HOLIDAY SURPRISE 2022: Le Pain Quotidien
For readers new to my “comics universe” (I’m not sure how many people that might be – potentially five or six reading this), you can learn much more about Shauna Wickle in the Bad Machinery archives.
Le Pain Quotidien is a bakery chain. Pre-Covid they used to have jars of jam just on the tables for customers to self-administer. For the irresponsible preserve-liker, there was a lot of opportunity to abuse their generosity with spoonfuls of delicious jam straight in the mouth while waiting for your order to arrive.
!
!!
IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!!!
Shauna!
I can’t even be disappointed if we don’t find out what Wolfboy’s deal is now.
I am part of the militant minority that always loved Shauna best. I hope this is a sign that Shauna will somehow be a bigger part of this new world.
What makes you think Shauna-lovers are in the minority? As a reader whose favorite Mystery Girl kept changing during the Bad Machinery days, I always got the impression that Shauna was LOTS of people’s favorite.
Yay! I adore Shauna! John, five or six, fiddlesticks! You have DROVES of Bad Machinery and Scary-Go-Round fans here.
John was saying 5 or 6 people NEW to his comics.
Hello Bill,
we Shaunarites are surely not a minority !
Ummm. Eeeew. I will never nosh on the free ja again. Not that I have seen any lately.
Here in the US, all of the establishments (that I am aware of) that have free jam on the table offer it in the form of sealed single-serving ‘portion cups’. Now I know why. (You could still try to snack on them while you wait for your order, but you’d have to hide the evidence.)
I doubt the staff would even care. It’s not like you’re contaminating the commons for following patrons.
This is normal in the UK too. It was the unfettered nature of the jam at LPQ that made it worthy of note.
US LPQ was similarly unfettered before The Event.
DO NOT MENTION THE EVENT. REMAIN INDOORS.
Shauna’s hair is so small, relatively speaking! I imagine she’s found the right conditioner.
That, or she’s finally grown into it. In other words, Shauna has grown but her hair is still the same.
Yeah that’s my impression, hair is like eyes you know – she came into this world with a full head of hair, she’s finally the right size for it
FINALLY! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I can’t wait to see what Shauna has been up to (I imagine it’s been completely normal on her end).
Either that or she’s been swordfighting unicorns onthe Moon.
Well, she is tough!
Shauna!!! Yay!!!!
(Forgot to say) A very nice holiday surprise, indeed!
This is the best holiday surprise!!!!!
A better present than Kevin Bacon!
Shauna’s been in numerous strips with Amy, who was in “Live at the Royal Albert Hall” with Drew Barrymore, who was in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle with Demi Moore, who was in A Few Good Men with… Kevin Bacon!
So Shauna has a Bacon number of 4.
Huh. Even I have a Bacon Number of 4.
(If you allow LARPs.)
I don’t have a Bacon Number, but I do have an Erdös Number… If we coauthor something together, you could have a single-digit Bacon-Erdös Number!
Does replying to your comment count as coauthoring?
My wife’s thesis advisor has an Erdös number of 2, IIRC.
As for me, I… met him once, so there’s that
Was his mind open?
(To the uninitiated, “My mind is open” was Erdös’ way of announcing himself at his friends’ residences, high on amphetamines and ready to math it up.)
I was just hiding out in the Math Department library so that I could avoid doing any work in my graduate classes when he wandered by. One of those times in my life when I wish I would have said something more.
I think I have a Bacon number of 2, but I’m sure I’m a 4. I’d have to make a phone call or three to confirm it.
For sure I used to know a girl back in the 90’s who had worked in a bakery in Hollywood where Sylvester Stallone often came in. Sly’s number is two. But I have a distant cousin who I haven’t seen in decades who works in Hollywood and has worked with many many actors.
Not bragging, but I think it’s interesting. The Google people say that almost everyone has a Bacon number of 2 to 4.
Mine’s 3, actually. John Cena’s older brother was one of my best friends in college. I met John a couple of times when he was just my friend’s bratty little brother. I had been vaguely aware that that he’d gone into professional wrestling, but I don’t follow that at all, so I had no idea how big a name he’d become until I stumbled across his TVTropes page one day. Reading through that was a really surreal experience. There’s “knowing that professional wrestling is fake” and then there’s “reading the fictional backstory of a guy whose actual family you actually knew before the fiction”.
My sister was in The Ring with a skillion actors who have a Bacon Number of 2, so she has a 3 and I can claim a paltry 4.
Um. Amy was in “Live at the Royal Albert Hall” with Drew Barrymore?
Can someone please, please fill me in, maybe even with a link, in the spirit of Xmas/Shauna Wickle?
There was this time Len tried to convince Drew to marry him, and Amy had to be there to witness the carnage.
Pretty much everybody can also trace a 4 through Shelley, who has a 3 by multiple routes, via Hedy Lamarr and various Beatles, thanks to her efforts to destroy history.
Thank you for that. I had no idea this all-reruns-Bobbins-show thing existed.
It’s not even reruns; it’s the old Bobbins site on Keenspot, where most of those strips were originally posted, from before Bobbins moved over to the SGR site. The Bobbins domain name has apparently been grabbed by a squatter, but I discovered a while back that the old site is still up and accessible through the bobbins.keenspot.com URL.
Jesus H. Christmas! John C, you are my second-favourite SGR-related John in the whole world!
Huh. I thought Bacon Numbers were based on film performances. I suppose a lot of people could get lowish numbers if televised live events are included (live audience = extras = valid link). *shrug*
Enjoy your Christmas miracle!
(Story starts here, the reference will be a few weeks in)
Unpossible.
Sigh. I’m so happy to see these two together again, even if it’s just for a few panels/pages.
Booooooo. Together forever!!!
Short of a Glynottie shipping thing, this pretty much is my most wished for event. Very glad that our first sight of them together again has smiles.
Trying to figure out how Penwenchester would get shortened by the years to be something pronounced totally unlike what you would expect.
(Alas, I don’t have a very good portmanteau for a Glim/Lottie shipping thing. And the age difference, but Glenn is a Good Guy and needs somebody.)
(This is the most I have ever written about what characters in a graphic adventure should or shouldn’t do, and I feel vaguely weird.)
I believe the age difference between Glenn and Lottie was established as being only a couple of years or so.
As of the Autumn Special, Lottie and Grumman’s average age is 21, and Lottie turned 19 between the Spring Special and the Autumn Special, so that makes Green 23.
I don’t really get any romantical vibes between them, though. Garnish looks at Lottie like she might eviscerate him at any moment.
Maybe Gomp likes that in a woman, you never know with some people.
I assume Penwenchester would be shortened in pronunciation to something very much like “Penister,” and the locals would act completely shocked at the mere suggestion that there wasanything even remotely risible about that pronunciation
wisible
I was going to go with “Puncher”
I ended up there as well… but maybe it’s because I just experienced my own public transport woes and I’m looking for VIOLENCE
I was thinking “Punster”. Also wondering if “Pkwy” is an abbreviation for “Parkway”, or a Welsh word in its own right.
I think it is pronounced “Penster Parkway”
There’s no K in modern Welsh (outside of a borrowed word or two).
Maybe the Welsh word is “prqcwm”.
Well, no, there’s a D, two Es, an H, an L, an M, an N, an O, an R, an S, and a W.
Or maybe that’s “shown Dremel”.
Yes!
SHAUNAAAAA! I have been waiting for this reunion! Oh thank you John Allison!
I have never seen so many comments this soon after posting. Clearly I am not alone in my joy.
Nope! I’ve been trying for it too, and clearly lots of other people too 🙂
Um…’dying’ for it, not ‘trying’.
Shauna! I did not know how much I’d missed her until seeing this page. John, I literally have tears in my eyes seeing these two together again.
Shauna and Lottie together! Reunited and it feels so good.
Holiday Surprise indeed!
Was wondering how she would be depicted after this long hiatus. I can see it.
OMG SHAUNA AT LONG LAST!!!
Shauna!!! Let’s go. Also excited to finally see where the X landed if indeed it did.
I was wondering at that as well. Perhaps she put it in a (relatively) sensible place, like Wicxle (just bending the K into an X) or Wixkle (slightly less change when writing a cursive signature). Then again, wouldn’t “sensible metal name” be an oxymoron?
Sorry, but those don’t sound metal. They just sound Welsh.
There’s no X in Welsh.
They don’t sound metal because they’re (relatively) sensible. d:
Guillemot Island’s got to be the long way round, right?
No surprise that the little star that lights up over Lottie’s head is lighting up over most of the audience’s head, too.
Coming back from London Euston just before Christmas there’s like a thousand people all standing in the hall, facing the same way and staring at the huge departure board like it’s going to suddenly show them the ten commandments or something.
Great to see Shauna.
Maybe one day it will!
Amazing to know there’s a direct train between Glasgow and Tacklefield! And obviously incredible to see Shauna again. She was always the character I related to most as a teenager.
Well, there is in theory. (The theory presumably being that of the Northern Powerhouse.) It remains to be seen whether it will actually ever come to exist.
Actually, this strip looks unusually of the moment for John (in a way that could be meteorological, or political, or both). Which makes it weirdly prescient, given the lead time on this comic.
Has Le Pain Quotidien spread beyond London on this side of the Channel? I generally have to go to St Pancras to resupply on chocolate and Speculoos spreads.
(Yes, it’d be worth it just for that. Their dark chocolate spread makes Nutella go away and weep shamed tears in a corner.)
I think there are four. Well, five, if you count Tackleford Station. Three in London, one in Oxford. I came up with Solver as we now understand it (ie Gerg Lottie & Claire in Sheffield) in the Oxford one.
My pain (and I think I speak for many) is not daily but secular.
Here’s to running into old friends on train stations
This is marvellous!
I never thought I’d say the words, but this holiday miracle might be even better than Ladysounds. Thank you John!
Shauna! It’s a Xmas miracle!
Direct trains to Euston, Glasgow and Bristol puts Tackleford on the West Coast Main Line and somewhere around Birmingham.
I didn’t think it was that far West…
Tackleford exists outside of normal space and timetables
I seem to recall that Tackleford is on the West Yorkshire coast
Evidence puts Tackleford simultaneously on the West coast and 40 miles inland.
“How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All” (Firesign Theatre, 1969)
There’s no X in Welsh.
Ugh. Somehow, a previous comment of mine got copied here while I was posting a different comment.
There’s no X on the West Coast Main Line either, so you’re covered there
https://tackleford.fandom.com/wiki/Tackleford
Yay Shauna!
Boo being reminded about Le Pain Quotidien! All the locations in Chicago closed during the pandemic.
It was far too painful for our American tastes
Also, I don’t remember any of the US branches having free jam in jars, so then what’s the point really
The line to Curtain City is on time. I hope it’s just like Spatula City, except for curtains instead of spatulas, obviously.
What better way to say, “I love you,” than with the gift of curtains?
What better way to say “Pull yourself together!”
Thrilled to see Shauna return. Putting the X in Xmas.
Thank you John!
From now on whenever my train ist delayed again I will draw strength from the hope that tribes will be forming.
Anybody got ideas how to speed the process up?
Try to get everybody to do a singalong, like maybe “Wimoweh”. They’ll all form a tribe as far from you as possible.
oh my oh my oh MY!
I am not ashamed to admit that Shauna is my comics crush – the one fictional character I’d ask out in a heartbeat. Thank you.
Its Daisy Wooton for me even though I’m certainly not her type
I’ll have Ryan, please (if Amy’s prepared to share.)
EEEEEEEEE.
Is the Guillemot island to which you refer the one in AK or CA or somewhere else? I was actually unaware of the Alaskan island until five minutes ago (and realise that it is likely the canonical item) but Point Lobos is one of my favouritest places.
Going from Tackleford (fictional place but in England) to Bristol Temple Meads (real place in England) by train via either the Alaskan or the Californian Guillemot Island is kind of silly, so either this is just absurd humor, or there’s a possibly fictional place in England also called Guillemot Island. Uria aalge guillemots (aka common murre) can be found in Britain so a Guillemot Island somewhere near Bristol is theoretically plausible.
Apparently there are at least a couple of places called Guillemot Island in Canada. I found one in Nunavut and another among the thousands of islands off of Labrador. My search only uncovered places called Guillemot Island within North America, but that might be my search engine “helpfully” noticing that the search came from North America.
When was the last time we saw Shauna in this timeline? My sense of it is all out of whack because I’ve been seeing her(them?) every day in Bad Machinery for the last year or so that I’ve been rereading it. This miracle has been somewhat spoiled by that fact. But still, great to see her. Also, did they have a vague falling out at some point?? My memory, SOMEONE PLEASE REFRESH MY MEMORY.
Lottie and Shauna had a major falling out during the Case of the Missing Piece, due to Shauna’s friendship with Blossom. In the latter part of the Case of the Severed Alliance, they repaired the rift (first the alliance, then the friendship).
Oh my god, it has been a long time. Thank you!!!!!
The last appearance of Shauna is in the Bobbins: Hard Yards story and Wen-Tack. Nothing has been scrambled. We have never seen what happened to any of the mystery kids between age 16 and 18. They dispersed, some to sixth form college and Claire and Lottie to the 6th form of a posh school near Wendlefield.
Thanks for the refresher!
Now I want to see the mystery boys
Oh me too! Wouldn’t it be nice if all six of them accidentally found themselves together over the Christmas period?
Seven! Claire got promoted to full mystery girl in “Hard Yards”.
Me too. ME TOO.
1. How did I miss this on Monday
2. Shauna!
3. SHAUNA! (but in capitals)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCJV702erBc