Description

There’s tall and then there’s really tall.

I’m tall enough to be very aware of living in a world where I don’t really fit. Clothes, doorways, seats on a train, seats on a plane, seats… I’ve destroyed so many seats. To a seat, each one of us is merely just an arse. However, I seem to provide a different balance proposition to the conventional arse…

I am also tall enough to get daily reminders from some of my fellow humans. The vast majority of which are just an alternative form of pleasant yet observant greeting, and for some it’s an understandable verbal reaction of surprise. Others are just plain weird about it.

THE HEIGHT OF NONSENSE

There’s tall and then there’s Giant tall.

There’s a true story of an Irish giant, Charles O’Brien (anglicised to Byrne) that I’ve been itching to tell. A lofty tale of freakish proportions about the short life of a long fellow who grew up in a farming backwater not far from where I did in Ireland, and came to be in London, the big smoke, like I did.

And after he died aged 21, his humungous body was stolen, and his skeleton put on show in what became the Hunterian museum at the Royal College of Surgeons for a desperately long time.

This 22 page Zine tells the true story of the Irish Giant Charles O’Brien (Byrne), and how it’s a tricky business being someone who does not fit in this world, then or now.

Fifth in the series A Patchwork Province – Stories of Ulster this zine drawn and written by Bryan – an Ulsterman with an evolving Irish identity.

Limited press run – 100 copies – individually numbered.