flook april 1953

Wally Fawkes died a few weeks ago, aged old. Sad to lose him - he seems to have been a decent chap overall with well-defined interests and a great intellect. There was a Guardian obituary of him I stumbled across a few weeks ago, which was written by George Melly, gave me a bit of a start as I was sure Melly was dead. 'But there you go'. Then there was a footnote on the obit saying yes he'd died over a decade ago. 'There you also go'. 

You know what? This strip is actually from 31 March 1953, so I should have posted it a month ago, but I wanted to keep you in suspense. Not that there is any resolution of the suspense in the 31 March strip, so I suppose you will stay in suspense forever now but at least you've had a month to get used to it... 

So they can't imagine Americans understanding that cents are worthless in Scotland, but they have time for an obscure joke (?) in Scots Gaelic. I mean Flook is right, apparently, that genuinely is scots gaelic for 'Scotland for ever'. Anyway... 

 

I have a feeling that in the original of the second frame above Flook actually said 'Alwyn gu beath' as per the 31 March strip, but that this was too obscure for everyone at Gen'l Features Corp so it was translated into English and subsequently lost every semblance of funniness that might have accompanied such a callback.  

So after this is 28 - 30 April 1953 and those Flooks don't seem to exist (?). I'll keep looking.