Plot
In 1668 (updated to 1675 in the reprint), 14-year-old Trudy Wain is taking a legal document to a lawyer in Chesterton. On the way, she gets lost and comes across an empty cottage. She pricks her finger on a spinning wheel and falls asleep for 300 years, waking up in 1968 (1975) Chesterton. Time shock and culture shock ensue, both for her and those who see her, and Trudy is also shocked to see her parents’ graves. She is taken in by the Carrs, and proves useful in identifying genuine 17th-century artefacts for Mr Carr at auctions.
The document Trudy was taking to the lawyer proved her father’s ownership of a certain piece of land. This happens to be the land that the Carrs are now renting from a nasty landlord, Mr Hamble, who will stop at nothing to evict them. However, the legality of the document is accepted and makes Trudy the nominal landlady of the Carrs. She just lets them have the property, and they ask Trudy to become a member of their family.
Notes
- Artist: Len Potts
Appeared
- The Long Sleep – Mandy: #76 (29 June 1968) – #85 (31 August 1968)
- Reprinted – Mandy: #456 (11 October 1975) – #469 (10 January 1976)
- Reprinted – (?) – #883 (17 December 1983)
I remember the 1968 version. Trudy shortened her shirt to knee length to look more like a 1968 girl – though how she managed with no clean clothes whatsoever was never explained! She was also offered a lift by a group of young men on mopeds/motor cycles, recognising the word ‘pillion’. She is frightened by seeing a steam train, and one of the young men comments that he knows there aren’t many of them left, but …
“The Long Sleep” was reprinted a third time. It ended in Mandy #883 (December 17, 1983). I don’t have the start. She falls asleep in 1683 and wakes in 1983 in this printing.
Artist Len Potts.