Boiling
The instant-on boiling water tap (eg “Qooker”) is a real marker of middle class aspiration. I’ve never had one. I’ve used one once. It felt like too much power, to be honest. The kind of move Oppenheimer got himself so chewed-up about.
You can learn much, much more about Reverend Penrose’s relationship with “his writing woman” in the Steeple Summer Special (issue 15, “Reverend In Love”) – available on my Gumroad or to subscribers to my Patreon (direct link to the special) .
Hey, I bought the Steeple Summer Special, I earned the continuity! 8D
I’m reading it right now. Dang, Shelley came back in on a mission, didn’t she?
I’m glad to see Billie’s still on good terms with Brian. If that IS Brian. It also makes me wonder more about the effects of whatever the Problematyc Systers did to him. Is he a full-blown werewolf now? Or… the opposite? Every bit of wild beast removed from him? That would certainly make him difficult to recognize.
When the moon is full, Brian transforms into that most hideous and unnatural beast… a tax accountant.
THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
AIEEE! BALROG!
Brian is now an actual cardinal in the CoE.
Writing woman, you say? Up north, you say? Whom do we know that fits that description?
I knew the second I read that!
She’s red on top and read all over.
???…Oohhhh,Ohhohohoh!!!
Let’s just say that karma — or at least a certain redhead — decided that the Reverend was due.
Taking advantage of Steamboat Willy’s public domain there wit the stove in panel 2?
Looks like everything has changed forever. What happened to Brian? Has he also left the CoS? I’m worried about Mrs. Clovis. Is she okay or did the ghost drive her crazy? But at least Penrose seems to have managed to move in with the woman he loves.
Sounds like it. I’m wouldn’t be surprised given Brian’s deteriorating relationship with Tom after becoming aware of his growing toxicity.
Or is Mrs Clovis in jail now, after they found Mr Clovis in the flowerbed?
Yes. This possibility also worries me.
Also, although everything has changed, I love that Billie hasn’t _really_ changed after all. What a relief, after the shock of that first appearance two pages back!
I think her time with the CoS shows that regardless of the public face she tries to put forward, Billie is ultimately true to herself.
I think her public faces tend to be true to herself in some way, too. Billie’s a complex person.
I agree. I should have emphasized the “tries” part. For example, she clearly wanted to be seen as a good (so to speak) member of the CoS, yet she went about it in a decidedly non-diabolical manner.
So, it all kicked off, did it? For sufficiently chaotic values of “it”. It looks like you are about to do the rare reverse slapstick. I’m here for it.
What about Jason left in Tom’s CoS basement cell? What horrible stuff has happened to Mrs. Clovis and who has the C of E sent to the town? How do Maggie, Billie make a living? Inquiring minds want to know.
Did I miss a scrolling wall of text intro like the first Star Wars?
I think John is preparing the strands of a massive knot that will tie up all the loose ends.
Maybe Jason’s one of Tom’s extreme freaks?
I think the deep ones are planning to bust Jason out somehow.
And what of Gareth? I hope he went with the Reverend at least!
Currently shacking up with Shelley’s Maserati.
Is London considered “up country”? Or has that writing woman perhaps relocated to Tackleford?
Shelley moved back to Tackleford at the beginning of “Into the Woods”. Bought a house on the edge of the woods with her big Tibkins money. Shortly thereafter, her little sister collapsed the woods while fixing a problem Tim Jones and Rich Tweedy created. Fortunately, Shelley’s house was built just at a Safe Distance.
Ah, yes, I remember all that now. I think my mind was skewed by my recent reread of Giant Things.
Uh, I meant Giant Days, of course.
Giant Days, Wicked Things
(but also, this is not Shelley)
Have you read the Reverend in Love Steeple Special, Andrew?
I have, but I have also, crucially, misremembered it.
Giant Things! I can’t wait for Man-Sized Giant Thing #1.
Ah, tomato soup and a baguette. Lunch of champions!
Probably from a tin, but that still qualifies.
“Probably from a tin”
Do you mean the soup or the baguette?
You used to be able to get Croissants in a tin.
“Crescent rolls”
It’s fun what you can get in a tin. Including pies (Fray Bentos – Yay!) , steak and kidney puddings and treacle sponge puddings. As a kid I loved baked beans with sausages in a tin.
I loved those pies! We called them “Risey pies” and there was a millimetre thick layer of crispy pastry covering 4,000 layers of soggy pastry sludge beneath it – it was HEAVEN!
The contents of the pie, beneath the sludge, was largely gravy and gristle with a bit of meat thrown in to lure you to eat your wholesome connective tissue, but the gravy was delicious.
Anyone who thinks pastry sludge cannot be tempting is a FOOL!
“It’s fun what you can get in a tin!”, paid for by the British Tinned Food Council, could be a lovely companion piece poster to “Don’t tit about on ladders”
Where I live, you used to be able to buy tinned horse manure.
There’s a market for everything . . . apparently.
There’s a brand of brown bread you can buy in a tin over here.
BM Brown Bread in a Can
Are you saying there’s soup that doesn’t come in tins…?
You are aptly named.
No matter what kind of soup it starts as, it all becomes Campbell’s when I put it in my bowl.
Ayyyyyyyy. 👍👍
Swap out the baguette(or just throw in) a grilled cheese and that’s a champion’s lunch over here!
Y’know what? After years of Fighting The Good Fight for an Ungrateful Public, I think that Reverend Penrose has earned the right to rest his head upon the bosom of his Redheaded Writer!
He absolutely deserves that.
One can only hope that certain Forces of the Deep don’t take advantage of his absence…
So Brian is obviously all slicked back and cleaned up like someone from the cover of a Heaven 17 or ABC album
Well, his world IS full of strange arrangements…
Pent(agram)house and Pavement
He’s working for The Waterman now.
I think I missed something. Whose house are they in?
I believe we’ll find that out on Monday!
Writing, I had a page that addressed this but had to cut it because the count was tight. It’s Maggie’s flat. It is clearly small – you can see the bed just to the right of the fold-out table in the last panel.
Millennials Are Killing The Napkin Industry!
(I know that Billie and Maggie aren’t properly millennials. Reverend Penrose is probably a millennial by now)
But the kitchen Roll industry is booming!
For some, it’s a kitchen paper roll; for others, it’s the World’s Longest Serviette.
Yours. Say hello.
I always saw a boiling water hot tap as an accident waiting to happen, but after working at KFC and becoming enamoured I did try to talk my ex into getting one of those extendible shower style tapheads for the kitchen sink. v. sensible and handy.
Ah, those over-sink shower taps. They seem pointless – and then you use one and the power goes directly to your head.
My power shower goes directly to my head as well.
WINTERS
I only just noticed Maggie’s earrings! Has she worn this pair before? I mean, after she stopped being an activist for all the right causes? Has she gone back to that now, or is she just reclaiming her past?
Answering myself: it appears she last wore them in Hell on Wheels while watching the rocket launch, so much for that then. Nice pair, anyway!
The earrings are nice, too.
I *knew* this comment would come.
I mean, given your handle…
NGL, I’m hoping Billie goes back to the Church of Satan. She’s far better placed adding some virtue and sunshine to the dark congregation (and driving Magus Tom up a wall) than she is trying to convert the sinners.
Also, I really liked the Aziraphale and Crowley partnership she and Maggie had going on.
If memory serves, she was heavy into the charitable and humanist aspects of it, yea?
Whew, I believe Insinkerator made instant boiling water taps, a biz I worked for built out their office to have one in say, 2006? Rarely seen them at all since then — perhaps largely impractical on energy consumption? Or perhaps prone to breakage.
What is Billie doing in the last panel? Is that levitation, or the parting of the Red Soup?
She’s dropping pieces of bread into the soup.
That’s some pretty despondent bread-soup game for sure.
With the Reverend gone, I wonder what’s been happening with the endless waves of horrors from The Deep that he was fighting…