Like everyone
It’s not unusual to be greeted by an older male associate asking not how you are, but which roads you took to arrive at their home. Do not ask me to explain this. It is not in my make-up. Well, genetically it is 50% of my makeup based on all data I have to hand.
:C
I can’t be the only one googling where to get one of those towels.
Apparently the answer is Amazon. How very ordinary.
My guess as for the Little household’s no frills hospitality and fixation on roads comes from a lifetime of emergency service dispatch dedication.
Bed Butt and Beyond.
I thought they disappeared into the aether?
They disappeared up into their middle section, clearly.
You don’t want to turn the towel around go arse about face, although that does appear to be very common!
Claire is holding it upside down there.
I hope I’m not the only one who didn’t realize it was supposed to be instructional, and just thought “well I should get that for my brother-in-law”.
I need to have those towels. For… for amusing my friends when they come in my house… not for others motivations.
I would happily buy (and pay more for) a Bad Machinery/Solvers branded one. Just sayin’.
Likewise with T-shirts and other merch, but John has expressed many times his reluctance to take on an even greater workload – and we all want John to rest up and be healthy
So we all need to buy a T-shirt pen and get to work modifying our own while supporting him on Patreon!
Well, when you live a life where you might be called on at any time to risk Flaming Death, it’s probably good not to get too stuck up on transient visitors to the home. For, in the end, we are ALL transient visitors here, are we not?
Unless I’ve misremembered the Littles’ line of work. In which case, “Cor, they’re a right cold school o’ fish, ay?”
Not only we’re transient visitors but, as the self checkout of the supermarket notes that there is something unexpected on the shelf when we don’t hurry bagging pur stuff, we all are unexpected in this world.
Indeed! (Nodding sagely while puffing on a pipe)
“Bradley”? Does Claire have a brother we know naught of?
(Also she has a mother we know naught of, but I’d assumed that.)
Maybe two? The stockings say B, C and A and the parents are Matt and Jane. So Bradley, Claire and the mysterious A.
Maybe they misspelled Glurgyn with an A?
Claire’s parents don’t strike me as the time who’d put out a stocking for a guest they’d never met before. Otherwise, A for Aglyn would be entirely reasonable.
…when “Ygln” clearly starts with a “Y”!
It seems more likely that you are the missing family member.
That’s just the kind of fires they’re rated for. Claire is actually the A (solid combustibles).
That stocking is for the A6153 motorway.
Wait- B, C, A. Or… A, B, C? Did they name their kids in alphabetical order?
No, it’s A, B, C, C which is in itself a comment on the situation
“Always Be Cute, Claire”
We’ll need to see just how Tackleford this mysterious Uncle Rob is
I’m assuming that we’re going full Dark, and Rob will turn out to be an older version of Jack, with a depressive affect, no plan, and a destiny to prevent armageddon.
We will need diagrams.
How are we expected to towel the parts that fall outside the face/arse binary?
Just shake off like a Labrador.
It’s all regions and areas. Consider it shorthand for Above and Below the Belt.
I wonder if this is movie merchandise from the straight-to-VHS sequel to Face/Off?
Arse/Off sounds more like the porn parody.
Can confirm. Choice of motorway routes is the first, or at least second, topic of conversation, followed by a discussion of how they are now compared with how they were in the past.
It’s a symptom of my midwest (American) snobbery that I am surprised to find this behavior going on in a country as dense as England. Of course you’re going to talk about the route you chose when that decision was the only meaningful choice you made in the 10 hours it took to drive from your city to the next one over. Surely the only answer this question requires for any journey within England is, “Who cares, I barely got through a quarter of my audiobook and can still feel my feet?”
You overestimate our infrastructure and underestimate the insistence of people on living 4-6 hours drive away (not taking into account traffic jams).
Alternate choice: what the weather was like in the place you came from.
I know Glenn is a polite young man, but the flower offering to Claire’s mother is a real “wooing your daughter” move. The Saga of Glaire continues…
Getting put up in the childhood room of Claire’s brother is a real “wooing your daughter” move as well, with various multipliers depending on its positioning/proximity to Claire’s room.
I remember a character called “arse-face” from the comic series Preacher back in the aughts. Probably not related. At least I hope not. A tragic character, that one.
Ship confirmed.
So will this mean Lottie starts to get Glenn’s name right? Or will she start getting Claire’s name wrong?
Lottie has been recently practicing at being more consistent with Argyle’s name.
It’s funny how resistant people are to the fact that Lottie’s been been gradually getting Mr G’s name right more and more often. I guess it’s hard to escape a running gag.
Incidentally, the Cassopeia Quinn marathon was a good time. My thanks for the inadvertent recommendation.
Just archive binged after getting a recommendation from Cassiopeia Quinn.
I love it, the characters would drive me insane as real people.
I’ve made it a habit when I’m showering to wash my arse and my face so that, when I emerge, both are equally clean.
Do you floss?
Good thing Glenn seems amused by Claire’s explanation. Her mother was really rude, maybe she knows that Glenn helped Claire change majors and therefore resents him for that?
Can’t save lives with cut roses. 😉 I think she’s just not in the habit of not being 1000% practical at all times.
I’m getting quite excited for the Auto Shenanigans crossover teased in panel one!
I think it’s a holdover from when navigation was an act of effort that took conscious decision making. They’re trying to get a feel for your character, if you’re a ‘motorways all the way’ or ‘complex series of A roads’ type of chap could have wide implications for future relations.
I think a lot of people – predominantly men, especially as they age – are just really interested in travel infrastructure, logistics, geography, and socio-cultural factors affecting the aforementioned. I’ve tried to resist it, but at 37 I’ve been feeling it creep in these last few years…
I also think that some of it’s just that, in a society where men aren’t encouraged to say anything that might come out as overly emotional in certain respects, there are only so many polite topics of conversation available. Talking about travel logistics is usually safe, while also being a bit meatier than “How’s the weather?”
My b/f drives for a living so he LOVES talking about roads. He used to be a drayman, delivering beer to pubs, so he also LOVES saying things like ‘oh yeah, is that the one with, what is it, the Red Lion, on the corner? Used to be a Wadworths pub. Just where the road goes sharp left. If you’re heading towards Yeovil.’ etc.
Jack, you know this is the kind of anecdote that makes my eyes spin like fruit machine reels.
Like so many Yanks, I learned that a fruit machine is what we call a slot machine from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, aired repeatedly on PBS in the 1970s.
That might be the sort of person who, when you ask for directions from him, tells you to “turn right where the Red Lion used to be.”
A friend’s father once gave me directions that included the instruction, “When you come to the white house with the black dog on the porch, turn left.”
“What if the dog’s not there?” I asked.
“The dog’s always there,” he said.
The dog was there.
Douglas Adams taught us to always know where our towels are, but he failed to mention that you need to be very aware of which end you’re using.
“Zaphod sniffed it doubtfully. Even more doubtfully, he sucked a corner. He spat it out again.
‘Ugh,’ he stated.
‘Yes,’ said Roosta, ‘when I’ve had to suck that end I usually have to suck the other end a bit too.’
‘Why,’ asked Zaphod suspiciously, ‘what’s in that?’
‘Anti-depressants,’ said Roosta.” – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
I have to say, I expected more emergency poles in the Little household, given the family business.
“Quick! To the Little poles!”
I’m sure they have a secret Little cave hidden under the house, with a fire engine, too.
We haven’t seen how they get from their bedrooms yet.
Well hello Claire’s Mom