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

@cheapskatemum I remember those illustrations with the mankinis! Hahaha

There us a Jack in the Secret Seven, and Susie us his sister. I reread them all this weekend because of this thread. it's about half an hour each book. They are obsessed with fireworks and have never heard of the firework code.

I might reread the FF next. I am not in the mood for "proper" books and stuff like Blyton always ends up okay.

[quote sueelleker]It is annoying when authors forget stuff. But the Jill books were especially odd because the in the first book Jill gets a pony called Danny Boy who is piebald - and in all the later ones (and reprints of the first) he's a black pony called Black Boy! Or possibly the other way round - it's 40 years ago now. But I had the whole set and at the age of ten it was just incomprehensible why the details changed from book one to book two!
Yes, I noticed that. I think he was always Black Boy, but was definitely piebald in the first book. Have you seen these books recently written, about a grown-up Jill? ponybooks.shop/jemma-sparks-jill-books/[/quote]
In the original editions, that my sister and I had, Jill's pony was black and called Black Boy. In a later reprint of Jill's Gymkhana, which I came across when I was a children's librarian in the 80s, the name was changed to Danny Boy, presumably because of the racist implications of the name Black Boy, though why they also had to change him to piebald, I don't know!

Perhaps Uncle Quentin’s irascibility translated into bedroom fireworks? Given Bill’s proposal (which one can imagine Allie screaming about on Mn years afterwards), I tend to imagine foreplay might be a foreign concept... A very straightforward lover...?

@witchend (never guess you were a fan from your username!) Yes, it was a Jillies story which I first read (Redshanks Warning) which belonged to my mum in the 40s! I moved on to the Lone Piners after that!

Pentabus Theatre Co did a great production about 5 years ago, just called, 'The Lone Pine Club' as it was an amalgamation of stories. It was performed in a big canvas tent in the grounds of a few National Trust properties.

@eddiemairswife I love Shropshire too - we used to go for family day trips to the Long Mynd when I was a child as it wasn't too far from us. I still go back for holidays now - love it there as it's still so relatively unspoiled and not so touristy!

Sorry - derailing thread from EB!

Somehow I'd not heard of the mystery books.
I found the first one www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20190864 I just need to work out how to see it on my kindle now.

Everyone fancied Bill - he came across as very macho and dependable.

A kind of domestic James Bond. I would love to see Bill's spin off adventures. "Gotta get back to the kids and the wife now, 007. Had a message they are trapped in a mountain/ on an island/ in a volcano; you'll have to carry on with this mission by yourself."

@EBearhug

There us a Jack in the Secret Seven, and Susie us his sister. I reread them all this weekend because of this thread. it's about half an hour each book. They are obsessed with fireworks and have never heard of the firework code.

I might reread the FF next. I am not in the mood for "proper" books and stuff like Blyton always ends up okay.

I liked those characters as they were naughty and the other SS7 were rather sanctimonious (haven't read for years')

[quote mammmamia]@cheapskatemum I remember those illustrations with the mankinis! Hahaha[/quote]
I always thought AJ from Strictly looked like an Enid Blyton illustration.

Yes they didn't like Susie because she was vleverer than they were. Peter in particular can be a sanctimonious git, and tells the other off for speaking when he is (at which point they're all impressed by his leadership, rather than getting passed off with his authoritarian ways.) He also has a go at Pam and Barbara for giggling, for chatting, and at Pam, considering whether she's really good enough to be in the SS, but fortunately at that moment, she has a good idea to save her membership. There are certain jobs they just won't let the girls do (mostly going out at night to watch a warehouse or whatever,) but otherwise, they are fairly equal as long as Peter is top. They do have Cookie and Gardener and Matt the shepherd and Burton the hedger, but their superiority comes out more with working boys (who were probably only 2 or 3 years older,) who are called things like Len and Bob and Larry. Also at least two housekeepers called Emma, which I wouldn't have thought a particularly lowet-class name, but it seems EB did.

I think the class difference is more blatant in some of the other series, but the Secret Seven are later, written from the early '50s into the early '60s, when increasingly fewer households would have had staff.

Speaking of illustrations, I had one hardback Famous Five book which had been passed down from my Mum and sported the original illustrations (no mankinis sadly as it was the one with the castle and the gypsies and the scientist that everyone thought was a traitor but had actually been kidnapped). I much preferred those illustrations to those in the 1970s editions, which I think must have been based on the TV show - everyone had a lot of hair, Timmy was quite a scary looking dog, and Uncle Quentin in particular looked like a serial killer. Also the front covers were stills from the TV series, but I don't think they had done an adaptation of every book because the picture sometimes bore very little resemblance to anything that happened it the book.

The 70s TV series they didn't do 5 on a Treasure Island because they couldn't get the copyright and for some strange reason 5 have plenty of fun-I think the official reason was it was too similar to the others. Which is odd because I think it is less similar than other pairings.
Some of the pictures are taken from the wrong episodes, but overall aren't too bad.

I watched the 70s TV series (We are the famous five........ ) but it was very confusing because they mixed up some of the books, so one episode would be a mish mash of two books. As a child, I couldn't get my head around that at all.

As a kid, I had a whopping crush on George from the Famous Five based on the illustrations of her in the pre-70s editions of the books. I swear I have her to blame for being a lesbian.

Ah yes The mankinis ISTR they were an important part of the plot of 'Plenty of Fun; as Lesley could be disguised as a boy/merge in with them as she 'wore the same type of swimming costume'. I used to think, 'What boy ever wears a cozzy with a top' until I saw an illustration. I suppose nowadays it could be explained as them all wearing a rash vest or wetsuit or something.

A particularly clunky piece of pc updating was in one of the books, when the original version had the FF leaving money behind the counter at the local shop for some old chap's 'favourite baccy,' which changed to leaving money for his favourite sweets.

In the 1990s edition at least, Jill's pony was definitely a piebald in the first book as she named him Patchy before she knew his real name (my daughter loves ponies and we've started working our way through a mountain of pony books). It's a different world with the gong going for meals - did many people still have maids in the 1950s? - and all the characters going 'jolly well', 'beastly' and 'frightfully'.

All I can remember of Jinny is that her dad eked out a living making pottery and she didn't like schoolwork.

Have just found the 70s series on youtube! Tits all muddled! I am watching the very first one where the cousins first meet and it's all mixed up with a later book!

And George is way too feminine!

And uncle Quentin isn't an abusive prick!

I just did very badly on this quiz - my excellent memory for the school books (not hard to be honest) was fighting against Enid’s incredibly generic Secret Seven titles and the fact I had never read the Secret series, and could only remember about 5 of the Fatty books. A shameful 31 per cent. www.sporcle.com/games/nikki1810/enid_blyton_series

On the other hand 82 per cent on the Famous Five titles. The ones I couldn’t remember the titles (spoilers!) of were Five Get Snowed In With Their Evil Tutor, and Five Meet Jo, and I completely forgot Uncle Quentin Eats Bad Soup. The quiz seems to have added another one as well which doesn’t exist in my opinion. www.sporcle.com/games/nikki1810/enid_blyton_series

@SerenDippitty yes! Ajay from Strictly looks just like an EB character in those Illustrations. I always wondered why he looked familiar to me. Not surprisingly his brother Curtis from Love Island does too. They’d have to change their names to Dick and Jack to be the real deal though.

@cheapskatemum did the Treasure Hunters feature a map in Olde Worlde writing that they couldn't decipher because they thought it said Freajure, and a wicked step father figure called Mr Potts (of money)? I loved that book!

The Jinny books were much scarier and darker. In the first book she gets canned while she has a dislocated shoulder, and the village school is like something out of the dark ages compared to her inner city school. There’s another book where she makes friends with a girl with an emotionally abusive dad/stepdad who keeps wolves, and a really spooky one about the spirit of some old horse God where she finds a prehistoric statue and has to replace it with its twin, and I think she found a scary mural hidden under old paint in her bedroom or something? And the one where Marlene who’s disabled visits and is accused of stealing.

I'm sure there was a story about a boy who was asked to do jobs for a neighbour, and would get paid. He did a sloppy job on all of them then asked for his payment. They neighbour said the payment was in each job but he hadn't found them as he hadn't done them properly. Eg a pound note under the last jar he had to clean or something

I remember that one! It was a short story. The boy was a scout and his neighbour had left money and sweets in places like the chicken coop, some old sacks and the top shelf of the shed. Lazy little git

My best memory of ‘Plenty of Fun’ being the visitor was called Berta Lesley Wright, poor kid. EB has an indifferent view of Americans - they were always a bit lazy and vain yet good natured. And all said ‘wunnerful.’

I loved the family stories like Tree House and Green Meadows. My favourite was Dreadful Children though. When Pat got the glowing report after pulling his socks up after his mums accident, I nearly cried at the teachers comments. I felt so proud for the imaginary mum of her imaginary child 😂