when the posh children in Enid Blyton have an "ice", I always thought it meant "ice lolly"...

[sadpapercourtesan]

...but I was reading "Five Go To Billycock Hill" last night, and they talked about having an "ice" in a tub with a little wooden spoon...surely that's an ice cream?!

Yes, I have too much time on my hands. I should be doing stuff

I'm not sure about other books, though I think I may have seen it in a 1980s reprint of a Chalet School book. Most of the books I had were second hand anyway, so quite likely to have been published pre-decimalisation.

I do remember the outrage I felt at one of my GCSE history books, talking about agricultural workers in the 19th century earning 30p a week, and a loaf of bread or whatever being 5p. No! It was 6/- and 1/-. If you can't cope with shillings when you're doing history, what hope is there?

There were always 'rogues' in EB books. All the baddies were 'rogues with thick necks'.

The Family At Red Roofs one was an interesting book, if I'm remembering rightly. I think it was the one where the parents ended up hospitalized (or something) and their kids had to try and make ends meet without them. So the 18yo oldest sister had to become a nanny to this awful dysfunctional family, the 14yo had to try and help out and the little sister was trying to raise money by selling her toys and things. It was quite different from the other EB books and was actually a decent read.

I agree that modernizing stuff like shillings does children a disservice. Kids can ask or Google if they want to know things, or the publishers can just put an occasional footnote here and there to explain. It's important and educational for children to learn about how things were done in different times. Can't believe that a GCSE textbook didn't even try to talk about the currency used in those times----if students aren't given the tools for grasping concepts like "old money," they are going to be incapable of coping with primary sources of any kind.

EB was a pretty horrible mother, if I remember rightly. She favored one daughter massively over the other---not surprisingly, since the way her stories were written strongly suggests that this was a woman with powerful prejudices and dislikes.

Yes, I remembered Anne’s ponytail when I read the Chalet School books a bit later, when Nice Girl Len — dutiful daughter of authorial mouthpiece kerraazy Joey the eternal schoolgirl — has a similarly controversial ponytail.

Yes, EB’s life was quite hair-raising in some ways. She sounds incredibly damaged and damaging. Not only did she forbid her daughters from ever seeing their father after she divorced him (after he’d agreed to be named as the guilty party because she wanted to marry her surgeon lover), she blocked his career in publishing. She seems to have had a talent for erasing stuff she didn’t like from her life.

As someone pointed out, her father was a cutlery salesman and her own background was very modest, but my point is that she led an UMC lifestyle in adulthood. They only ever shopped at Harrods, they had a lot of household staff, the girls went to Benenden etc.

It’s the sheer speed of her writing that boggles my mind when you read biographies— she wrote about 10000 words a day and would finish a Famous Five book in a few days and move on to something else.

Someone asked what her daughters did — one was a psychotherapist, the other a primary school teacher who then ran a publishing imprint.

Dammit why is everyone talking about ice cream! I still want a Mr Whippy!

In Five get into a Fix the children's mother is referred to as "Mrs Barnard".
People think that EB made a mistake there and then corrected it in the next one (Finnieston Farm) when they arrive and the two Harries say "The Kirrins are here".

But actually this could be explained that the farmers wife had known Aunt Fanny at school when she was a Kirrins, so had referred to them as the Kirrins.

Family at Red Roofs is a family of four - Molly, Michael, Shirley and I can’t remember the fourth boy

The father gets a promotion at work allowing them to move to Red Roofs. He then has to go away on a business trip and goes missing - the ship sinks, I think. The mother has a nervous breakdown and goes to a respite home. Molly is the eldest and leaves school (she was doing A levels, I think, wanting to train as a teacher) and becomes a governess. Michael mends clocks and so on. I think the other older boy works in an office and they protect the youngest girl, but I think she runs errands and so on.

Meanwhile molly’s best friend prudence who is from a wealthy family ends up in disgrace - her father was embezzling funds from his firm, I think. There’s a most unsubtle Enid-style contrast between molly and Pru’s family

Anyway the dad is NOT drowned and molly goes back to school and all is resolved.

Blyton often was at her best with those family stories I think. I also liked Six Cousins, Those Dreadful Children, Green Meadows and i think The House At The End Of The Corner? I remember a boy throws something out of a window as a prank and accidentally really hurts a teacher. Does anyone remember that? And also the Put Em Rights although that one is a bit cringey because of the class distinctions but I guess that was a sign of the time.

I like the one where the FF go off for a long weekend, find an old house, decide the ancient sink and crockery is usable with a wipe and wash from a rusty pipe, then make the corner cosy with branches and leaves They don't have time to bring spare clothes and come in their school blazers. They row on a lake, follow a map, find hidden jewellery in a boathouse or somewhere, cleverly hide the jewellery, from crooks ( obligingly stupid ones) - ingenious plotting - and then....dust off the blazers and back to school.

Fatty was the best Finder Outer. He missed a trick not dirtying his finger nails when he dressed up as a balloon seller, but got it right for the next disguise and hid a priceless neckless ( spoiler alert) round the neck of a Waxwork model in a display. It's always possible, if we mine the books for social history clues as the rich and voluminous detail allows us to do, that people were often poor, pre- welfare reforms, and couldn't afford to be clean and have laundered curtains and spruced up furniture. Lots of references to dingy homes in EB novels and maybe, conceived as many stories probably were in '30s or her youth, she was just drawing on how society was and the poverty we lived amidst or alongside. Some of her views were reprehensible and, on being told, she did try to revise some pen portraits of people in later books, but maybe that time, beyond living memory, was dirtier and poorer than we sometimes imagine.

Anyone remember the Amelia Jane books? Amelia Jane was a very badly behaved doll who made the other toys’ lives a misery. She was apparently like that because she had been made at home rather than coming from a shop like the other naice toys!

Bit of a sad ending for Enid Blyton, didnt she die relatively young of Alzheimers? I believe her mother may have died of the same thing.

She was 71 when she died, but I think she had started having symptoms about a decade before.

Dd1 loved the family stories best. I used to read them to her t bedtime, and ds, who was two years older, pretended he was too sophisticated to listen. Mummy always seemed to end up in hospital in them.
Ds liked Mr Twiddle when he was about six.
She was prolific!

I like the one where the FF go off for a long weekend, find an old house, decide the ancient sink and crockery is usable with a wipe and wash from a rusty pipe, then make the corner cosy with branches and leaves They don't have time to bring spare clothes and come in their school blazers. They row on a lake, follow a map, find hidden jewellery in a boathouse or somewhere, cleverly hide the jewellery, from crooks ( obligingly stupid ones) - ingenious plotting - and then....dust off the blazers and back to school.

That's Five on a Hike Together, which is also a firm favourite of mine. I think the brevity of it all is that the school the girls attend has a halfterm weekend, and the boys get some extra time off because someone has won a scholarship, so the whole thing takes place over a long weekend when their leave coincides.

And I think that pupils quite often wore school blazers out of school in EB's era -- fewer clothes, clothes rationing, not really much of a concept of 'leisure wear' or specific walking/hiking gear, and blazers were hard-wearing and useful? There are definitely references in some of the other FF books set during the summer holidays to the children wearing blazers when it's chilly.

(I remember noticing that Kathie Ferrars in the Chalet Schools books is described as still wearing her old school blazer, despite the fact that she's been left school for long enough to attend teacher training college and get a job.)

I love that one. It has a thick-necked ex-con villain called 'Dirty Dick' (in case we were in any doubt as to his villainy!) and a female bad'un who dyes her hair and chainsmokes and is 'hard-faced', so we know she's the type to hang out with escaped prisoners.

And I love the bit where Dick and Anne are trying to make for a farm that offers accommodation and meals called Blue Pond, get lost, and continue to think that the godforsaken farm where they end up overnight must be the rightplace, despite the fact that it's staffed by a terrified old woman who hides Anne in an attic and Dick has to sleep in the barn!

It's coming back to me, Oxen, priceless plotting when Anne and Dick puzzle over the curious lack of hospitality at the ramshackle farm. And with thick real wool blazers, you probably could brush off the dirt and a top frazzle of wool would come off leaving a silky woven finish underneath. The police having always been searching for the criminals for a long time, as if all the raids and thefts in the whole country are carefully coordinated by the same gang.

@Diverseopinions the fingernails/balloon seller is one of my most enduring memories of EB books, along with the name Karl being a sure sign of a German spy, underground streams where the ceiling went dangerously low, disdain for saying "loch" incorrectly, Josephine being a far too pretty name for a gypsy girl, carbolic soap (still not sure what that is) and a very evocative section about dosing off in a chair (in Fatty's room?) with a crackling fire.
Jumbles in parcels from Mother, snake in the grass, occult meaning hidden, Quentin's ASD ways, frowning and scowling and being determined (misread it as deter-minded when i was little) . It's all mixed up in my brain, think I need to read them all again!

If you want to re-create the food of the FF and other children's classics then you need this book

www.amazon.co.uk/Cherry-Cake-Ginger-Beer-Hardcover/dp/B0168ST4SQ/ref=pd_lpo_14_t_0/259-8731806-5506563?psc=1&pf_rd_p=7b8e3b03-1439-4489-abd4-4a138cf4eca6&_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_wg=WfKMH&pf_rd_r=MX5S8VYC30TV4VQEWAJN&pd_rd_i=B0168ST4SQ&pd_rd_w=okPyq&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&refRID=MX5S8VYC30TV4VQEWAJN&pd_rd_r=f8133284-1c20-42af-b14b-1a419dbdb293

I've done a couple!

Agree about school blazers being worn out of school, but not for playing in. It was the default summer jacket when it wasn't warm enough for just a summer dress and cardigan. But girls who wore their school summer dress at weekends were thought of as being 'poor'.

I think we know what Blyton mothers would say if asked on Mumsnet whether they'd throw their partner under a bus for their kids. "Oh no dear, your father's just remembered he's booked a tour in Egypt and he wants me to keep him company. Just write to the Hilton in every Middle East country, leaving a week or two in-between letters , and new cook will look after you - if she turns up."

@Diverseopinions

I like the one where the FF go off for a long weekend, find an old house, decide the ancient sink and crockery is usable with a wipe and wash from a rusty pipe, then make the corner cosy with branches and leaves They don't have time to bring spare clothes and come in their school blazers. They row on a lake, follow a map, find hidden jewellery in a boathouse or somewhere, cleverly hide the jewellery, from crooks ( obligingly stupid ones) - ingenious plotting - and then....dust off the blazers and back to school.

Fatty was the best Finder Outer. He missed a trick not dirtying his finger nails when he dressed up as a balloon seller, but got it right for the next disguise and hid a priceless neckless ( spoiler alert) round the neck of a Waxwork model in a display. It's always possible, if we mine the books for social history clues as the rich and voluminous detail allows us to do, that people were often poor, pre- welfare reforms, and couldn't afford to be clean and have laundered curtains and spruced up furniture. Lots of references to dingy homes in EB novels and maybe, conceived as many stories probably were in '30s or her youth, she was just drawing on how society was and the poverty we lived amidst or alongside. Some of her views were reprehensible and, on being told, she did try to revise some pen portraits of people in later books, but maybe that time, beyond living memory, was dirtier and poorer than we sometimes imagine.

I agree. There were tramps who survived by begging food door to door especially in rural areas. Fatty once disguised himself as one.

He also once disguised himself as an Indian man and gave his name and address to Mr Goon as Mr Hohoha of Bong Castle, India.

It was the default summer jacket when it wasn't warm enough for just a summer dress and cardigan

Yes, I think that's definitely the way in which they are worn in the FF books. (Though I personally think Julian would have looked lovely in a summer dress and cardigan. )

Clothes have been 'updated' a bit in some of the Faded Page editions from the ones I remember as a child -- they wear jeans instead of shorts and I think some of the blazers references have been changed to windcheaters.

No an 🍦

Lots of references to dingy homes in EB novels and maybe, conceived as many stories probably were in '30s or her youth, she was just drawing on how society was and the poverty we lived amidst or alongside

My issue isn't with that, it's with the fact that her 'good' poor characters are invariably clean and live in spruce, if impoverished homes, while the 'bad' poor are dirty/live in squalor. Unless they are the helpful 'fey' wildchild types who are there to help out the main cast of children, like Jo the gypsy/Ailie the Welsh shepherd's daughter who gambols about barefoot in the snow with a lamb/Jan the Cornish shepherd's great-grandson, in which case they are depicted as initially filthy, but forcibly bathed by someone.

Or working-class comic relief like Ern, who's depicted as sympathetic, but has to be lectured about being truthful and honourable by the middle-class Five Find-Outers, and is humbly thrilled to be befriended by them. And still gets sent to have tea in the kitchen with the servants.

If EB could look back on herself now, she'd be disgusted with herself at those childish and crass little jokes about names, and maybe she didn't understand the manners of the children she wrote about. I only realised the poverty among tramps when I read George Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London'...and the poverty then. It's a shock.
Fatty was a sort of Hercule Poirot of teenagers, dipping into his funds to make his investigations happen. Didn't they all go back to school at the end of September, and it was always scorching even into that month?. I'll never forget that balloon seller either. The illustrations were pretty good too, and told a little narrative in themselves.

I love Enid Blyton books and I still re read the ones I have today. My favourites are Mr Galliano's circus, Six cousins at Mistletoe Farm, I had the second book but can’t find it now so not sure what happened to that. The famous five and the adventure series, circus of adventure, castle of adventure etc. Also the mystery ones with Barney and his pet monkey Miranda. Rubadub dub mystery and the rocking down mystery etc.

Reading them as an adult they aren’t terribly well written and some of the language is not good, but they are of their time and I like to read them for an easy read.