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 always thought it meant ice cream. A choc ice is a lump of ice cream covered in chocolate so an ice is just a lump of ice cream!

I always wondered too how Julian Dick and Anne got to nearly teenage years before meeting their dad’s niece. It’s not like that’s a really distant relative!
One of my aunts fell out with the rest of the family when she took up with a disreputable cockney type (who cared for her selflessly many years later when she had dementia) in the early 1940s. My mum reconciled with her in the 60s so I met one of my cousins when she was about 20 and I was 6. There is an older cousin from her first marriage who I have still never met.

@BitOfFun

My memory is hazy, but didn't Darrell start late because she she was in quarantine after her sister Felicity had chicken pox or measles or similar?

I remember the O’Sullivan twins being late to start the summer term because they were in quarantine for something. Also remember Sally Hope being late back in Third Year at MT for the same reason.

@kierenthecommunity

I always wondered too how Julian Dick and Anne got to nearly teenage years before meeting their dad’s niece. It’s not like that’s a really distant relative!

And after all those years of ignoring her husband, Fanny was more than willing to take her brother in laws kids for the summer holiday, due to their parents wanting an adult only jolly

I suspect that was more common back in the 40s/50s when travelling was harder. If people had moved a distance then it would be just that much harder to visit. I'm not sure that Quentin and Fanny had a car, just the pony trap in the first book, and I can't imagine Quentin being exactly keen on having visitors! And I don't imagine Kirrin having frequent trains. There's no mutual grandparent mentioned as being alive, so if Quentin refused to have visitors, Fanny wouldn't leave Quentin (as she won't in subsequent books as she says he's so hopeless), and Quentin and Fanny didn't have a car it wouldn't be simple.

Maybe when the children's father says in the first book he "met Fanny the other day" he used to meet up with her occasionally just to get news of his brother.

There may have also been an aspect that Fanny was very aware that they were living in relative poverty to the other children and may have been too ashamed to want them to visit. I certainly get the impression that they would have been too proud to accept help.
However accepting payment-and it is very clear they would have been paying for the children as she says she is wanting to take paying guests, for them to stay is very different to accepting a handout. Fanny is the one who says she's looking for paying guests. She may have felt very awkward when asked to take her niece and nephew, but it gave her three paying guests. You could even, if you wanted, read it as the children's parents setting it up so they could help out with Fanny feeling that she's doing them a favour rather than accepting a handout.

Quentin despised visitors. "How can a man work when these upsets go on? I was always against having children in the house." (Five go adventuring again)

I think the distance between Julian, Anne and dick’s house and George’s was flexible. I’m sure in one book it was a long journey by car, but on another they cycled it one afternoon!

I don’t think there was any logic to it - it was convenient to have the children meet for the first time when they were 10/11/12 that’s all.

The whole form thing at st Clare’s/MT is confusing. Public schools now generally start at 11 for girls, 13 for boys/mixed. Not sure if that was always the case. The only time you hear upper/lower nowadays is with regards to ‘sixth form’, years 12 and 13, and most state schools use this still, despite counting from 7 when children start at 11. One private school near me names it’s year groups ridiculously though - I think years 7 and 8 are upper and lower third forms, 9 and 10 are upper and lower fourth and 11 is fifth. No idea what happened to forms 1 and 2!!!

At my independent school we started senior school at 11 in the third form then lower fourth, upper fourth, lower fifth, upper fifth (GCE), lower sixth, upper sixth. In the prep school 1b was Y3 then 1a, 2b, 2a (Y6) where you were not encouraged to take the 11+ in case you passed it and left. 😀

@HilaryThorpe Ooh! Our independent school had that too! I've never seen it ANYWHERE else. It took me ages to work out why you started in the Upper 3rd (I didn't go to the prep school and incorrectly assumed it as a continuation of their numbering).

I was embarrassingly quite old before I worked out they'd started at the Upper Sixrh and just worked backwards.

My school's forms:
Junior School.......Kindergarten, Transition, Form 1, Form 2, Lower 3rd (11+ taken to determine if you went into the Senior School).
Senior School.......Upper 3rd, Lower 4th and so on to Upper 5th(O Levels)
Lower 6th, Upper 6th(A Levels).

3A was Y7 with 5A as Y11

I think the distance between Julian, Anne and dick’s house and George’s was flexible. I’m sure in one book it was a long journey by car, but on another they cycled it one afternoon!

Yes, that's right -- I can't remember which book, but when I was rereading the FF with my child, I remember noticing it, along with Julian, Dick and Anne's variable surname, which switches about between Kirrin and Barnard, despite the fact that we're told in the first book that Quentin is Julian and co's father's brother, so they would share a surname. (Which then pulls up the question of why, unless Aunt Fanny's maiden name is Kirrin, too, all the place names around are called after her family...)

In Five on a Treasure Island, Julian and co live in London and travel in their own car to Kirrin, leaving soon after breakfast and not getting there till six in the evening, but the time time we get to Five Go Off in a Caravan, they live in the country (and have a paddock with a retired pony who used to draw their pony cart, which doesn't suggest they've just moved..?)

(There is also that slightly mysterious reference in the first FF book to Julian, Dick and Anne's father having to meet Aunt Fanny in town 'for a business matter', immediately after which he says 'I don't think things are going to well for them' and proposes that the children go to Kirrin Cottage as PGs. Odd and interesting that Julian and co's father isn't having 'business' dealings with his own brother, but his brother's wife? Selling family heirlooms? Liquidating family assets?)

I think the surnames must just be a mistake — it was Aunt Fanny who owned the cottage/island/farm and used to own a lot of the land, so she must have been a Kirrin.

I can understand the people around there referring to George as a Kirrin, since from their point of view, Quentin is the one who's married in.

It would have made more sense if the others' father was Fanny's brother, but I imagine she'd have been much better at keeping in touch then! And of course the gold would have had to have been split.

It is all set round Poole Harbour isn't it. The castle is Corfe Castle moved to Brownsea Island. EB loved Swanage apparently.
When we lived in Poole we drove up to London in a couple of hours, so they must have taken a rather eccentric route, even before the A32, M27, M3. 😂

A31 not A32.

She might have had a bit of a shock on the beach at Studland. I once took a school trip there and in the middle of discussing the wildlife of the dunes, I wondered why I had lost my audience.....

@PolkadotsAndMoonbeams

I think the surnames must just be a mistake — it was Aunt Fanny who owned the cottage/island/farm and used to own a lot of the land, so she must have been a Kirrin.

I can understand the people around there referring to George as a Kirrin, since from their point of view, Quentin is the one who's married in.

It would have made more sense if the others' father was Fanny's brother, but I imagine she'd have been much better at keeping in touch then! And of course the gold would have had to have been split.

In Fix (number 17) the Children's mother is referred to as Mrs Barnard, so that should be their surname.

There is some confusion in that in book 18 (Finniston farm) they arrive and are greeted by the two Harries as "The Kirrins". However I think the farmer's wife had known Aunt Fanny, who might well have been Frances Kirrin before she got married, so may well have referred to them as "the Kirrins".

That's my assumption though.

I say tuthbrush and I'm not posh! From the midlands. I thought it was posher to say toothbrush! It took me years to say bus instead of buz too. I've recently reverted to saying garridge instead of garaaage too. Why should I change the way I speak..... posh people say rats when the mean rates too. I'm fairly old & have vague memories of the use of the word ice to mean both lolly & icecream when I was small. The childrens/young people books I read include

@amispeakingenglish

Oh no i cant bear tuth and tuthbrush it's not a class thing, for some reason i have a really strong visceral reaction to it, it almost makes my eyes water!

Ha theres a town nearby where they say buz instead of bus... "I were running f'ot buz" that i find charming for some reason!

We have family in a village where people are referred to by the farm they live in; I think this is partly because quite a few of them share surnames, so naming them after the farm makes it easier to distinguish, so I can imagine naming them after Kirrin makes as much sense as using their actual surname. Though I suspect it is mostly a Blyton mix-up (does Joanna the cook become Joan at one point?)

I am rereading them because of this thread and am now at Five Go Off In a Caravan.

And I assumed they lived somewhere round the edge of London, so the rural bit could work. Although, given that mostly, they are either at school or Kirrin, their parents could have moved several times with just a brief note to remind them to send their weekly letters to New Town rather than London.

Whilst on subject of mysterious iced treats, check out the legend of hokey pokey!!

Yep, and Alf the fisherboy becomes James.

I’d forgotten about them going for ‘ices’!

Those books always made my hungry, they were always delving into delicious picnics Aunt Fanny had whipped up

Wavescrashingonthebeach

Fraid I don't have a charming f'ot in front of buzz! Just the. I love the variation of our regional accents though and you hear the difference between generations too. I see I forgot to list the childrens book, will have to find it as forgot the title, however I do still have all my Jill Pony books and the Pullen Thompson ones, plus the Aussie Brumby series. Will never part with them.

the Aussie Brumby series

I have seen real live brumbies in the Snowy Mountains (though not a silver one.) I went there specifically because of the books.