And it turns out there's another complication, to do with English miles and Irish miles, which I didn't realise until very recently! Speaking of buttermilk, as we last were two posts ago, back in August (what?? where does the time go?!), the conversation continues, and concludes with Holding's theory on why English people so often are not allowed any...
TH Holding has a lot to say about all sorts of subjects besides just bicycles and tents.
Here, as they go into a field to have their first lunch on the road after obtaining baked potatoes and jugs of water and buttermilk from a cottage, he comments at length about gaps in hedgerows, and about tin-openers. It was a lot of fun looking up the various kinds of tin-openers which were in use in the late 1890s. A little more about getting along, then it's back on the bikes. Though crossing the "wonderful" Moy river leads Holding into thoughts about international trade, of course.
Holding and his three companions on the cycling adventure are very experienced sailors as well, having spent much time together all over the British isles for many years. So as part of their time in Ireland they'd naturally taken a couple of their sailing canoes as well - both, incidentally, designed by TH Holding himself. It's rare that one sentence gets an entire page to itself but it seemed right for both of these, and for this to be a double-page spread of contrast. ![]() Originally, I was just going to show the four figures cycling off into the distance, quite small, a bit like in this draft: ------>>> But no, I realised it simply had to look like fun or it would make no sense, it wouldn't work! Cycling had to look at least as appealing as the idea of sailing on a lake, which meant an awful lot more drawing! I also tried spacing the lines at the top to give more sense of... freedom? randomness? but I'm not really sure if that's worked so might possibly put them back as here in the draft. Next, we discover that two of the bicycles just aren't really fit for purpose... |
What's this all about??I'm making a true-story graphic novel called Archives
November 2023
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