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

Currently rather obsessed with caraway - rediscovered favourite rye bread with the perfect amount. Have been known to mix it into butter for white toast. Never know it was in ‘seed cake’ have never had seed cake. But if it’s got fennel and aniseed etc I’m hunting some down.

@EBearhug, have you ever read the Worrals books? Also by W.E. Johns but with a teenage WAAF pilot and her best friend. I think they stand up ever better than Biggles.

I have never even heard of the Worrals. Was just thinking I might need to order something online, as I haven't had any deliveries recently...

I loved Malory Towers but never really got into the others. I was a big fan of Malcolm Saville instead. He was a contemporary of EB's - they knew each other I think. He wrote stories in the same vein about the 'Lone Pine Club' who had adventures. I think they had fallen out of fashion by the 80s, but I'd picked one up at home which had belonged to my mum when she was a child in the 40s. In the 1980s I'd go searching for them in charity shops. Some of them are quite rare and valuable now! I recommend them - they have pretty much comparable characters / pets / adventures.

I met Enid Blyton's daughter, Gillian Baverstock through my work in the late 1990s - she was VERY Enid herself - very twin set & pearls and RP, but she was a very nice lady and was a huge advocate for her mother's work... almost idolised her (unlike her half sister!!). Where we met, Enid's typewriter was on display... it was like a sacred object

My mom loved "strangers at snowfell" by Makcolm Saville. I was very lucky she kept all her books to pass on yo me including Enid Blyton and some about Student Nurse - something Barton perhaps? Plus the Chalet School.
One if my favourite Blyton Books was a book of the year. It had a story, nature notes, poem and music for every month of the year. I used to play the music on my recorder

Sorry, no spell check on the app and 2 glasses of wine

I too enjoyed the Malcom Saville books. We had been evacuated to Shropshire during the war, so I felt I knew the localities. Enid Blyton's nature books were very informative.

The Sue Barton books!

I loved these too. They give such an vivid and idealised picture of the times. I found it really odd to realise that the author Helen Dore Bolston lived with Rose Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter and editor.

I li ed all the famous five books.
I remember loving the secret of kilimooin when peace paul invites the children to spend the holidays at his home in Baronia.
The descriptions of the palace were so vivid..everything was blue and silver and they were given fur lined cloaks to wear when they went into the mountains and the chocolate was rich and creamy.

PRINCE PAUL!

I love this thread. I’m nearly 40 and I still have loads of my EB books from the 80s and 90s. In fact my mum has bought a lot of them second hand so they’re even older than that so plenty of , um, original language.

Loved that Mr Pinkwhistle story about the kids who only had one set of clothes!

Sorry to derail but people often laugh at me because I say "lolly ice" not ice lolly. Does anyone else say this?

DHS granny said lolly ice, and biscake. She was from the western part of northern Ireland.

Thank you for identifying that book @Percivalthebabyspider

Biscake?

What was the book where they found the radium mine?

I'm now desperate to read it.

I also love the line in the book where the Five find the secret trains and one of them says something about them being 'really old and not of this century' :)

I say lolly ice
Very common in the north west of England

Was the radium mine one The Secret of Moon Castle?

Yes, Moon Castle, with creepy, threatening Guy.

Oh yes! Thank you! And lots of curtains!

My favourite EB novel is The Valley of Adventure, where the children incomprehensibly manage to get onto the wrong plane at an airfield, hide when they realise the pilot isn't Bill but some sinister foreigner, and end up living behind a waterfall in a deserted Austrian valley thwarting some villains' attempts to loot religious statues and treasures hidden by locals from the Nazi regime in caves full of stalactites and phosphorescent stars.

Although, despite the fact it was published in 1947, there is not one reference to WWII in any way that suggests it's in the very immediate past and something the children would know all about because they've just lived through it -- just vague references to 'war' and 'enemies' that make it sound as if EB could be talking about the Franco-Prussian war or the Hundred Years' War.

It was the same with her The Adventurous Four books, even though they're actually written and set during the war, her child characters are intensely patriotic, and the plot is about Nazi submarines hiding out in the lee of some Scottish islands -- again, it's just 'the enemy' and the occasional reference to the 'sign of the crooked cross' on the planes/subs.

I don't think as a child reader I connected the 'crooked cross' with the swastika at all.

It was the same with her The Adventurous Four books, even though they're actually written and set during the war, her child characters are intensely patriotic, and the plot is about Nazi submarines hiding out in the lee of some Scottish islands -- again, it's just 'the enemy' and the occasional reference to the 'sign of the crooked cross' on the planes/subs

There were only two of these weren't there? And an older boy used to go to the mainland to sell woven baskets to 'daytrippers' who arrived on 'steamers'?

No, the one you're thinking of is The Secret Island, where the children run away from cruel relatives, believing their pioneer pilot parents are dead, to live on a lake island, and Jack, their older friend, sells mushrooms and strawberries in woven baskets at the local market. Unsurprisingly, the parents bob up alive and well, apart from when they go down in some vaguely African country later on and the children have to rescue them from a tribe who dye their skin yellow and their hair red and try to sacrifice Annoying Prince Paul to the sun god. (Which I thought showed excellent sense. )

The Adventurous Four are a pair of identikit blonde twins, Mary and Jill, Andy (likes his food, forgetful) and their friend Andy the Scottish fisherboy (serious, responsible), who get swept off course when out at sea in Andy's boat, and wash up on an island group that turns out to be a Nazi submarine resupply depot.

But, actually, you're not wrong -- they're really similar in that both are about living on a small island in hiding, and there's an awful lot about food in both. Especially tinned sausages, if I remember rightly.

Sorry, Andy is the serious fisherboy, it's Tom who is forgetful and obsessed with food.