Extended permanently
Do you know what Bovril is? I would imagine that a section of the audience do not. It’s “beef extract”, a bit like Marmite, you can make “beef tea” from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMDmE5Hal_E
Unfortunately I can’t find an ad for the slimy spreadable semifluid version, only the granules, but you’ll get the idea.
“Fiendish and beefy” is my…
No, I can’t bring myself to finish that sentence. I’ll get my coat.
“Fiendish and Beefy” would also be a great Solver title.
Fiendish & Beefy T shirt!
Finally, the moment we’ve been waiting for- THE EXPLANATION FOR THE TITLE OF THE STORY!!!!
It’s Lottie’s Reichenbach moment!
But what exactly does “self-cancel” mean? Is Lottie expected to ruin her own reputation, or cut contact with everyone she knows? Or is this a more fatal instruction?
Yes!
(What exactly does it mean?)
If she thinks Lottie is even capable of “self canceling” then she’s a bigger fool than I imagined.
I don’t know… The fact that she casually divulged the location where she plans to carry out her threat makes me think she’s well aware that Lottie will attempt to rescue her friends, and has set up a trap for our intrepid Solver.
Possibly the vagueness of the instructions is part of the point. No matter how much Lottie abases herself to appease her nemesis, Skelottie can just say “Not good enough!” and throw her friends (and Dean) into the reservoir anyway.
This accomplishes the goal of revenge in three ways:
1. Lottie reputation is ruined
2. Lotte’s friends are dead
3. Lottie blames herself for point 2, because she’s a melodramatic doof like that sometimes
Come to think of it, all three points get accomplished regardless of whether Lottie does anything or not! It’s fiendish in its genius.
As a consumer of many a half-time cuppa at lower league games, can confirm that unless you deploy the proper technique of blowing on it and taking small sips, fresh bovril can and will burn straight through to the earth’s core.
I can only hope Lottie has a small plastic cup to contain this life-threatening spillage
I doubt that Bovril is hot, unless that video-player comes with a heater, but it probably jams up a card and ruins it quickly. (If you even touch those contacts with typically greasy fingers it’s all over for that card. But a short-circuit kills it completely.)
Experience it first, then you may attempt to doubt.
@Bazzargh speaks truth.
Aw man. Now she doesn’t have the spiffy digital picture frame any more.
It’s still good as evidence (but not nearly so spiffy.)
Lottie needs no evidence, just a powerfully delivered “J’Accuse!”
Too bad Lottie didn’t think to pull out her phone and grab a video of the picture frame in operation (with audio, of course).
You know what they say about hindsight, but she’s in her dressing-gown without phone.
See the wheelchair? She presumably used them to get Claire, Glenn, and Dean out of the room!
Makes sense.
It would still have been difficult to get them into those wheelchairs (especially Dean.)
Demon possession for strength. There’s no equal to that.
-Or one of those cute little Japanese tractors with a bucket-loader.
They might still be in the building. Perhaps there is no intention to dump them into the WHR at all.
Let’s hope Shauna and Linton followed Lottie and are ready to spring into action and prevent her forced self-destruction. The wheelchair could be a sign that they’re in some old hospital, or maybe it’s the wheelchair Evilottie used after her accident and they’re in her basement.
I also hope Lottie can get some help from Bitsy. The Dowager wasn’t born yesterday – she would surely have some tricks up her sleeve that would confound even Skelottie.
Getting help from Bitsy is the best idea I’ve heard so far. Beate has clearly studied Lottie carefully, and come to know her quite well, but the Dowager’s another matter.
Indeed. I imagine many have been thwarted by underestimating Bitsy.
Also, Bitsy already saw Evilottie and immediately recognised her as a fake. Maybe she’s already monitoring the situation.
I believe the property that the trio are caretaking is a former hospital.
And the place where Lottie is living used to be a hospital… Maybe they really are in the same building!
Umm, isn’t that what @Chris_Z just said?
Am I missing summat?
Bovril. It’s what’s for dinner.
I count five Lottie hands in the first panel. Sexy effigy (2), faux-tograph (1), and genuine article (2).
Two Lottie hands, three Nottie hands. And note that the effigy does NOT, in fact, have Lottie’s face (and Lottie’s face is the only part of Lottie Beate actually has).
The face on the effigy looks a lot like the face of Beate’s “advisor” as seen when Claire offered Beate some hot chocolate.
HMMM! yes, a very pure version indeed
My favourite fact about Bovril is that the name comes Bovine + Vril, where Vril is a word meaning “energy” or a sort of “life force”, taken from a nineteenth century science fiction novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vril )
Bulwer-Lytton is the same guy who gave us the famous opening-sentence cliche “It was a dark and stormy night”!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night
Bulwer-Lytton’s book inspired what is arguably the world’s first science fiction convention – the “Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete” held at the Royal Albert Hall in March 1891. Attractions included Bovril and a fortune telling dog.
That turgid first sentence also gave us the Bulwer-Lytton Contest, where people submitted their best worst efforts at opening sentences for a novel. Sadly it looks like it just stopped running last year after 40+ years. Past entrants and winners can be found at https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Did Beate use Glom’s own zip ties on them? Fiendish!
Hoist upon their own Picard!
The question is, did she actually plan for him to supply the zip ties?
Y’know – they’re probably still in the building. Perhaps a disused sub-basement. Nobody involved has a van (I don’t think Evillottie would have risked a financial trail to rent one), so even if Beate never skipped upper-body-day, it seems too much to presume that she would have hauled Claire, Dean and Ygln anywhere distant AND be back to set things up.
Lottie! Keep an eye out for a disused lavatory with a “Beware the leopard!” sign on it!
She’s had all night, though, while Lottie was sleeping on the train, presuming they didn’t decide to start Scrabble™ night at midnight or something
It’s been a while since I’ve played, so I’m not sure how long 4 two-person games would have taken, so, perhaps, if they started at 8, it might have gone to 10? 11?
Based on the win tallies we saw four pages back (Lottie: 3-0, Dean 2-1, Glenn [sic] 1-2, Claire 0-3), it appears it was a round-robin style contest with three rounds (so 6 two-person games total). 2-3 hours for that doesn’t seem unreasonable.
If Nottie is planning to honour her threat of tossing the three into Wobbly Head Reservoir then she’ll have to get them there, so it would make sense to be more than halfway there already to minimise the effort required for the climactic finale
I’m thinking that the video might show them in the back of a van. She got them there, made the video and went back in to leave it for Lottie, then got in the van and drove off.
No, she would just steal one if it was required for her fiendish plan. To a criminal mind this is just thought of as “borrowing.”
I should have read all the way down before posting this same idea!
Some sort of furnace-type chamber, which Lottie hasn’t seen because it has only been explored by Glyn and Nero in an attempt to defuse an Emergent Situation…
I mean, it’s possible. Stranger things have happened.
Mine’s a pint of the black stuff
You can’t drink a whole pint of Bovril…
Well, not with an attitude like that you can’t.
I’ve got some jaffa cakes in my pocket.
My God. Bovril.
(For maximum impact, please read this comment in the voice of Kevin Conroy as the Bat-Like Man.)
RIP – the *best* Bat-like Man voice ever
Beefy fiendish
Makes a drink that’s black and strong
Makes a memory card go wrong
🎶
Beefy fiendish
We’ll send you just where you belong
(where the wheelchair wheels go round)
I don’t remember wishing for a comments section laser-guided to my enthusiasms, but here we are, apparently.
Why aren’t the second and third Alps peaks on the picture frame no longer Milka lilac like in the previous comic? Just another mystery, I guess!
Chants: “Hamper! Hamper! Hamper! …”
I’m more interested in what the container is next to the wheelchair – or is that how Bovril is/was sold in?
That does indeed appear to be a Bovril jar
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Jar_of_Bovril_%28yeast_extract_version%29.jpg
The light’s hitting them differently
Years ago, (50’s, 60’s) I drank that stuff, sometimes while reading Punch magazine. But just did a search and Bovril is still available although quite expensive (plus shipping costs) unlike Punch magazine, which was the standard of British humor before Monty Python (and comics like this, Thank You John Allison!)
Alas, Punch is no longer as funny as it used to be.
Permanently, now.
If it was still going it would be in video, even interactive, with special treats for the seekers or really wicked humorists.
A complete lose-lose situation if the Grote doesn’t come up with an ace to keep up her sleeve
I can never see “Wait, what?” without hearing it in Dara O’Briain’s voice from his series of Taskmaster, sorry to Lottie
That same series has permanently altered the cadence of my “Oh, no…”
Is that a bottle of Bovril on the floor near the wheelchair?
I had a shopping cart board game as a kid and loved getting the shopping list with BOVRIL on it, as I thought that was the funniest possible name for a food.
I vaguely remember a TV commercial- when the lid was opened it made a mooing sound. Funny food.