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And the Painted Ponies Go Up and Down
Apr. 12th, 2018 06:25 pmYesterday I outlived Taff Evans.
I'd known it was coming for a while – since I first realised he died before his birthday in 1912, and did the math to figure out when I would reach his tally of days – and so managed to produce a short comic idea I've been mulling for a while:
One By One
Given that I probably outlived him sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I was more aware than usual, yesterday, that it was the first day of the rest of my life. It was spent thus:
It's been a very retrospective few months. 2008 was a hugely pivotal year for me, as discussed previously. This August, I will have spent as much of my life away from the family home as in it. It's also five years since everything went down and I emerged, shivering and withered, from the chrysalis of my former life. I wondered at the time what my life would look like when I was 36 ... I could never have remotely guessed where I'd be now. I wish I could tell 31-year-old me how it was all going to work out more-than-OK. She really needed to hear that.
Today I've been cataloguing Bill Wilson's account of the Terra Nova's journey down from Cardiff, as part of my preparation for writing the first volume of the series. July 23, 1910, which I have just reached, was his 38th birthday. They were in the tropical Atlantic and enjoying magnificent sunrises, while their cabins below were too hot to sleep in. His next birthday would be spent in a howling blizzard in the middle of nowhere on a mad quest for penguin embryos. He didn't get another birthday after that.
I wonder where I'll be when I turn 38. And 39. And 39 years, 250 days. That last one will be a much, much harder date to pass than my 40th birthday. 40 is just a number, but having more days than Bill Wilson is hard to fathom, and simply unfair. Oh that I could use them half so well.
I'd known it was coming for a while – since I first realised he died before his birthday in 1912, and did the math to figure out when I would reach his tally of days – and so managed to produce a short comic idea I've been mulling for a while:
One By One
Given that I probably outlived him sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I was more aware than usual, yesterday, that it was the first day of the rest of my life. It was spent thus:
- drawing both real and fictional people at a café on Kings Parade
- finishing up with Pennell's letters at SPRI
- attending a lecture on a little-known, hilariously dysfunctional expedition
- having fish and chips at a snug little pub on a foggy night
It's been a very retrospective few months. 2008 was a hugely pivotal year for me, as discussed previously. This August, I will have spent as much of my life away from the family home as in it. It's also five years since everything went down and I emerged, shivering and withered, from the chrysalis of my former life. I wondered at the time what my life would look like when I was 36 ... I could never have remotely guessed where I'd be now. I wish I could tell 31-year-old me how it was all going to work out more-than-OK. She really needed to hear that.
Today I've been cataloguing Bill Wilson's account of the Terra Nova's journey down from Cardiff, as part of my preparation for writing the first volume of the series. July 23, 1910, which I have just reached, was his 38th birthday. They were in the tropical Atlantic and enjoying magnificent sunrises, while their cabins below were too hot to sleep in. His next birthday would be spent in a howling blizzard in the middle of nowhere on a mad quest for penguin embryos. He didn't get another birthday after that.
I wonder where I'll be when I turn 38. And 39. And 39 years, 250 days. That last one will be a much, much harder date to pass than my 40th birthday. 40 is just a number, but having more days than Bill Wilson is hard to fathom, and simply unfair. Oh that I could use them half so well.
