Volume 1 of 'Stuff that happened' was published in 2017, it was a collection of comic pages about events that happened in 2013-2014 to the artist Vicky Stonebridge. This Graphic Novel of issue 2 picks up the threads around four years later and takes the form of a diary covering the years 2018 to 2019.
In the days before Covid19 and massive changes that the pandemic brought, Vicky was enjoying weekend trips, life in the highlands, working at her pottery studio and adventures with her animals and family.
This book started out as a travel diary when Vicky had an overwhelming mid-life crisis style impulse to do some travelling and went to Austria on a working break to assist a lively family at their homestead and pottery studio for ten days. Upon her return from this trip, the diary continued, a compulsion to make sense of a life woven with many threads. It still continues...
Volume 2 covers some difficult life changes, menopause, mental health and medication, some family stuff, recovery from trauma, chronic and acute health issues, including emergency and scheduled hospital admissions. The seasons come and go in the remote West Highland village where Vicky lives, poultry, pets, garden and pottery form the backdrop to a slowing down and middle aged existential chronicle, hastily scribbled during moments in between all the 'stuff that happened'.