27

I've never had a lucky number.

But when I started going out with Sarah - almost 5 years ago - her lucky number became important to me, too. Second-hand luck, if you will.

The number 27 has always seemed pretty good to me, because of my dad's and my sister's birthdays both being on the 27th of different months - one of those nice parallels you pick up on as a child. With my mum's birthday also being in the 20s (on the 24th of a different month), I've always felt a little outcast, my own birthday being on the 2nd of May.

When Sarah came into my life, she was 27 and I was 23. She announced to me that she'd known that 27 would be a good year, it being her lucky number. I couldn't argue with that - it certainly seemed like it had worked!

And so, when I turned 27 last year, Sarah informed me that she was sure it would be a good year for me, because it was the lucky number.

For the last 11 months, the pressure was on. Will this be a good year for me?, I kept asking. And what does that even mean?

When I was 25, I wrote a piece reflecting on what it felt like to be that age. I did the same again last year, when I was 26.

Well, now that I'm about to complete another year on this planet, why not do it again?

In case you're wondering - for this comic, I was inspired by thinking about lines: wires, mountains, skylines, things that carry on, whether you put them into the next image or not. Just how there are threads running through the narrative of life, you can pick them out in your surroundings, and I just felt compelled to think about places where I'd noticed these lines. I've drawn from places I've been over the last year - the power lines I saw near Loch Lomond, where I spent New Year's Eve; the sheep I saw in the Lake District in March, standing in a patch of snow all alone near the summit of Little Man; and the rest are mostly drawn from the Pentlands, my happy place just outside Edinburgh.

Thank you for reading! And I hope you're having a good year, whichever number it is.

L x