to read “Coc s” (sic). Knowing the delicate sensibilities of my audience, I restored the original wording. Second production note: I think the last panel is a definite career peak. The day after I drew it, drained, I succumbed to a terrible weeks-long cold.
NO WAITROSE NO INTEREST
Now I REALLY feel sorry for Dean. Although, as an adult who can’t drive, I also identify with Lottie and Claire here.
At least Claire is in the passenger seat and not Lottie. (I’m kind of surprised he didn’t put them both in the backseat like an Uber driver).
Much more Lottie’s style to sit behind the driver so she can speak into his ear like the little shoulder imp she is.
I admire John for elevating himself above the cliché “Are we there yet?” and instead giving us a glimpse of the true horror Dean has to suffer, so much so he would probably rather be driving a school bus
Functionally, it’s quite similar.
After such a fraught sequence of events, it’s so funny and delightful to watch Lottie and Claire revert to complaining girls on a car trip. Such great karma catching up with Dean.
Little Claire feels thick? Thick… As a brick?
So she’s an Ian Anderson fan?
Ian Anderson has been dealt with (in NEMS) and there will be no further tootling
Fie on you sir! Fie and bedevil you!
I adore you for this.
I think Dean would have really not minded sitting this one out.
I like the ferry icon that appears to be digesting a car and truck slowly over a thousand years.
I actually thought it was a hat.
Top marks for subtlety. Congratulations! C’est a dire, Chapeau!
Not to be snaky about it, but I saw what you both did there, in a serpentine sort of way.
Serpentine, yet ponderous as an elephant?
She can’t take a wee except at a Waitrose?
Dan, Dan. In Britaine, you “have” a wee.
You can ‘take’ the piss tho’
You’re pulling my leg
She must not need a wee all that badly.
Yet.
So she’s currently only holding a bit of pee, yes? (Alternatively: a wee wee, oui?)
I had to look up Waitrose. Seeing that it’s a supermarket, I’m surprised they have them at motorway service stops. Certainly the service plazas you find on U.S. highways just have small convenience stores and fast food joints.
Ooh I hadn’t considered motorway Waitroses when I started telling everyone our nearest branch (we’re in NW Cumbria) was 130 miles away in Edinburgh. Can’t remember seeing one on the northern section of the M6, but then I only stop at Tebay (which is FAR superior to any branch of Waitrose)
Gretna services on the A74 has one: https://www.waitrose.com/find-a-store/gretna-services
Who cares where your nearest Waitrose is – you’re in the land of Booths!
(as a regular Waitrose shopper, my first visit to a Booths was a mind-expanding experience)
I have, in fact, seen service stops in the U.S. that were attached to actual supermarkets. Yes, convenience stores are more common, but they do exist.
It’s pretty common for Walmarts to have a Murphy’s filling station in the parking lot (same ownership).
The British supermarket chains all run small branches that are like a large convenience store (Tesco Metro, Sainsbury’s Local and, in this case Little Waitrose & Partners). That’s the sort of thing you’d find at a motorway service area, not a gigantic hypermarket.
I just assumed it was the local equivalent of a Bucees here in Texas, which is kind of a huge glorified convenience store known for clean restrooms.
First, Buc-ee’s is not “glorified”. It is glorious.
Second, they are not just clean restrooms. They are, in fact, the cleanest restrooms in the known universe.
There’s a fantastic photo of a Buc-ee’s billboard advertising a Buc-ee’s which happens to be 764 miles away in the opposite direction.
As the meme goes…”There’s confident, and then there’s Buc-ee’s level confident.”
Waitrose is, in the social-class-space of British supermarkets, a bit posh. Not so much as to not place branches where they see profit, but John is flagging Claire as something of a snob here.
Mind you, I’d think that Claire would also accept a branch of Marks & Spencer Food, which can also be found in some service areas. But perhaps there’s some specific Waitrose product for which she yearns.
I suspect it’s the prospect of a clean, well-stocked lavatory she needs.
Does Waitrose offer gift hampers?
Asking for a friend.
Bespoke:
https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/browse/groceries/shop_by_occasion/build_a_food_hamper
I’m sure that we could find something to suit an overworked cartoo… friend.
Shoutouts to Buc-ees, which are a brand of gas station attached to giant stores that have a cult-like following in the southern US (including a mascot with plenty of merch).
I must say that I love the last panel. It reminds of something on which I sadly cannot put my finger.
It has flavours of this completely unhinged old Kikkoman commercial:
https://youtu.be/Wz-mJed_bP0
Wow. Just… wow.
That was an incomparable experience. You’ve done your part for the internet. I’m now off to bath in soy sauce.
“Unhinged” is right!
I like soy sauce on fried rice, but it has never EVER occurred to me to splotch it onto fried eggs.
One of my favorite meals is a plate of Chinese bbq pork with a sunny fried egg over rice topped with a drizzle of soy sauce. Augh, now I’m hungry.
Eggs with soy sauce are very, very good.
Soy sauce on eggs makes a lot more sense to me than ketchup on eggs, which I’ve known plenty of people who do.
Umami, baby!
All your sauce are belong to us!
The best part is when Kikko-Man beds the groupie, and there’s a little disclaimer in the bottom left that says “Don’t try this at home, kids!”
For some reason the first thing I thought of when I saw Dean’s face was the dad from Takahata’s My Neighbors the Yamadas.
It’s probably just that it’s a vaguely manga style, exaggerated faces panel.
Methinks that Dean is the Platonic Form of a driving instructor, from which all others are but imperfect images.
2009+ VW Polo? Seems sensible.
When did USB holes become ubiquitous in automotive transport?
When people started carrying their music libraries with them wherever they went.
Also, is it a Polo or a Golf?
I really do enjoy the way Mr. Allison depicts vehicles so realistically that your question could actually have a definitive answer.
my car is a 2011 model, and has a USB hole in the glovebox. It was a novel feature at the time.
I plugged a 32GB thumb drive loaded with several hundred albums into it, which plays on shuffle .. a setup which soundly beats the 15-CD changer I’d had in my previous car, for way less money and fuss; I can drive for nearly a year before hearing the same song twice.
It’s a perfectly good Xolkswagen Pato.
I guess Dean’s car is before the era before the era before bluetooth?
Somehow, and I’m not entirely sure why, I’m surprised Lottie agreed to let Claire have the front seat.
I think Lottie preferred to be able to whisper at Dean from behind.
She relished being the Devil on his shoulder
He can’t say no to that Keira Knightley face.
Nor to Betty Phage.
A magnificent page! And that last panel… <chef’s kiss>
Any hope that this trip was going to be NOT reminiscent of many of his worst school field trips have been well and truly dashed!
This is a great page.
The vicious cycle of Grote reality warping
Dean totally deserves a coral LAAAAA! and all the annoying questions. They distorted his reality better than a couple of 4 years old twins.
Pirates of Penance!
Dan T. beat you to it on the previous page (in a reply to Ross Webster).
Clearly the only thing to do at this point is to rewrite the lyrics:
When Glenn was but a little lad
He proved so brave and daring
His father thought he’d ‘prentice him to a bold career war-faring
I was, alas, his nursery maid
And thus, my charge to shoulder:
For me to see that this bouncing boy
Apprenticed to a soldier.
A life not bad for a hearty lad
Who is ranked among the bolder,
Though I’m a nurse
You might do worse than make our Glenn a soldier.
I was a stupid nursery-maid,
On breakers always steering
I did not hear the word aright
Through being hard of hearing
Mistaking my instructions which
A more attentive ear did call for,
And woe is me our poor Glenn found he
Apprenticed to a Solver.
I’m hearing Maddy Prior singing this.
Or could be Joni Mitchell!
https://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=50
Would an M&S Food have swayed her?
This ain’t no technological freeway (with USB holes)
Oh, no,
This is the road, I said,
This is the road to Hull…
So I looked up “Wookie Hole” and, aside from all the Star Wars erotica, found a tourist cave attraction in Somerset. Is there something I’m missing here?
NOPE
Splendiferous
I am too frightened to look up “Wookie Hole” to find out if it actually returns some sort of Star Wars erotica, rather than just being a throwaway joke line…
Bing informs me that it’s spelled “Wookey Hole”, and returns no Star Wars erotica at all. I’m not going to try searching “Wookiee Hole”.
Do I remember correctly that Dean is a geography teacher? If so, the proposal to stop off at Wookie Hole on the way from Sheffield to Hull must be particularly aggravating.
I don’t remember what sort of teacher Dean is. I do remember that Claire has a theory about geography teachers, though.
https://scarygoround.com/badmachinery/index.html?pg=740#showComic
this was delightful.
Is “Punch Buggy” the UK equivalent of “Slug Bug”?
Yes, although I don’t think it’s exclusively UK?
In the US, interestingly, the “Punch Buggy/Slug Bug Divide” cuts the country across entirely different lines than other, more commonly known bisectors such as the Mason Dixon Line, the Youse/Y’all Border, and the Soda/Pop/Coke Fractal.
That fractal should also include the sodapop diaspora.
And Canadian. We have yet to shrug off the trappings of colonialism.
And… American? I have never heard this “Slug Bug” thing before.
We use “Punch Buggy” in the US as well.
I’ve never heard of either.
On a road trip, if you see a Volkswagen Beetle, you yell Slug Bug [color of said Beetle] and punch your sibling. This continues until you arrive at your destination or your dad yells to knock it off and drink your damn Capri Sun.
As a purist*, I consider the “new” Beetle (c. 1998 onwards) to be a “Wanna Bug” (short for wannabe bug) rather than a legitimate Slug Bug.
* This also might be simply due to being a Millennial rather than from any form of purity.
Just adding my voice to what several others have already noted: GREAT LAST PANEL
Love the last panel! Although I’ve also wondered if it’s only an indication that they have now entered Cathey levels of madness.
I believe the psychological term is “Cathesis”
I can’t believe they say pop in Britain. I thought that was just a regional Midwestern U.S. thing. I thought Brits said “fizzy drink.”
For us, fizzy is the drink and pop is the music
Why would they take the “K” out???
This is such an uncompromisingly British page, I love it.
I’ll be real, I’ve started buying issues of Giant Days whenever I can afford them just to get extra doses of Dean, who I was entirely unfamiliar with prior to Solvers. What a fantastically written, deeply flawed character, just the way mama likes ’em.
Ah, Dean. That’s the face I’ve been waiting to see since you started that misbegotten grudge of yours. Cathartic!
I know you feel it’s a bit much, but frankly, you’ve earned it, and it could’ve easily been much worse. Annoyance, however severe, is always temporary. Your ego is large enough to absorb the blows, and you’ll undoubtably recover. Though hopefully with a slightly less abrasive chip on your shoulder. 😉